Jesus was dark skinned, why is he still portrayed as white?

kumate_champ07

the images we have of Jesus seem to be mostly from the same period and by Italian painters working for the Church,

is it racist today to still show Jesus as being white when he was actually middle eastern with dark skin?

hfallada

Jesus skin colour varies from country to country. He is often black in Africa, a more tanned color in Latin America and obviously white in Europe. How is it racist depicting him on what people believe he looks like? There is plenty of blue eyed, fair skinned people in the middle east. No one knows what Jesus looked like. Art is subjective. People can paint something whatever way they want

Arthur Beesley

kumate_champ07 wrote: »

the images we have of Jesus seem to be mostly from the same period and by Italian painters working for the Church,

is it racist today to still show Jesus as being white when he was actually middle eastern with dark skin?

How do you know he wasn't white?

Call Me Jimmy

What was his second name again?

kumate_champ07

hfallada wrote: »

Jesus skin colour varies from country to country. He is often black in Africa, a more tanned color in Latin America and obviously white in Europe. How is it racist depicting him on what people believe he looks like? There is plenty of blue eyed, fair skinned people in the middle east. No one knows what Jesus looked like. Art is subjective. People can paint something whatever way they want

well people think all travelers dump their rubbish everywhere, marry their first cousins and earn money from crime and poorly done tarmackking jobs, is it racist to label a travelller as a criminal because thats what people think of them?


basically I believe the church is being racist by altering Jesus' actual physical identity to fit into an image Western society will accept

kumate_champ07

Arthur Beesley wrote: »

How do you know he wasn't white?

how do you know he was white?, the facts point to him being dark skinned, it's up to you to prove he wasnt

Manach

My understanding, AFAIR from a book on Christian Art, was that such images can be both realistic - whatever the Semantic people of that era looked like or else cultural base.
In the former case, the image protraited by Jesus is derived from the normative society's template. For instance in renaissance paintings, in the scene relating to Gethsemane, soldiers had medieval armour. This was done to bring the stories in the Bible closer to the intended audience.

As for the whole racist thing, that is something the OP can work out in his/her own time as a way not doubt to feel superior to the rest of use mere mortals...

Arthur Beesley

kumate_champ07 wrote: »

how do you know he was white?, the facts point to him being dark skinned, it's up to you to prove he wasnt

The facts, is it? What 'facts' exactly? He is white in any photos i've ever seen. Disprove that.

endacl

This is a question that has been asked before...

hfallada

kumate_champ07 wrote: »

well people think all travelers dump their rubbish everywhere, marry their first cousins and earn money from crime and poorly done tarmackking jobs, is it racist to label a travelller as a criminal because thats what people think of them?


basically I believe the church is being racist by altering Jesus' actual physical identity to fit into an image Western society will accept

And is it racist if they alter him to be black in Africa? Or depicitng him as having Latino features in Latin America? Very little, if any church art is painted anymore. Most of it very old, when people werent award of how people looked in other countries.

kumate_champ07

Arthur Beesley wrote: »

The facts, is it? What 'facts' exactly? He is white in any photos i've ever seen. Disprove that.

cameras didnt exist back then. done.

kumate_champ07

Manach wrote: »

My understanding, AFAIR from a book on Christian Art, was that such images can be both realistic - whatever the Semantic people of that era looked like or else cultural base.
In the former case, the image protraited by Jesus is derived from the normative society's template. For instance in renaissance paintings, in the scene relating to Gethsemane, soldiers had medieval armour. This was done to bring the stories in the Bible closer to the intended audience.

As for the whole racist thing, that is something the OP can work out in his/her own time as a way not doubt to feel superior to the rest of use mere mortals...

whats with that attitude?

Arthur Beesley

kumate_champ07 wrote: »

cameras didnt exist back then. done.

Prove they didn't.

ryan101

kumate_champ07 wrote: »

the images we have of Jesus seem to be mostly from the same period and by Italian painters working for the Church,

is it racist today to still show Jesus as being white when he was actually middle eastern with dark skin?

Well firstly Jesus was Jewish not Arab.



