Expert says he didn’t have a beard at all!

THE way Jesus really looked has always been a matter of intense speculation.

One problem is that early Christians did not want ‘idols’ to be worshipped – so images of Christ were not kept.

Art from later periods show him with long hair, a beard and robes – but experts say it would have been unusual for many men to have facial hair in the first century.

Joan Taylor, professor of Christian Origins at King’s College London, said the exceptions were slaves, and those who had taken a vow to stop drinking wine. Jewish men – in common with civilised Greeks and Romans – were typically clean-shaven.

The very earliest depictions of Jesus tended to show him as a clean-shaven shepherd around 200-300AD. The more modern portrayals started in the 4th century AD when Byzantine artists depicted him as a younger version of Zeus – who was shown with a flowing beard and long hair.

Another commonly held view of how Jesus appears comes from the Shroud of Turin, pictured. While some believe the image imprinted on the death shroud is genuine, radiocarbon dating suggests it was made around 1260-1390 AD.