According to the internet, a grown ass donkey can carry up to around 80kg, and the good book says Jesus was riding one, so we should assume this is somewhat the upper limit for his mass
I think that the person you are replying to meant that the donkey had a fully developed rear end (capable of carrying a heavy load), so it would be a "grown ass ass".
In the book of Matthew, it says he rode two donkeys.
Matthew and Luke copy a lot of stuff from Mark, which was written first. The donkey story is there to fulfill prophesy. It was prophesied that the messiah would ride a donkey into Jerusalem. It also said he would be a king and vanquish their enemies and rule in peace and prosperity, but the New Testament authors figured riding a donkey was close enough.
So Matthew geta to the donkey story and reads the original prophesy. It says "Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey."
This is a poetic way of writing about a single donkey, like saying "he drove a car, he drove a red car."
But Matthew, frankly, fucked up a lot of stuff that he wrote, and he doesn't know this, so he changes everything to plural to fit the prophesy.
So everybody else writes that Jesus had his disciples bring a donkey and they lay their cloaks on it and he sits on it and rides to town. Matthew has them bring two, they lay their cloaks on them and he sits on them and rides to town.
It's unclear how he rode two donkeys. Was one donkey on top of the other and Jesus on top of that? Was it jean Claude van-damme style with him doing the splits between them?
At any rate, if the donkeys spread the load he could have weighed 160kg.
By the way, these donkeys are stolen. Jesus tells his disciples that there was a house back there that had a donkey (or two), go get it (them) for me.
I checked the shaman's spellbook and they don't have that spell, only Paladins have that
Edit: to clarify, I believe Jesus was a shaman because he could walk on water, resurrect from death (ankh), and as a carpenter he was probably well capable of crafting totems. There's also documented cases of him going melee combat (with tables, mostly) and healing others too
The food trick implies that he had a friendly mage though conjuring food, though he took the credit for himself
But then he was also descended from said deity, so celestial-bloodline sorcerer would also make sense?
And through weird extradimensional time shenanigans he is also said deity? I don't understand it myself, but I'm told it makes sense in 12 dimensions.
He was also briefly undead, likely a revenant given the unfinished business.
All of this depends on the edition of the lore you read though. In the beginning he was probably just a warlock multiclassing in cleric, then a supplemental edition has him ascend to demi-god status, which was later ruled actual divinity by a local authority once the franchise changed hands. Later, some of it was retconned and toned down for being too OP in another rulebook, but famously that rulebook wasn't very well accepted even though a sizeable playerbase still exists.
There are later editions where the pathway to divinity is laid out and Jesus is one of many gods, but that rulebook is still considered niche despite some disproportionate influence.
Yeah, everyone here seems to forget magic was involved here. For all we know he could have been 12' tall and light as a feather, with retractable beard and 5 legs.
So what are his density extremes based on this?
(I am too lazy and hungry to do that calculation right now. Besides, just because I know he was "smaller than a temple" does not mean I know the likely size of that temple to get a true volume bound...)
I think we can be pretty sure that he was no T-Rex though. I've never seen someone try, but I'm confident that you can't crucify them with their short arms.
Probably not a carpenter. The Greek word tektōn translates as craftsman or builder, not specifically carpenter. And given the relative scarcity of wood in the region, modern scholars think that Joseph would have been a stonemason.
Rev 1:14-16, New International Version has Jean-Baptiste's account of Jesus's appearance:
14The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. 15His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. 16In his right hand he held seven stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.
We can estimate from the remains of structures so establish a theoretical upper-bound. If I had to guess, I'd say he was 7 ft, since as far as I know, 7 is the Hebrew number associated with perfection.
I know but USA imperial units are different from UK ones, just like how american english has some differences with standard english.
I assumes they were using USA imperial units since IIRC UK now also uses metrical units to some degree eg: they use centimeters to measure people's height
To be very pedantic, in the USA they're not imperial (we left the British Empire, we had a whole war about it), they're "US Customary Units" and they're defined in metric lol
People are reading that passage wrong anyway. Most Bible scholars agree that just because Jesus fitted into the temple doesn't mean he would fit into the temple at all times. When he was in his giant mecha form, Jesus had no upper bound on his size.
I don’t think they could have constructed saint Peter’s basilica at this time or anything near the size of those archers, there is like a 1500 year difference between the two.
