Hey, it's Jack here. I'm still out in the van, writing up my travel book. The wind and rain

coming down hard in France, as you might hear in the background. We're recording an old-school

show and another interview at the end of this month, which we're really excited to produce and share.

In the meantime, I'm happy to release a one-to-one conversation with me and John Nelson, author

of Jesus' physical appearance and host at Premier Unbelievable.

We explore why the biblical writers include no description of Jesus' body, what that absence might mean,

and how Jesus' appearance has been imagined, altered and politicised across history.

Along the way, we discuss Jesus' clothing, stoic and cynic influences, animals and incarnation,

modern Christian culture, the politics of Jesus' image, and a few of the more intriguing of the Christian conspiracy theories.

Plenty to get your teeth into. I hope welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

It's great to be here with you.

I really enjoyed your book, Jesus' physical appearance.

Safe to say you managed to write 100,000 words on nothing.

It's a hundred thousand word argument from silence.

There was a point where I was about a third of the way through the book and I thought,

can I actually write 100,000 words on Jesus' appearance?

You're a third of the way through.

Well, the book is essentially, right, the idea that in the four synoptic gospels,

four synoptic gospels, four synoptic gospels, well, three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, but you might actually be correct to say that there is a fourth. A lot of people are now seeing John as dependent on the earlier synoptic gospels. So some people are saying that this is a kind of fourth synoptic gospel. I knew that. That's where you're already you're ahead of the curve. So I didn't know this before picking up the book that there is no description of Jesus's bodies physicality in the four gospels, right? But there's

some description of his clothes. Yeah. Why is no one describing Jesus's physical appearance? He's

probably the most important character in the whole of history. Why do they say nothing about it? Yeah, I mean, a lot of

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