You probably think this statement is so paradoxical as to be daft. So it is, in its broad form. So let’s narrow it down a bit by, paradoxically, adding a few words.
To love a person is to forget his face. Does this make more sense now? I’m prepared to argue that it does.
If you disagree, let me ask another question. What did Jesus look like?
We don’t know – this, though over the past two millennia he has arguably been loved by more people than anyone else. And if you doubt this statement, then here’s an unassailable one: his disciples definitely loved him more than anyone else. After all, they were prepared to abandon their families to follow Jesus wherever he led them, all the way to martyrdom.
Then why didn’t they leave a portrait of Jesus for posterity? By that I don’t necessarily mean a painted portrait, although the art of portraiture existed at the time. Egyptian funereal portraits, for example, were painted roughly at the same time, and they were masterly.
Moreover, the Incarnation changed in one fell swoop the Old Testament injunction against creating graven images of divine personages.
There was no doctrinal problem with depicting the image of Jesus, if not that of Christ. For 30-odd years Christ appeared to the multitudes as man Jesus, and men’s likenesses could be painted or sculpted with no fear of divine wrath. Witness the flourishing of iconography from the second century onwards, which was not only allowed but welcomed and supervised by that guardian of doctrine, the Church.
It’s conceivable, likely even, that the apostles had neither any artistic ability nor the means to commission someone so endowed. But what about a verbal portrait?
The Gospels are, among other things, reminiscences of Jesus. They probably weren’t written by any of the apostles, but there’s no doubt whatsoever that only one degree of separation existed between the evangelists and Jesus, two at most.
Mark was essentially writing down Peter’s accounts, Luke those of Paul, John those of his apostolic namesake, Matthew widely used the earlier, undiscovered Aramaic account (Q, in the terminology of biblical scholars) produced by eyewitnesses, and he certainly knew some of the twelve.
Sure enough, the evangelists go into extraordinary detail describing Jesus’s words, acts, thoughts and feelings – including those that show them themselves in a bad light. And yet they are extremely frugal with any details of his appearance, other than the odd throwaway line here and there, with none amounting to a full picture.
Why such disdain for the visual sense? Atheists use it as proof that historical Jesus never existed, but that’s simply vulgar ignorance.
Quite apart from specific references found in the works of Tacitus, Pliny, Suetonius and Josephus, not to mention the authors of the New Testament, anyone with any artistic sense will know that the Gospels are eyewitness accounts of physical events. To think otherwise would be to argue that those simple men possessed novelistic talents never again even approached by any writer – not to mention the knowledge of such disciplines as history and astronomy.
Also, immediately after the Resurrection, thousands of people, including those close to Jesus personally, went to their death with his name on their lips. It’s psychologically impossible that they would have done so for the sake of a fictional character.
Then there was the Docetic heresy, unequivocally rejected in the first Nicaean Council of 325. This was perhaps the most pernicious of many pure-spirit heterodoxies that denied the bodily being of Christ. What the multitudes saw, maintained the docetists, was a mirage, a phantasm that God in his omnipotence floated before their eyes.
Yet even assuming that for the sake of argument, it still doesn’t explain the scarcity of physical details in evangelical accounts. After all, writers both before and after the first century, from Homer to Dante to Goethe to Dostoyevsky to Kafka to thousands of lesser talents, were eminently capable of drawing figments of their imagination in palpable detail.
The fact is that, in common with other heresies, Docetism shows ignorance not only of God but also of man. This takes us back to the paradox in the title.
Think of someone you love with all your heart. Your spouse perhaps, or the lover your spouse knows nothing about, or your child. Now I’m sure that, for all the depth of your feelings, you’ve occasionally had to spend time away from your loved one.
Did you notice that on those occasions you found it hard to paint an accurate mental picture of that person? This, though you had no trouble remembering the exact appearance of, say, colleagues or causal acquaintances? I have my own experience in mind, but I’m sure it isn’t unique.
This shows that true love, as distinct from inferior forms of affection, is more metaphysical than physical. We love the soul not – at least not so much – the body. And the more we love, the deeper does our sight penetrate, the more it skips the physical shell to rest on the metaphysical essence. And this is something that can be deeply loved, but not accurately pictured.
That explains the evangelists’ otherwise inexplicable gaps of visual memory. They remembered too little because they loved too much.
1. It shouldn’t even be a question what JESUS looked like. The message is magnitudes of light years beyond any appearance.
2. JESUS appeared probably as any other ordinary Jew of the period. Long hair with the side curls, forked beard, etc. More or less like a Hasidic Jew appears today.
When it comes to Jesus Christ, the lack of a physical description baffles me. Since I cannot come up with anything, I shall submit to your explanation for the time being.
