2012-06-10

Jesus the Blue Eyed Jew, Part 2

We try not to deny any books to our children.  If they can reach it, they can read it.  (We try to limit how many books they eat, of course.)  The other day Lana was flipping through a book that someone had erroneously told her contained different pictures of what Jesus might have looked like.  It was actually Jesus and the Twelve[1].  It has one image of Jesus and twelve other images.  Judas is especially sinister; Saint Paul doesn't get an image, just a one-page summary; but Matthias is excluded entirely.

Lana, thinking each image was a try at Jesus' likeness, flipped through the pages, checking each one and judging it, "No, that's not Jesus.  Nope, that's not Jesus...."

When she had gone through each disciple, she finally arrived at the Jesus image and decided, "Oh, yeah, that's Jesus," like she was certain or she had almost forgotten what he looked like until that moment.

That makes me sick to my stomach.




I don't mind artistic representations of Jesus.  I don't even mind it when they portray Jesus in wildly unlikely genetic compositions:  The black Jesus or a Chinese Jesus, for example.  Since the whole Jesus story is God becoming human flesh, responding to the hypothetical, What if Jesus walked around as one of us (Samoans, Viking Norsemen, American Indians, red-haired Irish, Papuans, Austronesians, Cossacks, what have you), is a healthy exercise.  Few actually assert that Jesus was a totally different race than his historic Mediterranean Hebrew circumstances.

Few would, except the funny and ancient assertion that he was a great deal more white than he probably was or could have been.  Jesus the Blue-Eyed Jew, who triumphs over sin and death, not just because he is God and man together in one, but because he is also fully Aryan superman.  Don't get me wrong -- I'm not against entire people groups; I like Aryans.  Some of my favorite actors are Aryan supermen like Max von Sydow, who played Jesus in 1965's The Greatest Story Ever Told.  He doesn't walk around like a blond Swedish-French Jesus; he wears a dark black wig.  So there is some sense of obligation to historical accuracy.

Jesus and the Twelve shook me up at first.  I have a lot of skepticism about reports of Jesus' physical appearance, especially the blue eyes.  But it does come up a lot:  Blue eyes here, blue eyes there.  Maybe He really does have blue eyes.  At least 50% of his genetics are a wildcard, so who knows?  It's hard to argue with historical accounts like this:  "Description of Jesus by Publius Lentulus, Governor of Judea, addressed to Tiberius Caesar, Emperor of Rome.  Found in an excavated city written in Aramaic on stone ...".  The hard thing about being a skeptic is that you must be willing to accept evidence when it is presented.  If a governor like Publius Lentulus took the time to stone-carve an Aramaic blue-eyed Jesus, then it's a stronger possibility than I had expected.

Wait a minute.  What was Publius Lentulus doing writing Tiberius Caesar in Aramaic?  Why carve it in stone?  Paper writing in more appropriate languages like Latin or Koine Greek?  Found in an excavated city!  How very Indiana Jones.  Some adventure and intrigue to cover up the absurdity of it all.

Turns out Publius Lentulus was an actual name around the time of Christ but he was never a governor of Judea.  The famous description was unknown until the 1400s.  Wikipedia[2] and the Catholic Encyclopedia[3] take it for granted that it is a total fabrication.  A book, Modern Apocrypha, Famous "Biblical" Hoaxes, dismisses it[4]:
The 'Letter of Lentulus' is evidently a fiction, designed to give currency to the description contained in the printers' manuals about the personal appearance of Jesus. The varying accounts of its provenance are simply devices to explain its survival from antiquity until today. It is probably as old as the thirteenth century; but it was unknown to Christian antiquity, and has no claims to serious attention as throwing any light upon the personal appearance of Jesus.

The description is a physically flawless beauty who solemnly looks amazing all the time and never laughs.  Never laughs!  Sounds like some old Baptist Sunday School teachers I had as a child who would scold you if you smiled and tell your parents if they caught you running, or playing, or snickering, or spitting, or reading Tom Sawyer, or smoking.  No one I would ever want to meet again.

The original description from the dubious Publius Lentulus includes no blue eyes, by the way.  That's a product of Jesus and the Twelve alone.  All this debunking of Publius Lentulus could have waited -- but it's nice to know that Jesus might have laughed at least once in a while.


The description itself:

From Wikipedia, matching the Catholic Encyclopedia, containing no blue eyes:
Lentulus, the Governor of the Jerusalemites to the Roman Senate and People, greetings. There has appeared in our times, and there still lives, a man of great power (virtue), called Jesus Christ. The people call him prophet of truth; his disciples, son of God. He raises the dead, and heals infirmities. He is a man of medium size (statura procerus, mediocris et spectabilis); he has a venerable aspect, and his beholders can both fear and love him. His hair is of the colour of the ripe hazel-nut, straight down to the ears, but below the ears wavy and curled, with a bluish and bright reflection, flowing over his shoulders. It is parted in two on the top of the head, after the pattern of the Nazarenes. His brow is smooth and very cheerful with a face without wrinkle or spot, embellished by a slightly reddish complexion. His nose and mouth are faultless. His beard is abundant, of the colour of his hair, not long, but divided at the chin. His aspect is simple and mature, his eyes are changeable and bright. He is terrible in his reprimands, sweet and amiable in his admonitions, cheerful without loss of gravity. He was never known to laugh, but often to weep. His stature is straight, his hands and arms beautiful to behold. His conversation is grave, infrequent, and modest. He is the most beautiful among the children of men.
From Jesus and the Twelve, deviates in verbosity of embellishment:
There lives, at this time, in Judea, a man of singular virtue whose name is Jesus Christ, whom the barbarians esteem as a prophet, but his followers love and adore him as the offspring of the immortal God.  He calls back the dead from the graves, and heals all sorts of diseases with a word or a touch.
He is a tall man, and well shaped, of an amiable and reverend aspect; his hair of a color that can hardly be matched, the color of chestnut full ripe, falling in waves about his shoulders.  His forehead high, large and imposing; his cheeks without spot or wrinkle, beautiful with a lovely red; his nose and mouth formed with exquisite symmetry; his beard thick and of a color suitable to his hair reaching below his chin.  His eyes bright blue [bright!], clear and serene, look innocent, dignified, manly, and mature.  In proportion of body, most perfect and captivating, his hands and arms most delectable to behold.
He rebukes with majesty, counsels with mildness, his whole address, whether in word or deed, being eloquent and grave.  No man has seen him laugh, yet his manner is exceedingly pleasant; but he has wept in the presence of men.  He is temperate, modest and wise; a man, for his extraordinary beauty and divine perfections, surpassing the children of men in every sense.

Sources:



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