Today one finds pictures of Jesus everywhere—in books and magazines, on television and the internet. But the profusion of images of Jesus is nothing new. Beginning as early as the late third century, the Nazarene miracle-worker appeared on carved Roman coffins. In fourth-century Rome, or more accurately, beneath fourth-century Rome, in the dank and sprawling galleries of the catacombs, Jesus first appeared in portrait imagery on frescoed walls and vaults. Mosaic imagery followed soon after. As Christianity's status eventually rose from marginal and foreign cult to the official religion of the state, the visual apparatus of ritual and worship developed apace. Sometimes Jesus appears with the bare, round face of Apollo, whose cult he rivaled in the upper reaches of fifth-century Roman society. Elsewhere he is depicted as a tunic-clad philosopher seated among his disciples; or sometimes with beard and long hair, looking like sculptured philosopher portraits of the day; or like Jupiter or Mithras (a Persian sun deity) or Asclepius (son of Apollo and the god of healing)—all rivals whose iconography waged Roman and Byzantine culture wars.

After late antiquity the iconography continued to evolve, relentlessly enfolding inherited images of Jesus into local visual garb to achieve updated versions that spoke to newly converted Christians. In the process, his appearance took on ethnic color and regional features. Jesus went from being a Greek philosopher to a French monarch or an Italian friar. In these constant reincarnations he assumed the appearance of whomever it was that cherished his image, which meant among other things that he almost never looked Jewish.

From the early church to the present, missionaries have taken icons and devotional images around the world with them. These portraits have served as bridges between cultures. Asian and African Christs emerged from the sixteenth century to the twentieth. Black Christs became part of the political agenda of racial liberation in the American civil rights movement, and Christ as a woman registered the aims of feminist Christians who challenged masculinist conceptions of the Christian message. Only a few days after the national celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, it was announced that African American rapper Kanye West would pose on the cover of Rolling Stone with a crown of thorns, evoking Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ, but also King's own axiom, "suffering is redemptive." Some were offended by the cover, dismissing it as a shameless PR stunt. But is it inconceivable that in addition to the commerce of selling music, the image also conveys the artist's faith?

The long history of images of Jesus as a white man ensures that portraying him as Black or Asian or as a woman still has an edge. So what does the likeness of Jesus mean in this dizzying spectrum of images? Since no one drew his picture from life (notwithstanding the old claim that Luke was an artist who did so), aren't all images of Jesus mere fiction in service of something sinister—such as the hegemony of race, gender, or national or ethnic identity? The website Rejesus, operated by several Christian organizations and denominations in Great Britain, offers a range of visual portrayals of Jesus and invites viewers to vote for their favorite image. Voting is tallied instantly and visitors can see how their selections compare to those of hundreds of others.

The range of images displayed at the website is telling. Jesus shows up as Che Guevara; as a Black Caribbean man; as a Caucasian with his head thrown back in laughter; as the actor Robert Powell, who portrayed Jesus in the well-known 1977 film Jesus of Nazareth; as the ghostly image of the Shroud of Turin; as an early Byzantine icon; and many more. The images have been culled to register the great diversity of theological and political ideals, all of which correspond to one element or another belonging to the "portrait" of Jesus found in the New Testament gospels.

In the end, one suspects that the likeness of Jesus is not simply his appearance, but what his image shows him to be like. That is, portraying the likeness of Jesus is the act of glimpsing whomever one believes him to be. By tailoring the racial and ethnic features of the face to one's own group, believers fashion an intimate and immediate connection with Jesus. To some, this will always appear ethnocentric or even racist—and perhaps it is. But it may also be more than that, since the impulse to identify with Jesus goes to the heart of devotion to him.

David Morgan is Duesenberg Professor of Christianity and the Arts and of Humanities and Art History at Valparaiso University, and author of The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice.