The handsome caucasian male, with flowing locks of light or dark-brown hair, kind, sometimes blue eyes, and neat beard is the Jesus Christ most of us know from religious paintings and church windows.
But now a team of forensic scientists have come up with what is now believed to be the most accurate portrayal yet of the Christian Messiah.
And, perhaps not really that unsurprisingly, considering where he originated from, Jesus has a much darker appearance than we are used to.
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Using a new scientific field known as forensic anthropology used in crime fighting, British scientists teamed up with Israeli archaeologists to create a computer generated photo fit of Jesus to show what he probably really looked like.
The Bible gives little clues as to his actual appearance, so how did they do it?
The team worked on the the description given by evangelist Matthew that it was hard to tell Jesus apart from his disciples during his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane.
This led to the conclusion that Christ would have had the typical features of the Galilean Semites of the time.
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From this they set about obtaining three well-preserved skulls from Jerusalem in Israel, where Jesus had lived and preached.
Richard Neave, a medical artist from the University of Manchester, used specialist computer programmes to recreate the muscles and skins overlaying the skulls - in the same way that forensic detectives put together a photofit to identify a body when all they have is a skeleton.
Three important pieces of information about Jesus' appearance - his hair, skin and eye colour were missing, however.
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So for the final mugshot, the team studied the people in several drawings at archaeological sites in Israel.
The only plausible conclusion was he had dark eyes and the research team ultimately concluded that Jesus had dark eyes, hair and skin, like his counterparts and was bearded in the Jewish tradition.
But they also concluded through thorough research of the Bible, he would not have had the long hair so often depicted, but instead, short tight curls.