According to apocryphal sources, he resembled his mother. But we don’t know what she looked like either. As to Bert’s comment, I’m not sure I agree. It’s Christ’s person, more even than his message, that’s paramount. The confluence of man and God sanctified flesh, which many other religions consider evil, and indeed nature. After all, it would take only a couple of hours to read everything Christ is recorded to have said, which makes his person the greatest part of his message. What really matters isn’t so much what he say (although it’s sublime)as but what he is. And his appearance is part of his physical being. I can’t believe that all Jews looked the same at the time – they certainly don’t now. Sadducees and Pharisees must have looked different. Fishermen from Gallilee must have differed from the bookmen of Jerusalem. Hellenised Jews (of whom there were many in Palestine) must have looked different from those who spoke only Aramaic.
I’ve never much cared for the lily white versions of Christ produced by the great painters. Though artistically brilliant, they leave me cold, spiritually speaking.
I agree. Icons do it much better.
I agree. When I think of what he might have looked like, a much stronger – looking face, such as the Shroud of Turin comes to mind.
The portrait from the Sinai monastery with its kindly but see-through you gaze also seems to fit the bill.
” It’s Christ’s person, more even than his message, that’s paramount. The confluence of man and God sanctified flesh, which many other religions consider evil, and indeed nature.”
I cannot disagree with Alexander.
Very nice. Makes me think of Donne’s “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning “
Leonardo’s Jesus may be different from most others, though the latter, including Leonardo’s, do retain a rough consensus throughout the centuries as to the ‘gist’ of Christ’s visage: shoulder length light brown hair, small beard, moustache, blue eyes, and the most gentle of expressions. Where did this come from? Was it just an agreed upon projection of man’s ideal of how he should look?
One last thing. What do you think of Zeffirelli’s Jesus?
Richard Baukham thinks that the Evangelist John is in fact ‘The Beloved Disciple’ mentioned in that Gospel.
This Disciple is never named. This curious fact is explained as self- effacement; a device to identify who it was who did these things without appearing boastful if spelt out or resorting to the third person.
Baukham suggests that John’s Gospel focuses on the events in and around Jerusalem as against earlier ones because John was resident in the area. He was accepted in High Priestly circles, hence his knowledge of events within it.
Baukham also argues that The Evangelist was also the figure known as John the Elder at Ephesus, where he wrote or dictated his Gospel.
There was a strong tradition that Mathew’s Gospel was written by the Disciple of that name and there seems no entirely persuasive reason to reject it.
There is good reason to think that all the Gospels were written before AD 70, when Jerusalem was sacked by Titus. This event, cataclysmic for the Jews, is never mentioned in any of the Gospels or by Paul. It is prophesied by Jesus, although this wouldn’t have been too difficult, given the political and social ferment of the times and the fact that Jerusalem had been levelled before.
Bauckham’ s books, ‘Testimony of the Beloved Disciple : Narrative, History and Theology in the Gospel of John’ and ‘Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony” are persuasive arguments.
Baukham was Professor of New Testament Studies at St Andrews.
I’ve read quite a few studies on this subject, and any consensus is hard to discern, especially on the identity of John. Some scholars believe there were three Johns: the apostle, the Elder and the evangelist, some that the Elder and the evangelist were the same person, some that all three were. Most agree that, if the gospel had indeed been written by the apostle, he wouldn’t have referred to himself as ‘the beloved disciple’. Such boastfulness would be out of character.
Is it boastfulness? In the “Gospel of Love” (as some scholars call it), is it not appropriate for the author to identify himself not by his name (which is insignificant to him) but by the fact that he was (and is) loved? Boastfulness? No, humility.
Adjacent to Mr Boot’s blog in my daily diet is one that begins, today, with the heading “Power of suggestion and wishful thinking ” which I thought a perfect fit to the present parade pf ideas. How otherwise rational beings can entertain the foundational ideas of Christianity or those of any other religion is a mystery to me.
Newton? Galileo? Mendel? Einstein? Leibnitz? No rational beings in that lot.
They lived at times when such views could not be safely admitted. As they are all deceased no-one can know what they really thought or believed. You can know only what they felt obliged or volunteered to display. It should be beneath you to present as evidence views that cannot be substantiated today.
And surely Einstein was a Jew, so the question does not arise in that case.
But you did say any other religion, not just Christianity.
Prophet Isaiah says in his prophesy about the mission of Jesus in Isaiah 53:2, “He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him”. This can mean that Jesus of Nazareth had no attractive looks because God wanted people to believe in him not because of his outward comeliness or handsomeness, but because of what he said and did and, above al, because of what person He was. We could conjecture from Isaiah’s hint that Jesus of Nazareth looked like a common carpenter and had rather rough features, most likely way different from Leonardo’s depiction.
Perhaps we’re not told what He looked like in case some of us boast of looking more like Him than others do.
Perhaps there’s significance in the fact that the disciples didn’t recognise Him resurrected until he spoke.
Perhaps the undisguised (and indescribable) face of the Son of God, as glimpsed in the Transfiguration and seen for hours on end during the many days between Resurrection and Ascension, blotted out the memory of the weary, tearful, bloody face of the Son of Man.