The Virgin Mary may have looked something like this

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OddBird said:
You know, quite a few Church Fathers thought that Jesus was ugly, or even that he had a physical deformity (I think this one rests on the fact that he said of himself “
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The passage of scripture that you are somehow speaking about and including the Church Fathers, is referring to Christ’s passion and how he was pummeled, beat up, whipped and scourged to one bloody mass of pain.
 
Probably not far off. She probably had olive skin, brown eyes, brown hair. Never understood why it matters so much to some people though.
 
OddBird said:
It’s not irreverence, it’s a way to underline the extraordinary power and charism he had, and how it takes the eyes of faith to perceive him as he really is.
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I’ve never heard that He might have been ugly or deformed, but I do think if we present Jesus as a bearded Calvin Klein model with perfect teeth it undermines the fact that He was true God and true man. We have no reason to assume that He or Mary were supermodels. Teenage Jesus presumably had pimples. Mary might have had a largeish nose or something.
 
YHWH_Christ said:
This is a computer/A.I. generated image… it’s not perfect. Geez I was expecting everyone here to be excited to see this instead everyone is arguing over her eyebrows which, by the way, I think are quite nice. But it’s not like this IS her. This is just based off of a random person who was the same ethnicity as Mary and lived at the same place in the same time. It’s also just a reconstruction, not an end all be all type of deal. Nobody is saying she absolutely looked like this. Seriously though some of these posts are quite racist.
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I get it. 🙂
 
brown_bear said:
It would be as if, based on certain anthropological elements, I made a draft of an American man of English origin of the 19th century and then said: Abraham Lincoln may have looked something like this!
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The point of an approximation is that we don’t know for sure. All the art of the Mother of God was commissioned after her assumption to Heaven.
 
RolandThompsonGunner said:
As a final aside, do we have any evidence that the Virgin Mary was particularly physically beautiful?
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Well, one of my favorite saints saw her, and the Catholic Church believes her! Bernadette’s simpleness and her sincerity was so compelling, that even her detractors were impressed and in many cases won over by her. Someone once asked her;

“You have seen the Blessed Virgin, Sister. Was she beautiful?”

Bernadette replied; “So beautiful,” that once you have seen her, you would willingly die to see her again."

That’s plenty good enough for me!

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Mark121359 said:
Well, one of my favorite saints saw her, and the Catholic Church believes her! Bernadette’s simpleness and her sincerity was so compelling, that even her detractors were impressed and in many cases won over by her. Someone once asked her;
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Lots of saints have reported seeing the Virgin Mary, and some of their reports are inconsistent. I think it’s fair to assume that the way Mary appears in apparitions may not always reflect her physical appearance on earth.
 
The Catholic Church doesn’t even require belief in these apparitions, correct? So perhaps some of those inconsistencies could also be attributed to them not being genuine? I’m not trying to undermine your faith but as far as I’m aware the Catholic faith doesn’t demand belief of these, even of the most popular ones like Fatima. But then again, some of those apparitions seem consistent with a glorified body as well. The children as Fatima described Mary as “shining brighter than the sun.” Also, here’s a picture of a Marian Apparition at an Orthodox Church in Egypt and it’s consistent with a glorified body.

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Correct. So assuming you believe the apparition is genuine to begin with, you could also believe that what the saint was Mary’s glorified body, or a manifestation of it, and it doesn’t accurately reflect exactly what she looked like during her mortal life.
 
I’m guessing this is closer than the OP picture, which looks more Egyptian to me. Palestine was the “crossroads” of the ancient world, and Mary might have looked like any of the Hamitic, Semitic or Indo-European people who traveled through there. The first Syrian I ever met was blond and had blue eyes. So we need to realize there was probably a lot of variation in the Holy Land in Mary’s time.
 
Mary was ethnically Jewish. Although since the diaspora Jews have become quite diverse due to intermixing with surrounding peoples, many scientists and researches believe that Iraqi Jews are the closest to 1st century Jews in terms of how they looked based on DNA and archeological evidence since Jews were much more ethnically homogenous in the 1st century. And the pictures I’ve seen of Iraqi Jews are consistent with the image of Mary above as well as the reconstructed images of what Jesus would have looked like as well.
 