Secondly art depicts things in many ways, often the concept that God became human.

Like this symbolic picture of the mother of God.

"Our Lady of China"

No one is claiming they were Chinese

Manach

kumate_champ07 wrote: »

whats with that attitude?

The decrying of racism that seems to preclude any attempt at argument - that attitude mate.

katydid

ryan101 wrote: »

Well firstly Jesus was Jewish not Arab.



Secondly art depicts things in many ways, often the concept that God became human.

Like this symbolic picture of the mother of God.

"Our Lady of China"

No one is claiming they were Chinese

He didn't say he was Arab.

ryan101

katydid wrote: »

He didn't say he was Arab.

He said he was darked skinned, Jewish people are not dark skinned

AlfaZen

Mmm, really.

kumate_champ07

Arthur Beesley wrote: »

Prove they didn't.

prove I'm not Jesus.

katydid

ryan101 wrote: »

He said he was darked skinned, Jewish people are not dark skinned

He said he was dark skinned, not that he was Arab. Jews are Semites, like most people of Middle Eastern origin. The Jews at the time of Jesus would have been much like all the other Middle Eastern people today; the ones we see with lighter skins are most likely from the Diaspora, who would have mixed their gene pool with non-Jews over the years.

DoctaDee

ryan101 wrote: »

He said he was darked skinned, Jewish people are not dark skinned

I'd direct you to the Beta Israel jews in Ethiopia to smash that theory

ryan101

AlfaZen wrote: »

Mmm, really.

mmm really, as the vast majority of Jewish people are white.

ryan101

DoctaDee wrote: »

I'd direct you to the Beta Israel jews in Ethiopia to smash that theory

Converts, Judaism did not originate in Ethiopia, try again

katydid

ryan101 wrote: »

mmm really, as the vast majority of Jewish people are white.

And your basis for this claim would be...?

katydid

ryan101 wrote: »

Converts, Judaism did not originate in Ethiopia, try again

No, nor in Europe. It originated in the Middle East, where people are DARK SKINNED...

ryan101

katydid wrote: »

He said he was dark skinned, not that he was Arab. Jews are Semites, like most people of Middle Eastern origin. The Jews at the time of Jesus would have been much like all the other Middle Eastern people today; the ones we see with lighter skins are most likely from the Diaspora, who would have mixed their gene pool with non-Jews over the years.

Israel would prove otherwise. And up until very recently in history the Jews were a very closed homogeneous race.

ryan101

katydid wrote: »

No, nor in Europe. It originated in the Middle East, where people are DARK SKINNED...

If you exclude the Jews of course. And many people in Iraq etc. are not dark skinned.

AlfaZen

ryan101 wrote: »

mmm really, as the vast majority of Jewish people are white.

That's not what you said.

Anyway we don't know what Jesus looked like. Probably looked like the guy/girl that won the Eurovision a few weeks ago.

ryan101

AlfaZen wrote: »

That's not what you said.

Anyway we don't know what Jesus looked like. Probably looked like the guy/girl that won the Eurovision a few weeks ago.

Why are you going to claim he was an Ethiopian convert as well ?

katydid

ryan101 wrote: »

Israel would prove otherwise. And up until very recently in history the Jews were a very closed homogeneous race.

Israel has Jews of many different colours and types, from Scandinavian blond to the darkest black. Although Jews have kept their cultural and religious homogeny over the centuries, but mingled with the people amongst whom they lived and intermarried. Hence the wide variety of appearances. Jewishness is not a race, it is a religion.

Because they come from all over the world. The ORIGINAL Jews were Middle Eastern, therefore dark skinned. At the time Jesus lived, it was still racially homogenous.

ryan101

katydid wrote: »

Israel has Jews of many different colours and types, from Scandinavian blond to the darkest black. Although Jews have kept their cultural and religious homogeny over the centuries, but mingled with the people amongst whom they lived and intermarried. Hence the wide variety of appearances. Jewishness is not a race, it is a religion.

Because they come from all over the world. The ORIGINAL Jews were Middle Eastern, therefore dark skinned. At the time Jesus lived, it was still racially homogenous.

