AI-Generated Video Offers Insight into What Christ Might Have Looked Like
Based on the Shroud of Turin
Daily Mail
An AI video based on a famous religious artifact has revealed what Christ may have looked like.
The Shroud of Turin is an ancient cloth which many Christians believe was used to wrap Jesus' mutilated body after he died on the cross.
Photos of the cloth were fed into Midjourney, an AI image generator, which then produced a lifelike image and video of Christ blinking, smiling and praying as he may have once did before the crucifixion around 33AD.
The clip was posted on X, where users have called being touted as 'the true face of Jesus.'
However, others have pointed out that the technology made Jesus appear white when he would have been Middle Eastern with a darker complexion.
'Impossible, because he looks like me and I'm Norwegian,' an X user commented on the post.
Dr Meredith Warren, senior lecturer on Biblical and religious studies at Sheffield University, previously told DailyMail.com that while Jesus is widely portrayed as Caucasian, he 'would have had brown skin, brown eyes, like the local population.'
Dr Warren thinks the best representations of how Jesus might have looked come from the Egyptian mummy portraits.
These paintings were made of men who died between 80 and 120 AD in a similar part of the world to Jesus.
They show men with dark eyes, brown skin, short curly hair, beards and facial features which would have been distinctive of people living in what is now Egypt, Palestine, and Israel.
Likewise, in 2015, medical artist Richard Neave used forensic techniques to reconstruct the face of a Judean man by studying Semite skulls.
The portrait revealed a wide face, dark eyes, a bushy beard and short curly hair, as well as a tanned complexion which might have been typical of Jews in the Galilee area.
While this is just a portrait of an adult man living at the same time as Jesus, this reconstruction gives us a better idea of what kind of features he may have had.
The original AI image was created by the Daily Express using Midjourney, a generative AI that allows users to create realistic images from text prompts, to recreate the face of Jesus from the Shroud's markings.
The linen shows an emaciated man with long, dark hair, a beard, and cuts and grazes on his face and body.
Interestingly, this AI-generated version of Christ resembles many depictions of him from classical art.
Much like the image, the Shroud has been a lightning rod for controversy, with some disputing the claim that this cloth was actually used as Jesus' burial shroud.
It has been preserved since 1578 in the royal chapel of the cathedral of San Giovanni Battista in Turin, Italy.
Markings on the body also correspond with crucifixion wounds of Jesus mentioned in the Bible, including thorn marks on the head, lacerations on the back and bruises on the shoulders.
The cloth appears to show faint, brownish stains on the front and back, depicting a gaunt man with sunken eyes who stood about six feet tall.
The Bible states that after Jesus was crucified, Joseph of Arimathea wrapped his body in a length of linen and placed it inside the tomb.