• Taleya@aussie.zoneEnglish
    3·
    18 hours ago

    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

  • hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    851·
    2 days ago

    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

    • RattlerSix@lemmy.worldEnglish
      251·
      2 days ago

      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.

      • hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        11·
        2 days ago

        Was it jean Claude van-damme style with him doing the splits between them?

        Was thinking exact same thing reading this comment, and now I can’t get that thought out of my mind

      • Albbi@piefed.caEnglish
        6·
        2 days ago

        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.

        • tetris11@feddit.ukEnglish
          5·
          2 days ago

          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

      • hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        28·
        2 days ago

        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

        • jaybone@lemmy.zipEnglish
          17·
          2 days ago

          Well then, how can we be sure he didn’t just cast the donkey riding spell?

          • hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            12·
            2 days ago

            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

            • lime!@feddit.nuEnglish
              8·
              2 days ago

              jesus is famously a warlock, what with the getting his power from a patron deity thing.

              • metallic_z3r0@infosec.pubEnglish
                12·
                2 days ago

                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.

      • MsPenguinette@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        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

      • mefisdo_dot_info@lemmy.caEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        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.

    • Quantenteilchen@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      4·
      2 days ago

      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…)

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      8·
      2 days ago

      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 😁

  • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.worldEnglish
    121·
    2 days ago

    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.

    • Earthwormjim91@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      2 days ago

      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.

      • m0darn@lemmy.caEnglish
        11·
        1 day ago

        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.

        • spencerwi@feddit.orgEnglish
          2·
          1 day ago

          …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:

          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,

          • m0darn@lemmy.caEnglish
            2·
            1 day ago

            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.

            • spencerwi@feddit.orgEnglish
              1·
              1 day ago

              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.

              • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.worldEnglish
                2·
                19 hours ago

                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.

              • m0darn@lemmy.caEnglish
                2·
                23 hours ago

                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?

    • optional@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      26·
      2 days ago

      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.

  • eestileib@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    37·
    2 days ago

    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. ✅

    • bampop@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      2 days ago

      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.

    • StumblingWasabi@lemmy.todayEnglish
      13·
      2 days ago

      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.

    • Hossenfeffer@feddit.ukEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      There would be some geological record if he’d manifestly affected global tides. So, less gravitational mass than the moon, for sure.

      • Kalothar@lemmy.caEnglish
        4·
        2 days ago

        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.

        • kestrel7_7@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          2 days ago

          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…”

  • jaybone@lemmy.zipEnglish
    22·
    2 days ago

    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.

    • kestrel7_7@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      IIRC they would just build the crosses based on the armspan/height of the person they were gonna crucify

      • jaybone@lemmy.zipEnglish
        1·
        1 day ago

        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.

  • Nangijala@feddit.dkEnglish
    11·
    2 days ago

    I’m over here trying to imagine the possibility that Jesus didn’t have a beard.

    • fibojoly@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      6·
      2 days ago

      Well, Mary Magdalene washed his feet, so we know he had a pair of them. But she didn’t trim his beard, or shave him so that stays undetermined, yeah.

    • Duhtocqueville@ttrpg.networkEnglish
      41·
      2 days ago

      So John the Baptiste was a nazarite and they don’t cut their hair or trim their beard. Jesus takes over John’s mission, and there no lines from Jesus explaining why his hair is trimmed or excusing hair or anything. I know it’s popular to note there’s no reason to think Jesus was a nazarite but fundamentally I think we can conclude he likely was.

  • j5y7@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    71·
    2 days ago

    He is whatever you imagine him to be. You just gotta have louder faith than everyone else.