When you ask someone in America to describe the physical features of Jesus Christ the most common perception is that He is a tall, white/tan, attractive man with brown or reddish hair and a nice pair of abs. If you ask me, this sounds like a Hollister model.
In my Religions of America class last week we discussed the color of Christ. What did he really look like? I was shocked to find out that people actually believed Jesus was of white skin color. They described this photo of Christ below:
Most of us have seen this photo of Jesus before.
Is this really the Christ? Did Jesus really look like this? In Isaiah 53:2 (KJV) the Prophet Isaiah professes the image of the coming Christ. He said, “For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.
That doesn’t seem to match up with the images of Jesus that we see. To be totally accurate, no one born today really knows what Jesus looks like, though we would be foolish to believe that He resembled the present day Caucasian American. Well if Jesus did not look like the photo below that we are so used to seeing, then can we even pinpoint a possible appearance for Jesus?
Deriving from the fact that the Bible tells us Jesus was born in the city of his father Joseph in the town of Bethlehem in present day Israel. But in the photo below do Joseph and Mary look anything like present day Israelites?
My mother has been a Children’s Religious Educator and Children’s Pastor since I was 6 years old. My mother has always shown two picture of Jesus in her teachings. The two you see below.
She will then ask the students in her class to look at these photos and see which one they think would look more like Jesus. She tells them that we must first remember Jesus is from the Middle East, he worked outside all his life with carpentry work, and his mother was from Nazareth and his father was born in Bethlehem. Given this information which photo would you choose?
Though the question of what Jesus really looks like will stay a topic of interest for years to come, and no man, woman, or child today really knows the answer to this question, we can begin to put the clues together to produce the image of Jesus Christ.
I'd love to know what your mother says her pupils chose.
ReplyDeleteBassed of the information my mother provides her pupils and the examples or photos of other Middle Eastern men/women, most children choose the image of Jesus on the right!
ReplyDeleteI think it is also interesting how my Christian elementary school taught us that Jesus looked more like the picture on the right, but they would only ever show us the literal picture of the one on the left.
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