# Who started the Jesus with long hair idea? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 20, 2015, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-started-the-jesus-with-long-hair-idea/720400 "2015-05-20T02:42:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2015, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-started-the-jesus-with-long-hair-idea/720400/81 "2015-05-20T23:56:06Z")
Everyone seems to be missing an important point here: **the Letters to the Corinthians were letters to Corinthians.** They weren’t letters to the Galileans or the people of Jerusalem. They were intended solely to be read and understood by the people of Corinth. In fact they were only intended to be read an understood by the small Christian congregation in Corinth As such, all the the passage in questions tells us is that Paul expected the \*Christians of Corinth \*to agree that men wear their hair short. Nothing more. He isn’t even saying that men \*should \*wear their hair short. He is just saying that his readers, the Christians of Corinth, expect men to have short hair. That expectation is then used to illustrate an entirely different point about women wearing headscarves. I don’t know enough of the history of Corinth or the Corinthian congregation there to say for sure, but it seems quite plausible that they were mostly Roman ex-pats or heavily Romanised. As such they would indeed have agreed that men wear their hair short, and that would be a natural way of illustrating Paul’s point. But that would tell us nothing about the attitude of people generally about long hair on men. Even if every single Judean Christian wore hair down to their arse, the passage would make perfect sense so long as that was only a provincial Judean thing, not something done by the civilised, Roman folk of Corinth. Even if all the other Apostles wore their hair long, the passage would still make perfect sense to the intended audience: the people of Corinth. It wouldn’t be seen as insulting to the other Apostles because it was never intended for them. It was intended for the people of Corinth. Even if they found out about it, they wouldn’t be insulted because it’s an illustration. It is like me illustrating a point in a debate on this board by saying “You agree that it’s OK to use insecticides on our crops, therefore hunting…”. That won’t offend my friends who are organic farmers because it\* isn’t meant to apply to them\*. I am illustrating a point by selecting something that I know beforehand my audience will agree with. I’m not saying that it is obligatory to use pesticides. I am simply stating that, since my audience accepts Y, that same reasoning means they should accept Z. Since my audience accepts the use of poisons to kill pests, they should also accept the use of bullets for the same reason. If my audience accepts that men should have short hair and women long hair, they should accept headscarves for the same reason. Even if Paul knew that Jesus himself wore his hair long, it would still make perfect sense, so long as the people of Corinth accepted that long hair was unnatural for men. Paul was writing for a specific audience. His choice of illustrations can’t be used as a guide to the views of the Roman empire as a whole. It can only tell us about the prevailing views of the Christians living in Corinth. Clearly they accepted the Roman standard that men should have short hair. But that isn’t evidence that any other Christians accepted that standard. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2015, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-started-the-jesus-with-long-hair-idea/720400/82 "2015-05-21T00:08:39Z")
> [@rocking\_chair](#): > > pi don’t remember the other apostles being really interested in physical appearance or who was wearing what head covering. “Likewise, ye wives… whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; but let it be the hidden man of the heart” 1 Peter 3:3 So Peter, at least. was worse than Paul. He didn’t even want married women to plait their hair, wear any jewelery or wear good clothes. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2015, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-started-the-jesus-with-long-hair-idea/720400/83 "2015-05-21T00:39:20Z")
> [@Skammer](#): > > “Was a contemporary of” means lived at the same time, and does not necessarily mean they were personally acquainted. Paul and Jesus (assuming the traditional narrative) were most certainly contemporaries. That has nothing to do with my post. Paul never met Jesus. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2015, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-started-the-jesus-with-long-hair-idea/720400/84 "2015-05-21T02:13:20Z")
