Do forgive if this has made the rounds before.

Behold: the historical Jesus
http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2002/TECH/science/12/25/face.jesus/story.jesushead.cnn.jpg



From science and computers, a new face of Jesus
By Jeordan Legon
CNN
Thursday, December 26, 2002

This image of what Jesus may have looked like is on the cover of Popular Mechanics this month.
Interview: Mike Fillon, writer of "The Real Face of Jesus"


(CNN) -- The Jesus pictured on the cover of this month's Popular Mechanics has a broad peasant's face, dark olive skin, short curly hair and a prominent nose. He would have stood 5-foot-1-inch tall and weighed 110 pounds, if the magazine is to be believed.
This representation is quite different from the typical lithe, long-haired, light-skinned and delicate-featured depiction of the man Christians consider the son of God.
Israeli and British forensic anthropologists and computer programmers got together to create the face featured in the 1.2-million circulation magazine, which occasionally veers from its usual coverage of motors and tools to cover the merger of science and religion.
"What did Jesus look like?" the article asks. "An answer has emerged from an exciting new field of science: forensic anthropology."
Looking in on forensic anthropology
The same science has been used to create artists' depictions of dozens of famous faces, including the father of Alexander the Great and King Midas of Phrygia. This new conceptualization of Jesus is based in large part on the work of Richard Neave, a medical artist retired from the University of Manchester in England.
"Using archaeological and anatomical science rather than artistic interpretation makes this the most accurate likeness ever created," Jean Claude Gragard, producer of the BBC documentary "Son of God," told The London Times. Gragard used the same image last year in his series.
"It isn't the face of Jesus, because we're not working with the skull of Jesus, but it is the departure point for considering what Jesus would have looked like," he added.
How they started
Neave and a team of researchers started with an Israeli skull dating back to the 1st century. They then used computer programs, clay, simulated skin and their knowledge about the Jewish people of the time to determine the shape of the face, and color of eyes and skin.
They turned to the Bible to determine the length of his hair. In the New Testament, "would Paul (one of the apostles) have written, 'If a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him' if Jesus Christ had had long hair?" the article speculates.
The magazine's editors admit that they cannot be certain of the accuracy of this facial representation.
'Hard to find a lot of evidence'
"There is no way that we are saying this is the skull of Jesus," Popular Mechanic's Mike Fillon told CNN. "Christians believe ... that Jesus' entire body was resurrected, so there would never be any bones or skull or DNA evidence of Jesus. Plus, his ministry was very, very short. So it would be hard to find a lot of evidence."
Instead the article focuses on describing the painstaking effort of imagining the face and how science and theology both played a part in the process.
Despite the concerns about accuracy, Alison Galloway, a professor of anthropology at the University of California in Santa Cruz, told Popular Mechanics that: "This is probably a lot closer to the truth than the work of many great masters."

I've seen Jesus depicted as sub-saharan negro before but nothing like this. Interesting. But "forensic anthropology" hasn't taken in all the kinks of this particular folk legend yet.

For instance, the guys who wrote the New Testament specifically place the action in places like Bethlehem, Nazareth, etc; all places which would have had large numbers of foreigners, mostly Greek. This is why they've been able to get away with portraying Mary Magdelene as a red head or a blond. This was also a tactic to play down JC's Jewishness among Christians who didn't like the rest of the tribe.

Greeks in that era were light, as plenty still are. If they had thought of JC as more or less one of them (ie, Jewish in religion only) it would account for the fact that the NT was written and turned up first in areas with lots of Greeks (Alexandria, mostly, which was in Egypt but at that time a predominently Greek city.)

The nub of it is Greeks started Christianity and there are echoes of Greek myth in the gospels, Freke & Gandy cover all this in The Jesus Mysteries. But I never could figure out why. Greek culture has some of the strongest archetypes the world has produced. Fabulous stuff. Why the phony messiah; what did first century Greeks see in it?

Pagels! I liked her treatment and at least she states her bias upfront.

The current version of Christianity is the only one we can deal with, and it's gyrating in ways I am having trouble even keeping up with. Raptures here and sweaty-handed priests there; no comparison to the bad old days when the people themselves more or less ran the show. Then Rome decided to make profit off the prophet.

But take a look at off-the-books underground Christianity. D.H.Lawrence wrote The Man Who Died decades ago. Way before Nag Hammadi told us what the Gnostics were about. But D.H. already knew "He Hath Risen" had nothing to do with empty tombs. Makes you think, it really does.

This is the sort of thing people should be exploring not merely dismissing it as a Jew cult which has crippled the Aryan will to frolick with the Druids or whatever.

Yes Christian churches have been hijacked and are instrumental in the current destruction of our nation. But we ought not be simple minded in exploring the question of how and why and where to go from here.

I wonder if christians are going to sit back and let the jews force their PC agenda on them with this complaint that Gibson's film "Claims jews killed Jesus"

It takes a lot of gall to try and re-write history to the extent that they want to change the major defining point of christianity

I'm not a christian, but I find this proposed jewish pc rewrite appalling.

Christ was a nigger?

where is Odin?someone show me Odin!! :eek:

Yeah, the whole Gnostic "underground stream" had continued since ancient times, occasionally emerging to the surface. The Cathars, the medieval French manifestation of Gnosticism, is especially notable. The belief system was pretty much identical to the ancient Gnostics and, like the ancients, met a nasty end as "heretics" at the hands of Rome. The Rosicrucians, Swedenborgians, Theosophits et al are others (although they've never been dealt with in such a grisly manner).

There were ancient Gnostic sects that believed the Jews were the chosen people of the Demiurge (the evil idiot half god who rules the material world) and, as such, stood in the way of any and all good to be done in this world. I'm not religious but you have to admit, they nailed it.

That's some interesting shit there Spengler. Where can I read up on it?

um....ok..........

How the historical Jesus-- if there was one-- is not so important. It's like whether or not the world was created in 7 days. Of course it wasnt. What lies beneath the symbol is what religion really tries to get at. The symbol is important, but is not the whole story.

If there was a historical Jesus, I agree with Revilo Oliver's suggestion he was probably a hellenized Jew. One of those who supported the benificent reign of the Greek King Antiochus Epiphanes, against whom Judah Maccabee and the other rabble rousing hebes rebelled. Let me tell you the story the kikes "celebrate" at "Channukah."

Alexander the Great conquered Syria which included what the Romans later came to call Palestine. His general Antiochus took over that region after Alexander died. His descendant, Antiochus Epiphanes, continued the Greek policy of sharing Greek wisdom and culture with the benighted barbaric indigenous savages, the Hebrews. The vile hebrew priests agitated against this Aryan cultural gift perpetually and so the line of Antiochus fought to eradicate the vile Jewish religion. To that end, a statute of Allfather Zeus was placed in "The Temple" which offended the hebe priesthood, and then during a periodic flogging of jew miscreants, which occured at a time when the King's troops were off fighting with the selucids in Egypt, allowed the Maccabees to spark a rebellion against Aryan law and order, which was not restored until the Romans took over en route to more significant territorial conquests.

The Romans tried to improve upon the Greeks by simply destroying the Temple. However, as the Jews have regrettably proven, the religion of the Jews can't be destroyed so long as the Jews still exist, Temple or no, Zionist entity or not.

Something to keep in mind in the future. That has certain implications...