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The appearance of Jesus
“There is almost no written evidence of Jesus’ life before he turns 30. We can’t be sure
what he did for a living, whether he was married or had children. We don’t even know what
he looked like,” reports the narrator.
If the Bible mentions Jesus’ mother and siblings on a number of occasions, we certainly
would expect the Scriptures to have mentioned his wife and children if he had any.
As for his appearance, that does remain a secret. Early Christian artists in the third century
painted images of Jesus on the walls of catacombs, but Professor Jonathan L. Reed of the
University of La Verne says they likely used Roman gods as templates. One picture of Jesus
shows him with long hair but no beard.
It is also true that as Christianity spread, the appearance of Jesus changed with the location.
Europeans, for instance, made Jesus look like a European.
Jesus, however, was a Galilean. According to Reed, he would likely have had dark hair, a
stubby beard, and fairly dark skin from being out in the sun. Would Jesus have had long
hair? St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:14-15 says, “Does not the very nature of things teach you
that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him, but that if a woman has long hair, it is her
glory?” Draw you own conclusion.
Nazareth
Modern day Nazareth in northern Israel is the country’s largest Arab city with nearly 60,000
citizens, 2/3 Muslim, 1/3 Christian.
However, at the time of Jesus it probably was a very small and insignificant village. Reed
says that the name doesn’t show up in the Bible until the Gospels. My search of a Bible
concordance supports this statement.
Prof. Jodi Magness of the University of North Carolina thinks the Nazareth of Jesus’ day
was probably agriculturally based and had only a few hundred residents.
The Church of the Annunciation in modern Nazareth is thought to have been built near the
spot where Jesus’ family lived. A century ago monks excavated the church’s crypt and found
the remains of an ancient village. They found water cisterns and grain silos cut into the
bedrock. But not much was found to give an idea of the type of homes the first century
citizens of Nazareth lived in.
Today archaeologists are exploring the remains of a nearby Galilean town that was
abandoned in the first century but which offers clues to the nature of Galilean homes at the
time.
According to Mordechai Aviam of the University of Rochester, these homes were built of
rock and mud and covered with plaster outside and inside. Simple homes may have been
covered with mud plaster.
The Jewish book, the Talmud, informs us that most men worked as shepherds or farmers
while the women stayed at home baking bread, making and washing clothes, and generally
doing maintenance tasks. The farmers probably had all they could do to provide enough
olives, grain, and vegetables to keep their families fed.
Sepphoris
Sepphoris is a name that doesn’t appear in the Scriptures, but it plays an important part in
this National Geographic documentary.
Sepphoris was a city built by King Herod Antipas who was appointed king of Galilee by the
Romans in 4 B.C. It lay just some 4 miles from Nazareth. Herod wanted it to become one of
the finest cities in the empire. Called the “ornament of the Galilee”, it was a center of
economic and cultural life and the biggest city in Galilee at the time of Jesus.
Archaeologists have found no pig bones in the ruins of this city which means the inhabitants
ate no pork and which also means it was a Jewish city. Still the influence of Greek and
Roman culture here was strong.
The documentary imagines Jesus visiting “bustling Sepphoris” on occasion to look for work
(if he was a common laborer) or to shop in the markets. Here he would have become familiar
with the “mainstreams of Roman culture.”
Reed says the construction of Sepphoris along with the port city of Tiberius was bad news
for the lower classes, the peasants. The lower classes paid for building the two cities out of
their own pockets. Herod Antipas sent his tax collectors throughout the region, stirring up
considerable anger, as we well know from the Scriptures.
The Zealots, Sadducees, and Pharisees
The Zealots (“daggermen”) were organized by a man named Judas of Hezekiah as an armed
resistance movement. They wanted to stop the erosion of the traditional Jewish way of life.
Their “first act was a tax revolt in Sepphoris.” Although the revolt was crushed by Roman
troops, the insurgency grew. By the time of Jesus, they were doing guerilla warfare and
focused their attention on Jerusalem.
