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livingpeace
Guest
Where did we get the image of Jesus? Did it come from the bible? I am wondering because it is said that we are made in His image. So I wonder where *the image that we have of Him *came from.
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dhgray
Guest
the images you normally see come from the European painters. Pictures of Jesus in Japan have a asian flair…in Mexico a hispanic flair.
Close your eyes…what does Jesus look like to you.
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livingpeace
Guest
I wonder though then, is Jesus everything? Is he the people and the animals and the trees and everything on earth? Or does he just have a human form because that is what we painted so to speak. What made the painters paint him as He is? Is there a description of Him in the bible somewhere?
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RCWarrior821
Guest
I believe the image of Jesus arose from things like Veronica’s Veil and are confirmed in the Shroud of Turin, but I am not completely sure.
When the bible says we are made in the image and likeness of God it is speaking spiritually…we are made with a soul. God is not as we are with 2 arms 2 legs and a face but rather He took on our physical form when He became incarnate in Jesus Christ.
When the bible says we are made in the image and likeness of God it is speaking spiritually…we are made with a soul. God is not as we are with 2 arms 2 legs and a face but rather He took on our physical form when He became incarnate in Jesus Christ.
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Ruthie
Guest
No; He created them. We are His creations.
No, He came to us as a human being. He was fully human and fully divine. He was born and grew up just like any human, but He is the son of God. We are God’s adopted children, but Jesus is His only begotten Son.
There is no physical description of Jesus in the Bible, except that He is a man. Various artists give Him various appearances. He’s usually shown with a beard and long hair, because the Jews wore beards and long hair in those days.
Since He is the Lord of all people, and came to us as a human, we tend to see Him in our own image, as it were. I’ve seen paintings of Him as Japanese, African, blond and blue-eyed, black-haired and brown-eyed…
God bless you,
Ruthie
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livingpeace
Guest
He looks older than what most pictures show and different kind of, can’t really explain it. It looks more like what I picture God to look like, kind of stern and scary. I picture Jesus to look more peaceful. I don’t know if I have ever seen that before. I feel like I have but to be honest I never heard of the Shroud of Turin before or Veronica’s Veil. I’m really in the dark on alot of this. Open to learning though.
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thistle
Guest
NO. There is no physical description of Jesus in the Bible or in tradition.
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Angels_Unaware
Guest
I recall watching something on the Discovery channel about this, and from that program, anyway, I got the impression that it has been pretty much agreed upon by scholars that the Shroud of Turin was created several hundred years after Jesus died.
Is that the consensus among Catholics, too? Or is it considered authentic by the Church?
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patrick457
Guest
In 1988, the Shroud was subjected to radiocarbon dating, dating during the Middle Ages, approximately 1300 years after Jesus lived. However, this test has come under renewed attack. Follow-up analysis published in 2005, for example, claimed that the sample dated by the teams was taken from an area of the shroud that was not a part of the original cloth. The shroud was also damaged by a fire in the Late Middle Ages which could have added carbon material to the cloth, resulting in a higher radiocarbon content and a later calculated age.
As for whether the Church has officially said anything about the Shroud: She didn’t, and I don’t expect She will.
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patrick457
Guest
Welcome livingpeaceHe looks older than what most pictures show and different kind of, can’t really explain it. It looks more like what I picture God to look like, kind of stern and scary. I picture Jesus to look more peaceful. I don’t know if I have ever seen that before. I feel like I have but to be honest I never heard of the Shroud of Turin before or Veronica’s Veil. I’m really in the dark on alot of this. Open to learning though.
Perhaps one of the reasons why Jesus looks more rather ‘scary’ in the Shroud is because He had just suffered a violent death and His visage shows the rather brutal injuries (imagine being punched in the face repeatedly and you’ll get the idea).
Additionally Jesus was somewhere around His 30’s when He died; due to the low life expectancy back then (40-50 years) and the difference between the modern era and pre-industrial societies, Jesus (and others in general) may have looked a bit older than how people of age thirty in our society look like.
Plus, since there is variegation noise on the Shroud (due to the yarns used), some features may be distorted.
http://www.shroudofturin4journalists.com/templa7.gif
This is how the face looks like when the variegations are filtered. Note the face having more natural proportions and the hair being less straight.
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Hislittlelady
Guest
Jesus and all the apostles including Mary His Mother, came from the area of the middle east, so Jesus had dark skin and very dark hair. I think His physical appearance would best be imagined through the region he lived and what people of today look like from that same area. The average middle eastern person has a dark complexion, very dark eyes, and black hair. I’m sure there might be exceptions, although I know of none, but that’s the image I have of Jesus.
Mary also must have been a dark middle eastern woman, typical of her day, and they had hard lives. It made them age much more quickly then we do today. At thirty or thirty three, Jesus probably had the appearance of a forty five year old man of today.
I love all the paintings of Him, looking like a good shephard and with His gentle face, but in reality, he probably gave a far difference appearance.
It seems that maybe for whatever His reason, God didn’t want us to know what He looked like, otherwise I would think there would be a description of Him in the bible, and I find it very odd that there isn’t. I wonder why that is.
One night I watched this special on the History channel, and they reconstructed a face of a typical middle eastern man of that time period, in trying to recapture what Jesus must have looked like, It was nothing the way we picture Him to look. He was a rough and tough looking man, with very extremely dark eyes, dark skin and a thick nose and lips with bushy eyebrows, and all of that was only their interpretation anyway. Not everyone looked the way they represented him. He might have been handsome or he might not have. This we will not know and it’s probably not even an issue or important to God about his physical appearance. It’s only by our human nature that we look for visual appearance of things.
