The image of Jesus Christ in world painting was created by such great artists as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo. They endowed the portrait of the Savior with features characteristic of the Greeks or Italians. However, Christians from Africa and Arab countries often portray Jesus as black. So how could he really look?

Modern culturologists express the idea that the variability of the image of Jesus is due to differences in the culture and traditions of artists. The world is dominated by the Western European view, but you can still find portraits in which the Savior is endowed with the features of an Arab or Latin American.

In church literature, Yeshua Ha-Notsri is described as "an ordinary person" and "brother" of people. Presumably, his childhood and youth were spent in the city of Nazareth, which means that his appearance could be Middle Eastern. Another clue can be obtained from a special area of \u200b\u200bexpertise - criminal anthropology. British scientists have used methods identical to those used by police to solve crimes for their research. Together with Israeli archaeologists, scientists have recreated the most accurate description of the most famous person in human history.

Researcher Richard Neave believes that a comprehensive study of the issue using data from the fields of anthropology, archeology, physics and biology will help shed light on what the iconic personalities of history might have looked like. He was already engaged in the "reconstruction" of portraits of Philip II of Macedon, Alexander the Great, the Phrygian king Midas.

According to the researcher's theory, many people did not support the massacres of Jews and Muslims that the Catholic Church regularly carried out, because the people who were killed looked just like Jesus. Pope Alexander VI ordered the destruction of all images of Jesus on which he was depicted as a Semitic. Instead, new paintings were painted, for which the Pope's son, Cesare Borgia, posed. It was he who could become the prototype of the image to which Christians all over the world are accustomed today.

To recreate the portrait of Jesus, Richard Neave borrowed from archaeologists three skulls from Jerusalem, which may have belonged to Yeshua's contemporaries. Then the scientist did a lot of computer studies and found out how the skull might look, as well as how the muscles on the face were located. In accordance with this information, he determined the shape of the nose, lips, eyelids. Drawings of the 1st century were also involved in the work, in accordance with them it was established that Yeshua's eyes were most likely dark in color, and also that he wore a beard. On the basis of the remains of the skeletons, the average height of the Semites was determined - 155 cm, and the weight - about 50 kg.

There is, perhaps, no other historical person in history that causes as much controversial controversy as the person of Jesus. Of course, conspiracy theorists, putting forward a variety of ideas, try to understand the world, and therefore you should not judge them harshly. But sometimes they put forward really crazy versions. In our review, some of them.

1. Jesus is the UK tin merchant

Jesus is a UK tin merchant.

The most fruitful part of Jesus' life for conspiracy theorists is the so-called "missing years." The Bible is mysteriously silent about about 18 years between Jesus' childhood and the time he began to preach. Several theories link Jesus to a certain Joseph of Arimathea who visited Britain to trade in tin.
Today, it may seem that in ancient times, long distance travel was not possible. But for many centuries, tin from Cornwall was transported to the Mediterranean Sea, and the Romans transported it across Europe all the way to the English Channel.

2. Jesus was a mushroom

In 1970, archaeologist John Allegro published a book entitled The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. In it, he argued that scholars have traced the origins of the elements of the New Testament to more ancient sources in Sumer and Babylon. After decades of careful study, he came to the conclusion that the New Testament was a way of perpetuating old fertility rites.

According to his version, "Jesus" was a metaphor for a hallucinogenic mushroom, for example, a fly agaric. Amanita muscaria was used quite often in religious rites, so he believes that it is quite possible that Christianity was no exception.

3. Jesus was an alien

There have always been attempts to rationalize the miraculous events described in the Bible. True, among them were frankly extravagant. For example, one such theory claims that Jesus was not a man or a god, but in fact was a hybrid of an alien and a man. Those who advocate the alien origin of Jesus claim that the angels who visited Mary were in fact aliens, and that the star over Bethlehem was nothing more than a UFO. Jesus' ascension to heaven was simply his return to an alien ship.