Side note: I’m not religious, but St Peter’s basilica is probably the most impressive building I’ve ever seen in my life. Someone feel free to recommend competitors.
American here - babies, temples...? Enough of your metric system insanity, I need this in football fields.
Anyway, we do know Jesus wasn't poor. The Wedding at Cana was a very upscale event - based on the specific types and amounts of expensive anointing oils mentioned in the text. "A poor carpenter's son" would have been there waiting tables for some extra money. Being a guest tells us he rubbed shoulders with some high rollers. His father Joseph might have been a top craftsman with wealthy clients.
He definitely was on the more poor side. At least when Jesus was born.
When a son was born and presented to the temple, the parents would pay an offering. That was to be a one year old lamb for the burnt offering and one pigeon or turtledove for the sin offering, but there was a provision for the poor that could not afford to give a lamb to give two pigeons or two turtledoves.
Mary and Joseph gave two pigeons, which under the purification law would only be allowed if they were poor.
By the time he attended the wedding at Cana, Joseph was already dead. The last time he was mentioned was at the temple when Jesus was 12, and by the time of crucifizion Jesus entrusted Mary’s care to John. That wouldn’t have happened if Joseph were still alive.
Also, the book of John doesn’t mention any anointing oils whatsoever at the Wedding at Cana. Nothing in the passage marks it as particularly upscale.
John 2
On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, 2 and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3 When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”
4 “Woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”
5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
6 Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.
7 Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim.
8 Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.”
They did so, 9 and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine.He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside 10 and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”
11 What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
12 After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days.
In fact, the master of the banquet makes mention that the normal way hosts do it is to serve what good wine they have first, then the cheapest wine once everyone is drunk, but that the host of that wedding seemingly deviated from that and served the best wine last (though they had actually run out and that was unknown to the master of the banquet). More likely is that they served all the wine they could afford already, and it wasn’t all that great of wine.
That plus the fact that Mary “was there” and instructing the servants, and then “Jesus and all of his disciples had also been invited”, it would be much more likely that it was a close family friend of Mary’s that came from more modest means.
The only reason I can think of for someone to need to go from Nazareth to Bethlehem for a census is if they were up to some sort of tax fraud. A tax fraudster would surely skimp on temple sacrifices as well.
...the text literally explains that everyone was supposed to go to the regions allocated for their tribe? The whole Old Testament shows that Israel is pretty big on "this area belongs to this tribe, that area belongs to that tribe" for a while. The concept of the Year of Jubilee (when any land sales that were made revert back to their original owners) puts a really fine point on this.
Now in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth. This was the first census taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. And everyone was on his way to register for the census, each to his own city. Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David,
A census is meant to document how many people live where. Everyone going to their ancestral town doesn't make sense. And would obviously cause so much economic harm that the Romans would never demand it. I understand that there is evidence of travelling workers being instructed to go to their home towns, but that is very different from going to an ancestral town. Also wasn't the region under Herod at the time, not formally part of the Roman empire? Augustus wouldn't decree a census in a client kingdom, he would have herod make the decree wouldn't he? It's obviously invented as apologia for why Jesus can be the prophesied messiah even though he is a Nazarene not a Bethlehemite. It doesn't stand up to the smallest amount of critical thought.
Also wasn’t the region under Herod at the time, not formally part of the Roman empire?
Herod was the Rome-installed representative, which was a large part of why he was so resented at the time. You're probably getting a bit confused because Herod was from a Hebrew royal dynasty, but his successful ascent to the throne (after bloody internal power struggles in the region, and even within the same Herodic royal family) was a direct product of Rome aiding him and installing him militarily.
Augustus wouldn’t decree a census in a client kingdom, he would have herod make the decree wouldn’t he
I mean, outside of the bible, Josephus also records this same census happening during the same time frame. "Seems like wouldn't have" doesn't really hold up against historical contemporaries saying "did".
A census is meant to document how many people live where. Everyone going to their ancestral town doesn’t make sense
Doesn't make sense, to you, in a modern context, based on your present-day assumptions of how social structures are organized and what censuses are intended to measure.
Take, for example, taxation: in modern contexts, we'd look at the number of people living in various regions and apply their taxation rules accordingly, because variations in tax rules are primarily segmented by region (i.e. this state has different taxes than that one, this county and city have their own tax rules, etc).
