The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #77817   Message #1392061
Posted By: GUEST
29-Jan-05 - 02:21 AM
Thread Name: BS: What did Jesus look like?
Subject: RE: BS: What did Jesus look like?
The Bible gives no specific description of what Jesus Christ
looked like, and there are no known images of Him in existence,
such as there are, for example, for Roman emperors (e.g. Emperor
Nero), or actual "faces from the past" that can be seen with the
Egyptian Mummies.

There are however some very good indications of what He did,
and did not, look like -

There was nothing unusual about His appearance. Throughout the
Gospel books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, people made no
mention of something different about how He looked.

If anything, people wondered how such an ordinary-looking man
could be The Savior. John The Baptist would not have known that
his cousin was The Savior (their mothers, Mary and Elizabeth
were related) unless an angel had told him just before Jesus'
baptism at age 30 (John 1:33).

The mob that came to arrest Him The Fateful Night could not
tell Him apart from Peter or John or any of the others - Judas
Iscariot had to actually point Him out (Matthew 26:47-49)
and even then Jesus had to identify Himself, twice, to those
who demanded Him by Name as He stood right in front of them
in the bright light of their torches (John 18:3-9).

Jesus had a natural, rugged appearance. He did hard outside
physical labor, with Joseph in Nazareth, until He was about
30 years old. Back then, the building trade involved very
strenuous physical labor with heavy stone and lumber, without
any sort of power tools or mechanical digging equipment that
are in use today.

Unlike many religious pictures that portray Jesus as a pale,
skinny, effeminate man with long hair and wearing a flowing
white or pink robe, Christ could have looked nothing like that.

His appearance would definitely have been that of a tanned,
muscular, physically-fit young man dressed in durable and
practical clothing - which made Him indistinguishable from
the "blue-collar" Fishermen who were with Him when He was
arrested. The prophet Isaiah confirms His ordinary appearance -

"He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in
His appearance that we should desire Him. He was despised and
rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces He was despised, and
we esteemed Him not.

Many portray Jesus Christ as having long hair. Hair styles
and socially-acceptable length have varied tremendously over
the ages, sometimes very short, sometimes very long.

Most religious artists portray Christ with long hair. The man
in the Shroud of Turin also has long hair. But did Jesus have
long hair?

The apostle Paul (see On The Road To Damascus) actually saw
Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 9:1). Paul, a trustworthy man
who wrote a large part of the New Testament, knew exactly what
The Lord looked like.

In 1 Corinthians 11:14, Paul wrote, "if a man has long hair,
it is a disgrace to him." It's quite unthinkable that Paul
would have made such a statement if Jesus Christ had long hair.
How could anything about The Lord be called disgraceful?