The real face of Jesus

[je333]

If you want to know what Jesus looked like, just look at the Shroud of Turin. The negative of the shroud is as close as you will get to what Our Lord looked like. I know the Church does not recognize whether or not the Shroud is genuine, but, there exists a face cloth, supposedly the one used to wipe Christ’s face by St. Veronica when he was on His way to Cavalry. The facial image is exactly like the one on the Shroud of Turin.

Does anyone know what happened to the face cloth used to wipe Christ’s face by St Veronica? Where is it? Who has it? I want to know so badly…

 

[Jack_Bauer]

Is it racist that many people view Jesus Christ as a white man? No one knows what he actually looked like, so why is he generally portrayed as a white guy? This topic was brought up in a Bible study class that I attend. Any thoughts from you out there?

The history of Jesus’ portrayal as caucasian stems from the great artists of the Renaissance. I believe EWTN had a historical presentation on this subject. Jesus and the blessed mother are portrayed in many cultures to be like the people of their own culture. it just happens to be the European culture is more dominant in western developed countries. When I’ve visited predominantly African American neighborhoods, Jesus along with Santa Clause are portrayed as African Americans.

Racism has nothing to do with it. It just happens to have become a tradition in modern culture. A fundamentalist Microbiologist I met some years back, spoke about creation theory with Adam being very dark skinned.

 

[George_Stegmeir]

According to tradition, St. Veronicas veil exists and is located in a Catholic Church in Rome. You should be able to find it on the internet.
Also, what everyone in this discussion has forgotton is that the Jews, being Semites are classified as being racially Caucasion. However, one must bear in mind that the Ashkanizim, or Eastern European Jews are not pure Semites due to centuries of intermarriage and sometimes forced mating with other Eastern European peoples. The Sephardic Jews, the ones who were kicked out of Spain in 1492, are more pure blooded because they were given haven by the Moslem Calif in Turkey and North Africa and there was less intermarriage because mixed marriages were forbidden by the Moslems.
It should also be noted that the Palestinian Jews of Christ’s time were swarthy due to the climate in Palestine. All exposed parts of the body was deeply suntanned.
The Arabs, the other large part of the Semites, are not pure blooded Semites today. All Moslem men were allowed 4 wives, and during the Moslem conquest in the early years of their religion, intermarriage with African Negroes was common so that contemporary Arabs have darker skins than many mulatoes and have many other negroid physical traits.
So, the computor images derived from the Shroud of Turin is about as exact picture we will ever have of Christ.

 

[PerfectTiming]

the Blessed Mother is black because the portrait of her was burned and tried to be destroyed by the turks when they invaded poland. now matter what they did to the picture they could not destroy it so finally they tried to burn it and that is why she is black.

She is our Lady of Czestochowa. if you ever get to the town you can go and visit the image.

Thanks for the information! I adore that icon, I think it’s just so beautiful, and that’s a wonderful history behind it.

 

[Marybeloved]

I don’t know how you’d assume that a picture of Jesus was of a white male unless it had blonde hair ? How do you know what race is being portrayed if the hair and beared is black and the eyes are not blue or green or anything like that? Arabs, Semites, generally have light/whitish skin, though darker like Southern Europeans. So: dark eyes, black hair- to say he’s white would require assumptions. Also, I think the universal image of Christ in most people’s minds is a long haired, black-haired, bearded man- A Palestinian type, Northern-Indian type man- not a white man, so it’s not true that Christ is mostly depicted as a white person.

I don’t like movies of Christ with hair that’s brown/blonde etc- It just seems fake. Artistic religious paintings are a matter of preference. Personally, knowing that Christ was Palestinian means I prefer a Palestinian-looking Jesus. So if I see depictions of a European/African/East Asian Jesus, it just doesn’t do it for me, because it just seems fake. For me those pictures I provided earlier and the depiction in the Passion of the Christ movie- that’s what Jesus looks like.

 

[Vouthon]

Here’s another picture of Ray Downing’s computer rendering of the man on the Shroud - who could very well be the Lord Jesus.

Its taken from a different angle (every face looks somewhat different from different angles) and is called “Jesus in Glory” (its meant to depict him at the ascension into heaven):

http://www.raydowning.com/_Media/jesus_in_glory.jpeg

As you can see, he looks completely Jewish

Here’s other images of Ray Downing’s Shroud of Turin Jesus taken from different angles:

http://nhne-pulse.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/real-jesus-40-days-02.jpg

http://images.huffingtonpost.com/gen/153469/REAL-FACE-OF-JESUS.jpg

 

[Bezant]

Is it racist that many people view Jesus Christ as a white man? No one knows what he actually looked like, so why is he generally portrayed as a white guy? This topic was brought up in a Bible study class that I attend. Any thoughts from you out there?

I don’t think it’s offensive to see Jesus as any colour. For one, we don’t know exactly what he looked like. Secondly, although we could have guess at what he looked like based on geography and demographics, if you look at people from the Levant today some are quite dark, some are as fair-skinned and fair-haired as a white European (so the “classic” Jesus of The Head of Christ may not be so inaccurate). Given, to extent you take into account demographic changes, but ancient society could have been just as colourful as the Middle East is today (pun intended). My point is the only unambiguous image we have of Jesus is that he was a man. As long as one respects others’ views I see no problem with a white Jesus or a black Jesus or a Chinese Jesus.