There was a discussion on BET about the color of Jesus

One of the very few times BET has been worth watching. They had that fundie Jesse Lee Peterson on, with gospel singer Donnie McClurkin and some other woman whose name I can't recall. Peterson claims black are racists or white hating if they believe Jesus was black and project the image, but didn't address about those who believe he was white. I for one believe Jesus is above color, but I wanted to see it what people here think of those who want to view Jesus as a certain race. Is that racist or a reasonable belief?

he was not black or WHITE for that matter. Look at any of semitic origin... a healthy brown....

But that IS the historical Jesus... not the man who entered myth and religion.

RLOL

Yassir Arafat.


This representation is quite different from the typical lithe, long-haired, light-skinned and delicate-featured depiction of the man Christians consider the son of God.

Israeli and British forensic anthropologists and computer programmers got together to create the face featured in the 1.2-million circulation magazine, which occasionally veers from its usual coverage of motors and tools to cover the merger of science and religion.

"What did Jesus look like?" the article asks. "An answer has emerged from an exciting new field of science: forensic anthropology."


http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/12/25/face.jesus/index.html

:)

if Neanderthal Christ showed up looking like that today, hunters would shoot him as Bigfoot.

Read the article before you ask such asinine questions--it's a composite depiction based on educated guesses and averages.

anybody else in that community, right?
There's your absurd comment to an absurd article.
He was different, so why didn't He look different?
Why would He look completely alike when compared to others who only shared 1/2 the gene pool?
Claiming that He looked like any other inhabitant of Palestine, or Israel, or Canaan, or the Roman Empire, or whatever else you want to include,by sure speculation, denies his Godhood.
My speculation is that He looked like no one else.
A person is considered a Jew as measured from the mother's side. So he was a Jew, but that would not necessarily follow that He looked 100% Jewish, whatever that is.

It may be what many people generally looked like in a certain region a couple thousand years ago, but it definitely isn't what most people looked like a couple thousand years ago.

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is ethnically insensitive.

I've never liked that representation. He looks so confused. Like he doesn't know how to use tools yet.

if I knew what was coming.

(40 days without food... nails and beams...)

Cheer up, Jesus!

Huh?... oh yeah, right. Where were we?

http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcfa.htm

"Presbyterian" nose. :rofl:

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It's just irrelevant.

If there was a Jesus born where and to whom they say he was, he was Middle Eastern -- which means he looked more like that Zarqawi fellow we just killed than either Malcolm X or June Cleaver.

I don't get the desperate need some people have to identify racially with their chosen leader. Is their faith that fragile that it would be shattered if they found out they were worshipping a fur'ner?

And here I was thinking belief had something to do with with what comes after this life, where we shed off this mortal coil (apologies to Will S.) -- skin included.

That Peterson sounds like a flaming dork. I'm glad I don't know who he is.

just tell the fundie anti-muslims that some of the people they are hating are Jesus's and other biblical people's relatives. Decendents really I guess.

Newsweek did a feature on the recent fad of paying private companies to have one's DNA traced back to its continental origins -- and told of a few families, black and white, who discovered they were related... as well as the mindset-jarring revelations of a couple of people who found out they weren't at all what they grew up thinking they were (a "black" man who learned he had no known African DNA at all, but a combination of Native American and Middle Eastern), and how this made them question their ties to the culture(s) in which they were raised.

Inasmuch as I detest the idea of anyone's DNA floating around and available for potentially nefarious uses, when I read this I fantasized about forcing every white supremacist in the world to undergo DNA analysis. Just imagine the repercussions of a few White Stormfront types realizing they're kissin' cousins with Huey Newton.

Btw, making fundy heads explode is quickly becoming my life's work.

gulp...Osama bin Laden. But younger.

I am a part-time florist (with my daughter) and we do a lot of work for the Black community and all of our cards have Black Jesuses on them. I think it is natural to relate best, in your mind, to a person of your own race. I tend to think of Him as the standard long-haired, brown eyes, big nose, strong featured guy like in the Passion of the Christ.

with flaming red kinky hair in dreads, with one brown eye and one blue.

Like so what. That's not what Jesus was about and really as far as I have read is not what the world he was born into was about. skin color as a determiner of social superiority came later. I beleive that Jesus will appear to each of us in the persom we most disrespected, and that might be to look like yourself.

was born. "Racist" is a bit overboard; I'd say "reactionary".

The white-Jesus became entrenched at a time when it was a reasonable assumption. You don't travel much, most Middle Easterners you run across would have been on the more fair side--frequently Turks. Jews were light-skinned, and Jesus was a Jew, right? Notice that the older traditional Italian Jesus didn't usually have light hair, although he was still a milquetoast. Once traditions are entrenched, they're entrenched, and you don't think much about them.

