You expect them to tell barbarians apart?
Were the Jews considered barbarians? I thought the Romans used the term for those blond haired and blued eyed people from across the Danube 
.
Anyone who wasn’t Roman was a barbarian, although they made an exception for the Greeks and possibly the Egyptians.
Indeed! Race is a modern construction created to manage colonies and plantations.
I am sure in the ancient world there was no shortage of other ways of dividing people up.A most challenging part of understanding history is to understand these political divisions.
And conversely if you were a Roman citizen you were a Roman citizen and could rise even to Emperor (if enough of the army was behind you).
Are these generally considered to be accurate, though? I know some of the really old ones include rather improbable ages, and IIRC there are two different genealogies given to tie Jesus back to David. It all seems a bit post-hoc to me.
I guess I would put a lot more stock in what typically happens in regions with multiple ethnic groups and various occupying forces - lots of admixture. It seem very unlikely that “pure Israelite” was even a thing by the time Jesus lived.
If you are going to take the Bible’s word that Jesus even existed you might as well assume the rest is accurate.
Do you believe this describes Jesus, not to be born for 600 years?
Well, not really… I think each claim should be evaluated on its own merits. Jesus’ existence at least has some non-biblical evidence (limited, yes, but some). As well as some inferential support (lots of followers within a relatively short time after his purported existence).
But the genealogies, particularly since they are divergent, have much less support as being factually accurate. The reek of being created after-the-fact to support claims of fulfilling OT prophesy. IMO.
We’re getting a bit distracted. The genealogies were about a legitimacy of descent for public acceptance purposes. Meanwhile the prophecy about some figure that was not visibly different from those around, was retconned centuries later into referring to Jesus.
But regardless of any of that the major point is the historic Jesus would have looked like however the average Galilean Jew of the 1st centuries BCE and CE looked.
I believe that early Christians believed it applied to Jesus. So if they thought it fit…
Isaiah, the greatest of the prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures, is generally taken by Christians to have prophesied about the coming of Jesus, and his sacrificial role (the “Suffering Servant”). For example, Handel’s Messiah relies upon Isaiah for much of the text.
Jesus is depicted as a western European in western European countries and in many former British colonies. In African countries he is usually Black, and so forth. It isn’t a literal representation of what he looked like, unless you are uneducated and simple.
There is nothing anywhere to suggest that Jesus was not a Jew who looked like other Judean Jews.
They hadn’t invented paper bags yet.
From what I have read - and correct me if I’m wrong - the original, indigenous inhabitants of what is now “The Levant” - Israel, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon - were called the “Canaanites.” These people then divided into distinct kingdoms - the Israelites, the Judeans, the Moabites, the Aramites, the Philistines, and the Phoenecians. The Phoenecians became expert seafarers and would later expand an empire that included Cyprus, Sicily, Sardinia, Malta, and most famously, Carthage, which was in what is now Tunisia.
Would it be correct to say that Jesus would have looked like a Phoenecian? Since I am of the impression that the Phoenecians fell under the category of “Canaanite” along with the Judeans, Israelites, Philistines and these other Levantine kingdoms who are all ultimately from the same Canaanite ancestry?
This may seem off-topic but I would assume that since the Phoenecians were the most widespread and powerful of these ancient peoples, there would be more depictions of what they looked like, and hence, to use as a basis for the “real” appearance of Jesus?
A friend of my wife has 2 pictures of Jesus on her wall, one is the good looking white guy, the other is a darker skinned fellow with short dark curly hair and a scruffy beard. I asked her which one is the real Jesus, she said she doesn’t care. She also said if he is ever resurrected, she thinks he would look more like the dark skinned guy.
A few corrections - what is now Syria was inhabited by related but separate peoples: the Arameans and the Assyrians (hence the name). The Philistines, in turn, were a foreign nation (probably from the Aegean) that adapted the Canaanite culture and religion and were ultimately assimilated.
Really? Greater than Moses? Samuel? Elijah?
To the Christians, yes. Because Isaiah wrote stuff that they interpret to be about Jesus.
In the absence of other evidence the closest you’ll get in my opinion is saying a Semitic-speaking resident of Palestine in 0AD looks approximately the same as a Semitic-speaking resident of Palestine in 2023AD. Yeah there has been some population movement in the intervening 2 millennia, and language is not an exact indicator of ethnicity, but absent of a time machine thats as good as you’re going to get
There were a few humorous comments about a “scientific” reconstruction of Jesus looking like DJ Khaled, which my reaction was “well duh, a Semitic-speaking 30-something from Palestine looks like a Semitic-speaking 30-something from Palestine. who’d a thunk it?”
Well, all these comparisons (mostly but not totally to Isaiah) come from Matthew, who was probably a well-educated Jewish convert to early Christianity writing in an attempt to give Jesus “legitimacy” in order to convert others. Not a new tactic in history by any means.