Historically Accurate Image of Jesus
If you celebrate Christmas, it’s easy to let your head get full of overly idealized imagery of a beautiful couple wearing halos in a cute little stable, with a fresh baby lying in clean and polished wooden manger, doubtless surrounded by loving and recently brushed lambs and donkeys and the like. All this is lovely to picture, but isn’t honest about the real conditions of that time and place. And like visions of a great big guy in the sky with a beard and a cute little red devil with a pitchfork, these visual pictures can shroud what this holiday and religion is really about.
Ergo, I’m posting the non-Caucasian image of Jesus that hit the covers of Popular Mechanics in December of 2002. The goal had been to establish the most historically accurate image of Jesus possible. Of note is that Richard Neave, a retired medical artist from the University of Manchester in England largely directed the project. The group used visualization techniques that were common for forensic and archeological projects.
Jesse Watkins posted: 15 Apr at 7:24 am
It’s not any different than any other picture of Jesus because we don’t really know what he looked like, but I admire the fact that it attempts to depict a “historically and culturally” accurate depiction. I would like to know what they based the image on though? Were they just putting together what any normal man during that time period would have looked like? You article does not say.
mreinke posted: 15 Apr at 8:30 am
Right, although there’s no way of knowing Jesus’s exact facial proportions and likeness, this prototype is at least in the right ballpark. This image was built with 3D software – the skull was reconstructed from 3 well preserved skulls from the time period and from near Jerusalem. Muscles and skin were inferred from the bone structure. Archeological drawings from 1st century AD determined eye color, skin color is typical of that region and time, and hair length was gathered in part from Biblical verses. Although the shroud of Turin infers a long haired individual, both an inferrence from a passage in 1 Corinthians and the pervasive short haired style of the time tipped the scale in favor of a short haired Jesus. More information is available on the Popular Mechanics link within the post.
knowit posted: 27 Aug at 5:09 pm
i dn’t know what color jesus was but there is no way he was caucasion, white no way nor did he have blond hair
i think this is how jesus looked
even in the bible it says his hair was wool like a black person’s
remember there are black jews also
im not saying jesus was black but he had brown skin