The divisions in Jewish society caused by groups such as the Zealots “must have influenced
Jesus.” It is surprising the program didn’t mention that Jesus chose a member of this rebel
group to be his disciple, Simon the Zealot. (Matthew 10:4; Mark 3:18; Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13)
One of the Jewish groups that stirred up the anger of the Zealots was the group of temple
authorities known as the Sadducees. Borg says they were “native collaborators who worked
with the Roman empire to make sure that the taxes, the tribute to Rome was paid.” The
Zealots often “targeted high priests for assassination” for allowing foreign interference in the
sacred Temple.
Then there were the Pharisees, “the lay sages...who left us the Talmud and the Jewish
rabbinic tradition’, according to Prof. Lawrence H. Schiffman of New York University.
The Pharisees “encouraged stricter observance of Jewish law. This was the world that Jesus
knew and saw in Nazareth and in Sepphoris. These competing religious strands must have
been woven into his head and mind.”
“But the Bible does not say Jesus went to any of these groups,” this program informs us. On
the contrary, we do know from the Scriptures that the Sadducees and Pharisees were
frequently denounced by Jesus and also by John the Baptist. See Matthew 3:7, Matthew
16:6, Matthew 16:12, Matthew 22:34; Matthew 3:7; and Matthew 23:13 for examples.
Thus, if Jesus was influenced by the Sadducees and Pharisees, it was only to point out how
they had strayed from God’s truth.
The Mikvah
Now back to the question of why Jesus came to John the Baptist to be baptized. Not satisfied
with the answer Jesus gave to John in Matthew 3:15, the theologians and archaeologists
behind this National Geographic production looked for a different answer more pleasing to
them.
Much is made of the ritual baths of the Jews called mikvahs. In fact, the Jerusalem Temple
was surrounded by pools of water thought to be mikvahs. Magness tells us, “the pilgrims
entering the Temple first would have needed to immerse themselves in order to be ritually
pure.” Bodily secretions, touching dead bodies, or even certain reptiles would make one
impure and in need of a ritual bath.
It is possible, Magness says, that Jesus could have gone through this ritual whenever he
would make his annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem at Passover. And “Jesus had probably
immersed in a mikvah several times in his youth.”
So what drove Jesus to be baptized by John? The program presents some possible
evidence that a certain cave about 8 miles west of Jerusalem near where legend has it that
John the Baptist was born may have been used by John for the purification rites.
“These rituals of inner purification could be what drove Jesus to come to John.” In other
words, Jesus came to John to be purified! But purified of what?
The National Geographic Channel concludes this portion of the documentary with the
following statement: “The Bible paints John as someone who simply prepared the way for
Jesus, but the real connection between them may not have been what’s written in the Bible."
That statement gives us a good clue as to how to evaluate the whole program.
In Summary
So, was Jesus a mere mortal easily influenced by the events of his day and the people
around him?
First, remember Jesus is the “holy one” (Luke 1:35), “a lamb without blemish or defect.” (1
Peter 1:19) Any influence upon Jesus during the “lost years” would not have caused him to
even think about sinning.
Second, we are told in Luke 2:52 that the young Jesus “grew in wisdom and stature.” This
means that in his state of humiliation He did not always make use of his divine omniscience
but increased his knowledge over time just like any other young man. Thus, anything Jesus
had to learn from his experiences as a young adult does not detract from his standing as
the one and only God-man.
Third, Jesus’ mission was stated to Joseph right before his birth. Jesus came “to save his
people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21) or, as he said, “to seek and to save what was lost.”
(Luke 19:10) No influence upon Jesus during the “lost years” would have caused him to
reconsider for one moment why he came down to Earth. No event or sinful human could
have succeeded in doing what Satan had failed to accomplish. (Matthew 4)
The real Jesus is a far more beloved and impressive Jesus than the one portrayed by the
National Geographic documentary. The National Geographic Jesus could never have come
down from heaven to suffer and to die for our sins and to open heaven’s gate to us. Thanks be
to God that we know the authentic Jesus Christ! LSI
The appearance of Jesus
“There is almost no written evidence of Jesus’ life before he turns 30. We can’t be sure
what he did for a living, whether he was married or had children. We don’t even know what
he looked like,” reports the narrator.
