[He was] a man of simple appearance, mature age, small stature, three cubits high, hunchbacked, with a long face, long nose, and meeting eyebrows, so that they who see him might be affrighted, with scanty hair (but) with a parting in the middle of his head, after the manner of the Nazirites, and with an undeveloped beard.
Robert Eisler – The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist p. 467
In the above excerpt, Robert Eisler offered his colorful reconstruction of what he believed the first-century historian Josephus may have written about Jesus. One of many attempts at restoring the original version of the (in)famous Testimonium Flavionum, Eisler looked to the so-called Letter of Lentulus and other sources that were said to record descriptions of Jesus’s physical appearance. While it is perhaps odd to imagine a hunchbacked, unibrowed King of Kings, this is not the topic that concerns us at present. Nor is it the apparent difficulty the son of Mary had with growing facial hair. Rather, it is Eisler’s measurement of Jesus’s stature that we shall focus on. Could it really be that the Historical Jesus was unusually short for a man in his place and time? In the space below, we explore the tradition of a short Jesus in the early sources and raise the possibility that we may even have archaeological evidence in support of it.
An Old Tradition
Eisler’s reconstruction places Jesus’s height at precisely three cubits. A cubit was an ancient unit of measurement arrived at by measuring the distance between one’s elbow and the tip of their middle finger. There were common cubits and temple cubits, Persian cubits and Greco-Roman cubits, and many more varieties. Accordingly, the equivalent length for Ephrem’s “three cubits” in today’s units is still somewhat of a mystery. Estimates range from anywhere between 4’4’’ and 5’2’’ (Harris 1926, 120).
The direct source of Eisler’s puzzling statistic is a passage attributed to Ephrem the Syrian (Eisler 1931, 415). Ephrem was a venerated deacon and hymnographer who lived in the fourth century CE (Harris 1926, 119). In his Hymni de Ecclesia et Virginibus, the saintly songwriter bluntly asserts the following:
God took human form and appeared with a stature of three human cubits, while at the same time sustaining all things He rose upon us little of stature.
Hymni de Ecclesia et Virginibus (opp S. Eph., ed. Lamy. Iv., col. 632).
It is unclear how Ephrem arrived at this oddly specific measurement (Eisler proposes a deleted Josephan line), but other early Christian writers do seem to concur with the general assessment of Jesus’s height. In a lost fragment attributed to Theodore of Mopsuestia and Nestorius, we are met with the following observation:
Thy stature, O Christ, was smaller than that of the children of Jacob who sinned against the Father, and who kindled the wrath of the Eternal Son who dwelt in Thee, and who angered the Holy Spirit who sanctified Thee.
Harris 1926, 114
The average height for Judeans in the first century CE was less than today – only about 5’5’’ for men. For Jesus to be considered “smaller than that of the children of Jacob”, he was most likely shorter than this average. Similarly, Nicophorus of Constantinople somehow arrives at the conclusion that Jesus measured a full seven spans. Nicophorus wrote much later than Ephrem and Theodore, but this is interesting regardless, as seven spans is about 5’1’’ in today’s measurements—not that far off from the measurement of three cubits given by Ephrem if we assume that Ephrem was referring to Persian cubits (Harris 1926, 122-3).
While Ephrem the Syrian provides evidence for this tradition going back to the third century, there are even older sources that make mention of Jesus’s diminutive stature. In his refutation of Celsus, Origen quotes an argument from the anti-Christian philosopher that looks to cut Jesus down to size.
Since a divine Spirit inhabited the body (of Jesus), it must certainly have been different from that of other beings, in respect of grandeur, or beauty, or strength, or voice, or impressiveness, or persuasiveness. For it is impossible that He, to whom was imparted some divine quality beyond other beings, should not differ from others; whereas this person did not differ in any respect from another, but was, as they report, little, and ill-favoured, and ignoble.