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YHWH_Christ said:
The Catholic Church doesn’t even require belief in these apparitions, correct? So perhaps some of those inconsistencies could also be attributed to them not being genuine?
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While no Catholic is required to believe in Church-approved private revelation, of which there is a huge amount beyond just approved Marian apparitions, we don’t attribute inconsistencies in approved private revelation to the revelations all being fakes. Rather, private revelation is private, and the seer can be mistaken or unclear about the detail of something and/or God may have a reason to show Seer A a vision in a particular way and show Seer B a vision in a different way. An example would be a whole bunch of saints saw visions of the Crucifixion and the details of how Jesus was put on the cross were different. It’s not that 7 saints saw a fake vision and the 8th saint saw a genuine one, especially when the Vatican has deemed all “worthy of belief”. (You’d be claiming the Vatican made 7 mistakes. God keeps his church from that sort of error.) Rather, it’s that approved private revelations are not meant to be literal representations of history.

The reason why Catholics aren’t required to believe approved private revelation is that it contains nothing that isn’t already in public revelation, so believing in public revelation is enough; not because our bishops and Popes go around approving fake revelations.
 
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Right, and read the Book of Revelation too. Jesus is described as having white hair, eyes of fire, and feet of bronze. I hardly doubt he actually looked anything like that in his earthly life. He is simply appearing in a divine form.
 
It’s interesting how Mary appears in her apparitions throughout the world, taking the look of each culture, such as a Mexican Indian in Mexico as Our lady of Guadalupe, or as a a European at Lourdes, France, etc.to show that she is the mother of all people in all cultures…
 
Gab123 said:
It’s interesting how Mary appears in her apparitions throughout the world, taking the look of each culture, such as a Mexican Indian in Mexico as Our lady of Guadalupe, or as a a European at Lourdes, France, etc.to show that she is the mother of all people in all cultures…
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Which is why she appears Asian in the Asian apparitions, European in the European apparitions, etc. Appearing as the peoples she appears to helps them connect with her much more easily than they would if she appeared as someone from a culture and ethnicity different than theirs. Makes perfect sense.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
It’s not that 7 saints saw a fake vision and the 8th saint saw a genuine one, especially when the Vatican has deemed all “worthy of belief”. (You’d be claiming the Vatican made 7 mistakes. God keeps his church from that sort of error.
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My understanding of “worthy of belief” is that it essentially means “this is plausible/not ridiculous (like someone who claims they saw Jesus in their Egg McMuffin) and it’s not inconsistent with anything in public revelation, so there’s no spiritual harm in believing it.” That’s not the same as “this is true.”

If it turns out that an approved private revelation was just a dream and not anything genuinely spiritual, that wouldn’t mean the Vatican was wrong, since all the Church said was “this could plausibly have originated with God.”
 
YHWH_Christ said:
Mary was ethnically Jewish. Although since the diaspora Jews have become quite diverse due to intermixing with surrounding peoples, many scientists and researches believe that Iraqi Jews are the closest to 1st century Jews in terms of how they looked based on DNA and archeological evidence since Jews were much more ethnically homogenous in the 1st century. And the pictures I’ve seen of Iraqi Jews are consistent with the image of Mary above as well as the reconstructed images of what Jesus would have looked like as well.
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I look like a northern Italian but my DNA discloses (supposedly) that I’m mostly Scandinavian. I think it is a mistake to suppose that even ancient DNA means that a modern people looks like those who had the ancient DNA. Besides, Iraqi Jewish photos I have seen really don’t look like the OP drawing.
 
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Ridgerunner said:
I look like a northern Italian but my DNA discloses (supposedly) that I’m mostly Scandinavian. I think it is a mistake to suppose that even ancient DNA means that a modern people looks like those who had the ancient DNA. Besides, Iraqi Jewish photos I have seen really don’t look like the OP drawing.
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I don’t think anyone is saying “Mary definitely had olive skin and dark hair.” It’s certainly possible that she had an atypical appearance for the region and time she lived. I’ve been all over the Middle East and like any large human population, there are exceptions to the norm.

It’s just that we have no reason to assume her appearance was particularly atypical. It’s also possible Jesus was 6’8. Men do sometimes reach that height. However, since we having nothing indicating he was exceptionally tall (presumably if He was, people would’ve commented on it) it’s safer to assume he was probably more or less average height.
 
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