From the first time Christian children settle into Sunday school classrooms, an image of Jesus Christ is etched into their minds. In North America he is most often depicted as being taller than his disciples, lean, with long, flowing, light brown hair, fair skin and light-colored eyes. Familiar though this image may be, it is inherently flawed. A person with these features and physical bearing would have looked very different from everyone else in the region where Jesus lived and ministered. Surely the authors of the Bible would have mentioned so stark a contrast. On the contrary, according to the Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus was arrested in the garden of Gethsemane before the Crucifixion, Judas Iscariot had to indicate to the soldiers whom Jesus was because they could not tell him apart from his disciples. Further clouding the question of what Jesus looked like is the simple fact that nowhere in the New Testament is Jesus described, nor have any drawings of him ever been uncovered. There is the additional problem of having neither a skeleton nor other bodily remains to probe for DNA. In the absence of evidence, our images of Jesus have been left to the imagination of artists. The influences of the artists' cultures and traditions can be profound, observes Carlos F. Cardoza-Orlandi, associate professor of world Christianity at Columbia Theological Seminary in Atlanta. "While Western imagery is dominant, in other parts of the world he is often shown as black, Arab or Hispanic." And so the fundamental question remains: What did Jesus look like?
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It's a lot more believable than the blond haired, blue eyed depictions we've grown up with.
ReplyDeleteOh, this is not going to go over very well.
ReplyDeleteThe Shroud of Turin is a good representation of Christ's face!
ReplyDeleteMaybe...a little too Cro Magnon for me...
ReplyDeleteApplying a face to a spiritual entity is not a good thing.His actual appearance was concealed for a reason.1:24-has the Shroud ever been 100% verified as the burial cloth of Jesus?
ReplyDeleteNo. It has been debunked.
DeleteRemember where he was born and that he was a Jew. This is what people looked like, not something that artists and Hollywood have sold us.
ReplyDeleteAnd He isn't the skinny wimp so often pictured.. He was a carpenter. No power tools back then. He did it all by hand.
ReplyDeleteRemember how He overturned the tables and threw the 'vendors' out of the temple? He must have been a pretty significant presence in order to be able to do that.
He is alive right now, seated on the right hand of the Father, waiting... and soon His Father will tell Him to come get us and take us home.
I'm READY for that, aren't you? Bring it on!!
Another one off their meds
DeleteI'm glad to see so many accepting this rendition. I don't think that was the expected response, to be honest.
ReplyDelete2:03
ReplyDeleteJesus Christ was a Hebrew.
He was not a Jew (House of Judah)
The so called "Shroud" has been proven newer than one that would have been used on Jesus, thru carbon dating. AS far a "Forensic's" being used to reconstruct Jesus's face, they didn't have a skull to do forensic reconstruction, so the whole thing is just crap to dispel the look of Jesus we have grown to know and love. My Jesus at my church is very white, has blondish hair, beautiful blue eyes, and flowing white robes. He is not an Arab with a bomb vest.
ReplyDelete3:20 And Jesus was American too who believed in the right to bear arms? LOL
ReplyDeleteYeshua (Jesus) is from the Tribe of Judah (Heb. 7:14). His earthly father was descended from David (Matt. 1:6-16) and His mother was as well (Luke 1:27, 32-34, 3:23-31).
ReplyDeleteHe was not a Jew (House of Judah)
ReplyDeleteDecember 14, 2015 at 3:20 PM
Was he not the King of Jews?
According to writings from the Romans who kept good public records, Pontius Pilate described Jesus as having chestnut brown hair and grey eyes.
ReplyDeleteNothing like the picture that has been made. There is no question he was middle eastern.
There are blonde haired, blued eyed Jewish people depending on the tribe they were from. Some tribes come from modern day Russia. It's not out of the question he could have been fair skinned.
There are people today in the middle east, in Jordan, Syria, Afganistan, etc who are fair skinned with lite colored eyes. Not all middle eastern people look like North Africans! Seems to be some kind of war on white people!!!
Even the Ancient Greeks where said to be mostly Blonde haired blue eyed people. It was the invasions and mixing of other peoples that changed this.
Until Peabody and Sherman come back from their trip on the Wayback Machine, we'll never know. Or the Apocalypse, whichever comes first.
ReplyDeleteLook at the Palestinian. You warmongerers supporting the Zionist regim are in for a real shocker.
ReplyDeleteJesus was from Hebrew (Jewish) lineage and was the son of David and the son of Abraham through 42 generations Christ was born to be a Governor of the House of Israel, which was the Jewish nation...read the story of Christ's birth beginning with Matthew...he was raised with the law of Moses and kept all traditions of Moses' people, the Jewish people. Yet, he was rebuked by his own Jewish people and God told his son to preach to everyone, including the Gentiles and all other tribes. Those who accepted Jesus as God's son and repented of their sins and obeyed God's laws, would have everlasting life. Does it really matter what he looked like? What matters is what he did with his life...he died for us, so we might live.
ReplyDelete