What Did Jesus Look Like? (And Who Cares?)

As Christians observe the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ this Easter, I was once again reminded of the age-old argument over what Jesus looked like.

As it happens, the Bible doesn’t say.  Nowhere in the New Testament is Jesus’ physical appearance described — at least not the color of his hair, eyes, or skin.  Therefore, unsurprisingly, in the homes of white Christians across America, Jesus is often pictured as pale-skinned with blue eyes and blonde or golden brown hair.   By contrast, in the homes of many black Christians, Jesus is black, with black hair, while around the world Jesus is pictured as Middle Eastern, Slavic, Asian, and more.

From a purely historical standpoint (let me emphasize, I speak only as a historian, not as a theologian), it is highly unlikely that Jesus was blonde-haired and blue-eyed.  In the only Gospels that describe his birth, Matthew and Luke, Jesus was born to Jewish parents, in Palestine, and even if Mary bore Jesus after being impregnated by God, the God of the Old Testament, including its first five books, The Torah, was certainly not fair-skinned, blonde-haired and blue-eyed.  And neither was Mary.

As a result, the historical Jesus, having been born Jewish in the Middle East, most likely had dark eyes and hair, and something akin to an olive complexion.

The other explanation for the various depictions of Jesus is, of course, religious legitimacy and, by extension, supremacy.  If Jesus is white, then God is white, and white Christians are God’s chosen people.  If he is black, Slavic, Oriental, and so on, then each of them is God’s chosen people.  Again, the Bible doesn’t say, probably because the writers of the New Testament didn’t know what Jesus looked like.  The earliest Gospel, Mark, was written 30 – 35 years after his death.

But, just as likely, they didn’t care.  It wasn’t his appearance that mattered to them, but his teachings, which were completely color-blind (and creed- and race-blind).

Jesus preached that all of us should love one another, even our enemies.  He told us to be kind and just and merciful, and to treat others the way we would wish to be treated.  That is not a white, black, Asian or any kind of ethnic Christian message; that is a universal Christian message.

Meaning that, according to the Bible, those of us who adopt the teachings of Jesus are really God’s chosen people, and it doesn’t matter if we are white, black, yellow, olive, or everything in between.   Indeed, as we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection this Easter, we should recall the Bible’s other lesson: that the reason he died in the first place was to cleanse all of us — all of us — of our sins.