I confess to not understanding that we don't really know what were the "average heights" of various peoples at different historical times. I had "assumed" we do know those things, and that if we read somewhere that, for instance, knights averaged six feet and peasants about five feet, one group was this tall, other groups that tall -- that all this is known and easily referenced.
Turns out, from what I can find, that's not really true. Yes, different numbers are floating around, but they turn out to be based on nothing much.
But both logic and experience still tell us that children who grow up mal-nourished don't grow as tall as their well-fed neighbors.
And even something as simple as the height of the Shroud image cannot be universally agreed on by the so-called experts. The reports range from 5 ft 7 inches to 6 ft 1 inch.
So my argument here has NEVER been that the Shroud image's height necessarily makes it a fake. What I AM arguing is that if the Shroud image is relatively tall, compared to Jesus "average" contemporaries, that means he must have grown up in relatively priveleged circumstances.
Perhaps the boy-Jesus was not such a "marginal Jew" after all?
That is one possibility. A carpenter would have been a skilled tradesman, building houses, tables, chairs, cabinets, trading his skills for profit. With the title of carpenter, he would not be a mere laborer or a subsistence farmer. If anything, a skilled worker could be a member of the middle class.