In Hebrew contexts, taxation rules (particularly temple taxes) differed based on which tribe you belonged to (i.e. the Levite priests had different taxation rules than other tribes, for example). Herod, though he was a bit of a puppet installed by Rome, was himself still ethnically Hebrew and understood how those tax rules worked (as a layer on top of Roman tax codes), and so it logically follows for him to do what historical accounts record that he actually did: gather everyone in geographic locations that correspond to their tribal identities, and then count whoever's there, then apply the per-tribe rules and do the math.
To take another example, in the rest of Hebrew history, the most common reason for doing censuses wasn't to determine how many people live in a spot; it's to determine how many fighting men (and chariots, and horses, etc) your military was, and there are numerous accounts throughout the bible of those counts being segmented by tribal identity (like most of the book of Numbers, and even the book of Revelation at least references this segmentation because it was such a baseline expectation, though there's dispute about how literally to interpret its use there).
Basically, every time you have a Hebrew ruler going to do a census, they count the people by tribe. So again, a quick way to do that is to split everyone up geographically by tribal identity, then count the people in each spot. The ancestral-town thing is exactly in service of that repeatedly-demonstrated historical precedent.
Wait wat? Making an unknown number of people travel to a different city is a "quick" way to count them?
Hardly. It took Mary and Joseph about a week to go one-way to Bethlehem, and they only had to go 80 or 90 miles. A genuinely quick way would be to have people state their tribe while they're being counted. "But how do you know they're telling the truth?" Same way you know they traveled to the correct town to be counted, or that they didn't simply ignore the order and stay put. Having them move just to be counted is no more accurate than simply asking their tribe, definitely less quick, and generally makes no sense.
You're probably getting a bit confused because Herod was from a Hebrew royal dynasty, but his successful ascent to the throne (after bloody internal power struggles in the region, and even within the same Herodic royal family) was a direct product of Rome aiding him and installing him militarily.
I'm not confused about this. It was a client kingdom, not a Roman province until 6 CE, which is when the Census of Quirinius (the one you mentioned Josephus recording) was done to reckon what taxes should be levied.
The Gospel of Luke uses the Census of Quirinius to date the birth of Jesus but also cites the time of Herod the Great (who died between 5 BCE and 1 CE), while the Gospel of Matthew only references Herod the Great. Most critical scholars agree that Luke is in error, while some religious scholars have attempted to defend the gospel, sometimes invoking unproven claims.
(Emphasis mine)
In order to install an ad valorem property tax in the new province, Publius Sulpicius Quirinius, the legate (governor) of the province of Roman Syria starting in 6 CE,[2] was assigned to carry out a census in Judaea.
Scholars point out that there was no single census of the entire Roman Empire under Augustus and the Romans did not directly tax client kingdoms; further, no Roman census required that people travel from their own homes to those of their ancestors.
Is it possible you've been misinformed about how historically accurate the bible is?
He fit on a cross. I assume those were fairly standard in size. The Roman’s seemed like real schticklers for detail and order. I can’t see them going to Barney’s Discount Cross Emporium to save a few drachma.
I think there was a Roman one also early on. But that’s what everyone recognizes as an old form of currency, so I thought it would make the joke work better.
Since he's dead and this is a vision, I think they were actually trying to depict him as literally being a sheep in this passage. His hair is not just wooly but white, too.
Jesus was compared to a lamb so often because jewish tradition had lambs slaughtered on passover, for eating. He is "the sacrificial lamb" - Jesus's crucifixion was seen as him sacrificing himself on passover, if I understand correctly. I only mention this because it's one of the interesting elements of the religion that people don't fully understand the significance of because its actually rooted in the existing Jewish traditions.
The temple market he overturned tables at isn't covered and wasn't then either. No upper limit, bigger than a baby but we can infer smaller than a planetary body to some extent. The temple is technically just the largish building in the middle.
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According to the internet, a grown ass donkey can carry up to around 80kg, and the good book says Jesus was riding one, so we should assume this is somewhat the upper limit for his mass
You didn’t have to say “grown ass donkey” you could have just said “grown ass.”
Grown ass-donkey
The XKCD hyphen bot is one thing I absolutely do not miss about Reddit.
Sorry.
We need that here.
ass grown donkey
I think that the person you are replying to meant that the donkey had a fully developed rear end (capable of carrying a heavy load), so it would be a "grown ass ass".
