Was Jesus... Short?

Reflections on Luke's Little Messiah

In the lead-up to the publication of Jesus’ Physical Appearance next month, I will be posting weekly reflections on different aspects of Jesus’ appearance for my supporters.

In a letter to Mrs Neylan in 1940, C.S. Lewis pondered: “Have you noticed that you can hardly free your imagination to picture Him [Christ] as shorter than yourself?”¹

The Oxford don apparently found it hard to imagine a Jesus who was smaller than him. But one much earlier follower of Jesus, the author of Luke, may not have shared Lewis’ judgement – at least according to one recent scholarly assessment.

In an intriguing article, “The Little Messiah” (JBL, 2023), Dr Isaac Soon has revived an exegetical possibility which has been long overlooked by Gospels scholars: the idea that Luke 19:3 presents Jesus, not Zacchaeus, as ‘short in stature.’²

You may be familiar with the Sunday-school telling of Luke 19: a short-statured Zacchaeus climbs a Sycamore tree so he can see Jesus amidst the crowds. He is spotted by Jesus, hosts him for supper, and repents of his tax-collecting ways. The reason for his tree-climbing exploit is simple: ‘he was short in stature’ (19:3).

But who is he? Does this phrase refer to Zacchaeus as short, or might it equally refer to Jesus? Scholars have long noted that the Greek syntax is ambiguous.³ And the context is equally so: if Jesus was the one who was short, this would explain why Zacchaeus would have to climb the trees, since Jesus was surrounded by a crowd.