A question about the image of Jesus.

liah

Sorry if this seems like a really stupid question; not looking to start anything, just a passing curiosity.

I'm re-watching a Louis Theroux documentary on Black Supremacists, in which a group of black men tell Louis that Jesus was black with utter conviction.

Which got me thinking - I can understand why the image of Jesus up to/in the middle ages etc. was one of a white man. Peasants would never have known the difference due to probably knowing nothing about geography and probably never seeing a non-white person in their lives, and as we know, history is revisionist; the idea of Jesus as a white man is just something everyone was brought up with and never bothered thinking about in white countries.

But now, in 2011, we still have Jesus represented as white by white people, and black by some black people, and I can't really understand why. We've all done geography in school, we've all seen world maps, we've all seen films and movies and news, we all know where Israel is and what people from there look like.

So why is the idea of Jesus as a white man (or black man, or anything other than Israeli in appearance) still propagated so heavily in the West? Is it simply a case of an accepted cultural icon that nobody bothers questioning or thinking about?

Or is it a case of people genuinely believing Jesus was white? If that is the case, what, exactly, is the basis of this belief?

PDN

We've had a few threads on this before, but basically you find that people in any culture (unless influenced otherwise by foreign missionaries) tend to see Jesus as one of them. For example you get pictures of an oriental looking Jesus in China. The Bible says that Jesus suffered like us and was tempted like us, so people identify with Him without seeing Him as any race. If anything He is transcultural. Its the same with language - people read the Bible in their own language and forget it was ever written in Greek and Hebrew.

This 'translatability' of Christianity is in sharp contrast to, say, Islam that tends to retain Middles Eastern clothing and keeps the Koran in the Arabic language.

Fanny Cradock

From a few weeks back: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056229259

ciarak7511

well we dont know what Jesus really looked like anyway althoug he probably looked like the other people where he is from so there is no harm in depicting him differently although the image tends to stick in your mind. iof I had to guess I would say he definitely did not have fair skin and blue eyes1

anymore

He was born to two middle eastern jewish parents, so therefore he was of middle eastern appearance; ipso facto he was most certainly not of white european appearance.

Knight990

PDN wrote: »

We've had a few threads on this before, but basically you find that people in any culture (unless influenced otherwise by foreign missionaries) tend to see Jesus as one of them. For example you get pictures of an oriental looking Jesus in China. The Bible says that Jesus suffered like us and was tempted like us, so people identify with Him without seeing Him as any race. If anything He is transcultural. Its the same with language - people read the Bible in their own language and forget it was ever written in Greek and Hebrew.

This 'translatability' of Christianity is in sharp contrast to, say, Islam that tends to retain Middles Eastern clothing and keeps the Koran in the Arabic language.

Spot on. Jesus as a symbol can be from anywhere in the world, from the biggest metropolis to the sands of the Sahara to the snows of Siberia. It's what makes the religion so appealing to people across the planet - as this poster said, the "translatability".

Whatever we may or may not know about the man, the symbol is something which everyone can adapt to help them relate.

Unique thing about the religion, definitely.