the messiah jesus and john the baptist - Library for Christian-Jewish ...

THE MESSIAH JESUS
seen, irreconcilable with procerus. Goldast's now lost MS. of the
' Lentulus letter ' had 'xv. fialmorum et media,' which, more or less
in harmony with the epithet T ~ ~ ' ~ occurring ~ x v F in a letter of certain
Oriental bishops l to the Emperor Theophilus, as well as in a
Byzantine homily in defence of icon~latry,~ and perfectly in
keeping with Josephus' general phra~eology,~ does not at all
correspond to the average height of a man, as was the opinion of
Prof. v. Dobschiit~,~ but falls far short of it.5
Since the ell or cubit in most systems is equivalent to a foot and
a half,G T~~TT,-~VF would give us a height of four feet and a half,
considerably below average. If, with G. F. HiK7 we follow the
statements of Julian of Ascalon concerning the measures in use in
the Byzantine province of Palestine, and assume that the cubit
(rr7jXv~) is the ' royal cubit ' of the Egyptian system, that is, a little
more than nineteen inches, the total would be about fifty-eight
inches. If instead we adopt the simple ell, the total will amount
to about fifty-four inches, truly a pigmy height. If we adopt the
statement of the Goldast MS., fifteen palms and a half will give us
a height varying between forty-seven and fifty-two inches. At all
events, we now understand the following statement, pi~~dv ~TLIEEnv+&,
' slightly dwarfed,' certainly not the work of Christian
forgers, for the later Church naturally pictured its founder as a
man of stately height.8 The word ' procerus' of the ' Lentulus
letter ' corresponds to the statements of Nicephorus Callistou
representing Jesus as ' seven spans high according to the royal or
surveyor's standard ' (urr~eapai PaarXrnai or yewp~~p~~ai) and
of Epiphanius Monachus giving him a height of six feet. All this
is of course in agreement with the well-known tendency of the
Byzantine clerks to depict Jesus as a man of commanding majesty.
That Jesus was below medium height is in any case the opinion of
Tertullian,ll Celsus,12 and the Acta Johannis Leucii.13
To these documents must be added a number of Syrian testimonies
collected and admirably commented upon by Dr. Rendel
v. Dobschiitz, op, cit., p. 303.
Ibid., p. 246.
Cf. T~~T~XIIS, B. J., v. 8 193 ; ~ S T ~ T ~ XAnt., U S , xviii. § 103, is probably misread
for hrrdrous, since even a giant cannot be seven ells high.
Op. cit., p. 297, p. 300, where he thinks that three ells are equivalent to six
feet. Such large ells exist, indeed, but only in a very late metrical system. Still,
this fact may help to explain why the shocking statement escaped correction.
Cf. the iconismus of Augustus-who was stntura brevis, five feet and two
inches high-in Sueton., Aug., 79.
Josephus certainly has this usual cubit in view when he gives TPIT~XUS as
the height of the balustrade surrounding the inner court of the temple; cf. B. J.,
v. § 193.
Encycl. Bibl., S.V. ' weights and measures,' col. 5294.
Cf. above, p. 394 n. 9. Cf. above, p. 394 n. 8. lo Above, p. 395 n. 4.
l1 ' illud corpusculum,' Adv. Marc., iii. 17.
l2 uGpa . . . pi~pbv ~ a l
6usct8is, Orig., C. Cels., 55, 75.
la c. 89 sq., ed. Bonnet, ii. 196. The work is not much posterior to Celsus.