4. Jesus was a woman

In ancient times in the Middle East, an unmarried man was, rather, an exception to the rule. Therefore, some conspiracy theorists claim that Jesus was actually a woman. There is even a fragment of a papyrus that allegedly proves that Jesus was addressed as a woman. Further evidence, from the point of view of the adherents of this theory, is that Jesus has been portrayed as effeminate in art throughout history.

5. The Chinese younger brother of Jesus

One of the doctrines of the Christian church is the virginity of Mary. When the Bible speaks of Jesus' brothers and sisters, it is usually explained as the fact that they were in fact his distant relatives or like-minded people. In China, however, there is a more mystical theory.

In the 19th century, Hong Xiuquan had a vision. He ascended to heaven, where he saw a bearded man who told him that he needed to destroy the demons. Later, when Hong Xiuquan became acquainted with Christianity, he came to the conclusion that this man was the younger brother of Jesus, and the demons are in fact the ruling elite. While this may sound rather absurd, it led to Hon taking over peasant uprisingknown as the Taiping Rebellion, which killed 30 million people.

6. Jesus was a time traveler

Throughout history, people periodically claim that Jesus appeared to them. Some consider this a manifestation of deep faith, while others attribute the appearance of Jesus to his ability to travel in time. These even explain the resurrection of the Son of God.

If Jesus came from the future, then his miracles of healing could be explained by the common use of future medicine methods. Another justification for this theory is an icon depicting Jesus, dating from 1595, on which a modern satellite can be seen.

7. Jesus was a Buddhist

Jesus lived in a multicultural world. At that time, most of the world was ruled by the Romans, Greek was used as the language of science and business, and trade was actively conducted between different countries. Is it possible that his teaching was developed under the influence of oriental beliefs?

It is claimed that Jesus spent part of the notorious "missing years" in Kashmir, and that this is where his grave is located. Even if Buddhism did not reach the ancient Middle East, Jesus' journey to Kashmir could explain a lot. Indeed, in fact, these two religions have a lot in common. Some even note the similarities between Jesus and Buddha: both were teachers who were born in an unusual way, both used parables to spread their faith, both began preaching at the age of 30 and both had followers.

8. Jesus did not exist at all

Attempts to rationalize a number of New Testament traditions culminate in the claim that there has never been a historical person named Jesus. There are no historical documents during the life of Jesus in which he was mentioned. The canonical Gospels, which were written 40 to 60 years after his death, may have been written by people who had never met him.

The earliest texts of the New Testament are the letters of the apostle Paul, who never met Jesus. The fact that Jesus performed miracles in the Roman province during one of the most documented periods of antiquity makes you wonder why there is no mention of this in Roman documents.

9. Jesus in Japan

Jesus did not die on the cross ... by at least, according to one Japanese tradition. His burial mound can be found in Shingo. Adherents of this faith claim that Jesus' lesser known brother Isukiri took his place on the cross so that Jesus could escape. Jesus then moved to Japan, became a farmer and worked in the rice fields. He married and lived a sedate life until he died at the age of 106.

Naturally, the question immediately arose: why did Jesus choose Japan for "retirement." It turns out that those very “missing years” in the Bible can once again explain this theory. During the undocumented years of his life, Jesus allegedly actually studied with a master at the foot of Mount Fuji. When a threat to his life arose in the West, he fled back to his spiritual home.

10. Drugs in the sponge

Disagreements in the various Gospels regarding the life of Jesus are often used by skeptics to question all Christian teachings. For example, in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and John, one curious detail is mentioned: on the cross, Jesus was moistened with a sponge soaked in vinegar, after which he died. Another theory is that the sponge was soaked not with vinegar, but with some kind of drugs in order to fake an artificial coma. Accordingly, Jesus did not die on the cross, and there is nothing surprising in his resurrection three days later.

I like to argue with atheists: in such disputes, no, no, yes, there are theses that we, believers, do not think about, but it is on these theses that part of the atheistic worldview is based.

So, in a dispute with one atheist, the thought was expressed that the Gospels could not be written by people who saw Christ and communicated with Him, because they do not describe His appearance, whereas, for example, we know a lot about Socrates' appearance from creativity his students and contemporaries. Indeed, in none of the four canonical (and even in numerous apocryphal) Gospels one cannot find a verbal portrait of the Savior, except for the description of the Transfiguration: “ his face has changed"(Luke 9:29).

