Everyone has an idea of what Jesus looks like. As the most duplicated image in Western society, Jesus is commonly presented as a fair-skinned man with flowing long hair and a beard, wearing a cream-colored robe with long sleeves.

His face is so familiar that people claim to see him on pancakes, toast and once by a New York man who said, “I Found Jesus in My Chicken Tikka Masala.”

According to forensic experts, earlier interpretations of Jesus–in food, your mind, or in famous paintings–are likely wrong.

Thousands of Jesus paintings and drawings have been created through the ages, yet no one knows what he really looks like.

The vision of Jesus Christ, etched in our minds, is one suggested by artistic masterpieces, like Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” (1498), Michelangelo’s “The Last Judgement” (1541) or El Greco’s “Christ Carrying the Cross” (1540).

All these paintings, and appearances in popular culture are stereotypical portraits of Jesus, a long-haired man, usually blue eyed, with a robe that reveals his feet in sandals.

But there is nothing written in the New Testament offering evidence to his physical appearance, nor are there skeletal or other remains allowing a DNA analysis.

His real appearance has remained a mystery but now, experts believe they created a more accurate representation of the Son of God.

AI-created Jesus

A Dutch photographer and digital artist used cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology to produce a “historically accurate” image of Jesus.

Bas Uterwijk, a specialist in algorithmic picture synthesis, explained he used a neural network trained on photographs and paintings of thousands of human faces to create the face: “I used several cultural depictions of Jesus of Nazareth of Byzantine and Renaissance origin including Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi”, and the Turin Shroud, tweaking the ethnicity to a more convincing Middle-Eastern face.”

My Jesus portrait is going pretty viral on Twitter at the moment, without me being tagged so for everyone interested…

Uterwijk said he “felt it lacked any historical accuracy,” so he “changed the hair and beard to a more credible length and style for the time and region,” and “brought in elements found in some Fayum mummy portraits, pushing the renaissance art to the background.”

He added, “The result is an artistic impression of how this man could have looked, more than it is a scientific search for an exact likeness.”

Forensic reconstruction

Meanwhile, British forensic experts and Israeli archaeologists developed a 3D portrait of Jesus Christ’s face by combining the study of Semite skulls with modern-day forensics techniques.

Dr. Richard Neave, the author of book of “Making Faces: Using Forensic and Archaeological Evidence,” is the brilliant mind behind many famous facial reconstructions, including King Phillip II of Macedonia (father of Alexander the Great), and King Midas.

Neave, a retired medical artist and forensics facial reconstruction expert in Britain, headed the team that used forensic anthropology to recreate the face of Jesus, an image that no one was expecting.

The images constructed suggest that Jesus Christ might have had a wide face, dark eyes, short dark hair, a bushy beard, and tanned skin. These features are typical of Galilean Semites of his era, based on a description written in the New Testament, in the Gospel of Matthew, that also says Jesus closely resembled his disciples.

Neave, formerly from the University of Manchester, emphasized that the recreation is of an adult man living at the same time and place as Jesus, but some experts say the depiction is far more accurate than the famous masterpieces.

Analyzing data

The process involves intense analysis of cultural and archaeological data, along with techniques similar to those used in solving crimes.