Yahweh, Not Zeus

 

YAHWEH, NOT ZEUS

The Lord, your God, is a consuming fire, a jealous God. (Deuteronomy 4:24)

The Lord became enraged, and removed them from his presence. Only the tribe of Judah was left. (2 Kings 17:18)

Do not grieve the holy Spirit of God, with which you were sealed for the day of redemption. (Ephesians 4:30)

I think we have to be careful about anthropomorphizing God—he is jealous, angry, sad, etc. Our understanding of God through Scripture not only evolves but changes over long time. Revelation is gradual, and the words the prophets use are adapted to the peoples of the period. There’s a tendency to humanize God when really, we don’t know exactly what God is like. In the end, the nature of God is inaccessible to us. Analogy is just one way of understanding him.

True, we can understand God in a somewhat direct way through the person of Jesus Christ, the human being, male. However, God as pure Spirit is not accessible to us in the same way, which is precisely one of the reasons why the Son of God became man, so that through Jesus Christ we would know the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. God became man so that through the unique and universal mediation of Jesus Christ we would be saved and thereby united forever in perfect knowledge and love to the Triune God.

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The above image of Jesus Christ, Pantocrator, dates to 600. Before 300, Jesus was represented as a clean-shaven Roman aristocrat or a shepherd, similarly without a beard. It was a time of Christian persecution and images of Jesus were scarce. The bearded Jesus of the 300s was probably inspired by the image of the bearded Zeus, and the shift corresponds to the ascent of Christianity from persecuted minority to a political alliance with Roman power.

What did Jesus really look like?

Jesus would have to trim his hair and beard like everyone else. I’m not sure that he was clean-shaven or cropped his hair short or shaved his head. The gospels do not remark on his physical appearance, and moreover, we can’t infer much from what is said. It’s apparent that he was not of unusual appearance in any way, otherwise the gospels would have remarked on it. Judas had to kiss him to identify him to the Temple guards. Judas didn’t say, he’s the guy with the pointy nose and large ears who wears a braided cord around his left wrist. So he probably looked like most Jews of his time. Therefore, he was probably bearded and his hair was of regular length. He wasn’t golden blond or very dark-skinned like the Somalis, or he would have stood out, enough for the gospel writers to remark on it.

I’ve seen a life-size Santo Entierro based on a scientific reconstruction of Shroud of Turin data. It looks very plausible. If it is accurate, Jesus was a handsome man.

He was about six feet tall, so that he would be literally looking down at most of his peers. He was trim, well-built and and well-proportioned, but definitely not a mesomorph. His face was attractive, symmetrical, slightly boyish, his eyes perceptibly round and large but not very.

Although the Santo Entierro that I had contemplated shows his eyes closed, the appearance of his open eyes is depicted in the scientific reconstruction.

The Shroud of Turin scientific reconstruction is available at this Youtube link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsQ1m_sGFt4  

—Ray Downing, “Real Face of Jesus Project by Ray Downing,” YouTube video, 2:55 minutes, July 2, 2015