What the real image of Jesus would look like, according to artificial intelligence

With dark skin, brown eyes and short hair . That’s how they were THE the Jews who inhabited the Middle East in the 1st century according to the author of the book What did Jesus look like? New Zealand Jane Taylor .

The historian suggests that the photo of Jesus what we know is far from reality . After centuries of Eurocentrism, Taylor explains, We absorb the most familiar image of Jesus: a white, bearded man with long light brown hair and blue eyes. .

Although this is a portrait already known to the majority of the world’s 2 billion Christians, This is a barely believable recreation, which must have little to do with reality. .

The historical Jesus Taylor said in a report published by BBC , He was probably dark-skinned, short, and kept his hair short. like other Jews of his time.

One of the difficulties in knowing what Jesus looked like comes from the very origin of Christianity: the New Testament, the section of the Bible that recounts the life of Jesus, which does not describe what he looked like .

“The gospels do not describe him physically “They don’t say whether he was tall or short, handsome or strong,” warns Taylor, who in addition to being the author of the book What did Jesus look like? (What did Jesus look like?) is also an academic in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College London, UK.

“The only thing they say is his approximate age, around 30 years old. “, he adds.

“This lack of data is very significant »says another expert, historian André Leonardo Chevitarese.

“This seems to indicate that Jesus’ early followers did not care about this information, that it was more important to them to record ideas than to say what he looked like physically. “, says also professor at the Institute of History of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and author of the book Historical Jesus. A very brief introduction.

The forensic expert in facial reconstructions, Richard Neave used his scientific knowledge to create an image close to reality .

Three skulls from the 1st century ancient inhabitants of the same region where Jesus is said to have lived, Neave and his team recreated, using 3D modeling, a typical face that could very well have been that of Jesus .

The skeletons of Jews from this period show that the average height was 1.60 m and that the vast majority of men weighed a little over 50 kilos. .

Professor Taylor reached similar conclusions regarding the physiognomy of Jesus.

“The Jews of the time were biologically similar to the Iraqi Jews of today, so I think (Jesus) had dark brown to black hair, brown eyes, brown skin, a typical Middle Eastern man. “, he rocks.

Brazilian designer Cícero Moraes, a specialist in forensic facial reconstruction, created a scientific image of Jesus Christ at the request of the BBC.

Moraes comments that Jesus “It was certainly brown, considering the complexion of the people of this region and, above all, analyzing the physiognomy of the men of the desert, people who live under the intense sun. “.

Another interesting question concerns Jesus’ haircut.

In one of the books of the Bible, Corinthians, the apostle Paul writes: “It’s a shame for a man to have long hair. “, so Jesus would not have had long hair, as he is usually represented.

“For the Roman world, the acceptable appearance for a man was to have a shaved beard and short hair. Although in ancient times philosophers probably grew long beards says historian Joan Taylor.

Professor Leonardo Chevitarese believes that the first known iconography of Jesus, dating from the 3rd century, depicts him as a beardless young man with short hair.

“He looked more like a young philosopher, a professor, than a bearded god. », he explains.

Taylor believes that the images used over the centuries have always attempted to represent Christ, that is, the divine figure of the son of God, and not the human Jesus.

“It’s a subject that has always fascinated me, I wanted to see Jesus, obviously “, he said in the BBC report.

The representation of bearded and hairy Jesus appeared in the Middle Ages during the rise of the Byzantine Empire.

As Professor Chevitaese reminds us, The figure of Christ began to show an invincible being, physically similar to the kings and emperors of the time. .

Since the Western Church has not followed such standards, the artists who depicted Christ over the centuries created him in their own way .

“It can be a gentle figure in many baroque images or a suffering and martyred Christ as in the works of Caravaggio or Goya,” says sociologist Ribeiro Neto.

“The problem of faithful representation of the historical figure is a question of our times, where critical reflection has shown the forms of cultural domination in artistic representations. “, Add.

“In this sense, deplores Neto,The problem is not having a blond Christ with blue eyes. The problem is that it is believed that the deity must be presented to the European factions because they represent those higher on the “social ladder”. “.

This distance between the “European” Jesus and the new faithful from distant countries, according to the historian Chevitarese, was reduced in the search for a much more intermediate representation, an “ethnic Jesus”.

“Images of Jesus in Macau, the former Portuguese colony in China, show him with slanted eyes, wearing Chinese costume. In Ethiopia, there are traces of a Jesus with black features “, Add.

Tik Tok user, The IA Drawing shared a photograph where we can see a Jesus modeled by Artificial Intelligence .

In the picture you can see a man with a dark complexion, brown and rather slanted eyes and long hair . Characteristics more than similar to those described by the experts consulted by the BBC.

Check in this link TikTok registration.