Posted on 04/13/2009 6:53:20 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
Yale University professor Jaime Lara recalls standing before a sculpture of Jesus with a mirror where the face should be.
Lara, who teaches courses on Christian art and architecture, including a semester-length examination of Jesus' ever-changing appearance through the centuries, thinks it's as good a portrait as any.
"The face of Christ as depicted in artwork, sculpture, mosaics and frescoes is always going to be in part something that springs from the artist's imagination," he said, bound by cultural conventions and to some degree the racial features of those who crafted the image.
So what did Jesus really look like?
No one knows.
From the familiar shroud of Turin to more esoteric images, a few allegedly miraculous representations, known collectively as acheiropoietons, or Icons Not Made by Hand, have been said to exist.
But no definitive representation is known.
"There is no photograph," Lara said. And the scriptures are surprisingly mum on even the most basic details about Christ's appearance.
Chris McCurley, pulpit minister at Oldham Lane Church of Christ, said the prophet Isaiah paints a picture of a Messiah quite different from how many envision Christ.
The prophet writes: "For He [Jesus] grew up before Him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him."
Even as something as simple as Christ's hairstyle has seen profound changes, and depictions have ranged from a beardless youth with short, curly hair to the familiar countenance of a long-haired, bearded man on the cusp of his middle years.
Despite innumerable attempts, Christianity has "never really been interested in what Jesus looked like," Lara said, instead focusing on what believers trust that he did.
Still, the doctrine of the Incarnation -- the belief that Christ came to earth and lived as a man before dying for the world's sins -- "demands that God be depictable," with Christ "the image of the unseen God."
Philip LeMasters, an Orthodox priest and professor at McMurry University, said one of the most important points about iconography is its belief in the incarnation of Jesus as a physical man.
"The icon is taken as a reflection of his true humanity," he said.
Most Christian art flows from the "social milieu of the time and the moral climate," especially when it is "religious and mystical," said Bishop Michael Pfeifer, head of the Catholic Diocese of San Angelo, which also oversees Abilene churches.
"There is a spiritual need to express in a visible way, art, with our imagination, what we believe and hold true," he said.
McCurley agreed.
"Jesus was about substance," he said. "He stood out because of his character and his message. Jesus was not about appearance or social status; he was about love and sacrifice. We mustn't get so caught up in what Jesus looked like that we forget what he was about."
A Face Unknown
The modern vision of Christ familiar to most comes via Warner Sallman, a Christian artist born in Chicago in 1892. His portrait, "The Head of Christ," is one of the most well-known images of Jesus, having been reproduced more than 500 million times, according to its publishers, Kriebel & Bates.
Sallman's vision of Jesus is angular, almost heroic. His eyes cast up toward an unseen height, his features illuminated as if from above.
The image, made familiar on everything from greeting cards to prints of the original, is the face of Jesus for many.
"His is the sort of soft masculine image, the northern European, white, blond, blue-eyed Christ that has become a popular American icon," Yale's Lara said.
But Sallman's beatific face bears no vague resemblance to recent attempts to re-create a more realistic, Semitic Christ through forensic science.
Featured at the time in Popular Mechanics, the vision of a short-haired, broad-faced and broad-nosed Jesus looks "more like a dockworker" than the unearthly, beautiful Christ familiar though conventional wisdom, Lara said -- before he openly questions the overall accuracy of the attempt.
The road to Sallman's soft-shadowed Christ is quite convoluted.
Early Christian art is intensely symbolic, with Christ represented through pictograms such as the Ichthys, the familiar Christian fish, or the peacock. Though not to be seen as an actual portrait of the historical Christ, the figure of the Good Shepherd, a young tender of his flocks, is common.
The earliest dated images of Christ are preserved in the painted baptistery of Dura Europos on the Euphrates River, excavated by the French and Yale University and now housed at Yale, said Gene Kleinbauer, Indiana University professor of art history emeritus. The representations were done between 240 and 256 A.D.
"These paintings are poorly preserved but show Jesus as both beardless and bearded," Kleinbauer said.
Youthful and older images of Christ continue their round-and-round appearances throughout early Christian art, he said.
