I was recently invited by a dear friend, Alex, to come onto his podcast, Within Reason, which is currently blowing up in the philosophy-religion space on YouTube.
The topic of our discussion - What did Jesus Really Look Like? - intersected with my thesis. But as a recently-minted ‘Dr’, I was a little hesitant to broadcast my views.
In hindsight, I am glad I did. Not many PhDs have the opportunity of sharing their research in front of an audience as large as Alex’s - nor with so gracious or probing an interlocutor.
One of the unexpected pleasures of the interview was its aftermath: watching the comments roll-in, and finding many joining a conversation which had formerly comprised only an internal monologue for the past three years.
With any interview, however, one is always left with a sense of having left much unsaid. In the hope of continuing the conversation, then, I want to answer some of the comments and questions which were left on the video.
Why, for instance, did we not mention the Turin Shroud? Was Jesus just ‘average-looking?’ And how is it even possible to do a PhD in the physical appearance of Jesus?
Let’s dive right in - and take a look behind the Gospels.
What about the Turin Shroud?
By far the most common complaint is that we didn’t address the Shroud of Turin - a burial cloth which appears to bear the imprint of Christ’s crucified body.
The truth is that Alex and I did discuss the shroud. But afterwards I noticed that I botched my description of its provenance, and it didn’t make the cut.
For what it’s worth, I don’t see the Shroud as particularly relevant to a discussion of Jesus’ appearance. While I am a biblical scholar, not a shroud specialist - take my judgement cum grano salis - the evidence seems to weigh heavily against its authenticity. And the vast majority of genuine experts take this view.
To summarise a case I have made before, there are multiple lines of evidence which converge on its medieval origin. The cloth’s late literary attestation, its contemporary rejection by the Church, its weave, radiocarbon dating, as well as its appearance in a relic-saturated world, are just some of the threads which point in this direction.1
Of course, there will always be apologists for the shroud. Such aficionados have gone down this rabbit-hole longer than me, and I am sure their arguments will appear convincing to some. Yet I would ask them an obvious question:
If the evidence clearly points to a first-century provenance, why is the shroud not re-tested for proof?
I recently saw a Catholic priest and shroud-apologist asked this question online. His answer was that it would be too expensive for the Catholic Church.
The interviewer didn’t bat an eyelid, and the conversation went on - as I’m sure it will for many decades yet. In my eyes, however, it might as well have ended there.
Was Jesus an average-looking chap?
A few comments suggested that the fact that Jesus wasn’t described in the Gospels suggests that there was nothing especially noticeable about him. Jesus was neither particularly handsome, nor strikingly ugly; he was just an average bloke.
Those who take this view will find themselves in good company. In her recent book, What did Jesus Look Like? (2018), Professor Joan Taylor makes the same argument. She supports her view by noting that the disciples could not just invent his appearance, since there would have been people around who knew this not to be true.2
But is this convincing? Of course, it is plausible that Jesus was average-looking. But I am not so sure that this is why the Gospels’ don’t describe his appearance.
My reasons for caution are two-fold. For a start, if the Gospel writers wanted to invent or idealise his appearance, they would have been well within the license of ancient biography to do so. Indeed, as a recent study suggests, the quintessential appearance of the ancient teacher - Socrates’ ugly visage - was almost certainly an invention.3
My other cause for pause is that we have good reasons to think that Jesus’ appearance might not have been described, even if he was beautiful or ugly. If Jesus was ugly – if he was ‘slave-like’ in his appearance – then the Gospel writers had reason to omit it. (We know other biographers who followed this ‘photoshopping’ strategy.)
This explanation also holds if the evangelists had wanted to depict Jesus as the suffering servant of Isaiah; marred and dishonourable in appearance (52:14-53:2).
