I simply hope to read a good debate, and since I am a guest, I can not search for it…
“Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?” (l Corinthians 11:14).
If it is a shame unto him, why is the common portrayal of Jesus showing him to have very long, flowing hair…?
Is it racism? Blatant disregard for the sake of art? please, I am looking forward to an interesting discussion…
YAY! discussion!
matthew
arg… :smack: the comment of racism was not particularly about the hair, but more of the fact that jesus is often portrayed with very light skin, despite where he is from geographically…
I do want to know about the discussion of long hair, even though it is considered shameful in l Corinthians…but lets just discuss both…
yay! more discussion
matthew
Apparently before the Shroud turned up 1357 images of Jesus showed him with short hair and no beard.
After the Shroud most images show him with long hair and a beard.
I don’t think that’s right. From what I gather, bearded images of Jesus started turning up as early as the fourth century. Here is an icon from the eleventh century showing him very much like we know him today. The history of the shroud of Turin is known from 1357, when it surfaced in a church at Lirey, France. Now, I’ll concede that it’s not 100% clear just how old the shroud is, but several independent carbon datings have famously dated it to between 1260 and 1390. Of course, there’s a whole lot of controversy about this, and I’m not sure what the latest news is on the subject, but it does seem that the shroud is not the source of the classic “Jesus-look”.
One earlier image that might have been important in this respect is the so-called Image of Edessa. According to legend, this was a square or rectangular piece of cloth that had an image of Jesus’ face imprinted on it. The history of the legend goes back to at least 593. Some attempts have been made to identify this image with the shroud of Turin, thus claiming that the shroud is much older than commonly believed, but as of now it seems that we really don’t know just what the Image of Edessa looked like, if indeed there was one.
BTW, if the question really boils down to “where does the traditional image of Jesus originate”, shouldn’t this be in general questions? 
I think it’s also worth noting that Corinthians was written by Paul, who never actually met Jesus. Paul puts the -ianity in “Christianity”!
It’s possibly also relevant that Paul of Tarsus had male pattern baldness.
The likelihood of Jesus having had long hair seems pretty reasonable when you consider the texts of the Old Testament. Leviticus 19: 27 says not to “cut the hair at the sides of your head…” Not really a perfect description of, necessarily, long hair but it can lead one to the conclusion that Jesus did not cut his hair.
Another interpretation that, in my measure, is a less concrete indication of Jesus’ long hair, is from Numbers 6 . This chapter describes the vow of the Nazirite . However, it should be pointed out that Jesus of Nazareth does not equal Jesus the Nazirite. Knowing that he drank wine ritually and in celebration, it is difficult to be certain that Jesus was a Nazirite.
Around here–suburban NJ–I am always hugely amused by what I call “Veronica Lake Jesus,” the cardboard version that gets tacked up on people’s doors at holidays. Long, flowing blonde hair, blue eyes, and he wears a lot of blush, mascara and lipstick.
How long is long?
Anyway, to respond to the point of Jesus long being portrayed as white and blonde, I find it curious that the Roman Catholic Church headquartered in Rome among all those swarthy Italians would have permitted it.
I’m not sure Paul was speaking of hair length exactly, as much as he was speaking of hair style. Men can have long but obviously male hair, however- I think Paul was really concerned about deceptively feminine long hair on men, especially considering he was talking to Corinthians who had that whole temple prostitution culture going.
Some Medieval/Renaissance portraits of JC do make Him kinda girly, the Orthodox icons & the Shroud certainly do not.
Hey, Eve’s back! Hiya, Eve!
Been there, done that. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=353300
The Gospels don’t say how long Jesus wore his hair. He could as easily have been bald.
Are/were there any rabbinical rules as regarding hair?
You mean to say Jesus had a bad Mullet ?
oy…oy…oy
There’s a theory that Jesus was called “Nazarene” not because he came from Nazareth, but because he was a “Nazirite,” a Jewish ascetic sect who, among other things, vowed never to cut their hair or beards. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazarite The prophet Samuel was a Nazirite. Dunno about Samson (he wore his hair long, but if he kept a Philistine mistress he was probably no ascetic).
I thought that was Matthew just trying to jam one more reference in there somewhat sideways for his readers to give Jesus more credibility. After all, there is no word “Nazarene” in the Hebrew scriptures.
[hair]
My hair, like Jesus wore it
Hallelujah, I adore it!
Hallelujah, Mary loved her son
Why don’t my mother love me?
Hair!
[/hair]
Of course, Nazirites also vowed to abstain from wine, which Jesus notably did not. I recall a verse, can’t place it, where Jesus said to his critics, “John the Baptist came neither eating nor drinking, and ye said of him, ‘He is possessed!’ And now I come both eating and drinking, and ye say of me, ‘He is a drunkard!’”
The literal English translation of the orginal Hebrew version of Leviticus 19:27 (according to the translation in the Koren Publishers’ Jerusalem Bible, which is fairly straight up) is, “You shall not round the corners of your heads, nor shall you mar the corners of your beard.”
It’s that phrase, “corners of your heads,” that’s being translated on Frosted Glass’s linked website as “the hair at the sides of your head.”
Generally, that edict has been taken practically to mean that a man should not cut off the four corners of his beard, at the bottom and at the ears. Religious Jewish men used not to shave at all, which is why older pictures of Jews are full of bearded men. Since the advent of the electric shaver, the use of which is technically not considered forbidden because it does not function like a razor, Jewish men have been allowed to electrically shave their beards. The earlocks are not trimmed past a certain point. This commandment is the reason Hassidic men tend to have long, curly earlocks.
This passage doesn’t mandate long hair, at least not according to its conventional Jewish interpretation. However, Zev Steinhardt mentions in post 5 of this thread that Jesus didn’t necessarily have a thorough knowledge of Jewish law. I suppose that there’s a chance that he thought Leviticus 19:27 required him to grow his hair.
I highly doubt that Jesus was a Nazirite. The words aren’t actually related (the Hebrew word for Nazirite is “Nazir”, while the Hebrew word for Nazareth is “Natzeret”), so it would be a complete coincidence. Also, a Nazirite can cut his hair after the time period he swore to in advance is over, so he could have cut his hair then. If it was a long-term vow, then his hair would have been much longer than we generally see in artistic renderings. And as you point out, he often drank wine. Assuming that he would have been faithful to his vow, it would have had to be a short-term Nazirite-hood to allow for this wine drinking. I don’t think this explanation answers for the long hair.
Luke 7:33-34 (in the King James version):
For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine; and ye say, He hath a devil. The Son of man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners!
I’ve heard people say they keep seeing numerous depictions of Jesus as having blond hair, but I haven’t seen one. The overwhelmingly common “popular” depiction has Jesus having dark brown hair - seen in cards, churches, paintings, etc. So where and why does this blond Jesus keep popping up?
