法醫科學家透露耶穌的真面目 (1)
Forensic Scientists Reveal What Jesus
Really Looked Like — According to Science, That Is
Forensic expert Richard Neave has
reconstructed dozens of famous faces over the years, including Philip II of
Macedonia, Alexander the Great’s father, and King Midas of Phrygia.
He use to work as a medical artist at
the University of Manchester. His job was to apply forensic anthropology to
unsolved crimes. This was accomplished by building a portrait in the likeness
of the person who was described in the Bible and according to other
scientific evidence.
To build a portrait of Christ, Neave relied
heavily on the fact that prior to the crucifixion Judas Iscariot had to point
out who he was because it was hard to tell him apart from his disciples.
Neave and his team then got a hold of
Semite skills from a group of Israeli archaeologists and then created X-ray
“slices” of the skulls. This was done with computers, which enabled the
creation of digitized muscles and skin — as they would appear on an
average Semite skull.
According to historical evidence,
Neave found that Jesus would have definitely been bearded and wear short hair.
He also would have most likely had tight curls, in keeping with Jewish
tradition of the time.
They also concluded that Jesus most
likely would have been a bit over 5ft tall, and he would have been weather
beaten after working as a carpenter until he was about 30. The result of
Neave’s conclusions are as follows:
As you can see, the rendering clashes with
paintings most commonly displayed in churches and homes around the world. While
the rendering is “scientific” in nature, no one can be 100 percent
sure this is how he appeared.
If you refer to the earliest
depictions of Christ, you can see the scientists may not have been too far off.
The following three images can be dated back to the 3rd century. As you can see
via the second and third image, Jesus did appear darker but his hair was longer
(second image) and the third image depicts him wearing the shorter, tight
curls.
From the first time Christian children
settle into Sunday school classrooms, an image of Jesus Christ is etched
into their minds. In North America he is most often depicted as being taller than his disciples, lean, with long, flowing, light
brown hair, fair skin and light-colored 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. On the contrary, according to the Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus was
arrested in the garden of Gethsemane before the Crucifixion, Judas Iscariot had
to indicate to the soldiers who Jesus was because they could not tell him apart
from his disciples.
Further clouding the question of what Jesus looked like is
the simple fact that nowhere in the New Testament is Jesus described, nor have any drawings of him ever been uncovered. There is the additional problem of
having neither a skeleton nor other bodily remains to probe for DNA. In the
absence of evidence, our images of Jesus have been left to the imagination of artists.
The influences of the artists' cultures
and traditions can be profound, observes Carlos F. Cardoza-Orlandi, associate
professor of world Christianity at Columbia Theological Seminary in Atlanta.
"While Western imagery is dominant, in other parts of the world he is
often shown as black, Arab or Hispanic." And so the fundamental question remains: What did
Jesus look like?
An answer has emerged from an exciting
new field of science: forensic anthropology.( 法醫人類學) Using methods similar to those police have
developed to solve crimes, British scientists, assisted by Israeli
archeologists, have re-created what they believe is the most accurate image of the most
famous face in human history.
·
The Body As
Evidence
An outgrowth of physical anthropology,
forensic anthropology uses cultural and archeological data as well as the
physical and biological sciences to study different groups of people, explains
A. Midori Albert, a professor who teaches forensic anthropology at the
University of North Carolina at Wilmington.
Experts in this highly specialized
field require a working knowledge of genetics, and human growth and
development. In their research they also draw from the fields of primatology,
paleoanthropology (the study of primate and human evolution) -老考古學家and human osteology-骨格學 (the study of the skeleton). Even
seemingly distant fields like nutrition, dentistry and climate adaptation play
a role in this type of investigation.
While forensic anthropology is usually
used to solve crimes, Richard Neave, a medical artist retired from The
University of Manchester in England, realized it also could shed light on the
appearance of Jesus. The co-author of Making Faces: Using Forensic And
Archaeological Evidence, Neave had ventured in controversial areas before. Over
the past two decades, he had reconstructed dozens of famous faces, including
Philip II of Macedonia, the father of Alexander the Great, and King Midas of
Phrygia. If anyone could create an accurate portrait of Jesus, it would be
Neave.
13th Century Byzantine mosaic, San Marco, Venice.
SCALA/ART
RESOURCE, NY
·
16th Century Renaissance painting by Titian.
GIRAUDON/ART
RESOURCE, NY
網路資訊
Justin
Lai (賴正雄)
01/03/2016
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