That’s what some people/traditions say. It’s an open/controversial question which, if any, of the following are the same person:
Some additional discussion can be found in this Staff Report:
I’ll bet a dollar that none of the writers were named John.
On his mother’s side, which didn’t really matter to them. And many many generations back. I’m not sure what point you are trying to make, but if it’s “Jesus was considered to be related to group that the Israelites looked down on”, i think that isn’t true. King David was one of the most respected people of all the Israelites. Descended from David through the male line was unambiguously a respectable thing.
Brother wasn’t there at the right times.
The “it was his brother” idea is patently an effort to exonerate Jefferson himself, and all the evidence, DNA, family tradition, and historical facts, point squarely to Jefferson. Just another reason that I despise him. But this is quite a hijack.
Maybe I’m not sure of my own points, but I’ll try to get my thoughts clear
Of course, Jesus wasn’t “white”. The concept of “whiteness” as a way to classify people hadn’t been invented yet. He almost certainly didn’t have pale skin. But the definition of “whiteness” has changed so much over time that it’s hard to see the point of wondering whether he would be considered “white” by some modern person’s standards (early on, “white” meant of English descent - no Irish, Swedes or Germans need apply).
If we abstract to things like “pure bloodlines” instead of specifically talking about being “white,” the problem is that the Bible has very mixed messages on the subject. The Book of Ezra considers it righteous for Jewish men to abandon their non-Jewish (Moabite and others) wives and their children, and throw them out of the country, for reasons of purity. The Book of Ruth on the other hand, has a noble Moabite woman become the great-grandmother of King David, Israel’s greatest king.
Although descended from David is good, it doesn’t seem to have been a social advantage for Joseph, who wasn’t an important person in his society.
There’s probably nothing wrong with an American painting Jesus this way - and nothing wrong with an Ethiopian artist creating this image
Actually, that’s a great point, and maybe the real answer to the op.
You’re right, it is, but I’ll just point out that this is something that even @Cecil_Adams got wrong (“Events have shown that the following column is a crock.”).
Original “crock” column:
Update:
I wonder if their were professional “Jesus models” during the Renaissance who all had that Jeffrey Hunter look.
Modern Jewish people are often white. There are notable exceptions. DNA research has expanded who has that background and can emigrate to Israel.
The early paintings of Jesus would be based on Jewish people during the Renaissance.
I’ve wondered when during the diaspora the change occurred feom Middle Eastern. Jewish marriage law was strictly enforced to protect the Jewish heritage during the diaspora. Otherwise generations of marriage to outsiders would have erased the Jewish people and their culture from history.
Really? I kind of doubt that. The statue David even has a foreskin.
Just about any white guy could have served as a model for the early paintings.
I had always been told Jewish men influenced the appearance in painting. Only because Jesus was Jewish. No one considered or cared how much things can change in approximately 1500 years.
I found an interesting explanation, although no proof is possible, in Michelangelo’s David and the anatomical politics of religious art, by Sam Shuster.https://hekint.org/2019/03/15/michelangelos-david-and-the-anatomical-politics-of-religious-art/
[T]he paintings of Christ’s childhood never show him circumcised, even though, as with Michelangelo’s David, everyone knew him to have been circumcised.
The universality of this anatomical exclusion, in paintings made independently by many different artists over many years, excludes coincidence. It is therefore inescapable, that at the time these great works of art were made, religious and biblical characters were deliberately not shown to be circumcised, even though they were known to have been. There was, in effect, an aesthetic ban on the showing of circumcision in religious art. That ban operated silently in many different nations, and the only organization with the power and capability to initiate and maintain that international ban was the Church. Evidently that powerful organization saw good reason for this. …
The history of dislike, if not hatred, of Jews is little shorter than their practice of circumcision, and just as universal; yet, it was maintained by people who accepted the Jewish Old Testament and its stories as an essential part of the religious creed of Christianity. This stark contradiction would have made it difficult to confront the fact that biblical heroes such as David were Jewish, and visibly bore the Jewish hallmark of circumcision, as did Jesus, the son of the religion’s godhead. Much easier not to show it or, better still, pretend its troublesome precursor was never removed. If the anatomical hallmark of Jewishness ceased to exist, it would be much easier to distance Jewish heroes and figures of worship from their Jewishness, and to distance Christianity from its parent religion.
