Theological debate

Most early theological debate about Jesus' appearance arose from interpretations of Messianic prophecies and on the assumption that his physical form was the result of a miraculous virgin birth and so was determined rather more by divine will than ordinary biology. However, there were complex Christological debates about mechanisms of the divine incarnation into human flesh and about how Jesus may have inherited his mother's characteristics and the lineage of King David (since prophecies stated that the Messiah should be David's descendent).
This debate originated a dispute about the nature of Jesus' physical connection to the Jewish people, an issue that was later expressed in more racialized form.
Following Isaiah 53:2, most early theologians, such as Justin Martyr, insisted that Jesus was physically unprepossessing, with "no beauty that we should desire him." The anti-Christian author Celsus states that he was "short and ugly", an assertion that his Christian opponent Origen does not dispute. Whether these early debates reflect a purely scriptural view or a continuing oral tradition about his actual physique and physiognomy is not known.
In later centuries this early view was reversed. The Church Fathers Saint Jerome and Saint Augustine of Hippo argued that Jesus must have been ideally beautiful in face and body. For Augustine he was "beautiful as a child, beautiful on earth, beautiful in heaven."