"We don't know what Jesus looked like"

In my experience, there are roughly three objections to "pictures of Jesus". One invokes the 2nd Commandment. That's an important objection, which raises a number of complex issues. I think it fails, but it needs to be taken seriously. 

Another objection is the "Nestorian" charge. That's a silly objection, and it could be countered by accusing opponents of Monophysitism.

The third objection is that we don't know what Jesus looked like. Here I'll make four brief observations:

i) Christians need to be careful about referring to Jesus in the past tense. Certainly there are contexts in which it's correct to refer to him in the past tense. When we talk about what Jesus said and did during his 1C ministry. It is, however, striking how often Christians automatically slip into the past tense when referring to Jesus, even though we believe he's alive. So even if the objection were correct, it should be expressed in the present tense: "we don't know what Jesus looks like," rather than "we don't know what Jesus looked like."

ii) I'd add that if Jesus continues to appear to people, then there's a sense in which they do know what Jesus looks like. I'm referring to reported visions of Jesus or heavenly near-death experiences. However, that's not something I'd emphasize because even if some of these are genuine, Jesus may be adapting his appearance to the viewer's cultural expectations to be recognizable to them.

iii) If the Shroud of Turin is authentic, then we have a body-length (front and back) photograph of Jesus. Indeed, a photographic reproduction with 3D information. 

I don't have a firm opinion regarding the authenticity of the Shroud. I just haven't kept up with the research. My point, though, is that it's not a given to say we don't know what Jesus looks like. 

iv) Finally, the objection is arbitrary. We don't know what biblical figures in general looked like. But in my experience, Christians who object to "pictures of Jesus" don't object to movies about Noah, Moses, King David, King Solomon, St. Paul, or the Patriarchs, &c. 

Blue-eyed Jesus

I was asked to respond to a Black Israelite/Hebrew roots website about the ethnicity/appearance of Jesus. 

i) Rev 1:14 says his hair was white like wool. It refers to the color, not texture. It doesn't say he had nappy hair.

And it's a vision with symbolic elements, viz. a tongue like a sword. 

ii) Jesus isn't a black African. Edwin Yamauchi wrote a book debunking that kind of historical revisionism: African and the Bible (Baker 2004):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKnPpVtzTHM

iii) In modern movies, we expect realism about the past. We expect a movie about ancient Rome, the Old West, Medieval Europe, Tudor England or Victorian England, &c., to look historically authentic. But many European artists didn't know enough the past to make historically accurate depictions of the past. Spanish painters use Spanish models, Italian painters use Italian models. It's not a conscious effort to reimage Jesus and other biblical figures as Spaniards and Italians. They do the same thing when depicting subjects from Greek mythology. 

Likewise, if a Renaissance painter paints biblical events, he uses European architecture, period attire, and local landscape as the backdrop. He uses what's familiar. The scene is depicted according to his own time and place. That's anachronistic, but it's not a conspiracy to foster the impression that Bible history took place during the Italian Renaissance. 

iv) Spanish and Italian painters don't normally depict Jesus as a blue-eyed, blond-haired Aryan. Rather, they depict him with Mediterranean pigmentation, as a stereotypical Southern European. Dark hair, dark eyes, tan complexion. In addition, it's not as if Jesus looks Swedish in Byzantine iconography. 

Many critics don't seem to know anything about European art. The only thing they seem to be aware of is the Sallman Head or Jeffrey Hunter in The King of Kings. 

v) That said, it is possible for artistic depictions of an Aryan Jesus to foster white racism. Mind you, Black Hebrew Israelites do the same thing in reverse. 

vi) If Jesus appears to individuals in the course of church history, he might vary his appearance. If he appeared to someone in medieval China, he might appear Chinese. If he appeared to a pre-Columbian Mayan, he might appear Mayan. If he appeared to a Samoan child, he might appear Samoan. Jesus has the supernatural ability to alter his physical appearance if he wants to. But that's not how he looked during his ministry on earth. That's not his natural condition. 

vii) If the Shroud of Turin is authentic, then we have, in effect, a photograph of Jesus. I'm a bit skeptical about that myself, because the fabric seems to be very well preserved for fabric that age, exposed to the elements, folded and refolded over the centuries, and singed by fire. But I have kept up on the state of Shroud research. 