The Jewish people have been homogeneous for thousands of years.
And as for 'dark skinned' Iraq would prove otherwise.

dissed doc

kumate_champ07 wrote: »

the images we have of Jesus seem to be mostly from the same period and by Italian painters working for the Church,

is it racist today to still show Jesus as being white when he was actually middle eastern with dark skin?

Why do you think he had dark skin? It's just as likely he was fair skinned with blue eyes. Nowadays people from the middle east also vary from pale skinned to dark. Look at pictures of people from Israel or Jordan. The middle east is huge, as huge as europe which also includes people who are dark skinned or fair skinned.

It is racist to suggest that he must be dark skinned because he is from the middle east. 2000 years ago, things were different.

katydid

ryan101 wrote: »

The Jewish people have been homogeneous for thousands of years.
And as for 'dark skinned' Iraq would prove otherwise.

Homogeneous in culture and religion. Not necessarily in terms of marriage. Just look at how many Germans had Jewish connections.

You'll find a good article on it here. It may be Wiki but it has good references. There is no homogenous Jewish "race".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_ethnic_divisions#Israel

Manach

Historically, based a quite a number of books I've read on the Roman Empire, of which that part of world belonged to - the majority of the people would have been of semitic origins. However that is not to say there is an outside chance that an individual would have been lighter or darker skinned from the norm. The Meditarren had been a nexus of cosmopolitan trade for at least a millennium - with groups such as the Sea peoples; Celts who settled in modern Anatolia; Phoenician traders, Soldiers from the sub-Saharan Egyptian contributed to the population mix. Thus matching how a specific individual looked like (excluding such primary source material such as murals on Roma-Egyption coffins)would be problematic, to say the least.

katydid

dissed doc wrote: »

Why do you think he had dark skin? It's just as likely he was fair skinned with blue eyes. Nowadays people from the middle east also vary from pale skinned to dark. Look at pictures of people from Israel or Jordan. The middle east is huge, as huge as europe which also includes people who are dark skinned or fair skinned.

It is racist to suggest that he must be dark skinned because he is from the middle east. 2000 years ago, things were different.

2000 years ago, it was much more likely he would have been dark skinned. Even nowadays it would still be more likely. Fair haired Middle Eastern people are not very common.

Benny_Cake

hfallada wrote: »

Jesus skin colour varies from country to country. He is often black in Africa, a more tanned color in Latin America and obviously white in Europe. How is it racist depicting him on what people believe he looks like? There is plenty of blue eyed, fair skinned people in the middle east. No one knows what Jesus looked like. Art is subjective. People can paint something whatever way they want

Couldn't have put it better. The images of Jesus that we're used to seeing may be of a white man, but you'd get an entirely different impression in parts of Latin America, Ethiopia, or China. Since we can't know what he actually looked like, art depicting Jesus will reflect the society it comes from, nothing more sinister than that.

testicle

Call Me Jimmy wrote: »

What was his second name again?

Superstar.

Seaneh

ryan101 wrote: »

He said he was darked skinned, Jewish people are not dark skinned

Arab Jews are. Ashkenazi's aren't because they lived in eastern Europe for the guts of 1700 years and had the dark skin bread out of them by marrying locals.

Jews from North African, the Levant, the Arab peninsula and even Persia, are usually dark haired, dark eyed and tanned. You'd be doing well to find anyone in Israel with blonde hair and blue eyes who isn't either an immigrant from America, europe and the former soviet union or a grand child of immigrants from those areas.

ryan101

Seaneh wrote: »

Arab Jews are. Ashkenazi's aren't because they lived in eastern Europe for the guts of 1700 years and had the dark skin bread out of them by marrying locals.

Jews from North African, the Levant, the Arab peninsula and even Persia, are usually dark haired, dark eyed and tanned. You'd be doing well to find anyone in Israel with blonde hair and blue eyes who isn't either an immigrant from America, europe and the former soviet union or a grand child of immigrants from those areas.

No one is claiming blond hair and blue eyes and not tanned, that's a straw man argument, the art depictions were already explained, but the Jewish race and many others in the middle east are not 'dark skinned' as is the claim.