The black-Jesus became popularized--as much as it ever was--as a reaction. It was an overt rejection of what was a false portrayal, at a time when the truth as ascertainable. Instead they decided to go with something equally false, as much to deny one view as to pump up another. The excuse was just that, an excuse: Jesus came from Egypt, and, well, Egyptians were black. (Moreover, he'd most likely have stayed in Alexandria, with a large Jewish and Greek community.) But Egyptians weren't black, because they weren't of any one skin color; those from Upper Egypt were black, but the Lower Egyptians weren't. They were Semitic. (And by Roman times had intermarried considerably.) Many of their (older) pictorial representations draw a 3-way color distinction between Upper Egyptians and black slaves, Lower Egyptians, and the Semitic peoples east of the Sinai. Note that: two colors for Semites. Semitic is a language designation, and a poor genetic designation because the language family spread over different 'racial' groups. Ethiopians speak a Semitic language, but we don't call them Semitic.

The reconstructed Jesus-equivalent makes assumptions, but at least they're explicit. One unknown is the extent to which immigrations, forced and otherwise, altered something as trivial as skin color, and another is the extent to which skin color was homogeneous across social and religious groups. The least you can say is that Jesus was by no means Nordic; but by the same token, he wasn't Ethiopian.

On edit: The stuff in ( ).

he was an indigenous person to his region

he looked like one would expect him to look

olive to dark skin
dark hair
brown eyes
maybe even a little curl or kink to his hair

he wouldn't be a white Jesus. He'd be a tomato red OW-OW-OW-DONT-HUG-ME-LIKE-THAT Jesus after a couple of days.

And he would have had a hell of a time adapting to the heat, always having to have sunblock on, etc.

I'm imagining all those pastoral paintings of Jesus -- serene, arms open to receive children and lambs, and a big honking gob of white sunblock on his nose.

Lifeguard Jesus, heh...

Jesus wore the Armour of God! Its SPF INFINITY! The son of god does not wear sunblock. Let me quote Corinthians 3:12:

And Jesus wore his Armour of God. And thus his lily flesh was protected from the ungodly rays of the sun. He then rubbed palm oil on his flesh and proclaimed "It is good. Soon, I will have the brown colour of the people of Israel"

;)

And so is Jesus. I know - I met him. He was a mechanic in Buffalo and he fixed my car for free.

Nobody but Jesus would have done that.

its easy to make up their colour.

put their life on the line, and many died for a made up person?

no

not logical

Its sad and depressing and a waste of human potential.

they believed in Christ

they died for him

the early ones had good reason to believe in him

they were one generation away from knowing him

Just because a lot of people die for an idea, doesn't make that idea any more true, nor does it make their deaths any less sad. Look at Iraq...the senseless deaths caused by religion and ignorance are a waste of human potential. Historically, the Iraqi people have been shown to be extremely intelligent....imagine that there was no war, nor regressive religion in that region. Imagine the potential for great scientists and thinkers among the people of Iraq and the surrounding areas. There could be the next Einstein or Darwin in that crowd, but their too busy being oppressed by insane religioius rulers to harness that potential.

It is a waste, pure and simple. Every death for religous purposes is a shame.

But the other poster was right....this is another debate.

for something so closely connected by a couple of generations

Can you imagine people today being so devoutly and profoundly affected by something that was within the reach of their lifetime or their parent's lifetimes, that they would step out of line and work to spread it and even die for it.

I just think about how much apathy there is today about most things. In the beginning, Christians were killed for their beliefs. Of course we know that later there were many terrible things done IN THE NAME OF Christianity, but not by Christianity per se. Anyway, back to my thought, apathy. I can't imagine that people were real interested back in the years after Christ in getting involved in something either. They had their lives, many had miserable lives, but they were just trying to get by for the most part like people are today.

To think that some people (and I don't think they were psychotic because their lives were not disorganized like a Schizophrenic or untreated Bipolar disordered person's life would be) had the passion and drive to start a Church, one that has persisted through a lot and is still strong is just amazing to me. Hell, we can't even get more than 50% of eligible voters to vote, much less really take a stand for something.

Again, there are all kinds of people who die for stupid reasons....be it a space ship hiding behind a comet, a present day prophet, or a past prophet. Its all so ridiculous.

Lol..maybe if the early christians had been more succesful at killing themselves for their cause as the Heavens Gate cultists, we may have been able to save the million or so women killed during the witch trials. I blame the lack of a delicious, sugary drink.

thank you for comparing Christianity to Heaven's Gate and the Branch Davidians

both cults run by megalomaniacal psychopaths.

Christianity has had it's ups and downs.

and no doubt people have died for stupid reasons because of Christianity

no one should have to die for their beliefs

however, the culture killed Christians early on, and has throughout history at different points.

Not to say Christians haven't had their revenge.

But to compare a couple of nutjob's with small followings who killed themselves to Christianity, is well, ridiculous.