> [@Spoke](#): > > To reject Paul’s letter as evidence, and to hold onto the belief that Jesus had long hair, you must make some or all of the following assumptions: > > 1. Paul never met Jesus. > 2. Paul never saw Jesus. > 3. Paul never discussed Jesus’s appearance with the other apostles. (They never, for example, asked him, “Paul, when you saw Jesus on the road to Damascus, what did he look like?”) > 4. There were no contemporary depictions of Jesus. (Because if there were, and if they showed Jesus with long hair, Paul would not have written that long hair is shameful.) > 5. None of the apostles wore their hair in the same long-haired style as Jesus. (Because if they had, Paul would not be writing that long hair is shameful.) > 6. Paul was either lying or misinformed about it being the common perception that long hare on a man is shameful. > > This is what I mean by mental gymnastics. Those are actually all pretty much the safe assumption to make, if you actually know some Biblical history, most of which actually comes from the Bible itself. Paul never met Jesus. He never saw Jesus (unless you believe in magic). Paul started his “Christian” church, claiming both that he knew nothing about Christianity except what Jesus had told him during a vision, while also stating that he had personally prosecuted Christians as a lawyer several years earlier and that he had spent some time, ill, with a Christian man in Damascus. The amount of time after Jesus’ death before Paul had his vision of Christ varies between 3 days and 500, depending on source. According to the Bible, it was 3 years after Paul started his church (though this indicates that it was actually [15 years after Jesus’ death](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Jerusalem#Early_Roman_period)) that Paul heard there was a famine in Jerusalem. The church was raking in so much money for Paul that he was able to take a bag of gold to Jerusalem and save Jesus’ church. After five years of their dependence on Paul for support, Paul finally negotiated that they accepted that he had indeed experienced a revelation from Christ and that his church would not need to be bound to any of the founding beliefs of the Jerusalem church (though they weren’t going to accept his beliefs as valid for themselves). Jewish Christians were going to keep practicing Christianity in an alternate, largely unknown way. Paul only ever met the the people of the Jerusalem church three times in his life. The first time was during a famine, the second was when he bargained, and the third time was shortly before he was arrested. During the bargaining session, he agreed to only concern himself with Gentiles and to abide by the rule that Jews were to maintain the Noahide Law. On his third visit, the Jerusalem elders basically accuse him of having been preaching to Jews to stop following the Noahide Laws and insist that he go to the Temple of Jerusalem. It is at the temple that he is accosted by a group of Jews for teaching anti-Noahide ideas and ends up being arrested and put on trial. The local church does nothing to help him. The leader of the Jerusalem church was James the Just, the brother of Jesus. Sometime around 140 AD (James died in 62 AD), Hegesippus described him like so: > [@Hegesippus](#): > > After the apostles, James the brother of the Lord surnamed the Just was made head of the Church at Jerusalem. Many indeed are called James. This one was holy from his mother’s womb. He drank neither wine nor strong drink, ate no flesh, never shaved or anointed himself with ointment or bathed. He alone had the privilege of entering the Holy of Holies, since indeed he did not use woolen vestments but linen and went alone into the temple and prayed in behalf of the people, insomuch that his knees were reputed to have acquired the hardness of camels’ knees. On the whole, there is very little evidence that Paul knew much about nor cared much about the real Jesus, the people who knew him, nor what his teachings were. There’s strong reason to believe that he was basically teaching his own beliefs and only dealt with Jesus’ church out of necessity. Thinking that the man would describe Jesus in a way that correlates to what most of his contemporaries would expect and respect, despite any real knowledge to the contrary, actually seems like the safe bet. So no, no mental gymnastics are necessary. Your listed assumptions are pretty much “Yes. Yes, that’s true.” ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2015, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-started-the-jesus-with-long-hair-idea/720400/85 "2015-05-21T02:38:50Z")
So you’re saying you think Jesus had long hair, then. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2015, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-started-the-jesus-with-long-hair-idea/720400/86 "2015-05-21T02:44:41Z")
> [@Spoke](#): > > So you’re saying you think Jesus had long hair, then. It’s rather obvious that **Sage Rat** is saying that Paul is not a reliable source one way or the other. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2015, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-started-the-jesus-with-long-hair-idea/720400/87 "2015-05-21T02:50:05Z")
I was distracted by the gymnastics. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2015, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-started-the-jesus-with-long-hair-idea/720400/88 "2015-05-21T03:24:53Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > It’s rather obvious that **Sage Rat** is saying that Paul is not a reliable source one way or the other. Yes, though also from the quote by Hegesippus, it would be fairly reasonable to assume that Jesus never shaved, never bathed, was a vegetarian, and had heavily callused knees if we are to assume that the head of the Jerusalem church would closely follow the example of the previous leader. Not a slam dunk, but probably a safer bet than anything else. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2015, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-started-the-jesus-with-long-hair-idea/720400/89 "2015-05-21T03:31:30Z")
