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  • What Did Jesus Look Like? by Joan E. Taylor
  • Jose de Carvalho
Taylor, Joan E. 2018. What Did Jesus Look Like? London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark. Hardcover. ISBN: 978-0567671493. Pp. 262. £17.28.

After obtaining a B.A. degree from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, Joan Taylor completed her postgraduate studies at the University of Otago, with NT studies as her major, before attending the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem (Kenyon Institute) as an annual scholar in 1986. She undertook a Ph.D. degree in early Christian history and archaeology at New College, Edinburgh University, and was appointed in 1992 to the position of Lecturer (and subsequently Senior Lecturer) at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, in both the departments of Religious Studies and of History. In 1995, she won an Irene Levi-Sala Award in the Archaeology of Israel for the book version of her Ph.D. thesis, Christians and the Holy Places (1993, rev. 2003; Oxford: Clarendon). During 1996–1997, she was a visiting lecturer and research associate in Women's Studies in New Testament at Harvard Divinity School, a position she held in association with a Fulbright Award. She has also been an honorary research fellow in the departments of History and of Jewish Studies at University College London, and has taught at King's College London since 2009.

The question of what Jesus would have looked like continues to fascinate scholars. Traditionally, Jesus is depicted as a handsome, fair-skinned man with long flowing locks down to his shoulders, light brown hair parted in the middle, blue eyes, a light beard and pristine linen robes. His face is somewhat feminine and serene, with slightly pink cheeks. How did the image of Jesus evolve to project a European man who does not fit the visualisation of a Mediterranean man and certainly not a Jew from Judaea, a depiction in which one would expect the portrayal of a man with brown eyes, olive-brown skin and black hair?

To depict a more authentic historical Jesus, Joan Taylor, a leading Christian origins scholar, surveyed the historical evidence of prevalent images of Jesus to suggest an entirely different version of this most famous man. The book embarks on a quest that travels through time to explore how [End Page 165] different people at different times sought to provide a picture of Jesus. Taylor investigated Western art and relics, memories and traditions, and ultimately relied on early texts and archaeology to create a visualisation of Jesus that she considered to be more authentic. She also considered what excavated bones can tell about the physical appearance of Judaean men in the first century, and how this data informs Jesus's height, skin and hair, among other things. The book attempts to describe Jesus's apparel by using the evidence of Jesus's clothing in the Gospels, comparative paintings and textiles that have survived from the time of Jesus in the environment close to the Dead Sea. The book does not attempt to create a perfect photograph, but it moves us closer to a more authentic depiction than the one we have inherited, even if the result is a little blurry.

Chapter 1 is intituled "Behold the Man? The Missing Picture of Jesus' Appearance." The Bible does not provide any record of Jesus's description, so we have a missing picture and a blank canvas that many would like to sketch on—providing fertile ground for misrepresentation.

Chapter 2, intituled "The European Jesus: The Letter of Lentulus," evaluates the possibility that the traditional depiction of Jesus emanates from a letter allegedly written by a Roman official named Lentulus. The letter described Jesus as follows:

He is a man indeed tall in stature and admirable, having a countenance worthy of respect, which those who look on him are able to esteem and fear. He has hair of the colour of an unripe hazelnut, and it falls smoothly about to his ears, then from his ears in curling locks a bit darker and shinier, flowing over his shoulders. He has a parting at the middle of the head according to the manner of the Nazarenes. He has a smooth and...

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