I thought I would honor Good Friday by estimating the IQ of Jesus Christ. According to scholar Michael Hart, Jesus Christ was the third most influential man of all time, behind only the Prophet Muhammad and Issac Newton.
Assuming about 106 billion people have lived since the time of Christ, and Christ was one of the three most influential, that puts Christ at the one in 35 billion level in terms of influence. Normalizing the distribution, that makes Christ 6.53 standard deviations more influential than the average human.
Worldly success, whether measured by money, power, or influence, seems to correlate about 0.4 with IQ, and assuming this correlation can be applied globally and historically, Christ being 6.53 standard deviations more influential than the average human suggests he was 0.4(6.53 SD)= 2.61 standard deviations more intelligent than the average human.
Now on an IQ scale where Northwest Europeans have a mean of 100 and an SD of 15 (for their particular age and time), the average human has a mean IQ of 90 with an SD of perhaps 17. Thus Christ being 2.7 standard deviations smarter than the average human implies an IQ of 2.7(17) + 90 = 134.
Of course this is an extremely crude estimate based only on one predictor (influence), so don’t take it too seriously, as the estimate’s standard error is little better than a random guess. I’m sure people who have studied Christ could make a much better estimate than I can.
An IQ of 134 is extremely high (smarter than roughly 99% of Northwest Europeans of one’s generation). Of course it should be noted that because of poor nutrition, people thousands of years ago were probably about 20 IQ points lower in real intelligence than people today, so compared to modern white norms, Christ might have scored 114 (around the level of today’s average white university graduate) on a the most culture reduced tests.
But if we were to clone Christ and raise him in today’s America, he would probably score around IQ 134. To put that number in perspective, the average student at the World’s best university (Harvard) has an IQ around 130, as does the average president of the United States.
your slip is showing pp.
the very appelation “Christ” implies his divinity.
atheists should use the name Jesus of Nazareth.
Out of respect for Good Friday, I call him Jesus Christ
he is most likely a Syrian. what is the IQ of Syrians
In general non-white Caucasoids score 84, though in Israel the dark skinned Jews score about 91. I don’t know if this is because Arab Jews are genetically smarter than Arab Muslims or if they just get better nutrition in Israel.
But either way, non-white Jews score about the same as the human average, which is why it made sense to just regress Jesus IQ to the worldwide mean.
more likely he would score a 70, or just look at you like you were crazy and tear up the test.
people didn’t go to school back then pp.
There are perhaps some truly culture reduced tests that are not sensetive to schooling. This was shown by research on canal children in the 1920s.
The Raven was supposed to be such a test but is almost certainly not.
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Very doubtful it was any near that high. While we’re given very limited information about the actual man, people in his social bracket at that time and place, it’s highly doubtful he could write. His reading ability would have been absolute minimal, though he would have had a fairly good memory (as was common among teachers). Unlikely had any knowledge of science, history (outside of general Jewish laws and myths), logic, or mathmatics. What learning he did have would have been basic at best and rote. If 100 is the average used, then his likely IQ would have been upper 80s or lower 90’s by today’s standard. But then, he would have fit within the norm of an uneduated peasant of that period.
Hey PumpkinPerson,
I’ve been a reader of your blog for some time now and I commend you for the excellent work you do. I especially enjoyed reading this article on the projected IQ of Jesus and would love to see a follow up article on the IQ of Muhammad.
I read in your previous blog posts that people with very high IQs like Oprah are likely to oppose war (for obvious reasons). Since Muhammad was a very warlike person who lived and breathed violence, one might intuit that the opposite is true in his case. Then again, he was able to unite a large gang of brigands and in doing so, eventually turned his own brand of violent piracy into a cult which in turn mutated over time into one of the world’s largest religions. It seems that this requires a certain intelligence.
While we’re at it, I wouldn’t mind seeing your thoughts on the IQs of L. Ron Hubbard and Joseph Smith.
Once again, I love your blog and thanks for doing this! Great stuff.
-Tez
Thanks for the suggestions and encouraging words! I will consider posting about each of those individuals if I feel I can create a good estimate.
I really would like to read about your estimates for John Lennon and Mozart. People usually don´t think of musicians as really smart, althought many of them really are.