If the Bible mentions Jesus’ mother and siblings on a number of occasions, we certainly
would expect the Scriptures to have mentioned his wife and children if he had any.
As for his appearance, that does remain a secret. Early Christian artists in the third century
painted images of Jesus on the walls of catacombs, but Professor Jonathan L. Reed of the
University of La Verne says they likely used Roman gods as templates. One picture of Jesus
shows him with long hair but no beard.
It is also true that as Christianity spread, the appearance of Jesus changed with the location.
Europeans, for instance, made Jesus look like a European.
Jesus, however, was a Galilean. According to Reed, he would likely have had dark hair, a
stubby beard, and fairly dark skin from being out in the sun. Would Jesus have had long
hair? St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:14-15 says, “Does not the very nature of things teach you
that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him, but that if a woman has long hair, it is her
glory?” Draw you own conclusion.
Nazareth
Modern day Nazareth in northern Israel is the country’s largest Arab city with nearly 60,000
citizens, 2/3 Muslim, 1/3 Christian.
However, at the time of Jesus it probably was a very small and insignificant village. Reed
says that the name doesn’t show up in the Bible until the Gospels. My search of a Bible
concordance supports this statement.
Prof. Jodi Magness of the University of North Carolina thinks the Nazareth of Jesus’ day
was probably agriculturally based and had only a few hundred residents.
The Church of the Annunciation in modern Nazareth is thought to have been built near the
spot where Jesus’ family lived. A century ago monks excavated the church’s crypt and found
the remains of an ancient village. They found water cisterns and grain silos cut into the
bedrock. But not much was found to give an idea of the type of homes the first century
citizens of Nazareth lived in.
Today archaeologists are exploring the remains of a nearby Galilean town that was
abandoned in the first century but which offers clues to the nature of Galilean homes at the
time.
According to Mordechai Aviam of the University of Rochester, these homes were built of
rock and mud and covered with plaster outside and inside. Simple homes may have been
covered with mud plaster.
The Jewish book, the Talmud, informs us that most men worked as shepherds or farmers
while the women stayed at home baking bread, making and washing clothes, and generally
doing maintenance tasks. The farmers probably had all they could do to provide enough
olives, grain, and vegetables to keep their families fed.
Sepphoris
Sepphoris is a name that doesn’t appear in the Scriptures, but it plays an important part in
this National Geographic documentary.
Sepphoris was a city built by King Herod Antipas who was appointed king of Galilee by the
Romans in 4 B.C. It lay just some 4 miles from Nazareth. Herod wanted it to become one of
the finest cities in the empire. Called the “ornament of the Galilee”, it was a center of
economic and cultural life and the biggest city in Galilee at the time of Jesus.
Archaeologists have found no pig bones in the ruins of this city which means the inhabitants
ate no pork and which also means it was a Jewish city. Still the influence of Greek and
Roman culture here was strong.
The documentary imagines Jesus visiting “bustling Sepphoris” on occasion to look for work
(if he was a common laborer) or to shop in the markets. Here he would have become familiar
with the “mainstreams of Roman culture.”
Reed says the construction of Sepphoris along with the port city of Tiberius was bad news
for the lower classes, the peasants. The lower classes paid for building the two cities out of
their own pockets. Herod Antipas sent his tax collectors throughout the region, stirring up
considerable anger, as we well know from the Scriptures.
The Zealots, Sadducees, and Pharisees
The Zealots (“daggermen”) were organized by a man named Judas of Hezekiah as an armed
resistance movement. They wanted to stop the erosion of the traditional Jewish way of life.
Their “first act was a tax revolt in Sepphoris.” Although the revolt was crushed by Roman
troops, the insurgency grew. By the time of Jesus, they were doing guerilla warfare and
focused their attention on Jerusalem.
