Over the past few decades, the question of what Jesus looked like has cropped up again and again. Much has been made of a digital reconstruction of a Judaean man created for a BBC documentary, Son of God, in 2001. This was based on an ancient skull and, using the latest technology (as it was), shows the head of a stocky fellow with a somewhat worried expression.
Rightly, the skin tone is olive, and the hair and beard black and shortish, but the nose, lips, neck, eyes, eyelids, eyebrows, fat cover and expression are all totally conjectural. Putting flesh on ancient skulls is not an exact science, because the soft tissue and cartilage are unknown.
Nevertheless, for me as a historian, trying to visualise Jesus accurately is a way to understand Jesus more accurately, too.
The Jesus we’ve inherited from centuries of Christian art is not accurate, but it is a powerful brand. A man with long hair parted in the middle and a long beard – often with fair skin, light brown hair and blue eyes – has become the widely accepted likeness. We imagine Jesus in long robes with baggy sleeves, as he is most often depicted in artworks over the centuries. In contemporary films, from Zefirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth (1977) onwards, this styling prevails, even when Jesus’ clothing is considered poorly made.
There were many reasons why Jesus was portrayed in what has become the worldwide standard, and none of them were to do with preserving historical accuracy. I explore these in my new book What did Jesus look like?, but ultimately I look to clues in early texts and archaeology for the real Jesus.
For me, Jesus’ appearance is not all about flesh and bones. After all, our bodies are not just bodies. As the sociologist Chris Shilling argues, they are “both personal resources and social symbols that ‘give off’ messages about identity”. We can be old, young, tall, short, weighty, thin, dark-skinned, light-skinned, frizzy-haired, straight-haired, and so on, but our appearance does not begin and end with our physical bodies. In a crowd, we may look for a friend’s scarf rather than their hair or nose. What we do with our bodies creates an appearance.
And so Jesus’ appearance would have had much to do with what he was wearing. Once we’ve got the palette for his colouring right, given he was a Jewish man of the Middle East, how do we dress him? How did he seem to people of the time?
Dressed in basics
There is no neat physical description of Jesus in the Gospels or in ancient Christian literature. But there are incidental details. From the Bible (for example, Mark 6:56) you can discover that he wore a mantle – a large shawl (“himation” in Greek) – which had tassels, described as “edges”; a distinctively Jewish tallith in a form it was in antiquity. Usually made of wool, a mantle could be large or small, thick or fine, coloured or natural, but for men there was a preference for undyed types.
He walked in sandals, as implied in multiple Biblical passages (see Matthew 3:11; Mark 1:7, 6:9; John 1:27), and we now know what ancient Judaean sandals were like as they have been preserved in dry caves by the Dead Sea.
He wore a tunic (chitōn), which for men normally finished slightly below the knees, not at the ankles. Among men, only the very rich wore long tunics. Indeed, Jesus specifically identifies men who dress in long tunics (“stolai”, Mark 12:38) as wrongly receiving honour from people who are impressed by their fine attire, when in fact they unjustly devour widows’ houses.
Jesus’s tunic was also made of one piece of cloth only (John 19:23-24). That’s strange, because mostly tunics were made of two pieces sewn at the shoulders and sides. One-piece tunics in first-century Judaea were normally thin undergarments or children’s wear. We shouldn’t think of contemporary underwear, but wearing a one-piece on its own was probably not good form. It was extremely basic.
‘Shamefully’ shabby?
Perhaps it is unsurprising, then, that Jesus was remembered as looking shabby by a scholar named Celsus, writing in the mid second century, in a treatise against the Christians. Celsus did his homework. He interviewed people, and he – like us – was quite interested in what Jesus looked like. From Jews and others he questioned, he heard that Jesus “wandered about most shamefully in the sight of all”. He “obtained his means of livelihood in a disgraceful and importunate way” – by begging or receiving donations.
From the perspective of respectable people, we can surmise then that Jesus looked relatively rough. When the Christian writer Origen argued against Celsus, he rejected many of his assertions, but he did not dispute this.
And so while Jesus wore similar clothes to other Jewish men in many respects, his “look” was scruffy. I doubt his hair was particularly long as depicted in most artwork, given male norms of the time, but it was surely not well-tended. Wearing a basic tunic that other people wore as an undergarment would fit with Jesus’ detachment regarding material things (Matthew 6:19-21, 28–29; Luke 6:34-35, 12:22-28) and concern for the poor (Luke 6:20-23).
This, to me, is the beginning of a different way of seeing Jesus, and one very relevant for our times of massive inequality between rich and poor, as in the Roman Empire. Jesus aligned himself with the poor and this would have been obvious from how he looked.
The appearance of Jesus matters because it cuts to the heart of his message. However he is depicted in film and art today, he needs to be shown as one of the have-nots; his teaching can only be truly understood from this perspective.
The sayings of Jesus are generally considered the more accurate parts of the Gospels, so from this we can assume that Jesus really did not wear such robes. Overall a man in Jesus's world would wear a knee-length tunic, a chiton, and a woman an ankle-length one, and if you swapped these around it was a statement.
He walked in sandals, as implied in multiple Biblical passages (see Matthew 3:11; Mark 1:7, 6:9; John 1:27), and we now know what ancient Judaean sandals were like as they have been preserved in dry caves by the Dead Sea.
According to the New Testament, a woven crown of thorns (Greek: στέφανος ἐξ ἀκανθῶν, translit. stephanos ex akanthōn or ἀκάνθινος στέφανος, akanthinos stephanos) was placed on the head of Jesus during the events leading up to his crucifixion.
