Luther on Paul’s Appearance

I came across this bit of speculation as to what Paul would’ve looked like by Martin Luther. It’s just priceless.

“I think that Paul was a pathetic, ugly, and scruffy little man — like Philipp,” referring, of course, to his friend, to that point, anyway, Philipp Melanchthon.

Brilliant!

Icon of Paul

I’ve written before on what Paul might have looked like and I’d have to agree with Luther!

 

2 thoughts on “Luther on Paul’s Appearance

  1. BradK

    There is at least one ancient account of Paul’s appearance, right? As in…

    And a certain man, by name Onesiphorus, hearing that Paul had come to Iconium, went out to meet him with his children Silas and Zeno, and his wife Lectra, in order that he might entertain him: for Titus had informed him what Paul was like in appearance: for he had not seen him in the flesh, but only in the spirit. And he went along the road to Lystra, and stood waiting for him, and he kept looking at the passers-by according to the description of Titus. And he saw Paul coming, a man small in size, balk-headed, crooked thighs [note: bow-legged], well-built, with eyebrows meeting, rather long-nosed, full of grace.”

    http://www.christiantimelines.com/Paul's%20physical%20description.htm

    1. timgombis

      That’s right, Brad. It’s tough to know if that account, from Acts of Paul and Thecla, goes back to anything reliable, but it certainly is interesting! I often share that text in class and the “full of grace” statement always gets a laugh — love it!

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s