Update On The 1982 Carbon Dating Of The Shroud Of Turin

I recently found out that Gerald Wasserburg died last year. In a post I wrote in 2014, I argued that Wasserburg probably was involved in carbon dating a thread from the Shroud of Turin in 1982, several years before the more famous dating in 1988. I'm the only person I know of other than the scientists who arranged the 1982 test who discussed that test with Wasserburg. A lot of material has been added to my 2014 post since I first published it, and I just made a major update to it. The update includes a further discussion of my 2014 email exchange with Wasserburg, as well as material taken from some of the obituaries about him. I've also added further reasons to believe that the 1982 test did occur, and I've rewritten the section on scientific issues. Since so much material has been added to the article over the years, even those who read it previously may want to read the whole thing. Or if you just want to read the updates since the original post, you can find them in the comments section of the thread.

Antonio Lombatti's Claims About The Shroud Of Turin

Antonio Lombatti has written an article reviewing CNN's recent program on the Shroud. Even though the article has a lot of problems, Jim West is promoting it and claiming that Lombatti is "the Turin Shroud expert". Good to know that Lombatti outranks all of the scientists, archeologists, and other scholars who have studied the Shroud firsthand, served as Vatican consultants on the Shroud, etc.

Let's take a look at some of Lombatti's claims. I responded to his assertions about a Shroud nail wound in another post. And you can find responses to other claims he's made by running some searches here and here. If you run a search on the weave of the cloth at Dan Porter's blog, for example, you come across this thread and many others. Read the comments sections of the threads as well, since some of the most significant information is found there. Now, here's Lombatti:

Problems With CNN's Turin Shroud Program

I recently watched CNN's Finding Jesus program on the Shroud of Turin, which originally aired March 1. It seems to have had a relatively high viewership. Though the program made some good points, it mostly addressed the subject in an introductory and sometimes misleading way. Dan Porter's blog has had some good coverage of the show, and you can read a review by Barrie Schwortz here. Schwortz's expertise in photography and the Shroud are relevant, since CNN's program gave so much attention to Nicholas Allen's hypothesis that the Shroud image was created through a form of medieval photography.

Video Of A Recent Shroud Of Turin Conference

I just saw Dan Porter link a collection of videos of the recent Shroud conference in St. Louis.

The 1982 Carbon Dating Of The Shroud Of Turin

For a few decades, accounts have been circulating about alleged dating work done on a piece of the Shroud of Turin in the early 1980s. Unfortunately, the accounts have been largely unsubstantiated, vague, and inconsistent. If one of the accounts were to be accepted as accurate, would it even have much significance?

If you set out to study these issues in depth, you enter a labyrinth of garbled information, without much guidance and without a lot of hope of accomplishing much. That ought to change. Eyewitnesses and other sources relevant to the events in question are gradually dying off. Attempts to clarify these matters ought to be made sooner rather than later. I want this thread to take some steps in that direction. I don't claim to have even come close to resolving all of the difficulties. But I think I can clarify some points, with a lot still unsettled.

Weighing The Shroud's 1988 Carbon Dating

The best book I've read on the Shroud of Turin is William Meacham's The Rape Of The Turin Shroud (Lulu, 2005). Meacham is an archeologist who's worked at the University of Hong Kong, and he's one of the scholars the Roman Catholic Church has consulted on issues related to the Shroud in recent decades.

His book is especially good on the subject of carbon dating. Since carbon dating is the primary argument raised against the large amount of evidence we have for the Shroud's authenticity, it's important that we rightly gauge the significance of the carbon dating that was done in 1988. Sometimes, people will object to the Shroud by citing the 1988 carbon dating alone, as if that dating by itself is sufficient reason to dismiss the Shroud. Harry Gove, a scientist who had a prominent role in developing carbon dating technology and bringing about the 1988 dating of the Shroud, suggested that the 1988 tests allow for only about a "one in a thousand trillion" chance that the Shroud dates to the first century (Relic, Icon Or Hoax? [Bristol and Philadelphia: Institute of Physics Publishing, 1996], 303). Gove even jokingly compares the possibility that the carbon dating is wrong to the possibility that "the law of gravity is in error" (305). But Meacham writes:

More From Giulio Fanti On Dating The Shroud Of Turin

I just saw Dan Porter link an interview with Giulio Fanti, by Vatican Insider, concerning Fanti's recent book on dating the Shroud of Turin. The interview is a rough English translation of Italian, but it's easy to follow the general thrust of what Fanti is saying. For those who don't know, Fanti is an Italian scientist who recently applied three new dating methods to alleged material from the Shroud. All three methods gave a date consistent with Jesus' lifetime, much earlier than the carbon dating results of 1988. Here's a post I wrote last year about the initial reports of Fanti's work. And here are some of Fanti's more recent comments:

