Professor Joan Taylor has written a book about what Jesus looks like.

In What Did Jesus Look Like? (T&T Clark, February 2018), Joan Taylor imagines what Jesus would have looked like “as an average man”, reconstructed from the most up-to-date scientific knowledge concerning average first-century-AD Jewish men.

According to Taylor, this is what Jesus would have looked like, “if he was average”:

So basically, Jesus is Bret from Flight of the Conchords:

Overall, then, we can arrive at a general image of Jesus as an average man: he was probably around 166 cm (5 feet 5 inches) tall, somewhat slim and reasonably muscular, with olive-brown skin, dark brown to black hair, and brown eyes. He was likely bearded (but not heavily, or with a long beard), with shortish hair (probably not well kept) and aged about 30 years old at the start of his mission.

I note that Bret is a New Zealander. So this fact allows us to reach a further significant scientific conclusion: Kiwi men are the most Jesus-like men in the world.

Go in peace.

[Update: See Joan Taylor’s short article in the Irish Times, “What did Jesus really look like, as a Jew in 1st-century Judaea?“, 27 February 2018]