• Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.worldEnglish
    101·
    11 hours 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
      5·
      5 hours 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
        1·
        2 hours 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.

  • turdburglar@piefed.socialEnglish
    4·
    13 hours ago

    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?

    • Nurgus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      9 hours ago

      Sweet jesus, have we all just realised that the whole thing is a misunderstanding and Jesus is a literal lamb?

      OMG.

    • FavouriteShapes@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      11 hours ago

      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.

  • hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    821·
    1 day 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

    • Quantenteilchen@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      4·
      14 hours 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…)

    • RattlerSix@lemmy.worldEnglish
      231·
      20 hours 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.

      • Albbi@piefed.caEnglish
        5·
        14 hours 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.

      • hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        11·
        19 hours 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

      • MsPenguinette@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        9 hours 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

        • tetris11@feddit.ukEnglish
          6·
          20 hours 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
        27·
        1 day 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
          16·
          1 day ago

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

          • hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            12·
            1 day 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·
              24 hours ago

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

              • metallic_z3r0@infosec.pubEnglish
                11·
                21 hours 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.

      • mefisdo_dot_info@lemmy.caEnglish
        2·
        17 hours 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.

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      8·
      1 day 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 😁

    • optional@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      24·
      20 hours 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.

  • j5y7@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    71·
    17 hours ago

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

  • eestileib@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    35·
    1 day 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. ✅