How important are symbols?

[marco]

A lot of Christianity comes in pictorial form. We never saw Christ but the world knows the handsome young man given to us by artists. The face of Christ has become recognisable.

At Christmas we have a baby which we adore; we have a famous picture of the exposed heart of Jesus; we have innumerable hymns that make us hurt with pity for him or make us feel guilty for having crucified him; and most powerfully of all we have the cross of Christ. In the Middle Ages people sought bits of the true cross; the wonderful tale of the enchanted chalice grew up. In Turin we may or may not have the shroud that caught his dying blood.


How important are these pictures in Christianity?


Would an uglier face of the Lord be less acceptable?

[marco]

I just think it is pseudoscientific and not based on Jesus.

Science builds on theories, on ideas; it doesn't start with proof. The assumption here is that Jesus looked like the people among whom he was born rather than an English lecturer. Presumably he didn't take flesh as a fish-like creature.

To assume Jesus materialised from some supernatural source would be pseudoscientific since it would counter everything that science has accepted. There is more chance that the being staring at us through scientific guesswork is closer to fact than Christ's Resurrection or Ascension. It is a choice between trusting the processes that have made us comfortably civilised and believing the literal truth of Hans Andersen's tales. Tough choice!

[JehovahsWitness]

Continued from post# 8 by JehovahsWitness


HOW TALL WAS JESUS?




WAS JESUS 5"5 (165 cm) TALL?

• There are no records containing his measurements so that would be impossible to verify such a claim. While some anthropologists guess he may have been around this height supposedly based on skeletal remains from the region, to the best of my knowledge, the scope and content of the study upon which such conclusions are based have not been made available. According to the website "Our World in Data" a collaborative platform of researchers at the University of Oxford and the Leverhulme Center for Demographic Science at Nuffield College, UK [1], first century Eastern Mediterraneans (which would include Jordanians, Iraqis* and Lebanese*) were actually a little taller standing on average at about 5"7. So we can reasonably assume the average was between 5"5 And 5"7. Which was not particularly short compared to other nations at the time [In a study of 927 adult male Roman skeletons between 500 B.C. and A.D. 500, Professor Geoffrey Kron of the University of Victoria found an average of 168cm 5"6].

*Experts say that genetically first century Jews were closely related to present day Iraqis and Lebanese [5][6]

172 cm =5"7

Accurately measuring the height of an individual is a straightforward task and so we should be confident that there is relatively little measurement error in the recorded data. This is unlikely to be the case when measuring the height of skeletons. What is more, the techniques used to date skeletal remains (such as radio carbon dating) only provide a probabilistic estimate.
SOURCE: https://ourworldindata.org/human-height

IF THE AVERAGE FOR THE REGION WAS BETWEEN 5"5 -5"7 DOES THAT MEAN THAT A 6 FOOT JEW WOULD HAVE BEEN CONSIDERED FREAKISHLY TALL?

• Jesus may well have been several inches taller than the average without it being particularly shocking. For example the average height of an American male today is 5"9, yet most Americans know someone that is 6 foot tall or taller. Indeed a 6"1 American (4 inches taller than the average), would be described as "tall" but he would hardly stop traffic, cause small children to stare in awe and wonder or make the local newspapers. In short (no pun intended), being three or four inches taller than "average" isnt the same as being three or four inches taller than everybody. The Average is the median of all the "tall", "average" and the "short" people, so the populace itself would have been a mixture of all these "types". Which "type" Jesus was in ("tall" "average" or "short") we just dont know, but its just as likely (arguably more so) he was a "tall-type"as it is he was average or small.

ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS

Along with a person's genetic makeup (which in the case of Jesus we cannot assertain for sure if he was "a tall type" of Galiean or not) researchers have found that environmental factors, particularly diet and healthcare, also play a role in how tall someone is albeit to a much smaller degree. There are two factors that we can take into consideration when it comes to which "type" of Galiean Jesus might have been.

• * He worked outside M Fishberg's investigations of the Jews in the United States found that Jews working indoors to be an average of 4.4 cm. shorter than those working at outdoor occupations [3]. Jesus was trained from his youth as a carpenter. This involved a lot of outdoor physical exertion which would have favoured a muscular frame and arguably extra inches in height if he was genetically disposed.
  
  * He had a good diet Experts [4] say nutrition is also an environmental factor in a person's height. Although Jesus was from a poor family, he was from an agricultural region so even given the high Romsn taxes, in the absence of disease or crop failure, abject hunger would not usually have been a factor. In addition, his cousins were not only fishermen but from the gospel accounts owned their own small business. So it seems reasonable to conclude Jesus would have grown up with a reasonably healthy diet.

CONCLUSION Declarations that Jesus was 5"5 (or even 5"7) reflects a lack of understanding of what an average is. While its unlikely Jesus was extraordinarily tall, there is absolutely no archaeological evidence that renders his being 3 or 4 inches taller than that, statistically or genetically impossible; so Jesus may well have been about 5"9 or "10.

REFERENCES

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/human-height
[2] https://www.verywellfit.com/average-hei ... cs-2632137
[3] http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13993-stature
[4] https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... an-height/
[5] https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-a-fore ... grimage-a-
[6] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 003653.htm




JW



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