Silly Drudge Headline: What Did Jesus Look Like?

Matt Drudge has some rather “interesting,” tabloidish headlines. Our all-time favorite was his link to a story, in the Houston Chronicle, about a woman who beat another woman with a frozen armadillo.

But for utter silliness, the headline and picture above take the cake.

It notes that Jesus may have been muscular, “with Middle Eastern appearance.”

Let’s see: he was from Galilee, north of Jerusalem, south of Lebanon. Smack in the middle of the Middle East. How would we expect him to look?

The “muscular” part is less obvious. We really don’t know, but if he helped his dad in his carpentry work, in that era before power tools, that’s plausible enough.

We do know his charisma was not due to any particular physical appearance. When you can do miracles, you can look any old way and still impress people.

Tabloid Source

Drudge links to an article in the The Sun, a British tabloid, and the article contains some more stunning revelations. Such as:

• “The Son of God may have looked very different to the actors that often portray him on screen”
• “While she admits we will never know for certain, [Joan] Taylor surmises he would have had olive-brown skin, dark hair and brown eyes”
• “Pointing to a computer-generated image by forensic anthropologist Richard Neave, she says his features would have been ‘Jewish.’”

So a Jewish guy probably looked “Jewish.”

Conclusion

Usually, tabloids titillate with stories the truth of which is questionable. But in this case, they have published something blazingly obvious, and pretended it is some sort of revelation.

Muslim Rapper From Tennessee Praises Jesus

Hat Tip: First Things

Yea, this runs contrary to several stereotypes. On its face it’s as strange as Jewish rock music, and every bit as nice.

Never Quite Getting It

Jesus’ Tomb?

Like “The DaVinci Code,” the Discovery Channel documentary “The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” which will be aired on Sunday might, appears to be pretty much a fraud.

Christianity Today describes the content of the video, and then questions Biblical scholars about the issue.

Jesus married Mary Magdalene, had a son named Judah, died, and stayed dead, says Simcha Jacobovici, an award-winning filmmaker . . . Jacobovici, who describes himself as an investigative journalist and a filmmaker, directed and produced the film with Titanic director James Cameron. He claims that statistical, historical, archaeological, and DNA evidence back his position.

In reality, the evidence is pretty thin. In involves the notion that burial ossuaries contain the remains of Jesus, Mary Magdalene (supposedly Jesus’ wife) and other family members, including a son of Mary and Jesus.

If Jesus was in fact married, no historical sources -- not the gospels nor any other source that mentions Jesus -- record that fact. And since Jews in the first century, A.D. considered marriage an entirely honorable state, there would be no reason for early Christians to conceal the fact.

But perhaps more important is a logical argument.

If what Jacobovici says were true, Jesus’ disciples would have stolen his body and buried it in a tomb, let it decompose for a year, and then deposited the bones in an ossuary. As McKnight put it, “It is extremely unlikely that a faith that believed and rooted itself in the resurrection of Jesus would at the same time be building a tomb for the body and bones of Jesus.”

It is fun to go into the details of various conspiracy theories. We do it with the JFK assassination all the time.

But sometimes simple logic is sufficient.