The Seamless Robe of Jesus (also known as the Holy Robe, Holy Tunic, Holy Coat, Honorable Robe, and Chiton of the Lord) is the robe said to have been worn by Jesus during or shortly before his crucifixion.
In her 2018 book What Did Jesus Look Like?, Taylor used archaeological remains, historical texts and ancient Egyptian funerary art to conclude that, like most people in Judea and Egypt around the time, Jesus most likely had brown eyes, dark brown to black hair and olive-brown skin. He may have stood about 5-ft.-5-in.
Shroud of Turin, also called Holy Shroud, Italian Santa Sindone, a length of linen that for centuries was purported to be the burial garment of Jesus Christ.
WE LEARN in the New Testament that Jesus ate fish from the Sea of Galilee, and, after the resurrection, that he even cooked fish and bread over coals for himself and his disciples (John 21.9). “We certainly know that Jesus ate clean unpolluted fish almost every day of his life,” Colbert concludes.
What was the shoe style that Jesus wore? Also Mark 1 verse 7 says: He was preaching: “Someone stronger than I am is coming after me, the lace of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie”. John was saying that Jesus was wearing sandals with laces but we don't know exactly what kind of sandals.
Purple was a kingly color, and the soldiers mockingly put this robe on Jesus Christ because He had claimed to be the king of the Jews. Of course, in reality He is much more than that—He is the “King of kings, and Lord of lords” (1 Timothy 6:15; Revelation 19:16).
Likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works.
“When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments and divided them into four parts, one part for each soldier; also his tunic. But the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom” (v. 23).
In 1870, French architect Charles Rohault de Fleury catalogued all known fragments of the true cross. He determined the Jesus cross weighed 165 pounds, was three or four meters high, with a cross beam two meters wide.
Question: What's the significance of the purple robe placed on Jesus at his crucifixion? Answer: In Bible times, clothing for common people was usually drab and unbleached. It was hand-woven, usually from sheep or goat's wool.
Aramaic is best known as the language Jesus spoke. It is a Semitic language originating in the middle Euphrates. In 800-600 BC it spread from there to Syria and Mesopotamia. The oldest preserved inscriptions are from this period and written in Old Aramaic.
It is located at the center of the eight-hectare pilgrimage site called Montemaria International Pilgrimage & Conference Center in Sitio Montemaria, Barangay Pagkilatan, Batangas City, Philippines. It is the world's tallest statue of the Virgin Mary at 98.15 m (322.0 ft) which includes the plinth/building it stands on.
Saint Veronica is known as the woman who offered a cloth to Jesus so He could wipe His face on the way to His crucifixion. The cloth is believed to exist today in the Vatican and is considered one of the most treasured relics of the Church.
Turbans were worn, and a long robe over the left shoulder was worn by those of high social rank. The normal attire of the women at that time was a skirt up to knee length leaving the waist bare, and cotton head dresses. Jewellery was very popular, and men wore their hair in various styles with trimmed beards.
Probably lamb or sheep would have been most available.” Leslie Bilderback, a Pasadena, Calif., chef, baker and author of “The Complete Idiot's Guide to Good Food From the Good Book” (Alpha Books, 2008), said the terrain in the Biblical region supported a multitude of edible plants, such as fruit trees and herbs.
In modern times, Biblical sandals are a symbol of Zionism. Israeli pioneer settlers and Israeli born Jews used them to show the return to the clothing worn by the ancestors, and fit the climate.
However, as Jesus is depicted in his adulthood, he is adorned in bright red or vermilion robes. At first the use of red suggests a sign of evil, of sin, of the devil or hellfire. However, it is also considered a symbol of Jesus' sacrifice and the blood of Christ.
The Shroud of Turin is a 14-foot linen cloth bearing an image of a crucified man that has become a popular Catholic icon. For some, it is the authentic burial shroud of Jesus Christ.
Jesus was wrapped in clean, linen swaddling cloths in the same way newborn lambs destined for sacrifice in the Holy Temple were wrapped at birth. They were wrapped in cloth held by strips of cloth. The swaddling was intended to keep the lambs protected, unblemished, and unharmed.
Chief crops were wheat, barley, olives, grapes; legumes such as lentils, fava beans, chickpeas; and vegetables such as onions, leeks, and garlic. Life was also made sweeter with fruits such as olives, grapes, date palms, apples, watermelon, pomegranates, figs, and sycamores (a low-quality fig eaten mainly by the poor).
Blue in this case is show as the symbol of the divine and of transcendence. Red is then considered more connected with blood and connection with earth. In this case, Jesus is dressed in red and wrapped in blue. This shows his humanity wrapped in divinity.
Beneath the silver dome to the right is the chapel that commemorates where Jesus was stripped of his garments, which were distributed among those who placed him on the cross.
Red, symbolic of the blood of Christ, has played an important role in Christianity and Christian iconography. Cardinals wear red robes and the color is predominant in public-worship garments and textiles. Adopting the color was also a way for kings in the Middle Ages to show their God-given right to rule.
The difference between Jesus' regular clothing and bright, white clothing is described specifically during the Transfiguration scene where we are told that Jesus' clothing (here himatia) became 'glistening, intensely white, as no fuller on earth could bleach them' (Mark 9.3).
The red clothing symbolizes at least two things: the blood Christ shed in accomplishing the atonement (Luke 22:44; D&C 19:18) and the blood of the unrepentant wicked he has slain in his wrath (Isaiah 63:3; Lamentations 1:15; D&C 133:48, 50–51).
Introduction: My name is Pres. Carey Rath, I am a faithful, funny, vast, joyous, lively, brave, glamorous person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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