It’s a question I have often pondered. In a Middle-Eastern
country, wouldn’t a guy with white skin, fair Loriel hair and glistening blue eyes
have stuck out like a sore thumb?
The thing is, the Bible tells us that Jesus looked totally
ordinary, that he had ‘no beauty that we might desire him’. And as well as
this, he often slipped away into the crowd when he was tired or in a tight
corner, suggesting that he wasn’t instantly recognisable. He was an average Joe,
of the Standard Jewish Carpenter Model. You wouldn’t have known he was the Son
of God just by looking at him.
And so my friends, I decided to research this topic to discover for myself what ordinary people in Galilee, like Jesus, might have looked like, as well as working out why the Son of God is portrayed as he is and how exactly this weird state of affairs came about. Here are my discoveries.
How about we start with a nice
easy question: would Jesus have had long hair?
Er no. I have it on good authority from Jack Wellman that
Jews in Jesus’ time never wore their hair long. And it would have got in the
way when Jesus was carpentering, which he did for most of his life since he didn’t
start teaching publicly until he was 30.
OK question 2. What was his face like?
It might have been a bit like this. Richard Neave (a medical
artist) and his team used examples of Galilean Semites’ skulls to recreate the
facial shape of Jesus in this image, and they used drawings found at archaeological
sites to determine that he would have had dark eyes and a beard. It’s also
likely that Hebrews in Jesus’ day had olive-coloured skin.
What was the rest of him like?
Carpenters didn’t have power tools back then (again, Jack Wellman
said so). They worked with huge bits of trees and stone, so it would have been an
extremely labour intensive job. Jesus, therefore, was not the slender elfin
figure he is often portrayed as; he would have been pretty muscley and hulking.
But apart from the time when he flips out in the temple I can’t think of a
single example of Jesus showing any sort of display of strength, and the fact that
he had great strength but didn’t use it for anything other than his work tells
us a bit about his character too. Jesus was self-controlled and gentle.
Neave and his team found that Galilean Semites stood at an
average height of 5 ft. 1. So, interestingly, I would be half a foot taller
than Jesus. Also, they reckoned that he would have looked older than his years
from working hard and outside all his life.
That's what I've found out about his appearance and at this point I’m sure a lot of you smart cookies could probably guess, at
least in part, why Jesus is portrayed as white. I mean, Jesus is often shown as
reflecting the appearance of the part of the world he is portrayed in, he’s
been African, Arab, Hispanic, etc.
However, his Westernness can seem like an overwhelming image
in today’s global culture and this is because of Christianity’s roots in
Europe. And, the power of art. Particularly
during the Renaissance (a cultural movement which started in the 14th
century) European artists were inspired to paint the son of God, and probably
in a way which reflected their own society. It’s likely that they associated light
with righteousness and darkness with sin and evil. Thus white Jesus became the face
of God.
Perhaps what we should be asking now is: why does this image
persist? Anyone, with a few minutes thought, can work out that the usual interpretation
is not accurate. Yet even works as beautiful and Biblically accurate as ‘the
Passion of the Christ’ get it wrong.
I can only put in down to lazyness and lack of imagination. And
probably the influence of Hollywood in the case of films and TV.
I know perfectly well that at the end of the day it doesn’t matter what Jesus looked
like; he’s still made the ultimate sacrifice for you and me in the hope that we
can know him and love him. But I hope that the next interpretation of Jesus
Christ (whether it’s on the TV, in the cinema or in a children’s book) will be
a bit more accurate. Not only because Jesus’ appearance tells us something
about his life and personality, but also because art and stories are not
believable or relatable if they are based on such fundamental errors.
And the Christian faith is the
best, most complex, layered, challenging and dangerous story ever told. I want
to know every detail, and I'd quite like it to be the truth as well.
Fin.
If you'd like to follow up any of my sources here they are --->
Yeah, I basically just found them by doing Google searches so it's hardly academic standard. But there's some interesting reading material if you're interested.
Oh and if anyone finds the picture at the beginning of this article disrespectful, I'd like to apologise; I thought it was funny though.
And I thought Jesus looked like Alex Basson!
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