triumphant sun god, like apollo. since then, jesus has been re-imagined by every generation and movies have never tired of portraying him, from jesus christ superstar to the brooding artist in jesus of montreal to the smiling buddy christ of the film dogma. hallelujah jesus is not, as far as i can tell historically, the blonde, blue-eyed max von sydow version or even jeffrey hunter who we get from the movies. i think he would have looked very much like what we know by the term hippies. now, we may be able to literally put some flesh on the bones of centuries of guessing. that s what the noted medical and forensic artist richard neave did when biblical scholars gave him a copy of a skull from the first century, found in the
the nose is quite prominent, and a full mouth, a youngish face, between 30 and 40, i suppose. neave stresses that his jesus head is not the jesus head. at best, it represents a face that jesus himself might have seen or had. and still it attracts debate. i ve had one or two comments from people suggesting that it doesn t look anything like jesus which, of course, doesn t surprise me. they actually, some of them, do go on to say that they know exactly what jesus does look like, because they took a photograph of him only three weeks ago. even though science has given us a better idea of what jesus might have really looked like, jesus face wouldn t matter were it not for what he said and what he did. and the gospels tell us, in a surprisingly short time, just three years. what was the message of this carpenter s son from galilee?
they wanted to get an idea of what a man from jesus time and place might have looked like. it is a strong skull. and to live satisfactorily, especially the kind of life jesus led, you re going to have to be a fairly tough, rugged kind of fellow. you know, he walked miles. he carried his staph. he could be flogged. he could carry his cross. i mean, you know, that takes a lot of physical strength and determination. and so, he s not a wimp. neave has spent nearly 30 years reconstructing the heads of mystery people anonymous murder victims, ancient archeological finds and suicides. but how would he approach a recreation of a face from 2,000 years ago? it s done in exactly the same way as you would handle a forensic case. there s absolutely no difference, except that in this case, a nice clean, prepared cast, rather than the original skull. then you make a copy of that,
jesus is not, as far as i can tell historically, the blonde, blue-eyed max von sydow version or even jeffrey hunter who we get from the movies. i think he would have looked very much like what we know by the term hippies. now, we may be able to literally put some flesh on the bones of centuries of guessing. that s what the noted medical and forensic artist richard neave did when biblical scholars gave him a copy of a skull from the first century, found in the present-day israel. they wanted to get an idea of what a man from jesus time and place might have looked like. it is a strong skull. and to live satisfactorily, especially the kind of life jesus led, you re going to have to be a fairly tough, rugged kind of fellow. you know, he walked miles. he carried his staff. he could be flogged. he could carry his cross. i mean, you know, that takes a lot of physical strength and determination.
and that s mounted onto a metal stand. pegs are inserted into the skull at specific anatomical points, and these indicate the average thickness of tissue that you are going to get, say, there or there or there. neave s skull was rendered into an image by the bbc, and further developed by the artist donato giancola, with the help of neave and biblical scholars. the result is a startling image nothing like the jesus that history has imagined. the nose is quite prominent, and a full mouth, a youngish face, between 30 and 40, i suppose. neave stresses that his jesus head is not the jesus head. at best, it represents a face that jesus himself might have seen or had. and still it attracts debate. i ve had one or two comments