> [@](#): > > If the leader of a cult dies, I’d imagine one of the first things the cult members would do would be to start generating images of him to preserve his memory. Karen Armstrong makes the excellent point (in her book on Buddha, I believe) that stories about great men were not intended to be biographically true, in the way we’d think a biography needed to be factually accurate. Instead, they were hagiography intended to show the great man as fitting the narrative about previous great men, or to demonstrate that the great man was indeed the great man who had been anticipated. Cf re-writing the OT to show geneological descent from the House of David to Jesus. In this type of storytelling, it matters that the great man looks like a great man, not that he is depicted as physically similar to his actual appearance. Re: Paul, he sucked up to the Romans something fierce. I don’t see him as an accurate or reliable reporter. I’m still amazed that his story about Jesus and WWJD has stuck more tenaciously than those of people who were more likely to have actually interacted with him when he was alive. ---
**Author:** ![Rickymouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/34f0e0/32.png) [@Rickymouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rickymouse)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2015, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-started-the-jesus-with-long-hair-idea/720400/90 "2015-05-21T04:05:39Z")
Back in the past, the holy men had long hair. Most common people didn’t. The practice of cutting ones hair was to show you were not a preacher or Shaman. Royal men would have long hair too. this was to distinguish them against the commons. Wigs were illegal to wear in some parts of the world, passing yourself off as someone you weren’t was an illegal act. Then comes the US with all their politicians wearing wigs. I bet that didn’t go over well. So since Jesus was trained by a group of the Nazarenes, I think he would have had long hair and a beard. But this is just an opinion based on a bunch of articles I read on the history of long hair and it’s ties to the religions around the world. I can only interpret what I read, I do not know if the articles written by scholars on this subject are real or not. I have read so many conflicting articles written by influential people on a subject that it is hard to know who is misinterpretting things sometimes… ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2015, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-started-the-jesus-with-long-hair-idea/720400/91 "2015-05-21T04:12:28Z")
How long is long? I have no problem thinking the Shroud is an artwork which preserves an authentic tradition of Jesus’ appearance, and I’d regard the image’s collar-length hair with a tail in the back as consistent with Paul’s disdain for flowing feminine long hair. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2015, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-started-the-jesus-with-long-hair-idea/720400/92 "2015-05-21T04:14:04Z")
> [@susan](#): > > Re: Paul, he sucked up to the Romans something fierce. I don’t see him as an accurate or reliable reporter. I’m still amazed that his story about Jesus and WWJD has stuck more tenaciously than those of people who were more likely to have actually interacted with him when he was alive. Well there were several things that helped Paul during his life: 1. The Jerusalem church really kept themselves focused on Jews and seem to have discouraged fraternization between Jews and Gentiles, so it was rather difficult for most Christians to actually find out much about Jesus’ church. > [@](#): > > For he regularly ate with the Gentiles before certain men came from James. However, when they came, he withdrew and separated himself, because he feared those from the circumcision party. Then the rest of the Jews joined his hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy. 1. Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 AD, effectively ending the Jerusalem church. 2. Given that most works we can find that are non-Paulian are Gnostic, and Gnosticism seemed to function like a mystery religion, it’s likely that much of the original church’s teachings would have been a secret to anyone who hadn’t worked their way up in the church. 3. There wasn’t, on the whole, a lot of cohesion between all the various “Christian” churches. By the second century, there were already several dozen groups each declaring one another heretical (including Paul’s church), with arguments for primacy and scandalous rumors being thrown every which way. That surely would have created a lot of confusion for anyone at the time, as to what to believe. Paul’s church probably had the benefit simply of being the largest. It was already larger than the Jerusalem church by the time of the Council of Jerusalem. 4. And during the first century, besides Jesus and Paul, you also had John the Baptist’s followers (who turned into the Mandaeans), Simon Magus, and Dositheos all teaching opposing (probably related) religions. So again, the Pauline church could cast blame for variant beliefs on these other churches. * * * In the following centuries, there was a purge of all works that were deemed heretical so that only the Orthodox (i.e., Pauline) works remained. And that really does a number on how people view things. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2015, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-started-the-jesus-with-long-hair-idea/720400/93 "2015-05-21T05:37:12Z")