But let's remember, how much do we know about the appearance of the characters in the Bible in general? Apart from evaluative, streamlined words: "beautiful", "beautiful", "beautiful", "beautiful" - we do not know anything concrete about the appearance of the characters in the Bible. Only about David it is said that he was blond(1 Sam.16: 12; 17:42), - probably because blondes among the Semites are an extraordinary phenomenon. To us, brought up on European literature, where it is customary to describe the appearance of heroes, such inattention of the Bible to the appearance of the characters may seem strange and even suspicious. It may seem that the authors of the Bible books deliberately did not describe anyone's appearance simply because they did not see anyone of those they wrote about.

It is on these sensations that atheists build their concepts, often using only sensations that, superimposed on the conviction that there is no God, and the Bible is only “Jewish tales”, become evidence in their minds. In fact, sensations remain sensations, which can be eliminated by looking at the question from a different angle.

So, as I said, we are all accustomed to European and the American literature that it generates. All this literature - from Gogol to Faulkner, from Goethe to Prilepin - has its roots in the Greco-Roman written tradition, where it is customary to describe the appearance of the one about whom the narrative is going, or at least to focus on any of its features. Moreover, this applies not only to fiction, but also to biographical and historical literature. So, Plato describes in the Dialogues the appearance of Socrates, being his contemporary, and Suetonius in his Life of the Twelve Caesars describes in sufficient detail the appearance of the rulers of the Roman Empire from Gaius Julius Caesar to Domitian, although he was a contemporary of only three of them. Plutarch, in his Comparative Biography, also noted some of the features of the characters who lived long before him.

The Bible (Old and New Testaments) refers to a different, separate Jewish written tradition, which in the era of Hellenism (after 323 BC) absorbed some part of Greek culture, but did not dissolve in it. This influence is seen in the Old Testament. As you know, the so-called non-canonical books of the Old Testament and some fragments of the canonical ones have survived only in Greek. If we read them carefully, we will notice some of the features that are characteristic of the Greco-Roman written tradition. So, for example, in a non-canonical fragment of the Book of Esther - in the decree of Mordecai on behalf of Artaxerxes (Esther 8:12) - and in the first Book of Maccovey - in a letter to the king of Sparta (1 Macc. 12: 6) - a characteristic of the Greco-Roman tradition is used an inscription ending with the word "rejoice". Such inscriptions are found in the New Testament (see: Acts 15:23; 23:26; James 1: 1).

"In the Jewish written tradition, it was not customary to describe the appearance of people"

So, in the Jewish written tradition, it was not customary to describe the appearance of people. The reason for this is not the remoteness and mythology of the events and characters in the Bible: these factors, as we found out earlier, did not prevent Greek and Roman historians and poets from writing about the appearance of people and gods. One can argue and argue about the true reasons for this difference, but the fact of this difference is obvious. The Jewish written tradition is more restrained, ascetic, aimed at the inner life of a person, at his actions, and not at his appearance. And that is precisely why none of the Gospels contains descriptions of either Christ or the Mother of God. Even the holy Evangelist Luke, a Greek by nationality, does not have them, apparently because he lived in Judea for quite a long time and adopted the written tradition there.

In my opinion, such inattention to the appearance of the evangelists of Christ gives every reader, no matter what nation he is, the opportunity to see in the Savior something of his own, therefore, in different countries on Orthodox icons, Christ and all biblical characters are portrayed in different ways. On Japanese icons, Christ appears before us with narrow eyes and beardless, on Ethiopian icons - black, Indians in Mexico - in a headdress made of feathers and with characteristic features of the native inhabitants of America, and so on. These icons are canonical and beautiful in their own way, and most importantly, they allow the Japanese, Africans and Indians to ascend from the image to the Prototype.