Kleinbauer said that in the wall mosaics of the church of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, Italy, built and decorated circa 500-526, are depicted 13 of the miracles of Christ on the upper nave wall on one side where Christ is always youthful and beardless. On the opposite nave wall the Passion of Christ is depicted in 13 scenes where Christ is always bearded, in purple and mature.
"Here the artists make a chronological distinction in the physiognomy of Jesus: He was young when he performed his miracles, and he was 'older' during his last days, his Passion," he said. "Since the gospels do not describe the physiognomy of Christ, artists -- and their advisers -- were free to depict him as they so wished."
Both Kleinbauer and Lara said that many early pictures of Christ use elements lifted from classical mythology.
Depictions of the beardless sun god Apollo, curly headed and radiant, may form a model for some, while the older images of Christ may draw from images of Zeus/Jupiter, with a coiffure of long hair to the shoulders and a slightly older face.
"Those are the two depictions being played with most over the first 1,000 years," Lara said.
In the Roman catacombs are rather stylized images of Jesus, almost cartoonish, he said.
A halo or accoutrements identify him, but it is only later, after Constantine, the first Christian Roman emperor, legalized the faith that often-imposing visions of Christ begin to appear, seated in a formal pose in huge wall mosaics.
Abilene Christian University professor Jeff Childers said that nurturing, calm, protective and pastoral pictures of Jesus from the catacombs express the desires of a people openly persecuted by the Roman Empire.
"They wanted a Jesus who takes care of them, who looks after them," he said.
But in the fourth century, the image shifts. The imagery becomes a triumphant, victorious lord in power and glory, "resplendent and a little bit scary."
As figures such as Constantine were rulers of the temporal realm, so was Christ the emperor of the universe -- powerful, mighty and "very divine," Childers said.
In the traditions of the Orthodox church, LeMasters said, a story about a miraculous image of Christ forms the basis of the elaborate flat-paneled images called Icons originating in Byzantium.
The historical Byzantine icon depicts a middle-aged Christ with dark, brown hair to his shoulders, a short beard, regular facial features of the so-called Greco-Semitic type, with large brown or blue eyes, he said.
In the middle ages, we find fairly stern biblical characters, Childers said.
But it was not uncommon for medieval depictions of biblical scenes to display those within dressed in the standards of the day, said Abilene Christian University art professor Jack Maxwell, something that provided relevancy to the people who were looking at the art.
In the Renaissance, there was a tendency to re-emphasize the human side of Christ, Childers said, including the glory of the human body. Depictions of Jesus as an infant, though an infinitely wise one, proliferate, and the vision of the suffering savior came into wider circulation.
With the coming of Protestantism, and its removal of hierarchy both in the earthly and spiritual realms, there was a concerted effort by writers and artists to bring the characters of Scripture down to a kind of level that is easily relatable, especially Jesus.
Here we see the beginnings of images of a Christ who can smile or laugh, someone that believers could imagine having a casual conversation with, Childers said, a Jesus one can meet "on my own terms."
Speaking as an artist, ACU's Maxwell said there is much inherent difficulty in any attempt by an artist to represent religious figures, acknowledging that even his own views may be clouded by things that "may not be accurate at all."
"Moses must look like Charlton Heston," he joked.
It is for such reasons that Maxwell has been hesitant to create his own images of Jesus, preferring him to be more of a universal figure that many people can relate to.
"As soon as you give him certain facial or racial characteristics, some people are going to connect and some people are not, just based on physical appearance."
But the desire to create images of God, whether as pillars of smoke and fire, a symbolic old man or in the personage of Christ is real, he said. And we have a particular yen to make God human, something Jesus provides easily.
"I think we've always had a temptation to make God in our image, and we're more comfortable with the Jesus who looks just like us, who could be a member of our culture," McMurry's LeMasters said.
But the danger in that is a temptation to water Jesus down, to make him no longer a challenging figure, very different from others in his era who calls believers to make radical change.
To Childers, images of Christ should ideally "shake us up a bit," since Jesus shook up the expectations of his day in the biblical narrative fulfilling ancient prophecies but not in the manner that was expected.
Even irreverent portraits, the Jesus of "South Park" or "Family Guy," can help believers stop and think in ways "very healthy" for faith, he said.
