Jesus was a shape-shifter, says ancient Christian text

An ancient Christian manuscript from Egypt has just recently been translated, presenting a never-before-seen version of the story of Jesus: one in which the Messiah almost escapes capture by the Jews by changing his physical appearance, among other discrepancies from canonical biblical texts.

 

Roelof van den Broek of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, who translated and published the Coptic text, told LiveScience that it dates back some 1,200 years to the Monastery of St. Michael in Egypt, located in the desert near present-day al-Hamuli in Faiyum.

 

The text is attributed to St. Cyril of Jerusalem, who lived sometime around A.D. 400.

 

Shape-shifting Messiah

 

It is well-established, even in canonical texts, that Judas betrayed Jesus by identifying the Messiah with a kiss. The apocryphal text explains that Judas did this because Jesus had the power to change shape.

 

"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," the translated text says.

 

Judas therefore said he would kiss Jesus for identification, lest the latter change shape and elude capture.

 

This explanation of Judas' kiss also appears in other, older texts.

 

"To those who saw him [Jesus] he did not appear alike to all," van den Broek quotes Origen —a theologian who lived A.D. 185-254— as saying.

 

Believability

 

But Van den Broek said that he found it "difficult to believe" that the monks of the Monastery of St. Michael accepted everything that was written in the text.

 

He told LiveScience that "in Egypt, the Bible had already become canonized in the fourth/fifth century, but apocryphal stories and books remained popular among the Egyptian Christians, especially among monks."

 

Moreover, Van den Broek explained that the text doesn't mean that these events actually took place, but at least some people at the time seem to have believed in them. — KG, GMA News