In contact with

The image of Jesus Christ in world painting was created by such great artists as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo. They endowed the portrait of the Savior with features characteristic of the Greeks or Italians. However, Christians from Africa and Arab countries often portray Jesus as black. So how could he really look?

Modern culturologists express the idea that the variability of the image of Jesus is due to differences in the culture and traditions of artists. The world is dominated by the Western European view, but you can still find portraits in which the Savior is endowed with the features of an Arab or Latin American.

In church literature, Yeshua Ha-Notsri is described as "an ordinary person" and "brother" of people. Presumably, his childhood and youth were spent in the city of Nazareth, which means that his appearance could be Middle Eastern. Another clue can be obtained from a special area of \u200b\u200bexpertise - criminal anthropology. British scientists have used methods identical to those used by police to solve crimes for their research. Together with Israeli archaeologists, scientists have recreated the most accurate description of the most famous person in human history.

Researcher Richard Neave believes that a comprehensive study of the issue using data from the fields of anthropology, archeology, physics and biology will help shed light on what the iconic personalities of history might have looked like. He was already engaged in the "reconstruction" of portraits of Philip II of Macedon, Alexander the Great, the Phrygian king Midas.

According to the researcher's theory, many people did not support the massacres of Jews and Muslims that the Catholic Church regularly carried out, because the people who were killed looked just like Jesus. Pope Alexander VI ordered the destruction of all images of Jesus on which he was depicted as a Semitic. Instead, new paintings were painted, for which the Pope's son, Cesare Borgia, posed. It was he who could become the prototype of the image to which Christians all over the world are accustomed today.

To recreate the portrait of Jesus, Richard Neave borrowed from archaeologists three skulls from Jerusalem, which may have belonged to Yeshua's contemporaries. Then the scientist did a lot of computer studies and found out how the skull might look, as well as how the muscles on the face were located. In accordance with this information, he determined the shape of the nose, lips, eyelids. Drawings of the 1st century were also involved in the work, in accordance with them it was established that Yeshua's eyes were most likely dark in color, and also that he wore a beard. On the basis of the remains of the skeletons, the average height of the Semites was determined - 155 cm, and the weight - about 50 kg.

In history, there is, perhaps, no other historical personality that causes so many contradictory disputes. These

Recently I came across an interesting article in Popular Mechanics. The article is quite old, but it interested me. I thought. It turns out interesting, a paradox, one might say. Jesus Christ is the most famous person in the last two millennia, and what he looked like is still a mystery. Indeed, we can judge about the appearance of Jesus only by the fantasies of artists, and by the Turin Shroud. Neither one nor the other can be considered true, I think. The first is too subjective, the second is more a matter of faith.

Traditionally, in art, Jesus Christ is depicted as a light-skinned man dressed in robes with a neat beard and even, light brown hair. However, the restless scientist, as always, does not sit still. One of them, a Briton, in collaboration with Israeli archaeologists, conducted a scientific analysis using forensic methods in order to finally solve the question of what Jesus really looked like. In my opinion, the result was quite unexpected.

White man from Oxford

Ideas about the appearance of Jesus changed depending on time, location, cultural conditions, but gradually acquired a more or less uniform appearance, common in our time. According to this stereotype, Jesus had fair skin, a narrow, elongated face, light brown (or even blonde) hair, and kind and sad eyes. Long, flowing hair, a neat beard and distinctive attire make his image recognizable for everyone.

As one comedian Eddie Izzard jokingly says, the modern image of Jesus is the image of a "white man from Oxford", so scientists decided to reconstruct how Jesus, as a really historical person, could look like. It was decided to do this on the basis of the time period and place of action of the life story of Christ from ancient texts, using the methods of forensic anthropology.
And here, according to Popular Mechanics, they ran into a problem.

"Nowhere in the New Testament is the image of Jesus described, just as not a single image of him has ever been found."

Forensic research

Richard Neave, a former employee of the University of Manchester in England, already had experience in reconstructing the appearance of historical figures, including Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, and King Midas of Phrygia.

Using methods commonly used by the police to solve crimes, Neave used modern forensic techniques to examine ancient skulls from Jerusalem, the region where Jesus lived and preached.

