What did Jesus really look like?

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Medawlinno said:
There was an excellent documentary on some time ago (I don’t recall the channel - maybe History ?) where they took the image of the shroud of Turin, did a three dimensional scan of it and from that image did a complete facial reconstruction - it was quite painstaking and took, as I remember, quite some time to do. The program was about two (maybe three) hours long and went through the process by which it was done and using the people who did it.

I’m sure it’s probably on demand but as I mentioned, I don’t recall the name of the program nor what network it was on. You may be able to google it.

If you believe the image of the individual on the shroud was the historical Jesus, then the result of the reconstruction will show you exactly (in every minor detail) what that individual looked like. Amazing - I believe they also did something similar with a several known busts of Julius Caesar, Washington, and Lincoln.

Amazing results!
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Just what I was thinking.
 
The Shroud Museum in Israel used the same technique (VP-8) to cast a complete bronze body based on the data contained in the Shroud; quite impressive results to say the least.

ICXC NIKA
 
According to the Bible, Jesus had a beard (it was plucked during his Passion).

That’s really the only thing we know with any authoritative certainty.
 
Great question. Definitely, European artists portrayed Jesus as “white-bread” white, to make him more acceptable to the European population.

But Jesus was from what is now Palestine. He was probably dark, much like Arabs today. Honestly he probably looked more like (gasp) Saddam or bin Laden than the normal white portrayal…
 
DavidFilmer said:
According to the Bible, Jesus had a beard (it was plucked during his Passion).

That’s really the only thing we know with any authoritative certainty.
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Not even that actually. If you read the gospels, they don’t ever mention Jesus ever having a beard or whether it was plucked or not. (In fact, they don’t give any explicit physical description of Jesus at all.) The idea ultimately comes from Isaiah 50:6. “I gave my back to those who strike, / and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard; / I hid not my face / from disgrace and spitting.” Now it’s really an open issue: it depends on whether you choose to believe in a literal fulfillment of prophecy (Jesus did actually have an actual beard) or not (the reference is more figurative and just refers to shame and torture in general).

It’s actually kind of like the idea that Jesus’ ministry lasted for three and a half years and that He was 33-and-a-half when He died: a ‘factoid’ we take for granted, but in reality is a belief that actually doesn’t derive from the gospels themselves but from a particular interpretation of OT prophecy. (In this case, the final week of the seventy weeks of Daniel 9 is the origin of the idea.)
 
CaliLobo said:
Great question. Definitely, European artists portrayed Jesus as “white-bread” white, to make him more acceptable to the European population.

But Jesus was from what is now Palestine. He was probably dark, much like Arabs today. Honestly he probably looked more like (gasp) Saddam or bin Laden than the normal white portrayal…
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Why the gasp? No-one here believes he was ‘white’. Everyone knows he was middle eastern in appearance.
 
SAVINGRACE said:
Why the gasp? No-one here believes he was ‘white’. Everyone knows he was middle eastern in appearance.
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Gasp because of the connection with these 2 nefarious middle easterns.

But we still don’t know. There are Egyptians, Iranians and others in the region walking around in white skin. And Israel was a crossroads for three continents; they saw every kind of skin there was.

ICXC NIKA
 
GEddie said:
Gasp because of the connection with these 2 nefarious middle easterns.

But we still don’t know. There are Egyptians, Iranians and others in the region walking around in white skin. And Israel was a crossroads for three continents; they saw every kind of skin there was.

ICXC NIKA
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I haven’t read any serious historian conclude or even hypothesise that he was ‘white’.

He was often portrayed as white to make him more ‘acceptable’ to Westerners.
 
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