Origen, Contra Celsum, VI, 75
From Celsus’s polemic, we learn that there were second-century reports of Jesus’s unimpressive height. But from whence did Origen’s opponent glean this data? Celsus did rely to a certain extent on Jewish sources (Gregerman 2016, 61) and it is possible that they are responsible for passing on this information to him. Alternatively, we might posit that Celsus obtained this information from the Christians of his day (Soon 2023, 169). Whatever the case, Origen disputes Celsus’s claim, writing that he is not aware of any evidence for these alleged physical deficiencies. Furthermore, Origen comments that Celsus has obviously been reading Isaiah 53, and if he has read that much, he should hunker down and try reading more of it.
The mention of Isaiah 53 is extremely important for any study of Jesus’s appearance, as it is in this passage that we meet the “Suffering Servant” archetype. The text, commonly cited by Christians as a prophecy of the messiah, speaks of a figure who has “no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2, NRSVUE). Although the prophet does not single out his subject’s stature in particular, it is likely that early Christians reading this passage went on to conclude that their savior’s appearance—including his height—was preordained to be unremarkable. They may have even taken the mention of the Servant being like “a child” (or young plant) in Isaiah 53:2 to imply that this figure would be short (Taylor 2018, 142). “All children are dwarfs,” says Aristotle (Parts of Animals, IV). Tertullian also draws on Isaiah 53 when he describes the earthly Jesus as having a corpusculum, sometimes mistranslated as “poor body” but more accurately meaning “little body” (Against Marcion, III, 17). We must take seriously the possibility that herein lies the ultimate inspiration for any Christian musings on Jesus’s physical features. Nevertheless, this inference is not so assured that we can chalk the whole thing up to mere Christological creativity.
Luke’s Clues
While the legend of the Suffering Servant is a likely explanation for the root of Celsus’s hearsay, Luke’s Gospel provides another possible explanation for how the polemicist was able to formulate his zinger. In a recent article in the Journal of Biblical Literature, Isaac T. Soon (2023) revives the argument that the Zacchaeus pericope in Luke 19 reveals Jesus to be short in stature. This Sunday School classic tells of Jesus being swarmed by a mob, obscuring him from the view of one Zacchaeus, a wee-little man, who resorts to climbing up a sycamore tree in order to catch a glimpse of the pop prophet. The verse in question reads as follows: “And he [Zacchaeus] was trying to see Jesus – who he was – and he was not able to from the crowd, because he was short in stature” (Luke 19:3; translated by Soon 2023, 156). This last part – he was short in stature – is what is analyzed by Soon in the article. Who exactly does “he” refer to here? Zacchaeus? Or Jesus? Logically, Zacchaeus’s gaze could have been blocked due to he himself being short, but it could just as easily be Jesus whose littleness (in the absence of stadium seating) caused him to be unviewable by those on the outskirts of the crowd.
Soon (2023) takes up a threefold refutation of the long-held notion that the third evangelist provides no physical description of Jesus. In the past, scholars have been keen to argue that the gospels are unique within the genre of ancient bioi in that they do not describe the appearance of their subject (153). As Soon points out, many other ancient biographies also lack extended physical descriptions, including the autobiography of the Jewish historian, Josephus (154-5). Furthermore, Soon argues, Luke does indeed give us certain pertinent details on Jesus’s body (154). Jesus is circumcised, has feet, hands, knees, and etc. These details, dispersed as they are in service of the narrative, are one way in which ancient biographers operated. The physical description needn’t be lumped into one block at the beginning of the text (155-6). Thus, we cannot use this mistaken notion that Luke is subverting genre conventions in order to exclude the possibility that Jesus’s stature is noted in chapter 19.
Grammatically, the Zacchaeus passage also finds us in murky waters as to its implied meaning. Some have noted that “he was short in stature” must refer to Zacchaeus since he is the subject of all the other verbs in that particular sentence (Soon 2023, 156). This is incorrect, however, as in the phrase, “who he was,” “he” refers to Jesus. Immediately after this verse, there is an instance where Jesus is the subject of a verb subsequent to Zacchaeus being the subject the previous three times. We thus get a feel for how freely the author of Luke switches subjects without regard for previous references in a sentence (157). It is true that the last phrase in the text before “he was short in stature” has Zacchaeus as the subject (“he was not able”), however as Soon demonstrates, this phrase implies another: “to see Jesus.” I.e. “He was not able to see Jesus from the crowd, because he was short in stature.” Read in this light, Jesus is the last implied subject (157). We can thus state that, grammatically speaking, there is little case one way or the other for either Zacchaeus or Jesus as the short one.
