What did Jesus look like?

For what it's worth, the earliest paintings of Jesus, done in Egypt by Africans with encaustic, which does not fade, show a bearded man with brown straight hair, parted in the middle, and caught in a ponytail, large brown eyes, thin lips, and a fairly slim build. Less than a century later, later, we see the "Sun of God" portraits, done in mosaic in Greece, which have him a beardless (and quite well-endowed) young man, blonde, fair-skinned, blue-eyed, and with the attributes of Apollo, which were quickly shelved in favor of the "Imperial Jesus", which had the attributes of the Byzantine nobility (generalized Mediterranian), which has persisted (with various revisions) until the present. Recent reconstructions published by The Times of London show a stubby fellow (about five feet tall), with strongly Semitic features, curly brown hair, bushy beard, and full lips, an agreeable face, yes, but somewhat less than regal.

It's also worth pointing out that few ancient authors were all that keen on verbal portraiture or the kind of journalistic details we think of as being someone's "real personality": unless someone was of such striking appearance or behavior that every feature was worth recording, there is very little to go on as to how most people looked....it was just too much of a waste of papyrus and parchment (remember, parchment is leather, and even leather was more in demand than now) to record such trifles. Remember this, the next time you toss out some paper...