What did Jesus look like? This popular cover of BAR magazine juxtaposes two artistic representations of Jesus’ face. Photo: BBC Photo Library (left), Mosaic of Jesus from Hagia Sophia, Instanbul, Turkey/Photo by Pavle Marjanovic (right)
Novelists, script writers, and casting directors have piqued our interest. Jesus may be one of the best known and most talked-about people of ancient history. But do we know the answer to the question: What did Jesus look like? In “Painting a Portrait of Jesus,” D. Moody Smith points out the difficulties in answering the question: What did Jesus really look like?
Many ancient accounts of a person’s life give us a hint of the person’s physical appearance. And the Old Testament tells us that King David was ruddy and handsome. But the New Testament never goes near: What did Jesus look like?
Actually, as Smith points out in his article below, we don’t know much about the personal life of Jesus either. We’re given some insight into his family: the Gospels name his mother and brothers?including James who became a leader of the first-century church in Jerusalem?and mention unnamed sisters. John 1:45 refers to Jesus as “son of Joseph,” though after the Nativity narratives Joseph isn’t mentioned as a player.
Some of Jesus’ followers were women, including Mary Magdalene. The Gospel of John implies a close relationship, including her role in the resurrection story. Was Mary Magdalene the wife of Jesus, as envisioned by Nikos Kazantzakis in The Last Temptation of Christ and Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code? Most Jewish men would have been married, but it seems not likely for Jesus’ contemporary John the Baptist. And the apostle Paul writes that he was single. So Jesus being single and celibate was very possible.
In the Roman catacombs we see our first representations of Jesus. But could they, in Rome, know the answer to the question?what did Jesus really look like? There he was depicted as a beardless shepherd. By the fourth century, Jesus is shown with a beard, as we often see him represented today.