Friday, March 22, 2013

Shape-shifting Jesus again

MICHAEL HEISER weighs in at PaleoBabble on the shape-shifting Jesus apocryphon:

Shape-Shifting Jesus: On the Sins of Marketers and Media.

I think Michael is a little too hard on this article. Notably, he asserts incorrectly that in the apocryphal text Jesus is not a shape shifter, but he cites an irrelevant passage in the section on Jesus' dinner with Pilate, while ignoring the quoted passage about shape-shifting Jesus:
"Then the Jews said to Judas: How shall we arrest him (Jesus), for he does not have a single shape but his appearance changes. Sometimes he is ruddy, sometimes he is white, sometimes he is red, sometimes he is wheat coloured, sometimes he is pallid like ascetics, sometimes he is a youth, sometimes an old man ..."
Background here.