Jesus' image.
By nannacroc
@nannacroc (4049)
December 10, 2006 1:00pm CST
Why do all depictions of Jesus show him as a thin man? He was trained as a carpenter and would probably have been quite muscular and probably not white. He was said to have overturned tables in a temple and, from what I understand, these were large heavy tables and the Jesus I've seen depicted would have had difficulty doing this.
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6 responses
@pelya178 (693)
• United States
12 Dec 06
oh wow i never thought of that. interesting! also..im studying art history and i learned that when christianity was introduced to the roman culture they r the ones who started to depict him with a beard. this was to relate him to the greek n roman pagen god Zesus. so thats very very interesting. alot of what we know today about jesus comes from a lot of things that arent true! :-O
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@nannacroc (4049)
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13 Dec 06
Thank you, I didn't realise that the beard was from a pagan god. You're right lots of things are untrue because Christianity catered for so many people and adopted some of their customs to ensure more people followed.
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@pumpkinjam (8540)
• United Kingdom
12 Dec 06
BEcause people are silly. Maybe it's because the most dominant Christian countries were the ones where the most dominant images came from. So, as someone else said, he was depicted in our own form, so I wouldd assume that some "typical Arian" decided what Jesus would have looked like even though he was born in the Middle East and raised as a carpenter.
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@nannacroc (4049)
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12 Dec 06
You're probably right. I take it you're referring to Hitlers Aryan race as real Aryans were apparently strong black men, but no-one dare tell him.
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@pumpkinjam (8540)
• United Kingdom
12 Dec 06
Yes, I was referring to the Hitler shaped people. That's why I said Arians with an "i" cos I thought that's how they were spelt and the black ones were spelt with a "y"
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@JoyfulOne (6232)
• United States
10 Dec 06
I always wondered about this too nanna. Personally, I don't think he was white either because of the area of the world where he was born and grew up. As far as paintings depicting a less than muscular Jesus, I think that's what must be called artistic freedom, where it's the artists rendition of what they think that Jesus must have looked like. Did you ever notice though that almost all the pictures you see of Jesus seem to show the same type of face too? Good discussion topic, it'll be interesting to read what others think.
@nannacroc (4049)
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10 Dec 06
I think you're right about the artistic freedom and yes I had noticed that the face was thin and gaunt in most of the pictures.
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@RieRie (820)
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11 Dec 06
Yeah, but Samson didn't look very strong, but his hair made him strong, so perhaps Jesus didn't have to look strong to be strong, I don't look very strong, but I can lift heavy stuff.
And probably in Africa and India and whatnot Jesus might be portrayed as black, who knows?
@heathertruett (478)
• United States
10 Dec 06
Because people like to make God in their own image. If not physically, than we try to make him fit a box, spiritually and mentally, that is more like us.
@ESKARENA1 (18261)
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10 Dec 06
we make god in our own image. Not only is he always a thin male but also very tall white with blue eyes would you believe. Here is the big shock though, he never spoke a word of English lol
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@nannacroc (4049)
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10 Dec 06
And there's me thinking he was an upper class Englishman who never did a days work. Thanks for the correction.
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