Hey everyone, newbie to the forum, but been reading Cecils columns for a while now.
My question is twofold; first, is it true that in the bible there is no physical description of Christ? I’ve heard this mentioned in various debates, but am far too lazy to dredge the entire bible in search of the answer (:p).
Secondly, is there any evidence to suggest was he did look like, from the bible or otherwise?
All responses greatly appreciated.
There is no description in the Bible of Jesus’ appearance. And the earliest artistic portrayals of Jesus are from the 3rd century, more than two hundred years after his death. Here are some images from Roman catacombs.
We can guess at Jesus’ appearance by knowing that Jewish men of his time and place followed Mosaic laws about not cutting the hair, and keeping a beard.
Carbon dating of the so-called Shroud of Turin have shown it to be a mid-14th century creation.
Charles Henderson: We Would See Jesus.
On the other hand, Paul of Tarsus, a self-described Benjamite, felt comfortable enough setting down “Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?”
Of course, he might well have been more “Romanized” than Jesus was.
My SWAG is that he looked like a fairly average semetic Jew, - dark brown eyes and hair, a fairly good tan.
I had a Polaroid of Him, but my dog ate it.
Here (halfway down page) is a recreated model of a typical Judean of the time.
(Add in a Roman element if Mary had a liason with a Roman officer, as some have suggested).
He may have been quite homely, too.
Tsk!
Jesus was blonde with blue eyes. Haven’t you seen the pictures? Duh.
I can’t believe that nobody has posted this link yet, courtesy of our friends at Landover Baptist.
Whoever wrote that BBC article, linked above, was ignorant of a basic religious doctrine. The “immaculate conception” does not refer to the virgin birth of Jesus or anyone else. It refers to the birth of his mother Mary, by normal biological means, but with a soul “immaculate” of original sin.
The link Max Torque gave quotes at 1931 book by Robert Eisler, who in turn claims to be quoting first century Jewish historian Josephus. However, there are several problems with that.
First, that website implies that Josephus was a contemporary of Jesus, when he was actually born after Jesus’ death.
Second, the theory rests on an 8th-century archbishop, who quoted Josephus as follows: “But moreover the Jew Josephus in like manner narrates that the Lord was seen having meeting eyebrows, goodly eyes, long-faced, crooked, well-grown.” However, Josephus makes no such mention of Jesus’ appearance in any of his known works, and no earlier writer in the intervening six centuries quotes Josephus thus.
Third, Eisler in 1931 took that brief passage and embellished it into the longer passage you see quoted on that “What Did Jesus Really Look Like?” website.
The description in the above link is incorrectly attributed to Josephus. The description actually comes from a spurious letter attributed to a fictious Governor of Judea named Publius Lentulus.
Having said that, I have been able to discover a rare photograph of Jesus which differs quite radically from traditional iconography.
[qoute]
Jesus was blonde with blue eyes. Haven’t you seen the pictures? Duh
[/quote]
In addition to that, Jesus had perfect teeth (I find that incredible in an age with no toothpaste, dental floss, orthodontics, fluoride, etc…). He was always “immaculately” groomed. He was ethnically 100% European. He was tall and lean. He had six-pack abs. His hair was straight and he always parted it down the middle. I’m sure he smelled terrific as well.
If Jesus had been described in the Gospels as being the opposite of the above, I wonder what would have become of Christianity.
The Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle once wrote that though he was not a wealthy man, he would give half of what he owned just to see an authentic picture of Jesus.
It would seem to me that St. Paul’s remarks about long hair beg the question of just how long was considered long; by today’s standards the Moe Howard-style haircuts of very early statues, though considerably shorter than the hairstyles in many religious paintings, seem like long hair to a lot of people. And, as a previous poster noted, Paul may have been influenced by his own Romainzed background; he and Jesus never had met face-to-face.
Paintings of Jesus, at least in Western culture, often tend to make him more-or-less Italian-looking, a consequence of the history of the development of Western art.
In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Mother Night one character is a Nazi sypmathizer who had studied dentistry for a time. He was author of a book entitled Chirst Was Not a Jew. His “proof” for this assertion was that he had examined fifty well-known paintings of Jesus and in none of them, in his professional opinion, were his teeth “Jewish-looking”. He was eventually thrown out of dental school after claiming he could also distinguish the teeth of Catholics and Unitarians.
While the question of the age of The Shroud of Turin has probably been satisfactorily resolved by scientific analysis, people feeling a need to accept it shall likely cling to a belief in it forever. My personal objection to the Shroud is that the image on it looks just like him; that is, it looks as Jesus is supposed to look, based on paintings from the Middle Ages and after. Indeed, the face is not merely “Italian-looking”; some skeptics have suggested that the object on display is not the original Shroud but, instead, a hoax made by Leonardo da Vinci by treating a cloth with chemicals and then draping it over his own body. There does seem to be a resemblance.
I’m glad this has come up.
Somewhere or another I remember reading (and this was many years ago so there’s no hope of my remembering where ) that one of the apostles made the comment in something that wasn’t later included in the Bible, “Our Lord was ugly of countenance.”
Does anyone remember ever seeing this?
Sorry for the hijack but it seemed too good a chance to pass up.
On the same subject, I think movies have done a little better job in portrayals by not always having a blond-haired, blue-eyed guy.
However, I do find it interesting that (in movies and TV) Jews in Biblical times often have some sort of British accent. They never sound like Fran Drescher or Gilbert Gottfried, for example. They should be much closer models.
Ahhhh! For the first time I understand the phrase “Holy Roller”!
