What did jesus look like? Expert reveals characteristics of christ

Joan Taylor, a historian who has been attempting to chronicle the life of Jesus Christ, has reconstructed what The Messiah would have looked like. To achieve this, Ms Taylor has been

analysing historical texts and skeletal records from modern day Jerusalem from the time Christ supposedly lived. There have been many accounts of what Jesus would have looked like, yet his

appearance is not mentioned in any of the Gospels. For example, reference is in the ‘letter of Lentulus’, assumed to be by a Roman official who personally saw Jesus. The letter describes

Christ as “tall in stature and admirable”. The note added he “has hair the colour of an unripe hazelnut and it falls smoothly about to his ears”. However, the Letter of Lentulus was later

found to have been written in the Middle Ages, and not during the Roman Ages. The most famous depiction of Jesus surely comes in the form of the Turn Shroud – the burial cloth that Christ

was allegedly wrapped in after the Crucifixion. MAN ARRESTED FOR IMPERSONATING JESUS CHRIST But this too was proved to be a fake when carbon dating shows that the Turin Shroud also only goes

back to the Middle Ages. However, Ms Taylor, author of the book, ‘What Did Jesus Look Like?’, has analysed historical text, and skeletal records and established a realistic image of Christ.

She claims he would have been a short man who looked Middle Eastern, as opposed to the commonly depicted white man, which would have been unrealistic for the region at the time. Ms Taylor

wrote for the Irish Times: “What I have learnt is that Judaeans of this time were closest biologically to Iraqi Jews of the contemporary world. “In terms of a colour palette then, think

dark-brown to black hair, deep brown eyes, olive-brown skin. Jesus would have been a man of Middle Eastern appearance. “In terms of height, an average man of this time stood 166 cm (5 ft 5

in) tall.”