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CHRISTINE77
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I agree, but iconography shows his essence. You can see that Jesus is God.
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TheRealJuliane
Guest
You see that as blonde hair? I see it as dark hair, with maybe some golden streaks but is that from the artist or just what has happened through natural aging? I think that’s a good guess as to what he looked like. You could see such a man in the Middle East, in Jerusalem, today. Well, minus the halo of course.
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Kasama
Guest
Just thought it was interesting that the only description of Jesus in the Bible has Him with white hair (Revelation 1:14 His head and hair were white like wool).
and
“Dr. Gilbert Lavoie in his Unlocking the Secrets of the Shroud presented another intriguing discovery. The negative image of the shroud as compared with the negative images of photography reveals that the man in question had either white or light blond hair.”
holyspiritinteractive.net/columns/williamsaunders/straightanswers/shroudofturin.asp
Just seems to match up.
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patrick457
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Yes, but it also describes Him as having feet the color of oreichalkos, a face bright as the sun, eyes like fire, with a sword coming from His mouth to boot. All in all, IMHO it isn’t really meant to be a description of the earthly Jesus, but a (symbolic?) vision of the glorified Christ. We might as well claim that Jesus was really a seven-eyed lamb because that’s how John sees Him later.
I’ll dig up what I wrote once (if I did write something) about it.
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TheRealJuliane
Guest
So Jesus was more or less an albino?? Why would Judas have had to specifically identify him if Jesus had been a freak of his time? “It’s the blonde guy, you KNOW, that guy!”
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patrick457
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Well, at least now we know why there was an albino assassin-monk in Opus Dei. (Right, Dan Brown?)So Jesus was more or less an albino?? Why would Judas have had to specifically identify him if Jesus had been a freak of his time? “It’s the blonde guy, you KNOW, that guy!”
To be more serious, God forbid someone misconstrue your comment as ‘albino=freak’.I actually have a friend who is an albino. And yes, he did kind of stand out (this in a nation of black-haired people, with some ‘fake’ brown-heads or blondies or a small minority of some other hair color, up to and including purple!): on the plus side it was really easy to spot him even from a distance.
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CHRISTINE77
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Ha ha - have you seen Tony Robinson’s debunking of the Da Vinci Code? It’s hilarious.Well, at least now we know why there was an albino assassin-monk in Opus Dei. (Right, Dan Brown?)
I actually have a friend who is an albino. And yes, he did kind of stand out (this in a nation of black-haired people, with some ‘fake’ brown-heads or blondies or a small minority of some other hair color, up to and including purple!): on the plus side it was really easy to spot him even from a distance.
I totally think the Son of Man with the white hair is more like the Transfiguration of Jesus. Jesus did turn totally light at that point, and then his disciples knew he was God.
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Publisher
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“Son of David” was a “title”…not a description of his appearance…he most likely was a short dark Jewish man of the times…he was not the “white Christ” of Western European Christianity.
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CHRISTINE77
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His lineage was traced back to King David. Anyway there are plenty of red-haired Jews.
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Publisher
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There well may have been…but being the “Son of David” does not mean Jesus was red haired. I have very very red hair…carrot top…mixed with gray now…my family on both sides have dark dark hair…I have one uncle who shares my hair color.
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CHRISTINE77
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Anyway, we will probably never know! I think it’s more important to know Jesus from what has been written of him, rather than what he might have looked like. I think icons do the best job of showing us who Jesus was and is.
kurskroot.com/Jesus_icons.html
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Kasama
Guest
The Man in the Shroud was almost 6 feet tall.
No, but it means that not having jet black hair was possible.
It was at night and they couldn’t see very well, there were no street lights back then.
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Publisher
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I do not beleive the Shroud is authentic…basing the shroud as “evidence” of his appearance to me is not possible…I look to anthropology and the “norms” understood of the day.
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trickster
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Bezant
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I know you lot aren’t the only ones who have said this out but I just wanted to repeat something another poster and I raised previously: there is no such thing as “Jewish” physiological features or traits.
Furthermore, keep in mind my point about superimposing modern racial concepts on the ancient world.
