If man was made out of god's own image then God has a beard. .......oops
Beardless Jesus. Why?
by UnshackleTheChains 32 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Finkelstein
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blondie
Woman was made in god's image as well.
“God proceeded to create the man in his image, in God’s image he created him; male and female he created them. Further, God blessed them and God said to them: ‘Be fruitful and become many and fill the earth and subdue it.’” (Genesis 1:27, 28)
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neverendingjourney
I read a while back that it had to do with the huge cultural changes that went into effect when Rutherford took over in the 1910s.
There was a cult of personalty around Russell and his followers tended to dress and groom in his style (beards). Rutherford was clean shaven and his sycophants in turn groomed themselves accordingly in order to show their solidarity with Rutherford (and not with the many Russell followers who were defecting in droves).
In other words, wearing a beard became associated with loyalty to the prior regime, which was being lambasted in the publications as "the evil slave."
Eventually the hippie movement got underway and the antagonism against beards was further solidified in JW culture. There was a tremendous amount of growth in the 1950s and 60s to where the cultural norms of that era calcified with little change with the passage of time. Hence, the desire to see sisters wearing flowery dresses and having men with cheap suits "sell" literature door-to-door like vacuum cleaner salesmen of the era.
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Finkelstein
Spot on neverendingjourney
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James Mixon
Where there razors in Jesus day????? It 's not easy shaving with your sword or knife....David Crockett and Jim Bowie may have been good at it but the average Joe will have a hell of time shaving...OK for get my comment, razor like object has been dated to 18,000 B.C, so Adam shaved and Eve shaved her legs...
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BluesBrother
They never said that hair did not grow on Jesus... It was 1968 when they changed the illustrations, prior to that they said they followed "certain archaeologists" who interpreted the "Chalice of Antioch" as being a depiction of Jesus. The WT said that only Romans or eunuchs were shaved in his time so , bearded he became...
They also said this about beards , in 1968
In paradise restored on earth it would not be out of order if men returned to wearing beards, in perfect fashion, like Adam in Eden.
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UnshackleTheChains
So, my understanding is that the society -got it wrong for a number of decades, based on one man's obssessive dislike of beards -ie Judge Rutherford.
It appears contradictory that the society obsesses about everything they perceive as Pagan such as birthdays etc; yet for many years in the past, got Jesus and the beard thing wtong Fascinating 🤔
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David_Jay
This I remember.
The earliest painted depictions of Jesus by Christians were beardless. If you look in the catacombs and in other Christian art of the period, Jesus is always a young man without a beard. Considering that these were made prior to the formal canonization of the New Testament, the Jehovah's Witnesses saw this as evidence that Jesus was beardless. Why?
Foremost was the time period. After WWII when the Western clean-shaven look in men was synonymous with moral virtue, this really skewed the way the Witness leadership saw itself and the world around them. Those at the time who wore beards were synonymous with free-thinking, rebellion, free-love...and communists! Communists leaders wore (you guessed it) beards! This played a big part in the rejection of facial hair after WWII. Also before the hippies of the 1960s, there was the beatnik of the 1950s, and before them the Bohemians of the 1940s. None of these styles represented the Western Allies and the virtuous Christian, freedom-loving image that went along with it.
The JW leadership of the period after WWII ate this U.S. white-man stereotype up (remember, commies wore beards, and they were against freedom and God--icky poo!). And these JWs were also, like today, quite ignorant of what you learn from a full basic education. While these beardless depictions of Jesus were indeed the earliest produced by Christians, they were not meant to be depictions of how Jesus actually looked.
In ancient times artists painted stories using stereotypes and symbols which were universal in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds. Incarnations of gods (when male) were depicted as young men. A nimbus (halo) was a symbol of unearthly glow or honor. Leaders were often pictured as shepherds.
All these types of iconography were employed by Gentile Christians in their earliest portrayals of Jesus Christ. Since they believed Jesus was an incarnation of God, the way to paint this was to illustrate a young man. Young men, by nature, had no beards. This was the reason you see Jesus illustrated like this in paintings of this period.
Being as ignorant as they've always been, the JW leadership knew nothing about ancient iconography and art. Interpreting everything from their WWII point of view and being Western, white American males, they interpreted these early pictures without doing their homework: "These are the oldest pictures of Jesus. Jesus is beardless. Since he was a perfect man, perfect men must be beardless. Let's illustrate Jesus as beardless in our publications and forbid beards."
They did eventually admit their mistake, but did not do away with what caused it, namely interpreting things from their limited perspective and failing to test their conclusions by having them verified by disinterested parties.
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OrphanCrow
The 1958 Jesus in the Paradise book was Asian - he probably was Chinese. No chest hair on them...
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David_Jay
I just realized while writing my post that this may be something many here are unaware of due to age, namely the constant projection of Western culture by "the Society" (as we ex-JWs over 50 used to call the leadership) upon the rest of the world it preached to, and how the Cold War caused the Society to misinterpret the catacomb beardless Jesus depictions.
Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Trotsky, even Che...Facial hair was often a silent "loud" weapon of the Cold War era. In response, American men shaved. It was during this time the Society looked into the beardless Jesus thing of old catacomb art and made its mistake. It was said to be disliked by Rutherford, but facial hair became the "guise of evil" as even red devils began to be modeled on Lenin's look back in the 1940s.
All of this played into the whole "no beards" thing by the Society. It would not be until the 1970s when the Society released an Awake magazine featuring CB Radio use that it realized it was too often preaching a message based on living in an American bubble (the rest of the world asked the Society, "What's a CB Radio?"). Projecting Western values was a real problem for the Watchtower (and on occasion still is), and the whole beard thing is embarrassing proof of it.
Some here may not be baby boomers or even children of baby boomers, and so the way beards and the Cold War influenced the Society to make this interpretation of the beardless Jesus just isn't connected by younger generations. So my apologies if my post seems odd or crazy. It was a different time with vastly different influences.