Why Don’t The Gospels Describe Jesus’ Appearance?

1. 

   @CosmicSkeptic

   March 4, 2026 at 12:13 pm

   Check out John's writing here: https://www.behindthegospels.com/

2. 

   @Navak_

   March 4, 2026 at 12:13 pm

   "Able-bodied Galilean man" is about the best description we can get from the Gospels, and yet changing the "able-bodied" or "man" part is immediately more concerning than changing the "Galilean" part, but it shouldn't be mysterious as to why. Some of the major miracles Jesus repeatedly performs are healing the sick, the paralytic in particular. To imagine a HANDICAPPED man going around healing other handicapped people, but not himself, adds a potent layer of narrative meaning which confuses the whole story. That is not a simple substitution, that changes the formula.

   Similarly, Jesus as a woman changes the narrative and is not a simple substitution. The Messianic prophecies expect a "Son of David" and scripture tells of a "Son of Man." There is the double entendre in "Prince of Peace" (verbatim same title as Augustus) and Son of God (again parallels Augustus as son of a god). Emotional narrative qualities like the relationship with Mary and Mary Magdalene are altered. And how could this woman Jesus be mistaken for John the Baptist reborn unless we also gender bend John? Furthermore the brutality of the Crucifixion takes on a different emotional quality if it's a woman… women evoke a greater sense of pity and mercy. Basically it's much more disruptive to the story than it is to imagine him as a different ethnicity.

3. 

   @72mak51

   March 4, 2026 at 12:13 pm

   That is Chris Pratt! Chris Pratt is God!

4. 

   @WilliamrobertBanks

   March 4, 2026 at 12:13 pm

   Yahldaboath is his name😮😮

5. 

   @lucytupper69

   March 4, 2026 at 12:13 pm

   A white skinned man in the ME 2000 years ago was certainly a miracle. Jesus was and is a miracle worker. He was white. That’s why he had so many followers!

6. 

   @lucytupper69

   March 4, 2026 at 12:13 pm

   Yes, Jesus was born in the ME, but Joseph was not his father. His father is God. God is white. He’s always been white. In every painting or picture of God that I have seen, he is white. Therefore, Jesus is white! Judges 5:10 KJV tells us that he rode on his WHITE ASS. How much more proof do you need?

7. 

   @lucytupper69

   March 4, 2026 at 12:13 pm

   You only have to look up to heaven and see the fluffy white clouds and rays of light to know that the inhabitants are white!

8. 

   @thinkabit7264

   March 4, 2026 at 12:13 pm

   Apart from the fact that if he existed he was a Judean/Palestinian, commonly darker skinned with brown or black hair (phenotypical) if Christians are to be believed (and that's an obvious no) he was born of a Virgin and so would only have two X chromosomes not the X and Y males have because the Y needs male input (pardon the pun). This means Yeshua – according to conservative Christians-was a female. OOOPS! So sorry Yeshua, no playing male sports like 'stone the gays' for you!. A male with no Y chromosome (XX males), may have generally male features like testes and male hormones, but often infertility; and varied features like short stature or ambiguous genitalia and slight build with fine features are present, so the more feminine appearance is a reasonable possibility.

   And one last fun bit to explode the 'THERE ARE ONLY TWO SEXES-MALE AND FEMALE!!!!! (usually misidentified as genders) biologically ignorant conservative brain cells – SRY gene abnormalities can result in ambiguous or female-appearing genitals in XX males. Could it be that Yeshua was intersex? Without a peek under the robes we will never know and we certainly will have no idea what he/she/they looked like other as archeological evidence has demonstrated:1st century Palestinian/Judean Semites commonly appeared (we have lots of genetic evidence from ossuraries) short and brown with dark or black hair. But then again an intersex Yeshua may have been a DEI hire 🙂

9. 

   @dundundunnnnnnnnnnnn

   March 4, 2026 at 12:13 pm

   I think white is embodiment of beauty and majesty, and if God is beautiful and glorious therefore God must be white (the gospel says no one recognize Jesus during post resurrection). And if God is real and he's black (according to afrocentric view of Jesus) I'd rather be burn in hell for eternity than worshipping that kind of God.

10. 

    @blackmancer

    March 4, 2026 at 12:13 pm

    Why should they?

11. 

    @pam7500

    March 4, 2026 at 12:13 pm

    In the OT, the only description of the future Messiah was He was not comely, nor a man that you would look upon.

12. 

    @3AA2

    March 4, 2026 at 12:13 pm

    Stimulating dialogue! Alex, hope to see your upcoming tour make its way to the U.S.!! God bless

13. 

