If you ran into Jesus today, you would most likely see a very small, black little guy with rugged looks, a muscular posture, dark, curly hair and a large nose.

In those days, artists began picturing Jesus as a typical saint, with handsome, European looks and an angelic appearance. This is basically how we still picture Jesus today – from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ to Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion of The Christ’!

But in the meantime, historians and other scientists agree that the real Jesus must have looked very different. First, we know for sure that Jesus didn’t have long hair. The New Testament explicitly calls it ‘a disgrace’ if a man had long hair (Cor 11:14).

Also, it’s almost certain that Jesus wasn’t tall and white. After all, he wasn’t an Anglo-Saxon, but a carpenter’s son from the Middle East.

Medical examiners have put this to the test. In 2002, researchers from the University of Manchester used skulls from first century Palestine, historical texts and facial reconstruction software to reconstruct what an average man in those days must have looked like.

They came up with a broad face with short, curly hair, a prominent nose and a dark skin. An average peasant from those days would have been 5 foot and 1 inch tall (1,55 meter).

If the bible is accurate, Jesus also must have had hardened, muscular looks, because he worked as a construction worker with Joseph in Nazareth until he was about 30 years old. In those days, this meant: intense, outdoor physical labour with primitive tools, saws, hammers, chunks of wood and stones.

There goes the frail, skinny Jesus we see in catholic churches!

Another clue is that in the gospels, Jesus’ looks don’t stand out. If the bible is correct, he must have looked like any other guy. When he was arrested, Judas Icariot had to point him out with a kiss (in Matt 26:48). According to the gospel of John, Jesus had to tell the Romans who he was (John 18:3-9).

	No More Mr. Handsome
Early Christians believed that the real Jesus looked like an ugly, old, bald sorcerer

But there is also some evidence that Jesus was noticeably ugly. In Byzantine citations of a now lost text of the Roman historian Josephus Flavius, Jesus is said to have been three cubits tall (that’s three human underarms tall – almost a midget!), crooked and dark-skinned.

In fact, the texts explicitly describe Jesus as being very ugly. He was almost completely bold, had a long nose and eyebrows that touched each other. Jesus looked much older than he really was, the Byzantine texts read.

Among the first christians, it was a well-known fact that Christ wasn’t exactly Mr. Handsome. Around the year 200 AD, the church father Tertullian strongly opposed the notion that Jesus looked angelic. Instead, Tertullian called Jesus a ‘puerulus’: that’s Latin for ‘wretched little fellow’.

But we must add: we can’t be sure how accurate this is. After all, Tertullian lived two centuries after Jesus, and his goal may have been to picture Jesus as a frail and ordinary human being, instead of a heavenly creature.

Still, if Jesus indeed was very ugly, that would make sense.

Anthropologists know that in traditional societies, holy people are almost by default exceptionally ugly. Their ugliness was considered to be a heavenly token: “Wow, this guy looks so different… He must be a holy man!”