Forensic facial expert reconstructs Jesus Christ's face using ancient skulls

[Darkhawk]

I'm fairly sure you know as well as I do that that is not a soteriological opinion on my part, Kiya. Following -- in an of course much broader sense than originally intended -- the rabbinic principle of hiddur mitzvah I am strongly in favour of aesthetic beauty as a necessarily indispensable element of religious practice. Holy things ought to be beautiful things, and that extends to Christian depictions of Christ as well as it extends to an aron kodesh or the design of a mosque.

As holy things ought to be beautiful, a theology that is incapable of grasping beauty in the homely is fundamentally and profoundly flawed. Especially in the case where that theology is explicitly rooted in inversion of common order via exaltation of the humble and knocking the exalted down a peg.

This is not an argument against beautiful portrayals, but it is, I think, a very strong argument against rejection of those portrayals which are not in keeping with the current models of conventional exaltation.  To the extent that someone who is concerned with Christian theology cannot find such things beautiful, that would be their failing, I would argue, in the sense of the Fall.

[sevensons]

He appears a world-away from western representations of Jesus Christ but using forensic data from the skulls of ancient first century Jewish men, a British anatomical artist has re-imagined the face of the son of God.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/forensic-facial-expert-reconstructs-jesus-christs-face-using-ancient-skulls-a6772926.html

This project  effectively examines the  patient basin