The image is the result of Niva's research (Image: PopularMechanics)

X-ray "slices" of three skulls of Jewish men from the first century AD were created using computed tomography. Then the obtained data were processed by a special computer program. As a result, the scientists determined where, what and how many soft tissues were located on the skulls, concretized the muscles and appearance of the facial skin. The result is an image with a much wider face shape than European images.

“The whole process was carried out using software, the results are verified with anthropological data. Based on this data, the researchers constructed a digital 3D facial reconstruction. Then they created a mock skull. Clay layers corresponding to the thickness of the facial tissue specified in the computer program were carefully superimposed on the model, then imitation of the skin was made. The nose, lips and eyelids were modeled, following the contours of the muscles, "- Popular Mechanics reports.

A new face for ancient man

Through these manipulations, the team was able to identify common facial structures typical of a Middle Eastern person living in Galilee in northern Israel during the time of Jesus. However, the question remained with the skin color and type of hair and hairstyle.

To address this issue, Niv decided to turn to ancient art from the region's archaeological sites. If these sources are to be believed, Jesus should have had a dark skin, a thick dark beard and short hair, in accordance with the traditions of the time there.

According to Popular Mechanics, in one of the chapters of Paul's letter to the Corinthians, it is said that he allegedly saw Jesus, and then expresses the opinion that a man's long hair is an outrage.

"If a husband grows hair, it is dishonor for him."

Through this statement, the research team became convinced that Christ simply could not have long hair. Neither from the point of view of traditions, nor, even more so, from the point of view of the fact that with the appearance traditionally attributed to Jesus by Europeans, he would very much stand out against the background of his compatriots. But Judas even had to point to him in order to betray. It would be more logical and easier to simply tell the pursuers about his unusual appearance.

Archaeological data and skeletal remains indicate that the average height of a Semitic man two millennia ago was about one and a half meters, and the weight was about fifty kilograms. In addition, if it is true that Jesus was a carpenter, then he must have spent a lot of time outdoors doing hard work and, therefore, was physically fit, tanned, with chapped skin, which greatly added to the age of his appearance. In any case, he must have seemed older than his years.

God's Son

And finally, I would like to tell you about another interesting interpretation of the solution to the question of the appearance of Christ. Italian researchers, again in collaboration with the police, conducted their own experiments and created their own version of the reconstruction of the face of the young Jesus. The well-known Turin Shroud helped them in this.

“With the help of the Turin Shroud, a cloth-shroud from the alleged burial of Jesus, experts from the police created an image of the appearance of the young Jesus Christ. They reduced the size of the jaw, raised the chin and straightened the nose, "reversing" the aging process "

The resulting image is strikingly different from that created by Niv and is much more reminiscent of the traditional ideal of the Christian Son of God.

Anticipating the outraged exclamations of believers, I want to say that Jesus, who looks more like a Neanderthal, is also not to my liking as a European and just a believer. However, it is necessary to pay tribute to objectivity, which hints to us that such an image could also have taken place, moreover, it has at least some basis under it. And we don’t know at all how Jesus Christ looked in reality.

Archaeologists have discovered one of the oldest portraits of Jesus Christ, which is at odds with the most famous images of him. In fact, what he looked like is a big mystery for scientists and believers. What science says about this and how did the ideas about the appearance of the Savior change:

Unusual portrait

“The image found is a very important discovery. It refers to a type of iconographic model of Christ with short hair, which was especially common in Egypt and Syro-Palestine, but disappeared from the Byzantine art of a later period, ”archaeologists state in their scientific article.

The 6th century "portrait" discovered by Israeli archaeologists is very atypical. Christ is depicted on it without a beard.

"The hair is short and curly, the face is elongated, the eyes are large and the nose is elongated," - so, according to scientists, the early Christians represented Christ.

But why didn't anyone know for sure who he was? The Bible has left scientists with a great mystery.

"In the canonical Gospels there is no description of the appearance of Jesus Christ ... Just a certain tradition has developed to depict him on icons, but there is no written evidence of how he looked," biblical scholar Andrei Desnitsky told RIA Novosti.