In the book of Matthew, it says he rode two donkeys.
Matthew and Luke copy a lot of stuff from Mark, which was written first. The donkey story is there to fulfill prophesy. It was prophesied that the messiah would ride a donkey into Jerusalem. It also said he would be a king and vanquish their enemies and rule in peace and prosperity, but the New Testament authors figured riding a donkey was close enough.
So Matthew geta to the donkey story and reads the original prophesy. It says "Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey."
This is a poetic way of writing about a single donkey, like saying "he drove a car, he drove a red car."
But Matthew, frankly, fucked up a lot of stuff that he wrote, and he doesn't know this, so he changes everything to plural to fit the prophesy.
So everybody else writes that Jesus had his disciples bring a donkey and they lay their cloaks on it and he sits on it and rides to town. Matthew has them bring two, they lay their cloaks on them and he sits on them and rides to town.
It's unclear how he rode two donkeys. Was one donkey on top of the other and Jesus on top of that? Was it jean Claude van-damme style with him doing the splits between them?
At any rate, if the donkeys spread the load he could have weighed 160kg.
By the way, these donkeys are stolen. Jesus tells his disciples that there was a house back there that had a donkey (or two), go get it (them) for me.
Was thinking exact same thing reading this comment, and now I can't get that thought out of my mind
That was a damn fine rabbit hole to go down just to get to the point of setting the upperbound of the Jesus size limit to 160kg.
He could walk on water, does that give a lower limit on mass?
We can begin to extrapolate further. Broke bread, walked on water, ascended.
Christ was a duck.
Presumably hollow limbs that he could fit fish and bread into, and at least some kind of capillary network infused with some form of alcohol
No that was magic. He also applied the water walking buff on one of his friends, who then right-clicked the buff off and found out he can't swim
Well then, how can we be sure he didn’t just cast the donkey riding spell?
I checked the shaman's spellbook and they don't have that spell, only Paladins have that
Edit: to clarify, I believe Jesus was a shaman because he could walk on water, resurrect from death (ankh), and as a carpenter he was probably well capable of crafting totems. There's also documented cases of him going melee combat (with tables, mostly) and healing others too
The food trick implies that he had a friendly mage though conjuring food, though he took the credit for himself
jesus is famously a warlock, what with the getting his power from a patron deity thing.
But then he was also descended from said deity, so celestial-bloodline sorcerer would also make sense?
And through weird extradimensional time shenanigans he is also said deity? I don't understand it myself, but I'm told it makes sense in 12 dimensions.
He was also briefly undead, likely a revenant given the unfinished business.
All of this depends on the edition of the lore you read though. In the beginning he was probably just a warlock multiclassing in cleric, then a supplemental edition has him ascend to demi-god status, which was later ruled actual divinity by a local authority once the franchise changed hands. Later, some of it was retconned and toned down for being too OP in another rulebook, but famously that rulebook wasn't very well accepted even though a sizeable playerbase still exists.
There are later editions where the pathway to divinity is laid out and Jesus is one of many gods, but that rulebook is still considered niche despite some disproportionate influence.
so you're saying lich
It's a bard spell.
I'd say an upper limit on his density, if anything.
Ha or maybe he was as light as a water strider.
maybe he was three swarms of bees in a trenchcoat
Isn't it said that he's made of light? If he was made of photons, would he even have mass? Tho he might be producing raduative pressure
Yeah, everyone here seems to forget magic was involved here. For all we know he could have been 12' tall and light as a feather, with retractable beard and 5 legs.
I'd let Jesus ride my ass
Are you ready for his coming?
I'm on my knees every night begging for it
The second coming:
Oh my god! I'm coming! Again!
Get behind me, Satan!
Pull my hair, Satan!
Unless they had stronger donkeys back then.
Could have been a lot of selective breeding for decreased stubbornness sacrificing load capacity as a tradeoff during the last two thousand years.
They could theoretically have been capable of hauling 500lb behemoths without breaking a sweat but unwilling to follow any comnands 🤷🏻
Btw grown ass donkey 😁
The mastodonkey
I think you'll find the correct term is asstodon
Something from the Avatar beastary.
The donkeys were smaller in that period
So what are his density extremes based on this? (I am too lazy and hungry to do that calculation right now. Besides, just because I know he was "smaller than a temple" does not mean I know the likely size of that temple to get a true volume bound...)