Seaneh

ryan101 wrote: »

No one is claiming blond hair and blue eyes and not tanned, that's a straw man argument, the art depictions were already explained, but the Jewish race and many others in the middle east are not 'dark skinned' as is the claim.

You can't just randomly put the word strawman into posts and act like it means anything.

You claimed Jews aren't dark skinned. I pointed out that Jews who's descendants are from the Levant and surrounding areas are for the most part. Of course not all of them were brown skinned but sure not all Europeans are pale skinned.

Odds are, Yeshua ben Yosef, as a first century Palestinian Jew was short, dark haired and had dark skin and looked more like your average resident of East-Jerusalem than your average resident of Tel-aviv.

ryan101

Seaneh wrote: »

You'd be doing well to find anyone in Israel with blonde hair and blue eyes who isn't either an immigrant from America, europe and the former soviet union or a grand child of immigrants from those areas.

When you try to infer the argument is Jesus must be blond blue eyed and not tanned than that is indeed straw manning.

Turtwig

S/he made no such inference. When referring to blondes in Israel he was clearly talking about the extremely slim chances of them being anything other than descendants of immigrants from Europe or elsewhere.

So, no it clearly isn't strawmanning.

ryan101

Turtwig wrote: »

S/he made no such inference. When referring to blondes in Israel he was clearly talking about the extremely slim chances of them being anything other than descendants of immigrants from Europe or elsewhere.

So, no it clearly isn't strawmanning.

Then why post it ?

Turtwig

ryan101 wrote: »

Then why post it ?

Because, he and many other posters, were explaining the ethnic demographics of Israel. You made the statement that jews weren't dark skinned.

ryan101

Turtwig wrote: »

Because, he and many other posters, were explaining the ethnic demographics of Israel. You made the statement that jews weren't dark skinned.

In general they're not, as is plain to be seen

Turtwig

ryan101 wrote: »

In general they're not, as is plain to be seen

So we take it you are retracting your original claim of jews being dark skinned and by extension the claim that Seaneh was strawmanning your position?

ryan101

Turtwig wrote: »

So we take it you are retracting your original claim of jews being dark skinned and by extension the claim that Seaneh was strawmanning your position?

What claim of jews being darked skinned ? Have you jumped in again, without reading the thread again ?

Turtwig

ryan101 wrote: »

What claim of jews being darked skinned ? Have you jumped in again, without reading he thread again ?

No I just misread your post. In the optimistic belief that you'd retracted the strawman claim against Seaneh.

Seaneh

ryan101 wrote: »

When you try to infer the argument is Jesus must be blond blue eyed and not tanned than that is indeed straw manning.

I inferred no such thing. I countered your nonsensical claim that "Jewish people are not dark skinned" anf your use of this claim as some sort of reason why Jesus might not have been dark, based on the fact that most Jews alive today are of European descent, and pointed out how much of a flawed idea this is when talking about the historical person Yeshua ben Yosef, first century Palestinian Jew.

You've repeated this "Jews aren't dark skinned" thing more than once.
But you are either entirely ignorant of, or just refuse to even begin to contemplate the reality that the reason the Jews you recognise today are pale skinned is because of hundreds and hundreds of years of intermarriage with Christians in Europe and latterly North America.

A lot of Jews today aren't dark skinned because they simply aren't from the Levant, they are European.

Jews who are from families which historically lived in the Levant and it's surrounds (North Africa, Persia, the Arab penisula) and aren't recent immigrants from Europe, the former Soviet countries and North America, ARE dark skinned, just as Jews 2000 years ago would have been, because they weren't intermarrying with white Europeans for the last 2000 years.

Jesus more than likely looked more like Yasser Arafat than David Beckham, not matter what most Israeli's and European Jews look like today.

Arthur Beesley

kumate_champ07 wrote: »

prove I'm not Jesus.

Are you dark skinned?

ezra_pound

ryan101 wrote: »

Israel would prove otherwise. And up until very recently in history the Jews were a very closed homogeneous race.

Israeli Jews are not from Palestine. They settled the last 80 or so years from Europe and America where people are white.