Has the earliest portrait of Jesus just been found?

A shock discovery in Bible scholarship

The Bible says little about what Jesus looked like, and Christianity seems not to know either. He is presented looking like any range of men—especially that Italian guy with very amazing hair.

But a startling possibility comes in view. A painting of a Jewish man done around 244 A.D. has had a hazy identification. The scholar Barbara Crostini argues the figure might be “the earliest portrait of Jesus.”

I’m going over the case that she makes.

face from panel at Dura-Europos synagogue (Flickr) (edited)

The story begins in 1920, when a city was found buried in the sands of modern day Syria.

A site along the Euphrates River was excavated, as the ancient walls of Dura Europos began to re-appear. It seems that during a siege around 256–57 AD, the citizens had been gassed to death in an early use of chemical warfare. The city was forgotten.

Then it became a museum of the ancient world.