In his own meditations on Christ, Childers said he is "constantly subverting" the images of Christ he confronts. Sometimes a Byzantine icon's "deep reverence, silence and humility" serves well. Other times, a different face of Christ speaks more to him.
Unlike Buddhism or Hinduism, which view the physical aspect of divinity and all reality as an illusion, or Muslim and Jewish thought, which refute any attempt to objectify or depict God, the Christian approach has had a tradition of trying to depict an unknown, albeit divine face.
Because of that reason, Childers said he is drawn to images that remind him that Jesus is like him, both loving him and accepting him as he is and reminding him that he is "not everything I should be."
"He accepts me, but he calls my life into question and on to a higher place," he said.
The Rev. Eddie Jordan, pastor of New Light Baptist Church, said Christ's physical appearance is not as important as his role to believers as a perpetual, living savior.
"I see the image of God in people because he lives in us," he said. "He has transcended himself and transformed himself into people in the spirit. And therefore, we cannot look at him as black or white. ... He could be multicolored."
When he looks at the faces in his congregation, Jordan said, he sees people "who love Jesus, who accepted him and have transformed themselves," and in those moments he sees a bit of Christ's visage looking back.
Just like a mirror.
"I see the heart of the people, which is what I think Jesus would see," he said.
------
....Speaking as an artist, ACU's Maxwell said there is much inherent difficulty in any attempt by an artist to represent religious figures, acknowledging that even his own views may be clouded by things that "may not be accurate at all."
"Moses must look like Charlton Heston," he joked.
It is for such reasons that Maxwell has been hesitant to create his own images of Jesus, preferring him to be more of a universal figure that many people can relate to. "As soon as you give him certain facial or racial characteristics, some people are going to connect and some people are not, just based on physical appearance."
People, starting with no solid information, draw Christ to look like themselves. This is hardly shocking. But there are people that are SURE that Jesus had baby blues.
I think people would be stunned if they were to go back in time and actually observe Jesus. I don’t know what he looked like, but I think you’d see a vital, passionate, engaged, intellectually-gifted conversant ... far from the meek, mild mystical man with a dream-like stare.
Yeah, especially after reading the gospels, Jesus struck me as anything but a mild, dreamy person. In fact, He struck me as a very intense person--He did NOT go along to get along.
To walk into Jewish temples and challenge everything they knew right to their faces, day in and day out must've taken nerves of steel--especially given His knowledge of where it would all lead.
And there are those who are sure his middle initial is “H”.
Thanks for the laugh!
Through this girl and her disgusting family the patient is now getting to know more Christians every day, and very intelligent Christians too. For a long time it will be quite impossible to remove spirituality from his life. Very well then; we must corrupt it. No doubt you have often practised transforming yourself into an angel of light as a parade-ground exercise. Now is the time to do it in the face of the Enemy. The World and the Flesh have failed us; a third Power remains. And success of this third kind is the most glorious of all. A spoiled saint, a Pharisee, an inquisitor, or a magician, makes better sport in Hell than a mere common tyrant or debauchee.
Looking round your patient’s new friends I find that the best point of attack would be the border-line between theology and politics. Several of his new friends are very much alive to the social implications of their religion. That, in itself, is a bad thing; but good can be made out of it.
You will find that a good many Christian-political writers think that Christianity began going wrong, and departing from the doctrine of its Founder, at a very early stage. Now this idea must be used by us to encourage once again the conception of a “historical ” to be found by clearing away later “accretions and perversions” and then to be contrasted with the whole Christian tradition. In the last generation we promoted the construction of such a “historical ” on liberal and humanitarian lines; we are now putting forward a new “historical ” on Marxian, catastrophic, and revolutionary lines. The advantages of these constructions, which we intend to change every thirty years or so, are manifold. In the first place they all tend to direct men’s devotion to something which does not exist, for each “historical ” is unhistorical. The documents say what they say and cannot be added to; each new “historical ” therefore has to be got out of them by suppression at one point and exaggeration at another, and by that sort of guessing (brilliant is the adjective we teach humans to apply to it) on which no one would risk ten shillings in ordinary life, but which is enough to produce a crop of new Napoleons, new Shakespeares, and new Swifts, in every publisher’s autumn list. In the second place, all such constructions place the importance of their Historical in some peculiar theory He is supposed to have promulgated. He has to be a “great man” in the modern sense of the word—one standing at the terminus of some centrifugal and unbalanced line of thought—a crank vending a panacea. We thus distract men’s minds from Who He is, and what He did. We first make Him solely a teacher, and then conceal the very substantial agreement between His teachings and those of all other great moral teachers. For humans must not be allowed to notice that all great moralists are sent by the Enemy not to inform men but to remind them, to restate the primeval moral platitudes against our continual concealment of them. We make the Sophists: He raises up a Socrates to answer them. Our third aim is, by these constructions, to destroy the devotional life. For the real presence of the Enemy, otherwise experienced by men in prayer and sacrament, we substitute a merely probable, remote, shadowy, and uncouth figure, one who spoke a strange language and died a long time ago. Such an object cannot in fact be worshipped. Instead of the Creator adored by its creature, you soon have merely a leader acclaimed by a partisan, and finally a distinguished character approved by a judicious historian. And fourthly, besides being unhistorical in the it depicts, religion of this kind is false to history in another sense.
