Jesus’ Description… (more early church manipulation?):
Recently I posted the below physical description of Jesus from Page 230 of The Hiram Key by Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas but, after additional research, I now think that description was erroneous, possibly somehow advocated by some of Jesus’ followers to delay or otherwise hinder the authorities’ search for him.
I have long felt that the Shroud of Turin was the authentic wrapping of Jesus body and that the controversial radio-carbon dating was mistakenly taken from a fire-damaged, replacement area… overall, the Shroud depicts a man roughly 5’8” to 6’ tall with strong facial features, agreeing with many artists’ renditions… how clairvoyant is the typical or even above-typical artist?
Jesus’ description, from Page 230 of “The Hiram Key” by Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas:
“Despite Christian censorship, a copy of Josephus’s description survived in Slavonic texts and came to light in the last century. We cannot be certain that it is but many scholars believe it is, and there is no reason to doubt them. It paints a picture of a man quite different to the image most people imagine…
‘… a man of simple appearance, mature age, dark skin, small stature, three cubits high, hunchbacked with a long face, long nose, and meeting eyebrows so that they who see him might be affrighted, with scanty hair with a parting in the middle of his head, after the manner of the Nazarites, and with an undeveloped beard.’
“A height of three cubits would put him at under four feet six inches which combined with a hunchback and severe facial features would make Jesus the Christ a very easy person to recognize. Whilst this might offend some Christians, we would point out that it ought to be no more important for a god to be of beautiful appearance or tall than it is for him to be born in a palace. That is a modern view, however, and if Jesus had been a small and ugly man the Hellenized world would never have accepted him as a god, so the early Christians would have had to hide the fact. There is additional evidence that Jesus was a man of very small physical stature. The Acts of John (which was excluded from the New Testament) says of Jesus:
‘… I was afraid and cried out, and he, turning about, appeared as a man of small stature, and caught hold on my beard and pulled it and said to me: “John, be not faithless but believing, and not curious.’
“In Luke 19:3 we read about a man called Zacchaeus who tries to see Jesus through a crowd.
‘And he sought to see Jesus who he was and he could not for the crowd, because he was low of stature.’
“This is not the face depicted on the shroud of Turin, but we now believe the shroud is authentic.”
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