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patrick457
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When Jesus had spoken these words, he went out with his disciples across the brook Kidron, where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered. Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place, for Jesus often met there with his disciples. So Judas, having procured a band of soldiers and some officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees, went there with lanterns and torches and weapons.
(John 18:1-3)
As for skin color, I once dug up this information on Middle-Eastern skin color:
As a rule [the Mediterranean’s] skin is some shade of white, from pink or peaches-and-cream to a light brown. Skin color should always be taken on some unexposed part of the body. Among Middle Easterners this is simple, because they cover as much of the body as is consistent with their work. The exposed skin color may be a dark brown, while the skin of the underarm is ten shades lighter. (The sun shines brightly in the Middle East.) While fair-skinned people are to be seen, they live chiefly in shaded bazaars and government offices, whence they rarely emerge into the dazzling light of day.
The Mediterranean’s hair is usually black or dark brown, while his whiskers may reveal a few strands of red or even blond. Blond hair may be seen, but it is the exception. Its presence does not requite some invasion of Goths or Scyths or the miscegenation of Crusaders. One of the characteristics of the Mediterranean race is a minority tendency toward blondism. This is seen much more frequently in the eyes, since blond hair, which appears in infants, usually darkens as the hair coarsens with age.
Among Mediterraneans every shade of eye color appears. Coal black is exceptional, a dark or medium brown most common. Nearly a fourth of any sample, however, will have blue, gray, or green eyes, usually mixed with brown in the iris pattern. Eyes do not darken with age; hence the greater prevalence of light eyes rather than blond hair among the adult. Like pink skin, blue eyes and blond hair appear most often among people whose work or social status keeps them indoors. Descendants of the Prophet, courtiers, and wealthy merchants are more often blond than farmers or camel drivers. In my opinion this does not mean that blonds are in any way superior to brunets, in the Middle East or elsewhere. It rather indicates that in a hot, brightly illuminated environment blonds are at a disadvantage when out of doors. Those who can manage it gravitate toward work in shaded quarters; furthermore the natural selection that may operate against them in the field and desert would fail to limit their increase in the shade. Middle Eastern urban civilization may thus have produced artificially an environment comparable to the Baltic fog, where the Nordic emerged.
Even if Jesus was indeed one of these rare Mediterranean blondes, He is not one of the “people whose work or social status keeps them indoors,” being a tekton by trade.
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patrick457
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That’s exactly what some people have opined. As I mentioned, some of the early Church Fathers thought Jesus must have been physically ugly and/or deformed due to their reading of passages like Psalm 22 or Isaiah 52-53. Tertullian expresses the opinion that Jesus may have been “inglorious…both in bodily condition and aspect” (Against Marcion 3.17):
Let us compare with Scripture the rest of His dispensation. Whatever that poor despised body may be, because it was an object of touch and sight, it shall be my Christ, be He inglorious, be He ignoble, be He dishonoured; for such was it announced that He should be, both in bodily condition and aspect. Isaiah comes to our help again: “We have announced (His way) before Him,” says he; “He is like a servant, like a root in a dry ground; He has no form nor comeliness; we saw Him, and He had neither form nor beauty; but His form was despised, marred above all men.” Similarly the Father addressed the Son just before: “Inasmuch as many will be astonished at You, so also will Your beauty be without glory from men.” (Isaiah 52:14) For although, in David’s words, He is fairer than the children of men, yet it is in that figurative state of spiritual grace, when He is girded with the sword of the Spirit, which is verily His form, and beauty, and glory. According to the same prophet, however, He is in bodily condition “a very worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and an outcast of the people.” But no internal quality of such a kind does He announce as belonging to Him. In Him dwelt the fullness of the Spirit; therefore I acknowledge Him to be “the rod of the stem of Jesse.” His blooming flower shall be my Christ, upon whom has rested, according to Isaiah, “the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of piety, and of the fear of the Lord.” (Isaiah 11:1-2) Now to no man, except Christ, would the diversity of spiritual proofs suitably apply. He is indeed like a flower for the Spirit’s grace, reckoned indeed of the stem of Jesse, but thence to derive His descent through Mary.
