Wednesday evening, I arrived home from work and emptied my pockets on the coffee table-phone, wallet, keys, loose change, all the usual stuff, plus a scrap of paper.
This is not at all unusual. I don’t have a PDA, so I write reminders to myself much as the cavemen must have done-with ballpoint pen on bits of yellow post-it notes or newspaper, which are then stored handily in a denim pocket for easy recall.
Cavemen loved denim.
This particular note left me flummoxed. I thought it said “GIFT JESUS,”
Hmmm… Was I supposed to buy him something? I’m pretty sure His birthday is sometime in December, so I didn’t think that was it.
Perhaps I was supposed to buy someone some sort of gift having to do with Jesus? That didn’t sound much like me, but anything is possible.
I pondered and pondered to no avail. Then tonight, after arriving home from an absolutely terrific dinner at The Comeback Inn-thank you, Mom and Dad! - I happened to see the paper again, where it was conveniently tucked away on the living room floor.
Aha! “6’ft. JESUS” it said.
And I remembered everything: Wednesday morning I had walked past two colleagues, one of whom was describing a friend to the other. “Hey, Kevin, how tall are you?” she had asked.
Blessed as I am with superior intellect, I knew the answer right away. “Six feet.” I was so proud.
Then their conversation resumed with “Okay, I think he’s a little taller than Kevin, so probably about six-two…”
But their innocent (one presumes-though I suppose they could have been setting up a drug deal, or a political assassination, or something) conversation set my mind wandering. I’ve been told in the past by a certain religious nut that ONLY JESUS was exactly six feet tall.
Being naturally suspicious, I found that hard to believe. I mean, I know God is supposed to be a pretty powerful guy who can do anything He wants, but I didn’t quite understand why He’d care if His Son’s height was a nice round number as determined by the British Weights and Measures Act of 1824. Awfully arbitrary, if you ask me.
So Wednesday morning, right then and there, I resolved to research the matter. I signaled my resolve with the aforementioned note, and then forgot about it.
Anyway, now that I’ve remembered it, I spent some time browsing. I found some vague references to the six-foot myth, but was truly surprised by how little I located concerning that particular oddity. I thought I’d find a “SIXFOOTCHRIST.COM” website or something.
I did find an interesting discussion on a Yahoo forum. Three of my favorite posts are copied and pasted here:
*I visited one of the tombs in Jerusalem Israel and i think you can find the facts on how long the bed was carved out to be! im pretty sure it was at least 6ft.
*Is he trying to be a model or something?
Cause yea...his ribcage shows a bit on those crosses so he could have a pretty good shot at modeling.
But um...how is his walk? Can he handle the runway?
*According to the statue in Rio, Jesus was 130 feet tall and probably weighed several tons.
Surfing further, I discovered a message board with these comments:
*If He was six ft, Heck, he would have been one of the tallest male Jews around in the twenty-first century! I speak from experience as a tall woman who refers to her college misfires as "Attack of the 5'2" Jewish Boys", which rather conveniently for them put them all at boob-height.
*"He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him." (Isaiah 53)
So Jesus was probably short and dumpy.
which was followed by…
*Yeah, Isaiah is OT, so, that's of limited utility, I think. Thanks.
I also found a few snippets of an academic discussion, which made the point that “if Jesus were really 6 feet high, his height would have been so remarkable that he would certainly have been described as a very tall person by the writers of the Christian Scriptures.
and…
Apparently, scientific analysis of the Shroud of Turin reveals the image of a man between 5’11’’ and 6’ 1’’.
Finally, I found a slightly more scientific guess in a December, 2002 Popular Mechanics article, “The Real Face of Jesus.”
“The historic record also resolved the issue of Jesus's height. From an analysis of skeletal remains, archeologists had firmly established that the average build of a Semite male at the time of Jesus was 5 ft. 1 in., with an average weight of about 110 pounds. Since Jesus worked outdoors as a carpenter until he was about 30 years old, it is reasonable to assume he was more muscular and physically fit than westernized portraits suggest. His face was probably weather-beaten, which would have made him appear older, as well.”
If this doesn’t prove I know how to have fun on a Friday night, I don’t know what will.
1 comment:
"Kids,let me tell you about another so-called "wicked" guy. He had long hair and some wild ideas. He didn't always do what other people thought was right. And that man's name was...I forget. But the point is...I forget that, too. Marge, you know what I'm talking about. He used to drive that blue car?"
Post a Comment