And your post seems to be full of cabbage. Maybe the Catholics around you are quite dumb, but this Jesuit-educated former-Catholic knew a lot of really smart people. I’m not sure how much about the faith the students knew, but we had to take religion classes and were generally smart kids so I’m confident the majority knew more than the average person. In summary, Go BC.
Matthew 6:1 - “Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.”
I collect JW pamphlets & books. The OLD ones (1930s-40s) actually had him as clean-shaven with wavy short hair & button nose, but they were black & white drawings. All the ones I’ve seen from the 1960s onward & in color have him as dark-haired, dark-eyed, a bit tan but definitely Caucasian.
I’m wondering if the ones you’ve seen with him light-haired & blue-eyed were actually Seventh-Day Adventist or Mormon… as in…
Isaiah 53:2 is thought to be a prophecy of Jesus, and it says that Jesus was not particularly good-looking.
When I was a kid, we had a story book of the the Nativity, and the last picture purported to be Jesus growing up, It was a little blonde-haired, blue eyed kid holding a lamb. Even as a child my mom made a point of telling us (we read the story every year when putting out the Nativity scene my grandfather made) that this was not the way a Jewish boy of the period looked.
FWIW, “pretty” Jesus pictures annoy me. Especially this one, which my pastor referred to as “the sweet Jesus portrait” and appeared on way too much Sunday school literature.
On the other hand, everyone seems to know what his mom looks like, since the first thing out their mouths when they see a hint of a shadow of a suggestion of a face on anything from a tree to a tortilla is “OMG! It’s the Blessed Virgin Mary!!”
Yeah, all the Sunday School literature when I grew up showed Jesus like a white guy with a tan, shoulder-length brown wavy hair, brown eyes, and a neat beard. He wore a clean white robe and a blue belt and had brown sandals. He smiled all the time and had children on his lap and lambs around him, and sometimes emits a soft glow.
Unfortunately, this story-book Jesus still seems to be the norm in Children’s literature. I taught Sunday school to Kindergarteners last year and the available resources often drove me crazy. A couple of times I just abandoned the lesson material all together.
But to answer the question, even growing up with this image shown all the time, I was aware at an early age that Jesus didn’t really look like that. I was told by my parents, church leaders, teachers, etc. that Jesus would look more like someone we see today in the Middle East. It is kind of a running joke amongst Christians I know, about the ‘pretty Jesus’ vs. what he probably looked like. There must be some kind of required course for Christian illustrators “Jesus Illustrating 101” where this image, and only this image, is taught.
Well, that’s accurate. (It might be the only actually accurate thing he said in that argument.)
Another question is if Jesus was illiterate?
I remember a story of him at age 12 impressing rabbis at the temple with how well he understood the law. But I don’t remember it specifically saying that he could actually read the Torah. Nor do I recall any incident in the New Testament where he is recorded as having written anything.
