“He was a wanderer. He was on the streets. He accepted charity from strangers. He was with the poor.
“The 2nd Century philosopher Celsus said Jesus was shabby, a vagabond who was unkempt – he looked like a beggar. That tallies everything else we know about Jesus.
“He even described himself as homeless. As he said: ‘Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head’.”
Richard Neave
Even though Jesus would have had some cultural exchange with Europeans (who would have had lighter skin) and Africans (who would have had darker skin), Taylor still thinks he would have looked like a normal Jewish guy of the 1st century.
It’s likely that Jesus looked like the average person of his time in the Middle East due to the high intermarriage rate among Jews in Judea and Egypt.
According to archives, Judeans typically kept their hair and beards short and well-combed to combat the prevalence of lice.