Goddamn hippy. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2015, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-started-the-jesus-with-long-hair-idea/720400/94 "2015-05-21T15:36:39Z")
> [@susan](#): > > Re: Paul, he sucked up to the Romans something fierce. I don’t see him as an accurate or reliable reporter. I’m still amazed that his story about Jesus and WWJD has stuck more tenaciously than those of people who were more likely to have actually interacted with him when he was alive. Well, considering that Paul’s letters are the earliest Christian writings we have (the Gospels came afterwards), why wouldn’t his writings be considered important or “stuck”? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2015, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-started-the-jesus-with-long-hair-idea/720400/95 "2015-05-21T16:17:35Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > Well, considering that Paul’s letters are the earliest Christian writings we have (the Gospels came afterwards), why wouldn’t his writings be considered important or “stuck”? Because he was delusional, and based his teachings on the words of a “ghost Jesus”, filtered through his own ideas of how the church should be run? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2015, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-started-the-jesus-with-long-hair-idea/720400/96 "2015-05-21T16:35:25Z")
Here’s the deal when it comes to why I don’t trust Paul: I am an atheist. With evidence, you could convince me that Jesus existed. With evidence, you could convince me that his disciples managed to get his words, or at least his basic ideas, down on paper somewhat accurately. What I cannot buy, however, is that Paul talked to the ghost of Jesus after he died and received any messages from him. This means that Paul was either delusional, or that he was lying to further his own cause. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2015, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-started-the-jesus-with-long-hair-idea/720400/97 "2015-05-21T16:41:50Z")
You are entitled to your opinion. You are not entitled to threadshit. Discussing whether or not Jesus was real is off topic. Please take it to another thread. ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2015, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-started-the-jesus-with-long-hair-idea/720400/98 "2015-05-21T16:53:13Z")
**Czarcasm** , let’s drop the discussion of the validity of the divine aspects of Jesus. Using terms like “delusional” run the risk of hijacking this thread into a debate about that. > [@Czarcasm](#): > > Because he was delusional, and based his teachings on the words of a “ghost Jesus”, filtered through his own ideas of how the church should be run? > [@Czarcasm](#): > > Here’s the deal when it comes to why I don’t trust Paul: I am an atheist. > With evidence, you could convince me that Jesus existed. > With evidence, you could convince me that his disciples managed to get his words, or at least his basic ideas, down on paper somewhat accurately. > What I cannot buy, however, is that Paul talked to the ghost of Jesus after he died and received any messages from him. This means that Paul was either delusional, or that he was lying to further his own cause. **Peter Morris** If you think a post is threadshitting report it and let the mods handle it. > [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > You are entitled to your opinion. You are not entitled to threadshit. Discussing whether or not Jesus was real is off topic. Please take it to another thread. No warnings issued, but lets keep this thread on track. ---
**Author:** ![Skammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skammer/32/143_2.png) [@Skammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skammer)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2015, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-started-the-jesus-with-long-hair-idea/720400/99 "2015-05-21T17:24:50Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > That has nothing to do with my post. > > Paul never met Jesus. Spoke asserted that they were contemporaries, and you responded that they never met, so I inferred that you were contradicting him. Otherwise, your response is a non-sequitur since Spoke didn’t say or imply that they had met and it’s pretty common knowledge that Paul never met Jesus except in a vision. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2015, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-started-the-jesus-with-long-hair-idea/720400/100 "2015-05-21T17:34:53Z")
> [@Skammer](#): > > Spoke asserted that they were contemporaries, and you responded that they never met, so I inferred that you were contradicting him. Otherwise, your response is a non-sequitur since Spoke didn’t say or imply that they had met and it’s pretty common knowledge that Paul never met Jesus except in a vision. I think **Spoke** tried to open that door here: > [@Spoke](#): > > At the time the letter was written Jesus was dead, but Paul and Jesus were contemporaries. No reason they couldn’t have met during Jesus’s lifetime. You are assuming they didn’t. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-started-the-jesus-with-long-hair-idea/720400.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-started-the-jesus-with-long-hair-idea/720400.md?page=6)