Many people have a picture in their minds of what Jesus looks like. In Western culture, he is often shown as a light-skinned man with long hair and a beard, dressed in a light-colored robe with long sleeves.
His image is so well-known that some people say they see him in everyday things like pancakes, toast, and even a guy from New York who claimed, “I Found Jesus in My Chicken Tikka Masala.”
However, forensic experts suggest that the traditional images of Jesus—whether in food, your imagination, or famous artworks—might not be accurate.
Many paintings and drawings of Jesus have been made over the years, but no one really knows what he looked like for sure.
The image of Jesus that we often think of comes from famous artworks, like Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” (1498), Michelangelo’s “The Last Judgement” (1541), and El Greco’s “Christ Carrying the Cross” (1540).
These artworks and other portrayals in movies and TV show a typical image of Jesus as a man with long hair, usually blue eyes, and wearing a robe that shows his feet in sandals.
However, the New Testament doesn’t describe what he looked like, and there are no bones or remains to study for DNA.
His true appearance is still a mystery, but now experts think they have created a more accurate image of the Son of God.
AI-created Jesus
A photographer and digital artist from the Netherlands used advanced artificial intelligence to create an image of Jesus that he claims is “historically accurate.”
Bas Uterwijk, who is skilled in making pictures with algorithms, shared that he trained a neural network on many photos and paintings of different people to design Jesus’s face. He said, “I looked at various cultural images of Jesus from Byzantine and Renaissance times, like Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ and the Turin Shroud, and adjusted the features to make it look more like a realistic Middle-Eastern person.”
My Jesus portrait is going pretty viral on Twitter at the moment, without me being tagged so for everyone interested…Posted by Bas Uterwijk on Tuesday, September 1, 2020
Uterwijk said he “felt it lacked any historical accuracy,” so he “changed the hair and beard to a more credible length and style for the time and region,” and “brought in elements found in some Fayum mummy portraits, pushing the renaissance art to the background.”
He said, “What we have here is more of an artistic idea of what this man might have looked like, rather than a scientific attempt to find an exact match.”
Forensic reconstruction
British forensic scientists and Israeli archaeologists teamed up to create a 3D model of what Jesus Christ might have looked like. They based their work on studying skulls from Semitic people and applying modern forensic methods.
Dr. Richard Neave, who authored the book “Making Faces: Using Forensic and Archaeological Evidence,” is famous for his incredible facial reconstructions. He has also worked on the faces of historical figures like King Phillip II of Macedonia, the father of Alexander the Great, and King Midas.
Neave, a retired medical artist and specialist in forensic facial reconstruction from the UK, led the team that used forensic anthropology to recreate Jesus’s face, and the results were quite unexpected.
The images they created suggest that Jesus likely had a wide face, dark eyes, short dark hair, a thick beard, and tanned skin. These features are typical of Galilean Semites from that era and align with descriptions found in the New Testament, particularly in the Gospel of Matthew, which notes that Jesus resembled his disciples.
Neave, formerly from the University of Manchester, emphasized that the recreation is of an adult man living at the same time and place as Jesus, but some experts say the depiction is far more accurate than the famous masterpieces.
Analyzing data
The process requires a deep dive into cultural and archaeological information, using methods that are a lot like those used in criminal investigations.
The team examined three Semite skulls that were discovered earlier by Israeli archaeologists, all from the same era. They used X-rays and computerized tomography to create visual “slices” of the skulls, which helped them see the details of their structure.
After running programs to figure out the density of muscles and skin, the experts created a digital 3D model of a face. They then made a cast of the skull and added layers of clay to match the thickness of the facial tissues that the program had calculated.
Finally, they added features like the eyes, lips, and nose, following the expected shape of the skulls.
Unwavering FAITH.Unconditional LOVE.Eternal LIFE. “Jesus” (by Akiane Kramarik, 2017)Happy Easter everyone✨https://akiane.comPosted by Akiane Kramarik on Sunday, April 4, 2021
The skull analysis couldn’t tell us what color Jesus’ eyes were or how his hair looked.
By looking at artwork from the first century, which is even older than the Bible, the researchers guessed that Jesus probably had dark eyes and, since he was Jewish, he likely had a beard too.
They also used a clue from the Bible to figure out his hairstyle. Experts believe that Jesus had short hair with tight curls, which is different from how he’s usually shown in pictures.
There’s a part in the Bible written by Paul that says, “If a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him,” which helped the team decide that Jesus probably had shorter hair.
This idea is quite different from the long-haired image seen in the Shroud of Turin, which appeared in 1354 and some think shows Jesus after he died on the cross.
To find out how tall and heavy Jesus might have been, the team looked at the bones of Semite men to get an idea of the average size of a Jewish man living in Galilee.
From this, they found that Jesus was a smaller man, likely about 5-foot-1, weighing around 110lbs.
Shutterstock
He mostly worked outside as a carpenter until he turned 30, so experts think he probably had a tan and bigger muscles than what traditional Western art shows.
When the story was shared on Facebook, people responded with a loud, “Amen!”
Interestingly, the new images are more similar to the “Prince of Peace” painting created by Akiane Kramarik when she was just eight years old. Akiane claimed she saw Jesus in her dreams, and now her painting is priceless and famous all over the world.
These new discoveries might upset some devoted followers, especially those who expect to see his well-known image in food.
“When I put my fork down it moved a little bit of sauce around the eyes. I didn’t think anything of it, but that actually turned it into Jesus,” said Jeff Jordyn, 52, who in 2022 was eating some chicken tikka masala when suddenly he saw the face of Christ in his curry. Comparing the image in the curry to how Christ is famously portrayed in historical illustrations, Jordyn added, “This is the only time I’ve had someone appear in my food. I’m not real big on divine intervention.”