"thank you for comparing Christianity to Heaven's Gate and the Branch Davidians"

I don't think I compared them directly...I kind of meant that dying for a false belief was dumb. I didn't say that the beliefs are the same. I don't understand why you are getting offended...I'm certainly not suggesting that you are anything like the Davidians.

"both cults run by megalomaniacal psychopaths"

I'n sure there are examples of other religions or cults, without megalomaniacs, that die for their religions. Its still sad.

"Christianity has had it's ups and downs".

Yep

"and no doubt people have died for stupid reasons because of Christianity"

Undoubtedly

"no one should have to die for their beliefs"

or have beliefs that require them to die, yep.

"however, the culture killed Christians early on, and has throughout history at different points"

Yes, they died for no reason.

"Not to say Christians haven't had their revenge."

And how! Millions of women burnt to death, native peoples subjugated, property stolen. Great revenge..its nice to stand at the other end of a tiger.


"But to compare a couple of nutjob's with small followings who killed themselves to Christianity, is well, ridiculous."

Why? Do you really think that christianity was much more than a cult when it began? What makes it superior? Do you think you would believe in Christ if Constantine had slayed the rest of the christians instead of adopting it? Is it a question of number...does more people believing something make it more true?

Christianity WAS A CULT. When Jesus was alive, it was a cult. A long time after he died (if he ever existed) it was a cult. A very successful cult. It is no longer a cult.

I really don't think his followers (if he really existed) had any idea they were starting a Church. They might have had second thoughts about it if they did.

(I'm not denigrating the members of any particular 'church' here. I'm simply pointing out that most of man's inhumanity to man has, unfortunately, been carried out in the name of one's 'church'--read that as 'religion.')

after his death and resurrection, the pentecost happened, and his apostles received the gift of the holy spirit and were told to go out and preach the word

there were lots of factions of Christianity in the early days

there were lots of different beliefs about who Jesus was

in the end, the followers of the book of John won out in that there were 4 gospels chosen out of many

if he didn't exist, then a lot has been done to make a lot of people believe that he did exist.

quite a conspiracy

Most historical evidence suggests Jesus, or at least his original followers, believed he was a herald of the apocalypse, and that the Kingdom of God would arrive during or shortly after his lifetime. Hence why the gospels were not written down until several generations after his death.

since there are no pictures of him from the time. Every depiction is some form of idealization, just as all gods, demigods, and plain old emperors were idealized.

We don't have any pictures of Moses, Mohammed, Cleopatra, or Columbus, either, and even when we think we know what someone looked like, like Julius Caesar or Washington, we still only have the artist's interpretation.

He was a Jew from Palestine, and most likely looked like a Jew from Palestine, whatever they looked like back then. So what's the big deal?

We do have likenesses of Cleopatra, in both free-standing sculpture and on her coinage. She looks very, very Greek. There are also portraits of Columbus, though I don't know off the top of my head if they were painted from life and/or were contemporary with him. Cleo, though, we do know about.

Alexandria, Egypt, where I'm staying for a work assignment. (Allegedly "short-term," but I've been here almost continuously for about 10 months...)

The Graeco-Roman Museum here in Alexandria has a whole ROOM full of ancient coins, including some minted during Cleopatra's reign and so, presumbably with her approval.

The coins show a lady with a fairly large nose and a sharp chin. As you said, she looks very Greek. (Not surprising, after 13 generations of Ptolemaic inbreeding.) A Google should turn up lots of pictures.

There's also a famous statue of Cleopatra dressed as Isis for an Egyptian religious festival. It shows the same features. That's my favorite art depicting her, I think. She has a very mysterious, Mona-Lisa like smile on her face.

Playing tour guide for a second, the famous Hotel Cecil in downtown Alexandria boasts that Cleopatra died on its doorstep. They're probably not exaggerating much. That area was where she built the Caesareum for Marc Antony--the huge temple named in honor of her son by Julius Caesar. (Nowadays the area is occupied by Sa'ad Zaghloul Square, named for a famous Egyptian nationalist leader.)

never had a portrait done of him while he was alive. That we know of.

The belief that "Jesus is above colour" is a manifestation of whichever heresy it was that held that Jesus was fully divine but not fully mortal, I think - I'm ashamed to say that I can never keep the names of different heresies straight.

I'm not a Christian, but I'm fairly sure that it's a key part of Christian teaching that Jesus became *a* man - a specific man, with a skin colour. Since he was a middle eastern Jew, it was probably somewhere between very dark caucasian and darkish arab, I would think, although what it was (or even if he actually existed) will never be known for certain.

Unless you believe that race is an actual issue. I'm more concerned with the message than the messenger... unless it's an Eddie Izzard show. I'm not transphobic, he just looks really trashy.
Anyhow, regardless of Jesus' melanin quotient, that is beyond his control, and beneath me worrying about it.

He would of looked like any modern Palestinian (modern Jews are not the best for comarison because of significant non-Levantine admixture).