No nation, and few individuals, are really brought into the Enemy’s camp by the historical study of the biography of , simply as biography. Indeed materials for a full biography have been withheld from men. The earliest converts were converted by a single historical fact (the Resurrection) and a single theological doctrine (the Redemption) operating on a sense of sin which they already had—and sin, not against some new fancy-dress law produced as a novelty by a “great man”, but against the old, platitudinous, universal moral law which they had been taught by their nurses and mothers. The “Gospels” come later and were written not to make Christians but to edify Christians already made.
The “Historical ” then, however dangerous he may seem to be to us at some particular point, is always to be encouraged. About the general connection between Christianity and politics, our position is more delicate. Certainly we do not want men to allow their Christianity to flow over into their political life, for the establishment of anything like a really just society would be a major disaster. On the other hand we do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything—even to social justice. The thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice. For the Enemy will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest chemist’s shop. Fortunately it is quite easy to coax humans round this little corner. Only today I have found a passage in a Christian writer where he recommends his own version of Christianity on the ground that “only such a faith can outlast the death of old cultures and the birth of new civilisations”. You see the little rift? “Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason.” That’s the game,
Your affectionate uncle
SCREWTAPE
Ummm..., according to the information I get from the PA (Palestinian Authority), Jesus was a Palestinian and a Muslim...
Divine Mercy image with blood (red) and water (blue) flowing from the heart of Christ.
Jesus, I trust in you.
The shroud tells us what he looked like. Simple.
I’d guess he looked sort of like the rabbi up the street.
The Byzantine iconographic tradition claims portraitic accuracy of Jesus, as well as Mary and major saints. That is because the writing of icons was practiced in the Early Church and it was done not for decoration or self-expression (like modern art is produced) but for education: the iconographer was under canonical obligation to reproduce the facial features as he had learned them to be. Presumably, the first iconographers were either people from among the circle of disciples (St. Evangelist Luke, for example, is said to have written the first icon of Mary), or could verify their work against the memories of the disciples, sort of like a police artists produced a sketch following the corrective advice of a witness who lacks the artistic skill himself. Icons earlier than 6c did not survive, due to the passage of time and iconoclasm. This is the first extant image of Christ.
The Savior (6th c.)
St. Catherine Monastery, Mt. Sinai
The other image is the miraculous Shroud of Turin:
We note that the images match (the Shroud image has the eyes covered with coins).
~Gagging slightly~ Pardon me but this sounds as if you're describing Bill O'Reilly.
My former Pastor (KEY LIFE) once described Jesus and I kind of like his description since it makes the most sense: While on earth THEN, he was a carpenter and later, a little wandering Rabbi with a classically large nose and somewhat stooped shoulders who was wise without being glib and could cut through the sheer B$ of the human condition like a hot knife through butter. He Is RISEN. Then as now, He is earthy and loves a good party. Yet make no mistake, he will judge. Those who know HIM will have eternal life. Those who don't....
...for “Horatio.”
I’m sorry that my description made you think of Bill O’Reilly ... that is more your issue than mine.
I think it is apt and perfectly consistent with your description.
Why would that be unusual? Jesus was a Jew. Many Jews have blue eyes.
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