The
truth is, for all of the tens of thousands of depictions of
Jesus, nobody really has even the vaguest ideas of what he looked like. Every depiction you have ever seen has been imaginings on the part of the
author.
You see, the writers of the
gospels were not too interested in really giving a
biography of
Jesus per se. Rather, they were attempting to describe the life and doings of a figure whom they were trying to construct a
religion around. They wanted something to show to members of the early
church that would strengthen and broaden its power, not something that would provide an in depth, down to earth description of their supposed
christ. Therefore, they left a lot of things out--what Jesus'
personality was really like, the precise nature of his
family and
lineage, and what he looked like. It seems to me that if you were trying to write a
religious book about a
messiah that you wanted other people to revere and believe in, you wouldn't want to make him too
realistic and down to earth, since such a portrait would just make him seem more
terrestrial. Rather, you would want to make him seem
ethereal and
majestic, and the only good way to do that would be to make him
vague and
mysterious by nature, since any concrete depiction would fall well short of an individual's preconceptions of what the
son of god would be like. Think of
monster movies: when the
monster hides in the
darkness killing people, he is
scary and
captivating because he is unknown. If he comes out of the
shadows later on, he invariably falls short of
expectations. And it's even worse when he's running around
onscreen the entire time, since after the first five minutes, you've kind of acclimated.
Right, then. So the question is what did
Jesus really look like. The usual picture you see everywhere of a really
light skinned,
blond guy with delicate bones is probably wrong. Think of the pictures of ancient
Rabbis you've seen; none of them look anything like that. Yes, even then,
war,
migrations, and the like had polluted the
gene pool to the point where there probably were
Jews who had
blond hair and
light skin, but
Jesus most likely had darkish skin, hair, and eyes. This is a far cry from the
traditional western portraits of
Jesus, and even farther from the pictures from the
Greek Orthodox Church, which show him as kind of greenish skinned, limping, and with uneven
legs. He also probably looked fairly normal and was lacking in glowing
halos hovering atop his head, since none of the people he went and hung around with immediately recognized him as the
messiah. Furthermore, he probably had shortish hair, since
Paul wrote a bit in the
New Testament where he said that
long hair was disgraceful, and Paul probably wouldn't disrespect the
Lord Thy God like that.
"But, man," sayeth you, "stop jerking me around. Forget the
probablys and
maybes. In the end, what did the
Christ really look like?" The answer (if there is one): any way you want him to.
So I was listening to some lecture the other day, and the lecturer mentioned something about
Daniel prophesizing pretty definitively about the coming of Jesus and what not. Now, I hadn't read The
Book of Daniel in quite a long time, but I recall his visions as being incredibly
strange and
ambiguous, so after the lecture was over, I looked it up. . .among other things, it mentions the coming of one like the
Son of Man and that this character will have "
hair of his head like the pure
wool." (Daniel 7:9) My
Bible cross references this with
Revelations 1:14 which says of the Son of Man "his hairs were white like wool,
as white as snow." I don't see any mention of
ebony colored
skin, but this might be the thing
Quad is seizing upon. . .The problem that both of these descriptions take place during
apocalyptic visions, which are crazy,
metaphor ridden, and painfully ambiguous.
I happened to remember right about Daniel: his vision, as I mentioned, does speak of the Son of Man, and he does speak of God's coming dominion, but his terms and descriptions are about as
clear as mud. It is amidst all sorts of crazy stuff involving
dragons,
horns, and
beasts. The traditional reading is that these aren't visions about the end of the world, but rather an
allegory about history: the warring among these dragons and beasts is not about
Judgement, but rather about these
pagan nations fighting and swollowing eachother up - the author is simply describing history as he knows it to be in a veiled language in order to stay out of trouble with the
state. Keeping with this idea, the one as the Son of Man is not the
Messiah; rather, it is the concept of a Jewish ruled
Zion. Where the other kingdoms, the pagan kingdoms, were in the forms of wild monsters, the Jewish kingdom would be strong and enlightened - it would be as a white clad man in comparison with these beasts. It should be mentioned that the term "Son of Man" was not coined for Jesus, nor was it a classical Messianic title. Rather, it seems to simply have been a way of saying "man" (
Ezekiel was also referred to as the Son of Man, and he definitely was no Messiah). So using Daniel as proof of Jesus having woolly hair seems a bit
specious. . .
As for Revelations, that quote seems to offer a much greater deal of proof. It seems to me that
John, regardless if he were writing about the ultimate coming of the Messiah at Judgement or, as some have conjectured, in some kind of allegory about the past, present, or future, he seems to have had the vision of Jesus firmly in mind. Barring any questions of John actually having seen Jesus, my problem with using this last as proof of Jesus being definitively black and having wooly hair is chiefly one of
semantics: he does not claim that Jesus' hair felt like wool; rather, he says that Jesus' hair was as white as wool. John is not making a statement about the hair's quality or feeling, but rather simply about its color.
Ultimately, because of these ambiguities, my conclusion is as it was before: there is no definitive description of who Jesus was and exactly what he looked like. It seems to me, at the very last, this is all one is left with: Jesus Christ is a
personal messiah. He supposedly suffered for a personal
salvation, and will later personally come to save the
righteous. By this,
he is your personal savior, and hence must look as you envision him appearing.