Whether or not you believe Jesus Christ is the son of God, you prob­a­bly envi­sion him (or, if you pre­fer, Him) in much the same way as most every­one else does. The long hair and beard, the robe, the san­dals, the beatif­ic gaze: these traits have all man­i­fest­ed across two mil­len­nia of Chris­t­ian art. “How­ev­er, these depic­tions don’t exact­ly match the pro­file of a first-cen­tu­ry Jew­ish car­pen­ter from the Mid­dle East,” says Hochela­ga host Tom­mie Trelawny in the new video above, an inves­ti­ga­tion into how our mod­ern con­cept of how Jesus looked came to be — and into what we can know about his real appear­ance.

First, we must turn to the Bible. In the King James Ver­sion, Rev­e­la­tion describes Jesus thus: “His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; and his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a fur­nace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. He had in His right hand sev­en stars, out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and His coun­te­nance was like the sun shin­ing in its strength.” That’s it for the New Tes­ta­ment. As for the Old Tes­ta­ment, Isa­iah describes a fig­ure that could pos­si­bly be Jesus by cred­it­ing him with “no form nor come­li­ness; and when we shall see him, there is no beau­ty that we should desire him.”

This scant Bib­li­cal evi­dence hard­ly aligns with the high-pro­file depic­tions of Jesus we’ve all seen. For many around the world today, the “default rep­re­sen­ta­tion” is the down­right glam­orous 1940 por­trait Head of Christ by the Amer­i­can painter Warn­er Sall­man (a Chicagoan, inci­den­tal­ly, much like the new­ly elect­ed Pope Leo XIV). One could see that art­work as the cul­mi­na­tion of a fair­ly long his­to­ry of visu­al depic­tions of Jesus, which first became abun­dant in the Roman Empire of the fourth cen­tu­ry under Con­stan­tine. Accord­ing to Gre­co-Roman mythol­o­gy, “hav­ing long hair and a beard were sym­bols of divine pow­er.” Ear­ly Chris­tians thus “want­ed to present their god using sim­i­lar artis­tic con­ven­tions,” plac­ing Jesus in a league with the likes of Zeus.

That’s the basic look Jesus has in most rep­re­sen­ta­tions, from the botched Span­ish fres­co that became a meme to the cru­ci­fied Mr. Uni­verse in South Korea, where I live, to Andy Warhol’s Christ $9.98. And yet, accord­ing to the dic­tates of Leviti­cus, “you shall not round the cor­ners of your heads, nei­ther shalt thou mar the cor­ners of thy beard.” Trelawny takes this into account when attempt­ing to recon­struct the his­tor­i­cal Jesus, also not­ing that, since Jesus could only be iden­ti­fied by Judas’ kiss of betray­al, he must have looked much like all the oth­er men around him. The result, when all of this is fed into an arti­fi­cial-intel­li­gence image gen­er­a­tor, is very much an every­man, which may be as his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate as we can get. But then, each time and place cre­ates its own Jesus — and now, with AI, each of us can do the same for our­selves.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Ten Ear­li­est Depic­tions of Jesus: How Art Visu­al­ized Jesus in the First Cen­turies After His Death

What Makes Caravaggio’s The Tak­ing of Christ a Time­less, Great Paint­ing?

How Leonar­do da Vin­ci Paint­ed The Last Sup­per: A Deep Dive Into a Mas­ter­piece

The Real Sto­ry of East­er: How We Got from the First East­er in the Bible to Bun­nies, Eggs & Choco­late

Intro­duc­tion to New Tes­ta­ment His­to­ry and Lit­er­a­ture: A Free Yale Course

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

On Tues­day, the car­di­nals locked them­selves into the Sis­tine Chapel, offi­cial­ly begin­ning the con­clave to elect the 267th pope. First for­mal­ized by Pope Gre­go­ry X in 1274, the con­clave (a word derived from the Latin words cum clave, mean­ing “with a key”) fol­lows a high­ly script­ed process honed over the past 800 years. How the con­clave works, and how it came into being—all of that gets cov­ered in the Reli­gion for Break­fast video above. It’s host­ed by the reli­gious stud­ies schol­ar Dr. Andrew M. Hen­ry.

