In this regard I think it is interesting to note that our
current conception of
Jesus's appearance is of relatively recent
origin. If you look back at early
depictions of Jesus--I mean really early, in the period before
Constantine, for example--what you'll generally find is a
beardless man with
close-cropped hair, a style which was favored by
Greek philosophical
teachers. I suspect that as
Christianity spread past the
Hellenic world and established itself in
Rome and beyond, such depictions lost some of their
symbolic meaning, and
Jesus began to be portrayed as more kingly and therefore
bearded. Note for example the fourth-centruy
frescoes in Rome's
Catacomb of Commodilla.
On a related note, Eusebius of Caesarea, author of the Ecclesiastical History, mentions in 7:18 of this work that a statue of Jesus existed at the time in his home town, and it was said to have been erected by the woman cured of a hemorrhage in Mark 5. He describes it briefly thus:
Facing this was another (statue) of the same material, an upright figure of a man with a double cloak neatly draped over his shoulders and his hand stretched out to the woman...This statue, which was said to resemble the features of Jesus, was still there in my own time....
However, when asked later by Constantine's sister to provide a portrait of Jesus, Eusebius deferred, noting that it was theologically impossible.