    @casparleeb5897

    March 4, 2026 at 12:13 pm

    Nice conversation, although I will heavily disagree with a point raised around minute 31, namely, that the "normative Christ is white because of Europe's colonial history".

    The exact opposite is true – the "normative Christ" is depicted with white skin because Europe (where the vast majority of people tend to have fair complexions) was the heartland and centre of Christendom for roughly 1500 years. The Catholic Church in Europe, led by Europeans, developed the image-culture of Christianity by infusing greco-roman visual traditions with the stories of the Gospel. It was European Catholic designs that codified the colour of Mary's cloak (dark blue), the depiction of Jesus as a bearded man (the earliest Christian depictions in the Middle East pre-Roman Catholicism tend to show Christ as a young man without a beard), the appearance of the devil (a very obvious recuperation of the Pagan god Pan), etc etc etc. When colonists arrived in foreign continents, they were only spreading a by-then ancient canon that had no alternative models, since it owed it's appearance to the area it was developed in.

    Obviously a religion that almost exclusively exists in an area with "white people" is going to use their own visual and social references as a guide in codifying religious depictions, which then become their own visual canon. At no moment whatsoever were they thinking "we must depict Christ as a white man so that colonized people look up to us", thinking this is mixing up the cart and the horse.

    An easy counterexample would be Islam, which did not partake in modern colonialism but nonetheless always conserves the explicitly arab roots of the religion – like how Imams MUST sing the Quran verses in Arabic, no matter if they are in Mauritania or Indonesia. Did Islam do this out of ethnic chauvinism? No, Islam developed that way because it was initially an Arab religion developing in an Arab context.

    This somewhat cheap attempt to reduce Jesus' depiction in religious art to some kind of ethnic supremacism is ahistorical and patently false. And as the interviewee himself stated before, there are depictions of Jesus from the world around that have no qualms about representing him as a Korean, a Subsaharan African, an Indigenous American, etc. So the entire problem of a "normative Christ" is not even a real issue, unless one takes umbrage with the basic historical fact that for most of Christian history, it was a religion almost entirely practiced by white people.

14. 

    @Trifluvien

    March 4, 2026 at 12:13 pm

    I am reminded of going to a Catholic church for Our Lady of Guadeloupe on her feast day with my wife who is Mexican. In case you don't know, it commemorates Mary appearing to an indigenous Mexican and his uncle in the 1500s. When she appeared to them, she looked like a native American, not like a European as the Spanish colonizers had depicted her. Anyway, when I was at this Mass, the white priest speaking in Spanish said in his homily how Mary had appeared in Korea as well. That time, her features were of a Korean woman. Now I am not going to criticise Catholics about Mariolatry and I know they don't consider Mary a goddess, but it made me think of that famous quote from Montesquieu: "If triangles had a god, they would give him three sides."

15. 

    @user-ky6ib3tn8x

    March 4, 2026 at 12:13 pm

    The fact is, given the Scriptures we know absolutely nothing beyond the Gospel accounts as to anything about JC's pre/post-resurrection appearances.

16. 

    @caleighem

    March 4, 2026 at 12:13 pm

    I’m surprised this doesn’t have way more views

17. 

    @caleighem

    March 4, 2026 at 12:13 pm

    Who’s here after the latest episode? ❤

18. 

    @patrickcopt

    March 4, 2026 at 12:13 pm

    I love my God, and I love to be reminded that I know nothing about him!

19. 

    @luxmaggie

    March 4, 2026 at 12:13 pm

    Meanwhile there's a passage in the Bible that describes a woman's boobs

20. 

    @rebeccah9136

    March 4, 2026 at 12:13 pm

    44:50 patriarchy and colonialism… you have to look at the intersection of patriarchy and racist colonial beliefs to unpack this issue. The goal was to exclude anyone who wasn't white, cis, able-bodied, and male.

21. 

    @MancFlowerDragon

    March 4, 2026 at 12:13 pm

    Quite recently Cynthia Erico has performed the lead role of “Jesus Christ Superstar.” I don’t recall any public outcry. It seems anything goes.

22. 

    @drzaius844

    March 4, 2026 at 12:13 pm

    14:08 just wait! 😂

23. 

    @ToddG-i7m

    March 4, 2026 at 12:13 pm

    I'm not sure how this honestly affects my faith, but then again I never had any kind of faith in any religious belief.

    With that said, I'm fully certain it's all about the message. I have not yet watched and listened but the title to me seems a bit silly.

24. 

    @freakyflo369

    March 4, 2026 at 12:13 pm

    I think it would be pointless to describe him, he is the embodiment of his teachings and I think it will be obvious when those teachings return into the consciousness of the world, because all of the sudden people will start to behave differently and for example start to realize how meaningless much of the conflict is.

Comments are closed.