An ‘ugly Jesus’ was a favourite of the second Century Church, since ugliness served to confirm his fleshly humanity in skirmishes against heretical Christians who doubted it. (A non-fleshly divinity would surely not be ugly!) But many of the same writers express reservation about Jesus’ ‘ugliness’ as the final word on his appearance.4
On the other hand, if Jesus was divinely beautiful, the evangelists’ Jewish background - so reticent to describe the Lord’s body - may have precluded a description of him as such. I suggested to Alex that we may see hints of this reticence in Luke, who tells us that ‘the appearance of his face [in the transfiguration] became other’ (9:29).
As New Testament scholar, Brittany Wilson describes, “Luke’s phrase “the εἶδος [appearance] of his face” implies a certain distancing: it is not Jesus’s face itself that is necessarily changed but the form or appearance of his face.”5 This may echo the distancing strategies found in Jewish theophanies, such as when Ezekiel describes ‘the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord’ (Ezekiel 1:26, 28).6
In short, Jesus’ appearance was too holy for Luke to describe. This is just one of several explanations for Jesus’ missing description which I explore in my thesis.
How and why a PhD…. in Jesus’ physical appearance?
But what even is a thesis in Jesus’ appearance? A few have expressed astonishment at the possibility of research in this peculiar sub-field of research.
I must concede tht I never imagined writing on this subject. But to speak of my PhD ‘in’ Jesus’ appearance is something of a misnomer. My PhD was in biblical studies, and my question was not what Jesus looked like, but rather why - in a particular socio-historical and literary context - the Gospels fail to describe Jesus’ appearance.
Such a question is certainly niche. But in my view, it deserved some attention.
For a start, Jesus is the most ubiquitous figure in all visual history. Why the earliest accounts of his life - which could be expected to describe him - fail to do so, is therefore a curiosity to the modern scholar. While many have commented upon this omission, my thesis is the first to treat it in detail.
The topic of Jesus’ appearance also served me as a springboard to think about other pressing questions in Gospels research - questions which have long fascinated me.
For instance, are there other ways in which the Gospels depart from the conventions of Graeco-Roman biography? Is there anything about the Gospels’ characterisation of Jesus which would preclude a description of him along physiognomic lines? And what do the Gospels make of the subject of ‘appearance’ as a whole?
I hope, then, that when my thesis is publicly available, it will be of interest not only to those who are interested in what Jesus’ physical appearance, but also to those who want a fresh perspective a number of fascinating sub-fields within Gospel studies - a panoply of subjects which we treat weekly, here, on Behind the Gospels.
So, what is Behind the Gospels?….
For those who are new to the stack, welcome! It’s great to have you here.
On Behind the Gospels, I try to give a fair summary of the very best of Gospels’ scholarship. This means offering a critique of mainstream ideas (for example, Professor Bart Ehrman’s telephone game analogy) as well as fringe ones (like this.)
Occasionally, I will also share bits and pieces from my own research, in a lay-style. Recently, I have posted on Jesus’ short stature and his seamless tunic.
If you would like to see what I have been writing about more generally, do check out this post. And if you would like to join the community discussing them - and have your questions answered - perhaps you might consider supporting the site.
I try to post in a way which might be informative for people with or without a commitment to the spiritual traditions informed by Gospels. Whether you are a priest or a lay-person, a believer or a sceptic, I believe there is something here for you.
Thank you for joining in our quest behind the Gospels.
For a recent discussion of the Shroud, see Dale Allison Jr., The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History (London: T&T Clark, 2021), 315-322.
See Joan E. Taylor, What did Jesus Look Like? (London: T&T Clark, 2018), 1-14.
See Maria Luisa Catoni, Luca Giuliani, “Socrates Represented: Why Does He Look Like a Satyr?” CI 45 (2019): 681-713.
See Callie Callon, Reading Bodies: Physiognomy as a Strategy of Persuasion in Early Christian Discourse. LNTS 597 (London: T&T Clark, 2019), 131-155.
Brittany Wilson, The Embodied God: Seeing the Divine in Luke-Acts and the Early Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 181.
Wilson, Embodied God, 181.