Below, you can also delve into the more recent his­to­ry of papal elec­tions. Cre­at­ed by Use­ful Charts, this video cov­ers every papal con­clave since 1958 and includes a pre­dic­tion for who the next pope will be once the white smoke ris­es. Who is the next like­ly pon­tiff? No spoil­ers here. You’ll have to watch the video to find out.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Take a 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel & Explore Michelangelo’s Mas­ter­pieces Up Close

When There Were Three Popes at Once: An Ani­mat­ed Video Drawn in the Style of Medieval Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­script

Pope Fran­cis Set to Release a Rock/Pop Album: Lis­ten to the First Sin­gle

Pope John Paul II Takes Bat­ting Prac­tice in Cal­i­for­nia, 1987

The Lord said to Noah, there’s going to be a floody, floody; then to get those chil­dren out of the mud­dy, mud­dy; then to build him an arky, arky. This much we heard while toast­ing marsh­mal­lows around the camp­fire, at least if we grew up in a cer­tain mod­ern Protes­tant tra­di­tion. As adults, we may or may not believe that there ever lived a man called Noah who built an ark to save all the world’s inno­cent ani­mal species from a sin-cleans­ing flood. But unless we’ve tak­en a deep dive into ancient his­to­ry, we prob­a­bly don’t know that this espe­cial­ly famous Bible sto­ry was­n’t the first of its par­tic­u­lar sub­genre. As explained in the Hochela­ga video above, there are even old­er glob­al-del­uge tales to be reck­oned with.

In fact, one such myth appears in the old­est known work of lit­er­a­ture in human his­to­ry, the Epic of Gil­gamesh. “In it, the god Ea learns of this divine flood, and secret­ly warns the humans about this com­ing dis­as­ter,” says Hochela­ga cre­ator Tom­mie Trelawny. Thus informed, the king Utnapish­tim builds a giant cor­a­cle, a kind of cir­cu­lar boat “used to nav­i­gate the rivers of Mesopotamia for cen­turies.”

Like Noah, Utnapish­tim brings his fam­i­ly and a host of ani­mals aboard, and after rid­ing out the worst of the storm, finds that his craft has come to rest on a moun­tain­top. Also like Noah, he then sends birds out to find dry land. But ulti­mate­ly, “the sto­ry takes a strange turn: instead of being pleased, the gods are angry,” though Ea does step in to take respon­si­bil­i­ty and make sure that Utnapish­tim is reward­ed.

There are oth­er ver­sions with oth­er gods, floods, and ark-builders as well. In the Reli­gion for Break­fast video just above, reli­gious stud­ies schol­ar Andrew Mark Hen­ry com­pares the Bib­li­cal sto­ry of Noah and the Utnapish­tim episode of the Epic of Gil­gamesh with the “Sumer­ian flood sto­ry” from the sec­ond mil­len­ni­um BC and the two-cen­turies-old­er “Atra­ha­sis epic.” All of these ver­sions have a good deal in com­mon, not least the exec­u­tive deci­sion by an exas­per­at­ed high­er being (or beings) to wipe out almost entire­ly the human­i­ty they them­selves cre­at­ed. Iron­i­cal­ly, we mod­erns are like­ly to have first encoun­tered this tale of god­ly wrath and sub­se­quent mass destruc­tion in light­heart­ed, even cheer­ful pre­sen­ta­tions. Whether ancient Sume­ri­ans also sang about it in youth groups, no clay tablet has yet revealed.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Dis­cov­er Thomas Jefferson’s Cut-and-Paste Ver­sion of the Bible, and Read the Curi­ous Edi­tion Online

Lit­er­ary Crit­ic Northrop Frye Teach­es “The Bible and Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture”: All 25 Lec­tures Free Online

A Map of All the Coun­tries Men­tioned in the Bible: What The Coun­tries Were Called Then, and Now