Soon goes on to list several less-convincing arguments for Zacchaeus as the short one in Luke 19. Among these is the assertion that, in the ancient physiognomic literature, dwarves were described as being “excessively swift.” Meanwhile in Luke, Zacchaeus is depicted as running ahead to climb up the tree and get a glimpse of Jesus. Such a suggestion is hardly conclusive, as Zacchaeus’s hurrying down the tree could just as easily be read as an eagerness to obey a command from the Lord (Soon 2023, 162). Likewise, if Zacchaeus was a dwarf, it is argued that this would have been seen as going hand in hand with a greedy nature, and as we read in the narrative, Zacchaeus is said to be a tax collector (162). Yet, Luke’s treatment of tax collectors is not overly negative. Pharisees, for example, fare much worse in the third gospel (158). And Zacchaeus himself is never explicitly accused of knowingly ripping anyone off (163). Besides this, we are right to question how widespread was the ableist trope of the “greedy dwarf” in ancient physiognomic literature (164). One final example: It is brought up that Luke 2:52 says that the young Jesus “increased in wisdom and in stature.” This is used as evidence by some that Jesus couldn’t have been short (159). But are we to believe that Jesus didn’t grow at all after the age of twelve? That stretches credulity. Rather, it seems this phrase is used by the author as a transition into the meat of the story where Jesus is an adult.
Contrary to the negative portrayals of little people highlighted in the paragraph above, there exist other well-known and well-respected figures in antiquity who were said to be small in stature. John Kloppenborg, Greg Sterling, and others have noted similarities between Jesus’s passion in Luke and traditions of the death of Socrates (Soon 2023, 167). Socrates was said to be short. He even calls himself a “short man” in Phaedo aka On the Soul (Phaed. 102e). Perhaps even more noteworthy are the parallels between Jesus and the Phrygian fabulist, Aesop. According to the literature, Aesop possessed a variety of unattractive features (at least as far as the ancient author’s narrow definition of attractiveness went). Included in a list of the fabulist’s physical attributes is apparent dwarfism.
The fabulist Aesop, the great benefactor of mankind, was by chance a slave but by origin a Phrygian of Phrygia, of loathsome aspect, worthless as a servant, pot-bellied, misshapen of head, snub-nosed, swarthy, dwarfish, bandy-legged, short-armed, squint-eyed, liver-lipped—a portentous monstrosity.”
Vit. Aes. 1.1
As Soon notes, recent studies have identified numerous points of contact between Aesopic literature and Luke’s special material—of which the Zacchaeus narrative is a part. Episodes in which the hero is nearly thrown off a cliff for blasphemy (Luke 4:28) are common to both traditions (Soon 2023, 166). The phrase found in Luke 24:25, “Oh, how foolish and slow of heart,” is straight out of two Aesopic fables: The Fox and the Goat in the Well and The Frogs and the Sun (166). Mark Bilby has also perceived these connections and finds them to be a central theme in his reconstruction of the original gospel, which he dubs Qn (Bilby 2022). In this text, according to Bilby, Jesus is depicted “as a new Aesop: a brilliant, witty, justice-minded slave who speaks truth to power” (21). If this is indeed accurate (and I firmly believe that Bilby is on to something here), then readers would certainly understand that the wee-little man in Luke 19 is not Zacchaeus, but Jesus.
Family Matters
Several apocryphal Christian texts also bear witness to the tradition of a short Jesus. Perhaps most interesting is a passage in The Syriac Acts of Thomas. This early third-century book reflects a belief that Judas Thomas was the identical twin brother of Jesus. Whether the man called Didymus really was Jesus’s twin (or even Jesus himself, as we have previously suggested) matters not for the current discussion. However Thomas looked, so must Jesus also have appeared to the eyes of this early Christian author. And what do we read of this Judas, “the Twin?” Strikingly, he too is described as being of diminutive stature.
