This holiday season, images of Jesus Christ as a Caucasian man with long, flowing brown hair and fair-colored eyes will likely dominate the landscape, but now a retired anatomical artist from the UK has revealed that he would have actually looked quite different.
Credit: Richard Neave
According to The Daily Mail and Yahoo News, Richard Neave of the University of Manchester studied the skulls of first-century Jewish men, and re-imagined the Christian messiah as having a tanned complexion, wider facial features, hazel-colored eyes and short, dark curly hair.
Dr. Neave explained that these features would have been typical among Semites living in or near Galilee in northern Israel around the same time as Jesus, and that his recreation was finished with the help of computerized x-rays and drawings depicting typical males living in the same area and around the same time as the man many believe to be the Son of God.
While the image has only recently started trending on social media, likely due to the fact that this is the Christmas season, Dr. Neave’s image of Jesus was actually first published back on January 23 by Popular Mechanics, along with an explanation of how the portrait came to be.
Using skeletons, history and religious texts to paint an accurate picture
In that article, the website’s Mike Fillons explains that the doctor used the description of events in the garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus was betrayed by Judas Iscariot, contained in the gospel of Matthew to determine that his facial features were typical of Galilean Jews of the era.
On that basis, Dr. Neave and his colleagues acquired skulls from near Jerusalem during that time, and used computerized tomography to create detailed X-rays of the skulls’ structures. Next, they used computer software to measure soft tissue thickness in order to recreate the muscles and skin that would have been found on the face of a typical Jewish man.
Using this data, they created a digital 3D reconstruction of the face and a cast of his skull, then they applied simulated skin, a nose, lips and eyelids. Next, they used drawings from first century archaeological sites to determine the color of his eyes, and a combination of the Bible and Jewish custom to determine that he was bearded and would have had short, tightly curled hair.
Finally, using historical records, they concluded that the average Semite male living during the time of Jesus would have been 5-foot, 1-inch tall and weighed approximately 110 pounds. As a carpenter through much of his early life, Jesus likely would have been more muscular than most Jews, and probably would have looked older because of the time he spent outdoors.
Alison Galloway, professor of anthropology at the University of California in Santa Cruz, told Popular Mechanics that while forensic recreations such as this are not an exact science, she said that Dr. Neave’s picture of Jesus is most likely “a lot closer to the truth than the work of many great masters.”
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Feature Image: Thinkstock
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