Why is Jesus often depicted with long hair if 1 Corinthians 11:14 says it is disgraceful?
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According to these texts, Jesus evidently can and did appear in many forms. The question of whether Jesus had long hair is a topic that has been debated for centuries. While it may seem like a trivial matter, the length of Jesus’s hair has different meanings in various cultural and religious beliefs. On top of the tunic you would wear a mantle, a himation, and we know that Jesus wore one of these because this is what a woman touched when she wanted to be healed by him (see, for example, Mark chapter 5, verse 27).
Historical appearance
The classic image of a bearded, long-haired Jesus emerged as the favorite in the sixth century. Early Christians painted Jesus’s hair in many different ways— long or short, curly or straight, bearded or clean-shaven. The artists probably weren’t attempting to create a historically accurate image of the man. The New Testament offers virtually no physical description of him, so they would have based the portraits on their own, diverse ideas of what a god should look like.
Depiction of Jesus
In Europe, local ethnic tendencies in depictions of Jesus can be seen, for example in Spanish, German, or Early Netherlandish painting, but almost always surrounding figures are still more strongly characterised. For example, the Virgin Mary, after the vision reported by Bridget of Sweden, was often shown with blonde hair, but Christ's is very rarely paler than a light brown. In many cultures, hair length has been used as a symbol of power, status, and spirituality.
Race and appearance of Jesus
The length of Jesus’ hair in these images is often symbolic and may represent his holiness or divinity. Some of the earliest known artistic representations of Jesus date to the mid-third century A.D., more than two centuries after his death. These are the paintings in the ancient catacombs of St. Domitilla in Rome, first discovered some 400 years ago. Reflecting one of the most common images of Jesus at the time, the paintings depict Jesus as the Good Shepherd, a young, short-haired, beardless man with a lamb around his shoulders. Despite these historical and cultural arguments, there is still no definitive answer to the question of whether or not Jesus had long hair. Many contemporary interpretations of Jesus’s appearance acknowledge that physical descriptions of him are not provided in the Bible.
The Appearance of Jesus: Hairstyles and Beards in Bible Times
It certainly does not mean that the hair is on top of the head. The Bible clearly teaches in this passage that long hair is a covering and short hair is not. This covering is a sign of submission and is seemly on a woman. In fact, short hair that no longer acts as a covering is shameful on a woman.
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So, how does this help us determine the length of hair for Jesus. Well, for one thing, Jesus was a man's man in His human nature. Though the Old Testament law kept Him from shaving His hair, the principles given by Paul would keep Him from having womanly long hair as He is often depicted.
We can draw circumstantial shreds of evidence by carefully reading the four gospels. When Jesus was physically alive, the people around Him have short hair (this can easily be proven by reading historical findings of how people looked like during the antiquities). During the first century AD, Jewish men typically had short hair, while women wore their hair longer.
Symbolically, it represents divine strength, youthfulness, and beauty. However, as debates continue over the historical and cultural accuracy of Jesus’s appearance, interpretations of hair length are constantly evolving. There have also been suggestions that early portraitists confused Jesus of Nazareth with the religious order of the Nazirites, who vowed not to cut their hair. This explanation, however, is inconsistent with the many short-haired Jesus images that survive from antiquity. But why did this imagery of a Christ with short hair to a Christ with long hair come about?
Latter-Day Saint depictions
At the time, it was fashionable for men to have longer hair, and thus it was not "a disgrace". The historian Josephus describes the Zealots (a Jewish group who wanted to push the Romans out of Judaea) as a bunch of murderous transvestites who donned "dyed mantles" - chlanidia - indicating that they were women's wear. This suggests that real men, unless they were of the highest status, should wear undyed clothing. Overall a man in Jesus's world would wear a knee-length tunic, a chiton, and a woman an ankle-length one, and if you swapped these around it was a statement.
Some philosophers, like St. Augustine, appreciated the diverse ways of portraying the incarnate Jesus. Historically, artists have depicted Jesus with both long-flowing hair and short, neatly trimmed hair. However, neither of these images match God's commands regarding hairstyles. The Jesus we’ve inherited from centuries of Christian art is not accurate, but it is a powerful brand.
It was simply meant to prompt people to consider Jesus as being a man of his time and place, since we are never told he looked distinctive. In the desert caves close to the Dead Sea and Masada, sandals from the time of Jesus have come to light, so we can see exactly what they were like. They were very simple, with the soles made of thick pieces of leather sewn together, and the upper parts made of straps of leather going through the toes. The sayings of Jesus are generally considered the more accurate parts of the Gospels, so from this we can assume that Jesus really did not wear such robes. The Gospels make it clear that He spent a lot of time outdoors. He hung out with fishermen, the kind of characters who would never respect and look up to a weakling.
He was a carpenter, a builder, a man who knew the construction trade. He knew how to cut down trees and make wooden beams, to haul rocks to build walls, to construct buildings from stone and timber. Being as there is no image of Jesus that has any historical credibility, the question is based on a faulty premise.
Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here. This, to me, is the beginning of a different way of seeing Jesus, and one very relevant for our times of massive inequality between rich and poor, as in the Roman Empire. Jesus aligned himself with the poor and this would have been obvious from how he looked. For this reason, there was no way that He remained to be as skinny as many people have had assumed.
There are no pictures of Jesus created during his lifetime, and there is no mention of his hair length in the Bible. No one knows for sure how Jesus looked in the eyes of his contemporaries. However, there is evidence that suggests the hair of Jesus may have been rather short—black or dark in color—and his beard closely trimmed. Not all images of Jesus have Him with long hair, but all modern ones do. In fact the first images found in the Catacombs of Rome have Jesus portrayed with short hair.
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