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By Root 1299 0

before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his garments became white as light," a fitting description for the "light of the world that every eye can see." The androgynous character at Revelation 1:13-15 has also been interpreted to refer to Jesus: "And in the midst of the seven candlesticks, one like unto the Son of Man, clothed in a garment down to the foot, and girt about his paps [breasts]. His head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow . . ." A number of people have claimed that the "wooly" hair reference means Christ was a black man, and they cite black crucifixes and bambinos as evidence. As can be seen, the scriptural "evidence" of Jesus's physicality creates more problems than it solves.

In fact, early Christian fathers admitted that Jesus's appearance was unknown. For example, as St. Augustine said of Christ, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, "in his time there was no authentic portrait of Christ, and . . . the type of features was still undetermined, so that we have absolutely no knowledge of His appearance.", This deficiency would appear to be very strange, particularly since it was claimed that Jesus was "known throughout the world." How, pray tell, did anyone recognize him? Despite the lack of any gospel description, Jesus was alternately described by the early Christian fathers as either "the most beautiful of the sons of men" or "the ugliest of the sons of men"another highly strange development, if this character were real. But, as Augustine admitted, this debate existed before the "type of features" was determined, i.e., fabricated and standardized. Fox relates the ambiguity of Christ's appearance:

Nobody remembered what Jesus had looked like. Citing Isaiah, one wing of Christian opinion argued that he had chosen a mean and ugly human form. By c. 200, he was being shown on early Christian sarcophagi in a stereotyped pagan image, as a philosopher teaching among his pupils or a shepherd bearing sheep from his flock.2

It is beyond belief that had Jesus existed and been seen by "the multitudes," no one would remember what he looked like. The authors of the gospels, pretending to be the apostles, professed to remember Jesus's exact deeds and words, verbatim, yet they couldn't recall what he looked like!

Many people think that the standard image with the long, dark hair is how Jesus's early followers saw him. In reality, the earliest images of Christ portray a young, beardless boy, at times with blond hair. As Carpenter relates:

The Christian art of [the first three to four centuries] remained delightfully pagan. In the catacombs we see the Saviour as a beardless youth, like a young Greek god; sometimes represented, like Hermes the guardian of the flocks, bearing a ram or lamb round his neck; sometimes as Orpheus tuning his lute among the wild animals.3

Of these early depictions of Christ, Doane states:

One of the favorite ways finally, of depicting him, was, as Mr. Lundy remarks: "Under the figure of a beautiful and adorable youth, of about fifteen or eighteen years of age, beardless, with a sweet expression of countenance, and long and abundant hair flowing in curls over his shoulders. His brow is sometimes encircled by a diadem or bandeau, like a young priest of the Pagan gods; that is, in fact, the favorite figure. On sculptured sarcophagi, in fresco paintings and Mosaics, Christ is thus represented as a graceful youth, just as Apollo was figured by the Pagans, and as angels are represented by Christians ..."4

According to the gospel story, Jesus disappeared between the ages of around 12 and 29 before he began his ministry, so this depiction of him at "about fifteen to eighteen years of age" certainly would be odd, since his followers never saw him at that age.

These depictions demonstrate that Jesus's appearance was arbitrary, allegorical, unhistorical and not based on a single individual. Dujardin says:

As to archaeological evidence, the oldest paintings in the Catacombs not only display no features that confirm the gospel legend, but represent Jesus under forms that