How Tall Was Jesus Christ? We Asked Every Academic Department
UChicago likes to brag about its interdisciplinary research programs, which usually turn out to be something like “one econ professor wrote a novel once.” In that spirit, we directed the resources of every academic department at UChicago towards a single noble purpose: figuring out how tall a guy who has been dead for two thousand years was.
History
We don’t know for sure if Jesus Christ existed as a historical figure, but we’re pretty sure he would’ve been a short king if he did. People were tiny back then.
Cinema and Media Studies
Eh, doesn’t matter, you can fix anything with the right camera angle. Or I guess, back in the day, the right painting angle.
Philosophy
Plato once told me Jesus was a pretty tall guy, and the first rule of philosophy is Plato’s usually right.
Near East Studies
Oh, he was 5’7”. We actually have his body somewhere in the Oriental Institute storage closets, you wanna take a look? We stole it from the Romans a while back.
Data Science
We built a really big neural network to predict people’s heights based on their faces, trained it on images of humans, and it told us that Jesus was either 3’2” or a golden retriever. Problem solved, that’ll be $10,000.
English
Nabokov was six feet tall, so probably somewhere around that.
Anthropology
If only we had access to Jesus’ bones. Pretty sure they’d make bank on the black market. Like seven, eight million last time I checked. I mean, that’s a guess. What was the question?
Biology
I can tell you for sure if you want. I think we have his DNA somewhere back here. All I’ll need is millions of dollars and for someone to invent cloning.
Computer Science
Jesus?
Economics
Oh, easily ten, twenty feet. It’d have to be a lot to account for inflation back then.
Political Science
Popular figures are known to be taller than average, so Jesus was probably wearing height-boosting insoles but forgot to on a particular day, which — come to think of it — is probably why his followers eventually turned on him.
Psychology
Well, how tall do you think Jesus was? Wait, can we give you some LSD and then have you tell us? There’s $20 in it for you!
Linguistics
Unfortunately, we haven’t yet reconstructed the word for “height” in the Judeo-Palestinian dialect of Aramaic spoken during the Second Temple Period, so we don’t know.
Chemistry
Approximately 324,675,000 atoms stacked on top of one another.
Religious Studies
Probably somewhere around 5’2”, 5’3”.
Editor-in-Chief, 2022-23
