what did jesus look like?
Many believe that The Shroud of Turin is the actual burial cloth of Jesus Christ, and that the man seen in the cloth’s image (in photograph) is that of The Lord. Apart from (disputed) carbon-dating tests that show it to be only about 600 years old, there is at least one other strong proof that The Savior is not the man in the cloth which is idolized by millions of people. The Bible makes no specific description of what Jesus Christ looked like, and there are no known images of Him in existence, such as their are, for example, for Roman emperors (e.g. Emperor Nero), or actual “faces from the past” that can be seen with the Egyptian Mummies. There are however some very good indications of what He did, and did not, look like – • There was nothing unusual about His appearance Throughout the Gospel books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, people made no mention of something different about how He looked. If anything, people wondered how such an ordinary-looking man could be The Savior. John
” Answer: The Bible never gives any physical description of Christ. The closest thing we get to a description is in Isaiah 53:2b, He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him. All this tells us is that Jesus appearance was just like any other man’s He was ordinary-looking. Isaiah was here prophesying that the coming suffering Servant would arise in lowly conditions and wear none of the usual emblems of royalty, making His true identity visible only to the discerning eye of faith. Isaiah further describes the appearance of Christ as He would appear as He was being scourged prior to His crucifixion. His appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and his form marred beyond human likeness (Isaiah 52:14). These words describe the inhuman cruelty He suffered to the point that He no longer looked like a human being (Matthew 26:67; 27:30; John 19:3). His appearance was so awful that people looked at Him in astonishment. Most of
No one knows for sure. The New Testament provides almost no physical descriptions and the earliest surviving portraits of Jesus date from about two centuries after his lifetime. The ReligionFacts Jesus Image Gallery is a collection of 100 images of Jesus, arranged in chronological order from the most ancient to the most recent. Some of these images of Jesus might give us clues about what he may have really looked like, such as the alleged shroud imprints and modern forensic reconstructions. But the vast majority are symbolic representations or reflections of the artist’s own time, culture and perceptions of Jesus, not attempts to show what he actually looked like. Some basic facts and observations: Jesus was first represented by symbols like a lamb or fish. The earliest known image of Jesus is a fresco of the healing of the paralytic at Dura-Europos (c.230-40). Jesus first appears with a beard in the late 4th century (and then not consistently). The earliest depiction of the crucifixio
No one knows, of course, since no one now alive saw Jesus when He walked the earth, and the writers of the New Testament never described Him in the slightest bit — never said whether He was short or tall, whether He had piercing eyes or long hair or anything. They told us what He said, but they never told us anything about how He looked.
By Gary Petty The title proclaims “The Real Face of Jesus” followed by “Advances in forensic science reveal the most famous face in history.” This article didn’t appear in a religious magazine, but was the lead story in Popular Mechanics challenging the popular view of Jesus. he article, which appeared in the December 2002 issue of Popular Mechanics, begins, “From the time Christian children settle into Sunday school classrooms, an image of Jesus Christ is etched into their minds. In North America He is most often depicted as being taller than His disciples, lean, with flowing, light brown hair, fair skin with light-colored eyes. Familiar though this image may be, it is inherently flawed. A person with these features and physical bearing would have looked very different from everyone else in the region where Jesus lived and ministered.