Good question. Low enough density would explain the water walking
It's been said he's pretty holy, so probably not very dense.
That is on average I presume?
Maybe the donkey was on steroids.
I think we can be pretty sure that he was no T-Rex though. I've never seen someone try, but I'm confident that you can't crucify them with their short arms.
maybe Jesus mk 1 was a t-rex (not Korean, like Best Jesus) and didn't have the upper body strength to protect His flock from meteors
That he was not attractive the bible makes quite clear.
when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. (KJV)
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. (NIV)
https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Isaiah%2053%3A2
Isaiah did him wrong smh
Also we know he fit at a dinner table, right?
Depends on the size of the table, I guess 🤷🏻
Fair, but given he was poor we must assume it's a typical size table for seder of the time and place
Except his dad was a carpenter, so he probably had some excess lumber hookups for building oversized furniture..
Probably not a carpenter. The Greek word tektōn translates as craftsman or builder, not specifically carpenter. And given the relative scarcity of wood in the region, modern scholars think that Joseph would have been a stonemason.
Yeah but have you ever had a parent deliver furniture for you while you're couch surfing? Especially in your 30s
This one time, my dad skipped the middle man and just delivered the couch with me already living on it
He was known to have wealthy friends.
half a dinner table, i saw the painting
Right! So his legs might be longer than a table width! Which would explain the half table.
The table could be an arbitrary size. His body was placed in a known tomb. That's a tighter upper bound than the second temple.
Rev 1:14-16, New International Version has Jean-Baptiste's account of Jesus's appearance:
14The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. 15His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. 16In his right hand he held seven stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.
He has white hair. ✅
Mfer was just hunting dragon balls
Nailed it.
That's just his SSJ form though
Hmmm. Depending on how you see it he did get stroger after a near death experience. So that checks out.
Yeah but that's Revelation. So it's like when Gandalf comes back as Gandalf the White. It doesn't mean his hair was always white.
i prefer gandalf the mocha. he had goooood hips
nothing in there about clothes, hmmmmm
Big Jeezy hangs dong, brother
and not just one dong. Big Jeezy has dong enough for anyone who wants to borrow a few (See John 6)
a lot of this description is fire related, maybe they just caught Jesus at a bad time?
I think Jesus was a Witcher.
And a sharp tongue, which isn't usually a physical description.
Maybe he used it for cutting his veggies. We will never know
Complicated way to say he was a little bitch who would talk shit.
White hair, "blazing" eyes, a shining bright face... did Jesus have albinism (with sunburned feet)?
I mean I'm not a Bible expert but do we have bounds on the size of the temple? Because until we do, Jesus's size is still unbounded above 🤔
Well the temple is on Earth, so smaller than the Earth, probably.
And made by humans, so no bigger than the largest human-made structure
We can estimate from the remains of structures so establish a theoretical upper-bound. If I had to guess, I'd say he was 7 ft, since as far as I know, 7 is the Hebrew number associated with perfection.
They prolly did not use american imperial units tho
Imperial units didn't come from America.
I know but USA imperial units are different from UK ones, just like how american english has some differences with standard english.
I assumes they were using USA imperial units since IIRC UK now also uses metrical units to some degree eg: they use centimeters to measure people's height
Edit: i may have confused UK and Canada in the last paragraph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_Kingdom
To be very pedantic, in the USA they're not imperial (we left the British Empire, we had a whole war about it), they're "US Customary Units" and they're defined in metric lol
People are reading that passage wrong anyway. Most Bible scholars agree that just because Jesus fitted into the temple doesn't mean he would fit into the temple at all times. When he was in his giant mecha form, Jesus had no upper bound on his size.
Solomon left some rather precise measurements so that would give you an idea of dimensions, I think.
Good point. Could have been something akin to St. Peter's Basilica, or could be more like Cross Island Chapel 🤔
I don’t think they could have constructed saint Peter’s basilica at this time or anything near the size of those archers, there is like a 1500 year difference between the two.
Side note: I’m not religious, but St Peter’s basilica is probably the most impressive building I’ve ever seen in my life. Someone feel free to recommend competitors.
I went all the way to St. Peter's Basilica just to experience the most American thing ever. The old Texan couple in front of me in line.
Husband: "I don't get what the big deal is, we have bigger buildings than this in Texas."
