For centuries, the prevalent image of Jesus Christ, particularly in Western cultures, has been that of a fair-skinned man with a beard, long, wavy light brown or blond hair, and often blue eyes. However, the Bible offers no physical description of Jesus, and available evidence suggests his appearance likely differed significantly from this traditional portrayal.
Biblical Clues to Jesus’s Appearance
The Bible provides limited information regarding Christ’s physical attributes. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the primary sources about Jesus’s life, identify him as a Jewish man born in Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth, Galilee (present-day northern Israel) during the first century.
While Luke 3:23 indicates Jesus was around 30 years old at the start of his ministry, scripture is largely silent on his physical characteristics. Notably, the Bible suggests Jesus did not have a distinctive appearance. In the Garden of Gethsemane, as recounted in Matthew 26:47-56, Judas Iscariot needed to identify Jesus to the soldiers among his disciples, implying a similarity in their appearances.
Some scholars interpret Revelation 1:14-15 as hinting at a darker complexion and woolly hair texture for Jesus. This passage describes hair “white as white wool, white as snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace.”
According to Robert Cargill, an assistant professor of classics and religious studies at the University of Iowa and editor of Biblical Archaeology Review, “We don’t know what [Jesus] looked like, but if all of the things that we do know about him are true… He would have looked like a Jewish Galilean.”
Evolving Depictions of Jesus Through History
A restored fresco in the Roman catacomb of Santa Domitilla portrays an early depiction of Jesus with his apostles.
Early artistic representations of Jesus emerged in the mid-third century A.D., over two centuries after his death. Paintings in the catacombs of St. Domitilla in Rome, rediscovered roughly 400 years ago, are among the oldest. These paintings depict Jesus as the Good Shepherd, a youthful, beardless man with short hair and a lamb around his shoulders, reflecting a common early image of Jesus.
Another ancient portrayal of Jesus was unearthed in 2018 on a sixth-century A.D. church wall in southern Israel. This discovery marks the earliest known image of Christ in Israel, showing him with shorter, curly hair. This style was prevalent in the eastern Byzantine Empire, particularly in Egypt and the Syria-Palestine region, but later faded from Byzantine art.
From the fourth century onwards, the long-haired, bearded depiction of Jesus gained prominence, heavily influenced by representations of Greek and Roman deities, especially Zeus, the supreme Greek god. Jesus began to be portrayed in a long robe, enthroned, often with a halo, as seen in the fifth-century mosaic at the Santa Pudenziana church in Rome.
The purpose of these artistic renderings, according to Joan Taylor, professor of Christian origins and second temple Judaism at King’s College London, was “never to show Jesus as a man, but to make theological points about who Jesus was as Christ (King, Judge) and divine Son.” She noted in The Irish Times that these images evolved into “the standard ‘Jesus’ we recognize.”
It’s important to note that not all Jesus imagery aligns with the dominant Western depiction. Many cultures globally have visually represented Jesus as resembling themselves. Cargill explains, “Cultures tend to portray prominent religious figures to look like the dominant racial identity.”
The Shroud of Turin: Relic or Forgery?
A negative image of the Shroud of Turin, a linen cloth debated as a possible burial shroud of Jesus Christ.
Among purported relics linked to Jesus, the Shroud of Turin, appearing in 1354, is among the most famous. Believers claim Jesus was wrapped in this linen cloth post-crucifixion, leaving a facial image. However, many experts consider the shroud a fake, and the Vatican refers to it as an “icon” rather than a relic.
Cargill states, “The Shroud of Turin has been debunked on a couple of occasions as a medieval forgery.” He adds that it’s part of a broader historical trend of attempting to acquire or produce objects connected to Jesus’s life and body, “for the purposes of either legitimizing his existence and the claims made about him, or in some cases, harnessing his miraculous powers.”
Scientific and Archaeological Insights into Jesus’s Appearance
In 2001, retired medical artist Richard Neave led a team of forensic anthropologists and computer programmers to create a new image of Jesus. This reconstruction, based on a first-century Israeli skull, computer modeling, and knowledge of Jewish people’s appearance at that time, offers a different perspective. While not claiming to be an exact likeness, scholars consider this image – depicting a man around five feet tall with darker skin, dark eyes, and shorter, curlier hair – more historically plausible than traditional artistic depictions.
Joan Taylor’s 2018 book, What Did Jesus Look Like?, draws on archaeological remains, historical texts, and ancient Egyptian funerary art. Her research suggests Jesus likely had brown eyes, dark brown to black hair, and olive-brown skin, typical of people in Judea and Egypt at the time. She estimates his height around 5 feet 5 inches (166 cm), the average male height of that era.
Cargill concurs that these recent reconstructions, featuring darker, possibly curlier hair, darker skin, and dark eyes, likely offer a more accurate representation. He emphasizes the inherent uncertainty, asking, “What did Jewish Galileans look like 2,000 years ago? That’s the question. They probably didn’t have blue eyes and blond hair.”