Hence the paradox: in different regions, Jesus Christ was portrayed in different ways. For example, in Ethiopia, where the Christian community is one of the oldest in the world, he is black on the icons. And in the oldest images in the Roman catacombs or Byzantine basilicas, Jesus Christ appears as a young man - as in the famous 7th century mosaic in Ravenna.

“This Hellenistic influence - in ancient Greece and Rome, the gods were portrayed as young and beautiful. But this continued only until the 7th century, when the Ecumenical Council decided to depict Christ in his historical incarnation, and not in the allegorical image of a young man or a lamb, ”art critic Irina Yazykova explains to a RIA Novosti correspondent.

"Curly and stocky"

The canonical image of Christ, which can be seen on icons today, took shape only by the 6th century. One of the samples, according to Yazykova, was an icon from the Sinai Monastery.

“Such a depiction of Christ is also called Judeo-Hellenistic, because it was based on the ancient canon of a harmonious, beautiful face and at the same time tried to convey Middle Eastern features. But no one specifically emphasized his Jewish origin. On the contrary, the icon painters showed that he is a universal person, ”says the art critic.

But in the 21st century, the ethnicity of Jesus became very important, however, only for scientists. A forensic anthropologist at the University of Manchester, Richard Neave, tried to restore the appearance of a resident of Palestine in the 1st century AD in order to somehow get closer to solving the mystery of the Savior's appearance. The expert conducted X-ray analysis of three skulls from that era, found during excavations in the vicinity of Jerusalem. In addition, he turned to drawings of the time. The result was, to put it mildly, unexpected.

Most likely, Christ, as Neave suggests, had short black curly hair. With a high degree of probability, his eyes were dark. According to Jewish tradition, Jesus wore a beard. Perhaps he was not tall - the height of an average Semitic man of the 1st century AD, judging by the skeletons found, did not exceed 165 centimeters. And since Christ, according to the Gospel, was the son of a carpenter and, most likely, was a carpenter himself, he was broad-shouldered and muscular, suggests Richard Neave.

Disputes about the face

Judging by the description made by Neave, Jesus Christ did not stand out outwardly. It is curious that church authorities spoke about this as early as the 2nd century AD.

It was from this time that a dispute began in the Christian environment about what the Savior looked like.

Some theologians argued that outwardly he was inconspicuous, referring to the phrase from the Old Testament book of the prophet Isaiah: "He was despised and belittled before people, a man of sorrows and experienced illness, and we turned our face away from Him." Others defended the hypothesis of its beauty. “If He did not have something heavenly in His face and gaze, the apostles would never have followed Him immediately,” wrote the blessed Jerome in the 4th century.

However, none of them knew the exact answer. The fact is that all the descriptions were based solely on oral tradition, notes Priest Konstantin Polskov, associate professor of the Department of Biblical Studies of the Theological Faculty of PSTGU.

“We cannot say that even the images of Christ of the first centuries of our era found in the catacombs are photographic. This is still some kind of tradition, comprehended by the Christian community, ”he explains in an interview with RIA Novosti.

The only option

However, scientists have a key to solving this mystery. In 1976, Professor of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (USA) John Jackson reconstructed the image of Christ based on the Turin Shroud.

And in 2018, experts from the University of Padua, using the latest technology, created a three-dimensional image of Christ based on the body imprint remaining on the shroud fabric.

“According to our research, Jesus was a man of extraordinary beauty: tall, but very strong. He was almost 180 centimeters tall, 15 centimeters above average. His face had a regal, majestic expression, ”Professor Giulio Fanti, who led the study of the Shroud, said in an interview with La Stampa.

However, science has not yet confirmed whether the Turin Shroud is the very piece of cloth in which the body of the Savior was wrapped after his death. At the moment, one can only believe in its authenticity, says Father Konstantin Polskov.

“In this sense, the answer to the question whether it is possible to accurately restore the historical portrait of Christ is rather negative,” concludes the theologian.

3D "copy" of Jesus Christ