Is This What Jesus Truly Looked Like?

A portrait of a British scientist's depiction of Jesus Christ has surfaced on the Internet.

The Sun reported that Richard Neave, a retired medical artist from the University of Manchester, recreated an image of what Jesus might have looked like based on forensic anthropology and Christ's ethnicity.

While the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci and other Western artists show the Son of God having a long wavy hair, light brown or blue eyes and fair skin, Richard Neave's illustration displays otherwise.

As someone born and raised as a carpenter in Jerusalem, Jesus must have had a black short curly hair, dark eyes and brown skin. Well, that is according to the scientist's description of Christ's physical features based on his research.

For his study, Richard Neave worked with a team of Israeli archeologists to study Semite male skulls found near the city of Jerusalem. The group then produced X-ray slices of the skulls using computerized tomography to come up with a 3D model of his facial structure, muscles and skin. Subsequently, they created the skull's cast with the use of clay where the eyelids, nose and lips were modeled.

The team identified Christ's hair and eye colors based on the First Century drawings found at different Israeli archaeological sites. During the Biblical time, the average height of a Semite male was reportedly 5 feet and 1 inch, while the average weight was about 110 pounds.

Thus, Richard Neave's recreated photo of Jesus is published in Popular Mechanics in January 2015.

According to Unilad, Richard Neave began his study in 1998. His cast of skull was shown in the 2001 BBC documentary Son of God that tackled the historical basis of Jesus.

Meanwhile, a different version of the face of Jesus was also created by another team of scientists. The face was based on a mysterious archaeological find: the Shroud of Turin as shown in the video below.