And the Apostle lifted up his eyes, and saw people raised up one upon another that they might see him, and going up to lofty places. And the Apostle saith to them, “Ye men who are come to the assembly of the Messiah, men who wish to believe in Jesus, take unto yourselves an example from this, that if ye do not raise yourselves up, ye cannot see me who am little.”
The Acts of Thomas xxxvii
It seems here that we find a riff on Luke’s Zacchaeus pericope. Except this time it is the apostle Thomas—Jesus’s twin brother—who is explicitly identified as being the “little” one. On the subject of the Lord’s brothers, Mark’s Gospel also includes a potentially relevant nugget of information. In chapter 15, we are told that a certain “Mary the mother of James the Less and of Joses” was present at the cross (Mark 15:40; KJV). Scholars have offered several interpretations of the Greek word, mikros, translated here as “less.” Some render this word as “younger,” but a more accurate translation is “little.” We know from elsewhere in the gospel that two of Jesus’s brothers were named James and Joses (Mark 6:3, Matthew 13:55). It seems quite likely that this Mary was indeed the mother of Jesus and that “James the Little” was in fact “James the Just.” Does it not make sense that if James was of smaller stature, then Jesus might be as well?
OK, we have reviewed some of the more respected scholarship on the topic. You wanna get nuts? Let’s get nuts.
We have on completely separate grounds identified the Talpiot ossuary inscribed with the name, “Yehudah bar Yeshua” (or Judah son of Jesus) as belonging to the historical Jesus Christ. As it turns out, this ossuary is relatively small compared to the other ossuaries found alongside it. In his analysis of the Talpiot family tomb, Stephen Pfann makes the following observation: “The personalized CJO 702, Judah bar Jesus ossuary was the smallest ossuary in the tomb which again might indicate that the deceased may have been a youth” (Pfann 2013, 8; emphasis added).
The Judah son of Jesus ossuary is indeed relatively slight—measuring only 55 x 23 x 27 centimeters. While we cannot rule out the possibility that this artifact was designed to safeguard the bones of a young person, certain details point to the Judah ossuary belonging to an adult. The meticulously carved letters of the inscription mimic the handwriting of a trained scribe complete with shading and serifs (Pfann 2013, 8). This seems to indicate that the person whose remains dwelt within was a figure of some importance during his life. It is also worth mentioning that oftentimes young children (those who had not yet hit puberty) did not receive their own ossuaries, but had their bones deposited in the same ossuary as a parent or sibling. Sadly, without the remains—which have long since been reburied—we cannot state definitively whether this undersized bone box is that of a child or of a man small in stature.
While the Judah son of Jesus ossuary is notable for its lack of size, the Talpiot ossuary labeled “Mary and Martha” is just the opposite. Not only is its overall volume substantial, enough for the remains of two individuals, but notably, it is the longest of the whole group! While we must proceed carefully in drawing conclusions, it is fair to suggest that the increased dimensions of this ossuary may have been necessary to hold the remains of a tall individual (or individuals).
Recent scholarship has questioned the name Mary Magdalene as referring to a Mary from the town of Migdal. The Aramaic word, migdal, means “tower.” In fact, Herod built a famous tower in the Jerusalem citadel that was named “Mariamne Tower.” Elizabeth Schrader and Joan E Taylor (2021) have suggested that in the case of Jesus’s disciple, “Magdalene” could have been meant as an honorific meaning “Tower of Faith” or “Magnified.” While taking nothing away from these brilliant scholars, I propose a more rudimentary origin of the moniker: Mary was simply a tall woman. This attribute would have been especially apparent when she stood next to her vertically-challenged rabbi.
Walking Tall
In the Gospel of Peter, we are met with a supposed eyewitness account of the very moment of Jesus’s resurrection. The text reports that the tomb was heavily guarded by Roman soldiers who, during their watch, were shocked to see two angels roll back the great stone blocking the entrance. Moments later, it is written:
And while they were describing what they had seen, again they saw three men coming out from the tomb, two supporting the other and a cross following them. The heads of the two reached up to the heavens and the head of the one they were leading by the hand went beyond the heavens.
