What did Jesus Really Look Like?
January: Behind the Gospels 2026 Lecture Series
This weekend I gave a lecture as part of my new Behind the Gospels 2026 lecture series.
Each month I am hosting an interactive lecture for my paid subscribers, and the topic of this January lecture was ‘What did Jesus really look like?’, incorporating material from my recent book, Jesus’ Physical Appearance: Biography, Christology, Philosophy (2025).
The lecture covered a range of topics:
Why are the gospels silent on Jesus’ physical appearance?
What would an average Galilean man have looked like?
Does Luke 19 describe Jesus as ‘short in stature’?
Does Christian iconography, including the Turin Shroud, recover Jesus’ image?
What are the earliest images of Jesus?
It it possible that Jesus was physically impaired?
I want to give a huge thank you to Carl, who came to the lecture and recorded it, after I faced some technical challenges at the start.
The lecture is now available below:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Behind the Gospels to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.