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From the first time Christian children settle into Sunday
school classrooms, an image of Jesus Christ is etched into their minds. In Africa, he is most often depicted as being taller than his disciples, lean, with long, flowing, light brown hair, fair skin and light- coloured eyes. Familiar though this image may be, it is inherently flawed. A person with these features and physical bearing would have looked very different from everyone else in the region where Jesus lived and ministered. Surely the authors of the Bible would have mentioned so stark a contrast.

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**An Accurate Portrait**
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¶For those accustomed to traditional Sunday school portraits of Jesus, the sculpture of the dark and swarthy Middle Eastern man that emerges from Neave's laboratory is a reminder of the roots of their faith.

¶"The fact that he probably looked a great deal more like a darker-skinned Semite than westerners are used to seeing him pictured is a reminder of his universality," says Charles D. Hackett, director of Episcopal studies at the Candler School of Theology in Atlanta.
"And [it is] a reminder of our tendency to sinfully appropriate him in the service of our cultural values."

¶Neave emphasizes that his re-creation is simply that of an adult man who lived in the same place and at the same time as Jesus. As might well be expected, not everyone agrees.

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https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a234/1282186/
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