9 things you think you know about Jesus that are probably wrong...

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FRIDAY, FEB 27, 2015 12:30 AM PST

9 things you think you know

about Jesus that are
probably wrong

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For starters, it's unlikely that he had long, owing hair, and he wasn't necessarily hung
on a cross
VALERIE TARICO, ALTERNET

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TOPICS: ALTERNET, JESUS CHRIST, THE BIBLE, CHRISTOPHER DODD, D-CONN., GOD, POLITICS NEWS

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This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

Jesus has been described as the best known figure in

history, and also the least known. If you mentioned
the name Jesus and someone asked Jesus who,
you might blink. Or laugh. Even people who dont think Jesus was God mostly believe
they know a fair bit about him. You might be surprised that some of your most basic
assumptions about Jesus are probably wrong.
We have no record of anything that was written about Jesus by eyewitnesses or other
contemporaries during the time he would have lived, or for decades thereafter.
Nonetheless, based on archeological digs and artifacts, ancient texts and art, and even
forensic science, we know a good deal about the time and culture in which the New
Testament is set. This evidence points to some startling conclusions about who Jesus
likely wasand wasnt.

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disciples would have been practicing Jews, and all great rabbis we know of were married.
A rabbi being celibate would have been so unusual that some modern writers have
argued Jesus must have been gay. But a number of ancient texts, including the canonical
New Testament, point to a special relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus.
The Gospel of Phillip says, [Jesus] loved her more than all the disciples, and used to kiss
her often on her mouth.

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2. Cropped hair, not long.Jewish men at the time of Christ did not wear their hair long. A
Roman triumphal arch of the time period depicts Jewish slaves with short hair. In the
Apostle Pauls first letter to the Corinthians, he addresses male hair length. Does not
nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is degrading to him? (1
Corinthians 11:14 NRSV). During the 1960s, conservative Christians quoted this verse to
express their disgust against the hippy movement and to label it anti-Christian.
3. Hung on a pole, not necessarily a cross.For centuries scholars have known that the
Greek New Testament word stauros, which is translated into English as cross, can refer
to a device of several shapes, commonly a single upright pole, torture stake or even tree.
The Romans did not have a standard way of crucifying prisoners, and Josephus tells us
that during the siege of Jerusalem, soldiers nailed or tied their victims in a variety of
positions. Early Christians may have centered on the vertical pole with a crossbeam
because it echoed the Egyptian ankh, a symbol of life, or the Sumerian symbol for
Tammuz, or because it simply was more artistically and symbolically distinctive than the
alternatives. Imagine millions of people wearing a golden pole on a chain around their
necks.
4. Short, not tall. The typical Jewish man at the time of the Roman Empire would have
been just over five feet tall, which makes this a best guess for the height of Jesus. That he
is typically depicted taller derives from the mental challenge people have distinguishing
physical stature from other kinds of stature. Great men are called big men and larger
than life. In ancient times they often were assigned divine parentage and miraculous
births, and the idea that Jesus was uniquely divine has created a strong pull over time to
depict him as taller than is likely. A good illustration of this is the Shroud of Turin, which
is just one of many such Jesus-shrouds that circulated during medieval times and which
bears the image of a man closer to six feet in height.
5. Born in a house, not a stable. The miraculous birth story of Jesus is a late, maybe
second-century addition to the Bible, and it contains many fascinatingmythic
elements and peculiarities. But the idea that Jesus was born in a stable was added to the
Christmas story even later. In the original narrative, Joseph and Mary probably would
have stayed with relatives, and the phrase no room for them in the inn (gr: kataluma)
is better translated no room for them in the upper room. Later storytellers did not
understand that people of the time might bring animals into their ground floor, as in
Swiss housebarns, and they assumed that the presence of a manger implied a stable.
6. Named Joshua, not Jesus. The name Joshua (in Hebrew Yhoshua meaning
deliverance or salvation), was common among Jews in the Ancient Near East as it is
today. Joshua and Jesus are the same name, and are translated differently in our modern
Bible to distinguish Jesus from the Joshua of the Old Testament, who leads the Hebrew
people to the Promised Land. In actuality, the relationship between the two figures is
fascinating and important.Some scholars believe that the New Testament gospels are
mostly historicized and updated retellings of the more ancient Joshua story, with episodes
interwoven from stories of Elisha and Elijah and Moses. A modern parallel can be found
in the way Hollywood writers have reworked Shakespearean tropes and plot elements
into dozens of modern movies (though for a very different purpose).
7. Number of apostles (12) from astrology, not history. Whether Jesus had 12 disciples
who were above his other devotees is an open question. The number 12 was considered
auspicious by many ancient peoples, and the fellowship of 12 disciples, who are depicted
in Da Vincis The Last Supper, likely get their count from the same source as the 12 signs