Problems With A Conspiracy View Of The Resurrection

In another thread, Thomas Keningley wrote:

On a tangential note, Jason, can you point me to any resources, from you or elsewhere, arguing against "Conspiracy theory" used as an alternative to the resurrection to explain the apostolic preaching, i.e. the disciples conspired with other [supposed, on this theory] eyewitnesses to cook up the resurrection which they then preached from Pentecost?

Here's my response:

The Failure Of Naturalistic Theories To Explain The Shroud Of Turin

Here's a thread discussing the failure of various naturalistic theories to explain the Shroud of Turin. We don't just need to explain how the image could have been produced, but also why it happened with Jesus in particular and not with other individuals, the timing of the image formation (around the time when other evidence suggests Jesus was resurrected), and how the removal of the body from the Shroud didn't do more to disturb the bloodstains and damage the cloth. I think that Jesus' resurrection is the best explanation for the totality of the phenomena. But what I want to highlight here is something Barrie Schwortz wrote in the comments section of the thread linked above. Schwortz is an advocate of the view that the Shroud image formed as a result of a Maillard reaction, and Ray Rogers held the same view, yet Schwortz writes:

Ray Rogers told me personally that he believed, “Something else was at work with the Maillard reaction,” but he didn’t know what that was and didn’t live long enough to explore it.

Keep in mind, too, that the Shroud would still have high evidential significance for Christianity even if some natural process, like a Maillard reaction, explains the Shroud or part of it. The cloth would still give us evidence for Jesus' existence, the accuracy of early Christian accounts of his death, etc.

New Research On The Shroud Of Turin

The Shroud of Turin has been in the news a lot lately, due to a new book that's come out claiming further scientific testing that dates the Shroud around the time of Jesus. See the March 28 entry here for an overview from Barrie Schwortz, including a discussion of some of the problems with Giulio Fanti's claims at this point. We'll have to wait to see how things develop. Dan Porter has been covering the story on his blog as well. There's already good reason to reject the 1988 carbon dating of the Shroud, such as Ray Rogers' work published in 2005. We'll see how much Fanti's research adds to that. From what I've read so far, I agree with the general thrust of Schwortz's comments. Fanti's work looks somewhat promising, but there are problems with it.

The Multi-Faceted Evidence For Jesus' Resurrection

The evidence for the resurrection is often framed in terms of the testimony of the resurrection witnesses and the empty tomb, as if any hypothesis about what happened only has to address those two lines of evidence. Sometimes the empty tomb isn't even included. We should keep in mind that there's a lot more involved, though. The New Testament documents often refer to the resurrection as a fulfillment of prophecy and refer to how the apostles were empowered to perform miracles by the risen Christ, for example. Then there's extra-Biblical evidence, like the Shroud of Turin. Jesus' resurrection not only is a good explanation of the testimony of the resurrection witnesses and the empty tomb, but also is a good explanation of Paul's acquisition of the ability to perform miracles, the image on the Shroud of Turin, and other evidence that isn't mentioned as often. The same skeptic who has to find a way to dismiss the testimony of resurrection witnesses like Peter and Paul and dismiss the empty tomb also has to find a way to dismiss the other lines of evidence. There are more than two lines to account for here. I believe most people who follow these issues closely are aware of that fact, but it's not acknowledged enough, and we need to keep it more at the forefront of our thinking. The resurrection evidence is broader and deeper than we often make it out to be. There's merit to taking something like a minimal facts approach toward the resurrection in some contexts. That approach can be taken too far, though, and can leave people with a false impression about how much evidence we have for the resurrection.

Easter Apologetic Resources

During the last few Easter seasons, I put together posts indexing Triablogue's material on issues related to Jesus' resurrection:

2009
2010
2011
2012

The 2009 post is foundational to the others, so it should be consulted first. These index posts will link you to book reviews, reviews of debates on Jesus' resurrection, responses to objections to the resurrection, and a large variety of other material. Some of our e-books linked on the right side of the screen address the resurrection as well.

Since the 2012 post linked above, we've written many other posts on resurrection issues. What I want to do in the remainder of this post is provide some links to our latest material on the resurrection.