Wife: "Oh, but honey, I don't think they had power tools back then."
Husband [clearly not impressed]: "Hmmm..."
TBF, with religious buildings, magic is on the table.
There would be some geological record if he'd manifestly affected global tides. So, less gravitational mass than the moon, for sure.
That reads like Monty Python
We can also deduce that he is larger than a newt
He has hands and a mouth, but the exact number of each is not certain . I believe there is also mention of at least one foot
American here - babies, temples...? Enough of your metric system insanity, I need this in football fields.
Anyway, we do know Jesus wasn't poor. The Wedding at Cana was a very upscale event - based on the specific types and amounts of expensive anointing oils mentioned in the text. "A poor carpenter's son" would have been there waiting tables for some extra money. Being a guest tells us he rubbed shoulders with some high rollers. His father Joseph might have been a top craftsman with wealthy clients.
He definitely was on the more poor side. At least when Jesus was born.
When a son was born and presented to the temple, the parents would pay an offering. That was to be a one year old lamb for the burnt offering and one pigeon or turtledove for the sin offering, but there was a provision for the poor that could not afford to give a lamb to give two pigeons or two turtledoves.
Mary and Joseph gave two pigeons, which under the purification law would only be allowed if they were poor.
By the time he attended the wedding at Cana, Joseph was already dead. The last time he was mentioned was at the temple when Jesus was 12, and by the time of crucifizion Jesus entrusted Mary’s care to John. That wouldn’t have happened if Joseph were still alive.
Also, the book of John doesn’t mention any anointing oils whatsoever at the Wedding at Cana. Nothing in the passage marks it as particularly upscale.
John 2
In fact, the master of the banquet makes mention that the normal way hosts do it is to serve what good wine they have first, then the cheapest wine once everyone is drunk, but that the host of that wedding seemingly deviated from that and served the best wine last (though they had actually run out and that was unknown to the master of the banquet). More likely is that they served all the wine they could afford already, and it wasn’t all that great of wine.
That plus the fact that Mary “was there” and instructing the servants, and then “Jesus and all of his disciples had also been invited”, it would be much more likely that it was a close family friend of Mary’s that came from more modest means.
Valid points. I may be confusing unrelated memories.
The only reason I can think of for someone to need to go from Nazareth to Bethlehem for a census is if they were up to some sort of tax fraud. A tax fraudster would surely skimp on temple sacrifices as well.
...the text literally explains that everyone was supposed to go to the regions allocated for their tribe? The whole Old Testament shows that Israel is pretty big on "this area belongs to this tribe, that area belongs to that tribe" for a while. The concept of the Year of Jubilee (when any land sales that were made revert back to their original owners) puts a really fine point on this.
But to give the exact quote from Luke 2:1-4:
Oh I thought we were having fun.
A census is meant to document how many people live where. Everyone going to their ancestral town doesn't make sense. And would obviously cause so much economic harm that the Romans would never demand it. I understand that there is evidence of travelling workers being instructed to go to their home towns, but that is very different from going to an ancestral town. Also wasn't the region under Herod at the time, not formally part of the Roman empire? Augustus wouldn't decree a census in a client kingdom, he would have herod make the decree wouldn't he? It's obviously invented as apologia for why Jesus can be the prophesied messiah even though he is a Nazarene not a Bethlehemite. It doesn't stand up to the smallest amount of critical thought.
Herod was the Rome-installed representative, which was a large part of why he was so resented at the time. You're probably getting a bit confused because Herod was from a Hebrew royal dynasty, but his successful ascent to the throne (after bloody internal power struggles in the region, and even within the same Herodic royal family) was a direct product of Rome aiding him and installing him militarily.
I mean, outside of the bible, Josephus also records this same census happening during the same time frame. "Seems like wouldn't have" doesn't really hold up against historical contemporaries saying "did".
Doesn't make sense, to you, in a modern context, based on your present-day assumptions of how social structures are organized and what censuses are intended to measure.
Take, for example, taxation: in modern contexts, we'd look at the number of people living in various regions and apply their taxation rules accordingly, because variations in tax rules are primarily segmented by region (i.e. this state has different taxes than that one, this county and city have their own tax rules, etc).