There is also a quote attributed to St. Andrew of Crete which goes: “But moreover the Jew Josephus in like manner narrates that the Lord was seen having meeting eyebrows, goodly eyes, long-faced, crooked (epikyphos), well-grown.” What is bemusing however is that despite St. Andrew’s attribution, it does not appear in any manuscript of Josephus known to us; nor would Josephus have plausibly made such a remark, who almost never gives physical descriptions of people, only doing so when the information is essential to his story. Writers at that time did not describe in detail people’s appearance other than in very general terms, which can sometimes be rather vague. (Another evidence against Lentulus and the Archko Volume.)
Anyways, this description of Jesus as “crooked” was interpreted by a few people to mean that Jesus may have been hunchbacked. Robert Eisler, in his work The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist According to Flavius Josephus (extract here), decided to flesh this supposed quote out by reconstructing how the passage may have looked like if written by Josephus. Some unfortunately took it at face value and since then, the idea that ‘Josephus (explicitly) describes Jesus as a hunchback’ is trumpeted all over the place. Here is the Eisler quote in question as it is commonly presented:
Both his nature and his form were human: for he was a man of simple appearance, mature age, short growth, three cubits tall [about 4 and a half feet, based on the Jewish cubit], with scanty hair, but having a line in the middle of the head after the fashion of the Naziraeans, eyebrows meeting above the nose so that the spectators could take fright, with a long face, a long nose, and with an undeveloped beard, dark skin, and hunchbacked.
It has also been argued that this description was originally not of Jesus at all, but St. Paul, based on the Acts of Paul and Thekla, where Paul at his first appearance is described as “a man small in size, bald-headed, bandy-legged, well-built, with eyebrows meeting, rather long-nosed, full of grace.”
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patrick457
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David is indeed described as 'admoni in 1 Samuel 16:12; 17:42, which means “reddish,” “ruddy” or perhaps even “earthy” ('admoni = 'adom ‘red’ = dam ‘blood’ = 'adamah ‘ground’, ‘earth’); i.e. the reddish-brown color of the soil. However, it is not clear whether this adjective describes his hair color or something else. Some suggest instead that this describes his complexion: it was ‘reddish’ and/or ruddy. (Note that the same word 'admoni is also used of the newborn Esau in Genesis 25:25.)
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patrick457
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Well, not exactly.
We could wonder about a man who was born of a virgin mother, “begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father,” as the Nicene Creed says, and thus say that we cannot even speculate that it is highly probable that Jesus should have common characteristics of a majority of Jews in that part of the world during that late—Second Temple era. If that is so, any appearance will work and that includes blonde hair.
Or we can say, forget about difficult and perhaps unnecessary doctrine and dogma; he was plainly Jewish. That means he almost certainly had dark hair. That would apply to his beard if he had one. But his hair color might have been an exception. There were exceptions then as there are today. Blonde works.
But all this presumes that the image represents reflected light as it would if it was a painting or photograph. That almost certainly presumes that the image is a fake or that is miraculously created in ways we don’t understand. If the latter is the case, all bets are off. Blonde would work. Since there are no reliable descriptions of Jesus almost any hair color would work. Purple would not have worked for there would certainly then have been descriptions of Jesus.
But what if the image was formed by some other form of energy — corona discharge, heat or some form of radiation other than light – we can’t imagine how it might have captured color or even lighter or darker tones. If the image was formed chemically, perhaps as the result of a amino/carbonyl reaction, the hair might serve to concentrate greater amounts of heavy amines to react with some chemical residue on the cloth producing what in the end looks like blonde hair. In fact, Raymond Rogers demonstrated this experimentally.
So until we know how the image was formed, we cannot make any assumptions about hair color. And even then unless we know that Jesus’ appearance was not exceptional, we cannot do so. Blonde works. So does black.
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Credo_in_Deum
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The History Channel did a cool thing using the Shroud of Turin to construct a CGi of Christ’s face. All in all I thought the show was good, except for the plug on Gnostics. As always with the history channel you have to take their programs with a huge grain of salt. Here is the link for the the full program.
youtube.com/watch?v=KvAJRp4CXdU&sns=em
youtube.com/watch?v=KvAJRp4CXdU&sns=em
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