Isaac Asimov’s Guide to the Bible: A Wit­ty, Eru­dite Atheist’s Guide to the World’s Most Famous Book

Did the Tow­er of Babel Actu­al­ly Exist?: A Look at the Archae­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence

The Epic of Gil­gamesh, the Old­est-Known Work of Lit­er­a­ture in World His­to­ry

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

It would hard­ly be notable to make the acquain­tance of a Greek Bud­dhist today. Despite hav­ing orig­i­nat­ed in Asia, that reli­gion — or phi­los­o­phy, or way of life, or what­ev­er you pre­fer to call it — now has adher­ents all over the world. Mod­ern-day Bud­dhists need not make an ardu­ous jour­ney in order to under­take an even more ardu­ous course of study under a rec­og­nized mas­ter; nor are the forms of Bud­dhism they prac­tice always rec­og­niz­able to the lay­man. What’s more sur­pris­ing is that the trans­plan­ta­tion into and hybridiza­tion with oth­er cul­tures that has brought about so many nov­el strains of Bud­dhism was going on even in the ancient world.

Take, for exam­ple, the “Gre­co-Bud­dhism” described in the Reli­gion for Break­fast video above, the sto­ry of which involves a vari­ety of fas­ci­nat­ing fig­ures both uni­ver­sal­ly known and rel­a­tive­ly obscure. The most famous of all of them would be Alexan­der the Great, who, as host Andrew Hen­ry puts it, “con­quered a mas­sive empire stretch­ing from Greece across cen­tral Asia all the way to the Indus Riv­er, Hel­l­eniz­ing the pop­u­la­tions along the way.”

But “the cul­tur­al exchange did­n’t just go one way,” as evi­denced by the still-new Bud­dhist reli­gion also spread­ing in the oth­er direc­tion, illus­trat­ed by pieces of text and works of art clear­ly shaped by both civ­i­liza­tion­al cur­rents.

Oth­er major play­ers in Gre­co-Bud­dhism include the philoso­pher Pyrrho of Elis, who trav­eled with Alexan­der and took ideas of the sus­pen­sion of judg­ment from Indi­a’s “gym­nosophists”; Ashoka, emper­or of the Indi­an sub­con­ti­nent in the third cen­tu­ry BC, an avowed Bud­dhist who renounced vio­lence for com­pas­sion (and pros­e­ly­ti­za­tion); and King Menan­der, “the most famous Greek who con­vert­ed to Bud­dhism,” who appears as a char­ac­ter in an ear­ly Bud­dhist text. It can still be dif­fi­cult to say for sure exact­ly who believed what in that peri­od, but it’s not hard to iden­ti­fy res­o­nances between Bud­dhist prin­ci­ples, broad­ly speak­ing, and those of such wide­ly known ancient Greek schools of thought as Sto­icism. Both of those belief sys­tems now hap­pen to have a good deal of cur­ren­cy in Sil­i­con Val­ley, though what lega­cy they’ll leave to be dis­cov­ered in its ruins a cou­ple mil­len­nia from now remains to be seen.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Take Harvard’s Intro­duc­to­ry Course on Bud­dhism, One of Five World Reli­gions Class­es Offered Free Online

Learn the His­to­ry of Indi­an Phi­los­o­phy in a 62 Episode Series from The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps: The Bud­dha, Bha­gavad-Gita, Non Vio­lence & More

One of the Old­est Bud­dhist Man­u­scripts Has Been Dig­i­tized & Put Online: Explore the Gand­hara Scroll

Breath­tak­ing­ly Detailed Tibetan Book Print­ed 40 Years Before the Guten­berg Bible

Dis­cov­er the World’s Old­est Uni­ver­si­ty, Which Opened in 427 CE, Housed 9 Mil­lion Man­u­scripts, and Then Edu­cat­ed Stu­dents for 800 Years

Con­cepts of the Hero in Greek Civ­i­liza­tion (A Free Har­vard Course)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.