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12 legitimate successors to the prophet Mohammed. But since the Gospels echo the
story of Joshua, the 12 apostles most closely parallel the 12 tribes of Israel.
8. Prophecies recalled, not foretold. Even people who arent too sure about the divinity
of Jesus sometimes think that the way he fulfilled prophecies was a bit spooky, like the
writings of Nostradamus. In reality, Scooby Doo could solve this one in a single episode
with three pieces of information: First, Old Testament prophecies were well known to
first-century Jews, and a messianic figure who wanted to fulfill some of these prophecies
could simply do so. For example, in the book of Matthew, Jesus seeks a donkey to ride
into Jerusalem that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet (Matthew
21:4). Second, gospels are a genre of devotional literature rather than objective
histories, which means that the authors had every reason to shape their stories around
earlier predictions. Third, scholars now believe that some Bible texts once thought to be
prophecies (for example in the Book of Revelation) actually relate to events that were
current or past at the time of writing.

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9. Some Jesus quotes not from Jesus; others uncertain. Lists of favorite Jesus sayings
abound online. Some of the most popular are the Beatitudes (blessed are the meek, etc.) or
the story of the woman caught in adultery (let he who is without sin cast the first stone) or
the Golden Rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you, which, we are told,
sums up the Law and the Prophets).
Which words are actually from Jesus? This question has been debated fiercely by
everyone from third-century Catholic Councils to the 20th-century Jesus Seminar.
Even Thomas Jefferson weighed in, but much remains unclear. The New Testament
Gospels were written long after Jesus would have died, and no technology existed with
which to record his teachings in real time, unless he wrote them down himself, which he
didnt.
We can be confident that at least some of the wise and timeless words andcatchy
proverbs attributed to Jesus are actually from earlier or later thinkers. For example, the
Golden Rule was articulated before the time of Christ by theRabbi Hillel the Elder, who
similarly said it was the whole Torah. By contrast, the much-loved story of the woman
caught in adultery doesnt appear in manuscripts until the fourth century. Attributing
words (or whole texts) to a famous person was common in the Ancient Near East, because
it gave those words extra weight. Small wonder then that so many genuinely valuable
insights ended up, in one way or another, paired with the name of Jesus.
The person of Jesus, if indeed there was such a person, is shrouded in the fog of history
leaving us only with a set of hunches and traditions that far too often are treated as
knowledge. The facts I have listed here are largely trivial; it doesnt really matter
whether Jesus was tall or short, or how he cut his hair. But it does matter, tremendously,
that facts people claim to know about how Jesus saw himself, and God and humanity
are equally tenuous.
The teachings attributed to Jesus mix enduring spiritual and moral insights with
irrelevancies and Judaica and bits of Iron Age culture, some of which are truly awful. That
leaves each of us, from the privileged vantage of the 21st century, with both a right and a
responsibility to consider the evidence and make our own best guesses about what is real
and how we should then live. A good starting place might be a little more recognition that
we dont know nearly as much as wed like to think, and a lot of what we know for sure is
probably wrong.
MORE VALERIE TARICO.

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