The Gospel of Peter 39-40
In this infamously bewildering resurrection account, the risen (yet still somewhat incapacitated) Christ is given Godzilla-esque proportions. Theological implications aside, it is quite possible that this story’s emphasis on the risen Jesus’s gigantism stood in stark contrast to the known facts of his mortal embodiment. As we have seen, the ancient tradition of the short Jesus goes back at least to the second century and possibly earlier. Could it be true? Are the ancient traditions reliable or just a case of devout Christians filling in the details of Isaiah 53? As Soon has demonstrated, the parallels between the way Jesus is portrayed in the gospels and the portraits of Aesop in ancient literature point to the New Testament authors finding some commonalities between the two wise men.
Hopefully sometime in the not-too-distant future, further DNA tests on the Talpiot Tomb’s ossuaries—particularly the Judah son of Jesus ossuary—will shed additional light on the topic we’ve explored above. If we are eventually presented with further evidence of Jesus being small in stature, multiple questions come to mind. Is it possible that Jesus had a Napoleon Complex? (Does such a condition even exist?) And can we use this to at least partially explain the Nazarene’s lofty aspirations? Did Paul, himself being a short man according to the tradition, know this fact about Jesus? If so, was this shared physical trait part of what drew him into the Christian movement? Besides these, some other sayings of Jesus might also be interpreted in new ways. Luke’s Gospel famously has Jesus state, “For it is the one who is smallest among you all who is the greatest” (Luke 9:48). As Soon (2023) rightly observes, “If [Jesus] is the smallest, then according to the logic of Luke 9:48, he is the greatest” (159).
As a man who stands a commanding 5’8” (shoes on), I think the possibility of Jesus being shorter than average is somewhat inspiring. And just have a look at his Heavenly Father, Yahweh. Scholars have noted that this representation of the deity seems to draw inspiration from the iconography of Bes, an Egyptian dwarf god (McClellan 2022, 72). If Yahweh himself was depicted as dwarf-like, why not also His Son? It would make for a rather wholesome family portrait. In any regard, I hope this brief inquiry has proven interesting to you, Dear Reader. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some trees to climb.
References
Bilby, Mark G. 2022. The First Gospel, the Gospel of the Poor: A New Reconstruction of Q and Resolution of the Synoptic Problem Based on Marcion’s Early Luke (version 2.22). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6215835.
Eisler, Robert. 1931. The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist According to Flavius Josephus’ Recently Rediscovered ‘Capture of Jerusalem’ and the Other Jewish and Christian Sources. New York: Lincoln MacVeagh, The Dial Press. https://ia802900.us.archive.org/22/items/themessiahjesusand/The%20Messiah%20Jesus%20and.pdf.
Gregerman, Adam. 2016. Building on the Ruins of the Temple: Apologetics and Polemics in Early Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism. Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck.
Harris, J. Rendel. 1926. “On the Stature of Our Lord.” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Manchester 10 (1): 112–26. https://jstor.org/stable/community.28211079.
McClellan, Daniel O. 2022. YHWH’s Divine Images: A Cognitive Approach. Atlanta: SBL Press. https://www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/pubs/9781628374407.pdf.
Pfann, Stephen. 2013. “Demythologizing the Talpiot Tomb: The Tomb of Another Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” In The Tomb of Jesus and His Family? Exploring Ancient Jewish Tombs Near Jerusalem’s Walls: The Fourth Princeton Symposium on Judaism and Christian Origins, edited by James H. Charlesworth, 165-205. Grand Rapids/Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. http://www.uhl.ac/wpcontent/uploads/2016/05/TalpiotTombAnalysisSJP3a.pdf.
Schrader, Elizabeth and Joan E. Taylor. 2021. “The Meaning of ‘Magdalene’: A Review of Literary Evidence.” Journal of Biblical Literature 140 (December): 751–773. doi: https://doi.org/10.15699/jbl.1404.2021.6
Soon, Isaac T. 2023. The Little Messiah: Jesus as τῇ ἡλικίᾳ μικρός in Luke 19:3. Journal of Biblical Literature 142 (March): 151–170. doi: https://doi.org/10.15699/jbl.1421.2023.8
Taylor, Joan E. 2018. What Did Jesus Look Like? London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark.