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What did Jesus look like?

  • 13-12-2010 10:29PM
    #1
    Jester Minute
    Closed Accounts Posts: 302 ✭✭Jester Minute


    I was talking to a fellow Christian today about this. I always thought of Jesus as being handsome, rugged and so forth. Looking at most Christian art, He is either portrayed as a handsome manly type, muscular (He was a carpenter) or else He is portrayed as quite soft and genteel.

    I like to think that the Lord is the perfect man. In my mind, that means He must be handsome, according to my Western imagination, of course.

    However, others quote various passages from Isaiah which might indicate that He was not attractive. But I always thought that was because His features had been disfigured by the scourging and so forth.

    I find it hard to believe that God would incarnate Himself as anything other than the most perfect specimen of the human race. I think that if we attain heaven, we shall all be perfect, and in my mind, perfection includes physical perfection which to me means physical beauty.

    Maybe I've got it quite wrong. Maybe I am thinking not as God thinks, but as man thinks.

    So, what do you think?


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Comments

  • #2
    Onesimus
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,055 ✭✭✭Onesimus


    I think what he means by Jesus not being attractive is that he did not have the appearance of someone who stood out of the crowd. But just looked basically like every other person on the planet. to put it in modern day language. He had no lynx, no gillette and did not shop at top man.


  • #3
    PDN
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,686 ✭✭✭✭PDN


    Perfection and physical beauty tend to be in the eye of the beholder. Physical perfection, in the eyes of someone from Tonga, would be considered grossly fat by many of us.

    What is fairly certain is that Jesus, as a First Century Palestinian Jew, was not the blue-eyed blond-haired Barry Gibbs lookalike portrayed in many paintings.


  • #4
    Fanny Cradock
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,240 ✭✭✭✭Fanny Cradock


    Not unlike this, I'd imagine.

    paljesus.jpg

    or this (middle picture looks not unlike Lionel Richie)

    semitic.jpg

    but most certainly not this

    euro-jesus.gif

    The notion that Jesus looked anything different from your average modern-day Palestinian, Syrian, Israeli or just about anybody from that region doesn't float.


  • #5
    Fanny Cradock
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,240 ✭✭✭✭Fanny Cradock


    PDN wrote: »

    What is fairly certain is that Jesus, as a First Century Palestinian Jew, was not the blue-eyed blond-haired Barry Gibbs lookalike portrayed in many paintings.

    Didn't you post an interesting picture before of a black Jesus? I guess the sub-Saharan equivalent of your Barry Gibb? *


    * After checking who he is the comparison makes perfect sense


  • #6
    Jester Minute
    Closed Accounts Posts: 302 ✭✭Jester Minute


    Fanny Cradock wrote: »
    Didn't you post an interesting picture before of a black Jesus? I guess the sub-Saharan equivalent of your Barry Gibb? *


    * After checking who he is the comparison makes perfect sense

    Lol.

    What about this: HOLY-FACE-SHROUD.jpg

    That's from the Turin Shroud.


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  • #7
    Oh_Noes
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,512 ✭✭✭Oh_Noes


    Jester Minute wrote: »
    Lol.

    What about this: HOLY-FACE-SHROUD.jpg

    That's from the Turin Shroud.

    The Turin Shroud was exposed as a hoax years ago.


  • #8
    Jester Minute
    Closed Accounts Posts: 302 ✭✭Jester Minute


    image-5-for-the-3d-diety-the-computerised-jesus-gallery-27709661.jpg


  • #9
    Plowman
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,630 ✭✭✭Plowman


    This post has been deleted.


  • #10
    Jester Minute
    Closed Accounts Posts: 302 ✭✭Jester Minute


    Oh_Noes wrote: »
    The Turin Shroud was exposed as a hoax years ago.
    Hardly. With each passing year the evidence increases. Anyway, let's not get into petty controversies. Let's talk about what Jesus looked like.


  • #11
    Slav
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 789 ✭✭✭Slav


    Jester Minute wrote: »
    I find it hard to believe that God would incarnate Himself as anything other than the most perfect specimen of the human race.

    That does not sound right to me. It even has a slight hint of some sort of monophysitism as far as I can see it. Theologically speaking, the physical appearance of Christ (as everything else we attribute to humanity) if fully determined by the appearance of Theotokos, Joahim, Anna, and so on. I guess we have no reason to suggest that they looked exceptionally differently from other Jews of that time and therefore so did not Christ.


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  • #12
    Jester Minute
    Closed Accounts Posts: 302 ✭✭Jester Minute


    Slav wrote: »
    That does not sound right to me. It even has a slight hint of some sort of monophysitism as far as I can see it. Theologically speaking, the physical appearance of Christ (as everything else we attribute to humanity) if fully determined by the appearance of Theotokos, Joahim, Anna, and so on. I guess we have no reason to suggest that they looked exceptionally differently from other Jews of that time and therefore so did not Christ.

    Yeah I agree with you and thank you for your insight.

    It wouldn't be the first time I've been affected by heresy. I think most Irish Catholics are infected with Pelagianism. I also suffered with a bout of Deism early in my conversional process.


  • #13
    homer911
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,058 ✭✭✭homer911


    Jester Minute wrote: »
    Hardly. With each passing year the evidence increases. Anyway, let's not get into petty controversies. Let's talk about what Jesus looked like.

    If you, as the original OP, introduce the Turin shroud as an example of what Christ might have looked like, you have to be prepared for people to be completely sceptical of it.

    You cant just introduce something and say "Anyway..." If its petty and irrelvant dont introduce it!

    It would be like me introducing Romans 14:2 in an attempt to prove that vegetarians make lousy christians...


  • #14
    BigDuffman
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,512 ✭✭✭BigDuffman


    Quite jewish I'd imagine..much to the disdain of southern supremacists!


  • #15
    Aron Repulsive Post
    Posts: 81,310 CMod ✭✭✭✭ Aron Repulsive Post


    I find it hard to believe that God would incarnate Himself as anything other than the most perfect specimen of the human race. I think that if we attain heaven, we shall all be perfect, and in my mind, perfection includes physical perfection which to me means physical beauty.

    I think the whole resurrection business might have been a tad more important than him looking pretty ! :D

    edit: I would also find it hard to reconcile someone who didn't show off with the jumping off the temple etc, with someone who showed off via physical perfection


  • #16
    newmug
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 3,571 ✭✭✭newmug


    IIRC what you posted Fanny, was a reconstruction done on a skull found in or around Jerusalem on a show like time-team. I remember watching it at the time. They suspected it was the skull of saint Peter (although I dont see how if he's buried in Rome!)


  • #17
    prinz
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 14,598 ✭✭✭✭prinz


    A cross between Omid Djalili and Gad Elmaleh.

    http://blog.vickiboykis.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/gad_elmaleh.jpg

    http://kazbah.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/omid-djalili.JPG

    Which would lead to something like Ashraf Barhom...
    http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3272/2737934637_3b7d758984.jpg?v=0


  • #18
    homer911
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,058 ✭✭✭homer911


    My accountancy teacher in school once told the class that Jesus was precisely 6 feet tall!! (and that he was the only person ever precisely 6 feet tall) Where do people get their ideas from???

    Assuming he was correct (unlikely) this would probably have made him considerably taller than most people of the time...

    This is not a subject any person should get hung up about, or even care about imo


  • #19
    Zombrex
    Closed Accounts Posts: 25,848 ✭✭✭✭Zombrex


    Plowman wrote: »
    This post has been deleted.

    True, only in terms of averages, ie there are certain traits that on average more people than not find attractive.

    As PDN says it is largely in the eye of the beholder, and largely down to genetics. We find people with slightly diverse phenotypes attractive, but go too far removed and it slides off again. Someone from Norway may find Halle Berry attractive but a woman from a mid-African country not so much (although again this could be different for someone else)

    So I would imagine it would be difficult for God to make the perfectly handsome Jesus as there is no objective standard.

    The OP does though have a point that God though would have had to decide Jesus' genetic material, and thus his phenotype, would God have made him stand out or would he have made him common looking and plain to blend in.


  • #20
    Zombrex
    Closed Accounts Posts: 25,848 ✭✭✭✭Zombrex


    prinz wrote: »
    A cross between Omid Djalili and Gad Elmaleh.

    http://blog.vickiboykis.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/gad_elmaleh.jpg

    http://kazbah.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/omid-djalili.JPG

    Which would lead to something like Ashraf Barhom...
    http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3272/2737934637_3b7d758984.jpg?v=0

    are you just listing the perfect man :P:pac:


  • #21
    Festus
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 2,087 ✭✭✭Festus


    I Imagine Mel Gibsons' guess wasn't far off the mark - a bit like Jim Caviezel only more like Jesus


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  • #22
    fontanalis
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,619 ✭✭✭fontanalis


    Fanny Cradock wrote: »
    Not unlike this, I'd imagine.

    paljesus.jpg

    or this (middle picture looks not unlike Lionel Richie)

    semitic.jpg

    but most certainly not this

    euro-jesus.gif

    The notion that Jesus looked anything different from your average modern-day Palestinian, Syrian, Israeli or just about anybody from that region doesn't float.

    So when he returns will his first words be "hello, it's me again"?
    Sorry.


  • #23
    Jester Minute
    Closed Accounts Posts: 302 ✭✭Jester Minute


    Although we can be confident that Jesus does indeed look like the average man from that region, I think there is no harm in portraying Him according to our own cultures and races. It can help people to be devoted to the Lord. Catholics like images of the Lord. We believe that since God has become incarnate and made man, He can now be portrayed. I read something in a book about that recently. I can't remember where though. It might have been in the Pope's new book. *sigh* I hate when that happens. You read something good and then forget where you read it.

    Anyway, I quite like some of the ethnic portrayals, such as this one from China:

    shangri-la-la.1198159020.chinese-mary-and-jesus.jpg

    It is sentimental and devotional. I think it's cute. I don't think there is any harm in that.


  • #24
    fontanalis
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,619 ✭✭✭fontanalis


    BigDuffman wrote: »
    Quite jewish I'd imagine..much to the disdain of southern supremacists!

    I'd say more Arab, I remember reading an article about jewish ancestry and apparently a lot of Jews (ashekanzi) are decended from people around the italy/mediterranean area who converted to Judaism and moved to central Europe.


  • #25
    Jester Minute
    Closed Accounts Posts: 302 ✭✭Jester Minute


    For the cold weather:

    20081222_eskimo_33.jpg

    And this is nice: Jesus with the children of the whole world:

    olqpjesuskids.jpg

    This is a very interesting article on this very subject:
    "It's relevant to every culture and every culture seeks to take it and make it its own, which then means a wide variety of depictions of Jesus," he says.

    "Truly, Jesus would have looked like a Jewish person in the Roman territory of Palestine 2000 years ago. But art is a means by which we can take the message flowing from that historical reality and...make it something that others in this particular time and place can draw near to and connect with."

    Christians simply relate better to a savior who looks like them. Which is why, centuries ago, Western Europeans painted Jesus with white skin and flowing, golden-brown hair. And why, today, murals in many north Minneapolis churches portray Jesus as an African-American.

    Prince of peace in pine needles
    But, perhaps more than our skin color, it's our life experience that determines how we choose to view Jesus, says Father Joseph.

    "Modern Western culture likes a very antiseptic Jesus, whereas when we see the images that the Hispanic immigrants bring with them, we just kind of go, 'Ooh.' They're very bloody. It's a beaten up Jesus. And in a way it's because we live in a modern industrialized nation that's very neat and tidy and clean. They come from, in many cases, a very poor and oppressed situation and so they really resonate with the suffering Jesus. That's a Jesus that they can relate to."

    -- http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/12/23/images_of_jesus/


  • #26
    PDN
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,686 ✭✭✭✭PDN


    Jester Minute wrote: »
    Although we can be confident that Jesus does indeed look like the average man from that region, I think there is no harm in portraying Him according to our own cultures and races.

    Time to show the cover of a book by one of my favourite authors: next-christendom-philip-jenkins.jpg


  • #27
    Jester Minute
    Closed Accounts Posts: 302 ✭✭Jester Minute


    PDN wrote: »
    Time to show the cover of a book by one of my favourite authors: next-christendom-philip-jenkins.jpg

    Interesting.

    If anyone is interested in a modern take on eastern icons, then this is a lovely website: http://www.monasteryicons.com/

    (You know, Mr Jenkins wrote a very good book on anti-Catholicism. I know it's a subject close to your heart!:P)


  • #28
    Jesus Wept
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 25,243 ✭✭✭✭Jesus Wept


    Bet he was mad sexy.


  • #29
    PDN
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,686 ✭✭✭✭PDN


    Jester Minute wrote: »
    (You know, Mr Jenkins wrote a very good book on anti-Catholicism. I know it's a subject close to your heart!:P)

    I've read it. But it's not a subject I obsess over.


  • #30
    dvae
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 335 ✭✭dvae


    The Bible dos not say what Jesus looked like other than the prophesy in Isaiah.
    I guess you can take from it that he was just an ordinary man to look at.
    As well as verse 2 Ive include the hole of chapter 53.
    I read it for the first time today, i hope like me you find it quite moving and humbling.

    Isaiah 53:2
    He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
    and like a root out of dry ground.
    He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
    Isaiah 53

    1 Who has believed our message
    and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
    2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
    and like a root out of dry ground.
    He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
    3 He was despised and rejected by mankind,
    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
    Like one from whom people hide their faces
    he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
    4 Surely he took up our pain
    and bore our suffering,
    yet we considered him punished by God,
    stricken by him, and afflicted.
    5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
    the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed.
    6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
    each of us has turned to our own way;
    and the LORD has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.
    7 He was oppressed and afflicted,
    yet he did not open his mouth;
    he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
    and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
    so he did not open his mouth.
    8 By oppressionURL="http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/#fen-NIV-18720a"][COLOR=#0000ff]a[/COLOR][/URL and judgment he was taken away.
    Yet who of his generation protested?
    For he was cut off from the land of the living;
    for the transgression of my people he was punished.URL="http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/#fen-NIV-18720b"][COLOR=#0000ff]b[/COLOR][/URL
    9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
    and with the rich in his death,
    though he had done no violence,
    nor was any deceit in his mouth. 10 Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
    and though the LORD makesURL="http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/#fen-NIV-18722c"][COLOR=#0000ff]c[/COLOR][/URL his life an offering for sin,
    he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
    and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.
    11 After he has suffered,
    he will see the light of lifeURL="http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/#fen-NIV-18723d"][COLOR=#0000ff]d[/COLOR][/URL and be satisfiedURL="http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/#fen-NIV-18723e"][COLOR=#0000ff]e[/COLOR][/URL;
    by his knowledgeURL="http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/#fen-NIV-18723f"][COLOR=#0000ff]f[/COLOR][/URL my righteous servant will justify many,
    and he will bear their iniquities.
    12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,URL="http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/#fen-NIV-18724g"][COLOR=#0000ff]g[/COLOR][/URL
    and he will divide the spoils with the strong,URL="http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/#fen-NIV-18724h"][COLOR=#0000ff]h[/COLOR][/URL
    because he poured out his life unto death,
    and was numbered with the transgressors.
    For he bore the sin of many,
    and made intercession for the transgressors


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  • #31
    lifequestions
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1 ✭lifequestions


    Looking for some info on the effectiveness of this course. Anyone out there done the course and if so how did u find it? Mary


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