The divisions in Jewish society caused by groups such as the Zealots “must have influenced
Jesus.” It is surprising the program didn’t mention that Jesus chose a member of this rebel
group to be his disciple, Simon the Zealot. (Matthew 10:4; Mark 3:18; Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13)
One of the Jewish groups that stirred up the anger of the Zealots was the group of temple
authorities known as the Sadducees. Borg says they were “native collaborators who worked
with the Roman empire to make sure that the taxes, the tribute to Rome was paid.” The
Zealots often “targeted high priests for assassination” for allowing foreign interference in the
sacred Temple.
Then there were the Pharisees, “the lay sages...who left us the Talmud and the Jewish
rabbinic tradition’, according to Prof. Lawrence H. Schiffman of New York University.
The Pharisees “encouraged stricter observance of Jewish law. This was the world that Jesus
knew and saw in Nazareth and in Sepphoris. These competing religious strands must have
been woven into his head and mind.”
“But the Bible does not say Jesus went to any of these groups,” this program informs us. On
the contrary, we do know from the Scriptures that the Sadducees and Pharisees were
frequently denounced by Jesus and also by John the Baptist. See Matthew 3:7, Matthew
16:6, Matthew 16:12, Matthew 22:34; Matthew 3:7; and Matthew 23:13 for examples.
Thus, if Jesus was influenced by the Sadducees and Pharisees, it was only to point out how
they had strayed from God’s truth.
The Mikvah
Now back to the question of why Jesus came to John the Baptist to be baptized. Not satisfied
with the answer Jesus gave to John in Matthew 3:15, the theologians and archaeologists
behind this National Geographic production looked for a different answer more pleasing to
them.
Much is made of the ritual baths of the Jews called mikvahs. In fact, the Jerusalem Temple
was surrounded by pools of water thought to be mikvahs. Magness tells us, “the pilgrims
entering the Temple first would have needed to immerse themselves in order to be ritually
pure.” Bodily secretions, touching dead bodies, or even certain reptiles would make one
impure and in need of a ritual bath.
It is possible, Magness says, that Jesus could have gone through this ritual whenever he
would make his annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem at Passover. And “Jesus had probably
immersed in a mikvah several times in his youth.”
So what drove Jesus to be baptized by John? The program presents some possible
evidence that a certain cave about 8 miles west of Jerusalem near where legend has it that
John the Baptist was born may have been used by John for the purification rites.
“These rituals of inner purification could be what drove Jesus to come to John.” In other
words, Jesus came to John to be purified! But purified of what?
The National Geographic Channel concludes this portion of the documentary with the
following statement: “The Bible paints John as someone who simply prepared the way for
Jesus, but the real connection between them may not have been what’s written in the Bible."
That statement gives us a good clue as to how to evaluate the whole program.
In Summary
So, was Jesus a mere mortal easily influenced by the events of his day and the people
around him?
First, remember Jesus is the “holy one” (Luke 1:35), “a lamb without blemish or defect.” (1
Peter 1:19) Any influence upon Jesus during the “lost years” would not have caused him to
even think about sinning.
Second, we are told in Luke 2:52 that the young Jesus “grew in wisdom and stature.” This
means that in his state of humiliation He did not always make use of his divine omniscience
but increased his knowledge over time just like any other young man. Thus, anything Jesus
had to learn from his experiences as a young adult does not detract from his standing as
the one and only God-man.
Third, Jesus’ mission was stated to Joseph right before his birth. Jesus came “to save his
people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21) or, as he said, “to seek and to save what was lost.”
(Luke 19:10) No influence upon Jesus during the “lost years” would have caused him to
reconsider for one moment why he came down to Earth. No event or sinful human could
have succeeded in doing what Satan had failed to accomplish. (Matthew 4)
The real Jesus is a far more beloved and impressive Jesus than the one portrayed by the
National Geographic documentary. The National Geographic Jesus could never have come
down from heaven to suffer and to die for our sins and to open heaven’s gate to us. Thanks be
to God that we know the authentic Jesus Christ! LSI
By Warren Krug
PART 2
| Professor Magness in a mikvah |
| Published 2008 |