In Hebrew contexts, taxation rules (particularly temple taxes) differed based on which tribe you belonged to (i.e. the Levite priests had different taxation rules than other tribes, for example). Herod, though he was a bit of a puppet installed by Rome, was himself still ethnically Hebrew and understood how those tax rules worked (as a layer on top of Roman tax codes), and so it logically follows for him to do what historical accounts record that he actually did: gather everyone in geographic locations that correspond to their tribal identities, and then count whoever's there, then apply the per-tribe rules and do the math.
To take another example, in the rest of Hebrew history, the most common reason for doing censuses wasn't to determine how many people live in a spot; it's to determine how many fighting men (and chariots, and horses, etc) your military was, and there are numerous accounts throughout the bible of those counts being segmented by tribal identity (like most of the book of Numbers, and even the book of Revelation at least references this segmentation because it was such a baseline expectation, though there's dispute about how literally to interpret its use there).
Basically, every time you have a Hebrew ruler going to do a census, they count the people by tribe. So again, a quick way to do that is to split everyone up geographically by tribal identity, then count the people in each spot. The ancestral-town thing is exactly in service of that repeatedly-demonstrated historical precedent.
Wait wat? Making an unknown number of people travel to a different city is a "quick" way to count them?
Hardly. It took Mary and Joseph about a week to go one-way to Bethlehem, and they only had to go 80 or 90 miles. A genuinely quick way would be to have people state their tribe while they're being counted. "But how do you know they're telling the truth?" Same way you know they traveled to the correct town to be counted, or that they didn't simply ignore the order and stay put. Having them move just to be counted is no more accurate than simply asking their tribe, definitely less quick, and generally makes no sense.
I'm not confused about this. It was a client kingdom, not a Roman province until 6 CE, which is when the Census of Quirinius (the one you mentioned Josephus recording) was done to reckon what taxes should be levied.
(Emphasis mine)
Is it possible you've been misinformed about how historically accurate the bible is?
He fit on a cross. I assume those were fairly standard in size. The Roman’s seemed like real schticklers for detail and order. I can’t see them going to Barney’s Discount Cross Emporium to save a few drachma.
I think they'd rather construct a plus-size cross than not crucify someone properly.
IIRC they would just build the crosses based on the armspan/height of the person they were gonna crucify
*denarius
drachma is the greek one
I think there was a Roman one also early on. But that’s what everyone recognizes as an old form of currency, so I thought it would make the joke work better.
Said he was white though right? Right?
There's also the whole three in one thing.
So probably a bit overweight at least.
He had at least two arms.
This reminds me of my book analyses. Grasping at straws just to say something abozt characters.
"Abozt". One little letter change and all of a sudden the entire sentence can only be read with a cheesy German accent.
A single iota of difference...
That doesn't really say much wrt size, though..
It is my undisputed and always right opinion...
...that he must have been a pretty large dude to carry that cross.
So about as big as an Elepanth. That is smaller than a temple.
Surprisingly, at lumberjack and highland game competitions, it's incredible to see a regular-sized guy can toss telephone poles.
Jesus...must be good technique.
He is whatever you imagine him to be. You just gotta have louder faith than everyone else.
jesus is an anteater
Preach it louder!
i don’t remember from which book, but i have a memory from catholic school of his hair being described in the bible as “wooly”. did i make that up?
Sweet jesus, have we all just realised that the whole thing is a misunderstanding and Jesus is a literal lamb?
OMG.
It said he had skin like bronze and hair like sheep's wool from what I remember.
I googled it because it sounded familiar; [book of revelations (https://www.gotquestions.org/Jesus-hair-like-wool.html) (i.e the bibles "Epilogue"!)
Since he's dead and this is a vision, I think they were actually trying to depict him as literally being a sheep in this passage. His hair is not just wooly but white, too.
Jesus was compared to a lamb so often because jewish tradition had lambs slaughtered on passover, for eating. He is "the sacrificial lamb" - Jesus's crucifixion was seen as him sacrificing himself on passover, if I understand correctly. I only mention this because it's one of the interesting elements of the religion that people don't fully understand the significance of because its actually rooted in the existing Jewish traditions.
The temple market he overturned tables at isn't covered and wasn't then either. No upper limit, bigger than a baby but we can infer smaller than a planetary body to some extent. The temple is technically just the largish building in the middle.
We know for certain only that Jesus Christ is not a sphere.
Does the Bible mention if he has friction though?
This is because looks don't matter
The least narrow sandwich in human history.