What Jesus Really Looked Like

A report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media.  This week’s item is from www.cbsnews.com March 27, 2001 with a headline, “Experts Reconstruct Face of Jesus.”  Researchers for the BBC have generated an image of what Jesus Christ may have actually looked like.  Using the 2000 year old skull of a Jewish man found in a Jerusalem building as a starting point the researchers reconstructed his face using techniques developed for serious burn victims.  Based on the earliest portraits of Jews taken from a third century Syrian Synagogue the image was given curly short hair and a trimmed beard.  The skin is dark because of the desert climate.  One of the researchers calls the image an accurate reflection of the people at that time.  The BBC show the image was created for “Son of God,” says our conception of Jesus as white grew out of the famous portraits of him in Western European art.

T. A. McMahon:

Dave isn’t it wonderful now that we can know what Jesus looked like, except for this.  I’m looking at this portrait and the guy is ugly.  He’s not just ugly, he looks rather —

Dave Hunt:

Stupid.

T. A. McMahon:

—rather Neanderthalish, which, Dave, if you go to any of the museums and begin to look at these reconstructions of supposedly primitive men, hominids so on, it’s interesting that they can put flesh on these bones.  How does that work?

Dave Hunt:

Tom, again, I’m sorry, you’re a very patient man, I lose patience with this sort of thing.

T. A. McMahon:

I’m the coffee guy.

Dave Hunt:

Yeah right.  What Jesus Christ may have actually looked like—I mean, may and actually just don’t quite fit together.

T. A. McMahon:

They never sort of underscore those words either in articles that you read.

Dave Hunt:

So, what He may have looked like—well, first of all, that doesn’t give me any assurance so what’s the point.  They’ve reconstructed something that they think He may have looked like.  Wow, isn’t that exciting!  Why do I want to know what he may have looked like?

T. A. McMahon:

How close is may?

Dave Hunt:

Yeah, I would say it is pretty far away, isn’t it?  It says it’s an accurate reflection of the people at that time.  Wait a minute!  There are all kinds of people that have all kinds of different faces.  Now, we’re talking about the Son of God.  We are talking about God, who became a man.  He is called the second man, the last Adam, just as Adam was created fresh from the hand of God from the dust of the ground.  So, the body of Jesus was created by God in the womb of a virgin.  This is the perfect man.  This is not a reflection of people of His time.  I mean, He is not average Joe.  This is God himself.  This is man as God intended man to be.  This is the perfect man, the epitome of manhood, the ultimate; this is the God/man.  So, obviously they don’t believe that.  They think if Jesus existed He was some average guy of His day.  Well, I’m not interested in that kind of a Jesus in the first place.  So, what is the point?  Well Tom, I think it’s part of a demeaning attitude toward Jesus.  It’s part of a tongue-in-cheek—oh yeah, maybe the Bible is true, we’ll check it out.  It’s part of skepticism that has invaded the church and it poses as some great advancement.  Isn’t this wonderful?Why now our scientists have reconstructed a portrait of what Jesus may have actually looked like.

T. A. McMahon:

And he looks like a dodo.

Dave Hunt:

He does.  And oh, we have made a great advance.  No, you have not made a great advance, you are just deceiving yourselves.  You have turned aside from the scriptures, from the truth to who knows what.  Now Tom, I’m going to offend some people out there because there are pictures of Jesus hanging on people’s walls.

T. A. McMahon:

And as this article indicates He is white [and] He certainly doesn’t look a dodo.  Yeah, He has a very western bent in terms of His physiology.

Dave Hunt:

You remember the portrait of the artist that won the National Catholic Reporter contest?

T. A. McMahon:

Yeah, it was worse than this one. 

Dave:

It was, actually. 

Tom:

But what I am getting at is that there are images of Jesus that we find in some churches and so on.  Now, that’s just as deluding, I think, maybe not as offensive but certainly no more accurate.

Dave Hunt:

People have their different preferences.  Some like a macho looking Jesus with a long beard and some with short and so forth.  Tom, once again, I’m sorry, I don’t want to offend any of you out there, but what is the point?  You have a picture of Jesus that you are not even sure that it looks the way He looked, what is the point?  To whatever extent this influences your thoughts about Jesus and it is inaccurate, you have been led astray.  Furthermore, Paul says, “Though we have known Christ after the flesh…” that is, before He was crucified, “yet henceforth know we Him no more.”  In fact, what does He look like?  He looks like John saw him, Revelation 1, indescribable.  His eyes like a flame of fire, this one before whom John fell on his face as dead, He is so awesome.  This is how Christ looks today.  So then, we have people visualizing Jesus as they think He looked before.  It’s an entire delusion that’s turning us from the truth and it concerns me.

T. A. McMahon:

Dave, I know people out there, they want something tangible to get a hold of, something that they can see, feel, touch, and so on.  But you know they get more than that from reading about Christ in the scriptures, getting to know Him personally through His Word.  There is objective truth, you know, we don’t have to mess with the imagination and its subjective ideas and so on.  We can know the true and living God through His Son Jesus Christ, through His Word by faith.

Dave Hunt:

Amen.