Far too many people think that Jesus from the Bible was light skinned, even though he grew up in what we call the Middle East.
I don't care if he was purple, his message was be kind to each other and we've failed to grasp even that simple philosophy.
If he actually lived it might even matter.
There are historical records of somebody named Jesus that lived at the time. The Bible story is just horse shit. He was an apocalyptic preacher just like today, and probably had undiagnosed schizophrenia, thought he could talk to God, and was the son of God. Plenty of people think that today, and we put them in Institutions instead of create a whole ass religion out of their life.
I will say this, I can’t think of a thing Jesus says in the Bible that isn’t pretty based. He prioritized pragmatism over rules and protocol, compassion and understanding over judgment, generosity over greed, forgiveness over scorn, acts over words. Everyone following his death like Paul seem to be the ones that start to miss the point.
Knew a theology professor (ended up in his class for credits somehow) who went with the "multiple Jesus's" theory. Apparently it's quite possible that stories of a variety of healers/figures got combined into the Jesus mythos. Explains a lot of the time and geographical inconsistencies with the historical record iirc
He never claimed to be the literal son of God, this is something that was addded into the dogma 2 to 3 centuries after his death during the Council of Nicaea (check Arianism).
We have no idea if he was apocalyptic. We suspect he was a reformer as reformist movements were popular at the time.
There are historical records of somebody named Jesus that lived at the time.
No, there are no contemporary primary sources about him from his purported lifetime. All sources stems from several decades to centuries after his purported death.
The consensus about his existence is established based on the likelihood of him existing, but his existence can never be verified with absolute certainty. And what he actually did or said is impossible to determine as well. On that we can only rely on what people living relatively long after his purported death wanted him to have said.
It's like how Saint Nicholas really existed but wasn't Santa Claus. My go to rebuttal whenever someone tries to bring up historal evidence as existence of Jesus. If you believe in the mythological version of Jesus, then you must also believe in Santa Claus
The best argument for Jesus' existence comes from Christopher Hitchens.
It goes like this: We know the nativity story is made up because of the census. There was a census near the time, but it was after Harrod's death and cannot fit the story. But why fabricate the nativity? Probably because Jesus of Nazareth is supposed to be born in the "city of David": Bethlehem. So then, if Jesus was invented whole cloth, why not make him Jesus of Bethlehem and save the aggravation?
Yeshua of Nazareth is a historically confirmed individual. He was real, really the son of a god? Probably not.
Yeshua of Nazareth is a historically confirmed individual.
He is not. We have no contemporary primary sources for his existence. However there is a general historical consensus that he most likely did exist. But absolute confirmation is an impossibility.
Entirely too many people give a shit about a shitass collection of bronze age bullshit in the first place.
I don't know who you are, where you live, or what you do for work, but if you talk crap about the quality copper ingots of Ea-nāṣir, I'm gonna whip your ass. That stuff is dope!
Or is there something else to say about that time?
In todays standard Jesus would be a communist.
Really more of a communal theocracy. It says right in the New Testament that you are expected to give all of your wealth to the church, with the implicit trust that the church is meant to distribute those resources fairly, starting with those most in need.
Yeah, in some kind of merger of state, church, and corporate power.
What's the name for that again?
Lemmy moment
We have an American commercial illustrator named Warner Sallman to blame for the canonical Jesus’ melanin deficit.
Yeah, I think Italian Renaissance painters may have pre-dated that somewhat.
Blonde, light-skinned with blue eyes? Nope.
i think it goes back a little further than some dude from the US...
That would go against the narrative that every thing bad comes from the US
After reading that I just had an idea for what I think would be a good premise for a film. In the 70s Jesus "returns" in the US somewhere, but as someone who gets labelled as a black man, noone believes him. Because he keeps getting knocked down at every turn due to systemic racism, and because he is so fed-up with the "White Jesus" trope he joins the Black Panther Party. He ends up being shot by a cop. Final shot slow-zooms in to show cop's name on a tag. First name Judas.
Nah, he would have been seen as Arabic and thus be labelled as a Muslim, being even more intenselly and more widelly hated in the US than if he had been deemed a Black man.
Also in terms of probability he would've probably 'return' to somewhere in Asia or Africa since there's were most of the population is nowadays.
I was going to paste the same link. :) Have my upvote instead.
Considering the makeup of the population of the region back when Jesus lived, he could have had white skin due to the Roman, Greek and Anatolian (modern Turkey) presences, though light hair would be super unlikely. Of course, the most likely appearance would've been that of a common Egyptian, almond-ish skin, #D5915A, and black hair
This guy is directly descended from David, and therefore would have been from the same family as The Christ, just many many generations removed. The Christ probably looked very similar to the guy in this photo.
Levantine people don’t have very dark skin, they definitely aren’t as white as Western Europeans though
All the applying of modern ethnic categories here is making my head spin.
I mean, rendering Jesus as a blonde guy is weird, but the way the pushback is parsed is just about as weird in the exact same way.
Modern Levant and Levant people three thousand years ago are both different in appearance. You can thank the Romans and Crusaders from Europe for changing this.
To expand on this with some small context albeit way older than the Romans. Egyptians gave the Peleset land in the Levant. Theorised that they were warrior peoples of the sea and the Philistines of biblical text somewhere in the late second millennium BC before the bronze age colapse. There is an incredible documentary by Pete Kelly (History Time) on youtube. Well worth the watch. Another great video he did about the Akkadians called The first Empire. He also did a great video about the Hittites. His whole channel is a goldmine of knowledge of the ancient world.
Any way the ancient world is filled with peoples from all over, moving around. Trade was a major factor. War was another. People from all over the Mediterranean and beyond mixed knowledge, their trades, their crafts, blood on battlefields and likely genes. Probably long before there was a written word pressed in clay.
Were all muts.
I have family, DEVOUT Christians, that live in the actual holy land. I asked them "who is that?" in response to their posting a picture of white-as-fuck Jesus on the Facebook page for the family village. They have yet to respond
I like my sky wizards to be of authentic skin color thank you very much.
If The Christ was, in fact, directly descended from David, then this guy would have been one of his Niblings/ Cousins, many many generations removed. The Christ probably would have looked very similar to the man in this photo.
He rode into battle on his noble T-Rex named Herbert. He can be any color he wants.
diabitus american in Alabama needs him to be white as a cope
Far too many people only think they're following Jesus.
The original whitewashing
He was surely not white like in the images and sculpture but we don't know how much darker his skin was. Skin color is a big spectrum
Yeah, for all we know he was full on albino
These days it is way more widely accepted
Before it was problematic since religion was used to justify hate crimes against people of color
Isn't there a physical description of Jesus in the Bible that says his skin is the color of bronze and his hair was wooly like a sheep? 🤔
That was Revelations, which was written far after anyone who ever saw Jesus would have died, and describes Jesus' divine form. The only gospel that describes anything about him was about a transformation. "His face shown like the sun," but that is in Luke, so between 50 and 80 years after his purported death, and continued to be edited throughout the second century. So essentially it's all made up and none of it matters.
I figure if you look at the Mizrahi Jews from Morocco he looked like that.
Very nice episode about this came out lately on the 99% Invisible podcast. Here's the link: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/615-your-own-personal-jesus/
If I learned anything from all of the Sunday school my parents forced me to go to it's that Jesus was a white dude with amazing abs.
Korean Jesus?
Modern day Palestinians come in all shades from "white" to "black". As someone who studied and argued the genealogy and ancestry of the region, here's the gist of it:
When you picture God what skin color do you see? What gender do you see?
According to the usa census it you are from the Middle East you have to put caucasian. My family on my dads side came from Syria
He had albinism, next question
Too
Well, most gods are created in mans image. Along those lines, any religious "fact" can be altered to fit whatever agenda the churches have at the moment to justify the widest level of religious adoption "in the name" of their god.
How many white people would have worshiped a darker skinned person while slavery was still an acceptable practice?
Some people are still able to rationalize the many images of jesus from around the world. (IMHO, this is yet another attempt to obfuscate discrimination by bouncing back and forth between reality and the meaning of religious symbolism.)
I question using religious scholars as references to a religious post, but at least that same site seems to be speaking out against white supremacy. I don't quite know what to think about that post, but it seems the intent was positive. Absolutely make a call-out if I missed some glaring.
The people who can reason that out probably aren’t very religious.
“Too many,” or is “far to many” a new phrase that the younger folk are using? I’m trying to keep up with the changes to language.
Yes, it’s a strategy to make low frequency events seem like major problems
TBF thats not a coherent argument on its own. People in modern day UK were Black in the ancient times. You need to look at historical and genealogical information to make a statistical result.
To the untravelled artist, everyone was white with the exception of a few going through town if in a major city. There was no way to know he wasn't white and it just stuck.
Yeshua Hamashiach, the person modern Christianity knows as Jesus, rumor according to records that have been found, show not only did Yeshua actually exist, they were likely light skinned. That doesn't mean they were white, and since we have no living person to question, and assuming the romans were being correct in their documents(I think romans, I'm being lazy and not looking it up, also it might be buried in a tome somewhere, or a history journal where they classified someone known as Yeshua Hamashiach as roman inflection or some such meaning lighter skinned), Yeshua might have been somewhere between Ricky Ricardo and the Weekend. Also I've never found a lick of evidence for turning water into wine, so not saying the miracles are true or not(miracles can happen, tho I do wonder how many miracles would actually be miracles if we just understood the actual process taking place), but Yeshua Hamashiach, aka Jesus seems to have actually existed. Probably a granola eating hippy type that preached about equality, and freedom for all, and was the first to do so and melted everyone's damn mind...
There used to be more diversity in the middle east. But there's been a bunch of genocides since then.