I know one thing for sure. When we finally see Him, face to face, we will see Him in all His glory, and the things of this world will be wiped away from our minds. Probably the looks of us in heaven will have nothing even close to our looks right now, even with perfected bodies some day, I don’t think there will be a resemblance to our shells that we use on this earth. It will be perfection itself.
Come Lord Jesus, Come!
:heaven:
Mary also must have been a dark middle eastern woman, typical of her day, and they had hard lives. It made them age much more quickly then we do today. At thirty or thirty three, Jesus probably had the appearance of a forty five year old man of today.
I love all the paintings of Him, looking like a good shephard and with His gentle face, but in reality, he probably gave a far difference appearance.
It seems that maybe for whatever His reason, God didn’t want us to know what He looked like, otherwise I would think there would be a description of Him in the bible, and I find it very odd that there isn’t. I wonder why that is.
One night I watched this special on the History channel, and they reconstructed a face of a typical middle eastern man of that time period, in trying to recapture what Jesus must have looked like, It was nothing the way we picture Him to look. He was a rough and tough looking man, with very extremely dark eyes, dark skin and a thick nose and lips with bushy eyebrows, and all of that was only their interpretation anyway. Not everyone looked the way they represented him. He might have been handsome or he might not have. This we will not know and it’s probably not even an issue or important to God about his physical appearance. It’s only by our human nature that we look for visual appearance of things.
I know one thing for sure. When we finally see Him, face to face, we will see Him in all His glory, and the things of this world will be wiped away from our minds. Probably the looks of us in heaven will have nothing even close to our looks right now, even with perfected bodies some day, I don’t think there will be a resemblance to our shells that we use on this earth. It will be perfection itself.
Come Lord Jesus, Come!
:heaven:
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patrick457
Guest
That reminds me of the BBC reconstructing a 1st century Jewish man’s skull. This is what they came up with:
(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
I wholeheartedly agree.
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Antonia123
Guest
Iconography (sacred images) began with the first Christian generation. St. Luke is said to have written (painted) the first icon of the Virgin Mary.
The traditional images of our Lord, Mary, and some of the apostles, notably Sts. Peter and Paul, descend from an eyewitness tradition, which is why they are so recognizable across centuries of images. (For instance, St. Peter generally has a full head of hair, often curly, a thick beard, and a burly build. St. Paul is usually depicted as balding and fairly thin.)
From this sacred tradition, we do have an idea of what they actually looked like. However, since iconography represents spiritual realities, I think it is still wonderful and appropriate to depict our Lord and Lady as being of other ethnicities, because our Lord representes and saves us all, and our Lady is mother to us all.
The traditional images of our Lord, Mary, and some of the apostles, notably Sts. Peter and Paul, descend from an eyewitness tradition, which is why they are so recognizable across centuries of images. (For instance, St. Peter generally has a full head of hair, often curly, a thick beard, and a burly build. St. Paul is usually depicted as balding and fairly thin.)
From this sacred tradition, we do have an idea of what they actually looked like. However, since iconography represents spiritual realities, I think it is still wonderful and appropriate to depict our Lord and Lady as being of other ethnicities, because our Lord representes and saves us all, and our Lady is mother to us all.
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meaprilrain
Guest
Isaiah 53:
1 Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?
2 For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: **he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. ** 3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
dictionary comely:
1 : pleasurably conforming to notions of good appearance, suitability, or proportion
2 : having a pleasing appearance : not homely or plain
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juliamajor
Guest
That’s a prophecy- not a true description. Isaiah 's point was not to describe his face but who he was and people’s reaction to him.
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meaprilrain
Guest
So are you saying you do not believe in the correctness of prophecy ? because the rest of the inline text is an accurate description of what the early peoples thought of him and the pains and suffering he did have? everything is correct except what he looks like ?
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jmcrae
Guest
“Created in the image and likeness of God” means that we have spiritual souls. God doesn’t have a material form.
Jesus came down to the earth as a man many centuries after the Creation. We can guess at what He looked like based on Veronica’s veil and the Shroud of Turin, but if someone doesn’t look like Jesus it doesn’t mean that they are any less human.
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patrick457
Guest
I do not deny that one of the interpretations of this passage applies to Jesus, but then again this is more a prophecy than an actual description of His appearance. However, even if Jesus proved to actually be a short, squat, unattractive man with short or no hair and no beard (literally without hadar nor to’ar and contrary to popular depictions of Him) I hope that that should not shake my faith in Him.
A bit off-topic: The term translated as “form” is to’ar, meaning “appearance,” “shape,” or “form” while “comeliness” here is hadar, which could also mean “majesty,” “ornament,” or “splendour.” The Septuagint renders to’ar as eidos (“form” or “appearance”) while hadar is doxa (“glory” or “majesty;” even “honor”). That does not however mean the translation above is wrong; Jerome translated both words into species and decor (“appearance” and “beauty,” respectively).
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George_C
Guest
Most European representations from the 16th century onward seem to be based on one Cesare Borgia, an Italian politician and soldier. He was the son of Rodrigo Borgia, who became Pope Alexander VI and nephew of Alonso Borgia, who became Pope Calixtus III.
He himself was made cardinal at age 18; he resigned five years later. He died in his mid-30’s and political philosopher and poet Niccolò Machiavelli admired him.
He himself was made cardinal at age 18; he resigned five years later. He died in his mid-30’s and political philosopher and poet Niccolò Machiavelli admired him.
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