So, according to Shuster, Jews did influence Michaelangelo, but negatively.
The larger takeaway is that no interpretations of the Christian Bible can be taken as evidence of its contents or meaning. They have always been done within the context of contemporary thought. I would contend that even the more scholarly works fall into this category.
I very much doubt that they were. Again, there was a lot of antisemitism, and artists wouldn’t have wanted their depictions of Jesus to look like their stereotypical ideas of what Jews looked like.
Jewish law recognizes matrilineal descent. The children of rape by outsiders were considered to be as Jewish as their mothers.
Some of the interactions, of course, would have been voluntary. Neither law nor custom has ever stopped humans from behaving like the outcrossing species that we are – that is, it may stop some individual humans, but it’s never going to stop all members of a sizeable group.
And I think the change in appearance was also affected by the change in what’s considered “white”. My family has the occasional blue-eyed blond on my mother’s side (we’ve no idea whether that was voluntary or not), but a lot of us are at least somewhat swarthy. Currently we’re considered white by the US Census, and by most people we run into; but the actual situation’s a bit more complicated.
This is all true, except I’m really not sure about that last line - it sounds very far fetched to me.
I think for the purposes of this discussion, we should just narrow down “white” to “would be considered white today.”
What most people mean by “white” is “looking like you are of predominantly European ancestry.” It’s not really about light skin tone. There are some Korean and Chinese people with very fair skin, but nobody would consider them to be white. So…it’s mostly about facial features? But then again, there are many people from the Indian subcontinent who look basically like Western Europeans but with the “brightness slider” turned all the way down. Same kind of nose, same kind of lips, same kind of eyes - but skin the color of Denzel Washington’s. Would anyone consider these people to be “white?” The answer is…no, not really. Fuck, it’s ridiculous, isn’t it? That’s why I wish the whole concept of racial classification wasn’t a thing at all, but it is.
So with this being said, we’re left with: “our current definition of white means, broadly, that you have the facial features, and a light enough skin tone, to look as if you could be a native inhabitant of somewhere in Europe.”
And with this being said, a substantial number of people from West Asia - that includes Israel, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, as well as Iran and the Arabian Peninsula - would in fact be considered white. Would they pass as a native of Sweden or Finland? No. Could they pass as a native of Italy or France? Yes, quite often.
That’s a substantial number of people, but it’s not all of them. Maybe it’s not even most of them. The region has a lot of different looks. Just google random images of people from those countries, and you’ll see pretty wide variety.
The author names himself as “John”, but modern scholars consider it unlikely that the author of Revelation also wrote the Gospel of John.[10]
Back in those days, few ancients wrote their own stuff, they dictated it to a scribe. We say Caesar wrote Commentarii de Bello Gallico but (wiki)Classicist Ruth Breindal believes it likely that Caesar did not directly write the work, but instead dictated most of it to a scribe at one time and the scribe wrote as Caesar spoke, or that the scribe took notes and wrote the account afterwards. Still, she does believe that Caesar had an overwhelming hand in creating the work, but believes much of the grammar and clarity of the work to be the result of the scribe or scribes involved.
So yeah, the Gospel of Paul was “written” by Paul’s disciples in Ephesus, late in his life. I doubt is the Apostle actually put pen to paper, but likely dictated at least part. Of course this is argued about but the most recent scholarship seems to agree. Most of the objections arise from the weird idea that in order for a Book or letter to be “written by”, that person actually had to set pen to paper, so based on that- pretty much NONE of the writings generally attributed to various ancient worthies would be “written” by them. This is nonsense. Nearly everyone dictated to a scribe.
So these arguments (wiki) " The Synoptic Gospels are united in identifying John as a fisherman from Galilee, and Acts 4:13 refers to John as “without learning” or “unlettered”.[35]
** The Fourth Gospel is written by someone who, based on their style and knowledge of the Greek language and grammar, would have to have been well-educated in Greek; on the other hand, as an uneducated illiterate Galilean fisherman, John the Apostle would most likely have had Aramaic as his native language, and no knowledge of any other language, let alone the ability to write in the sophisticated Greek of the Fourth Gospel.[35]: 32:41 [48]* are specious.
First of all, John lived to a very old age. Why couldn’t he learn to read, write and get an education in some 70 years of life after the death of Jesus? Next, he had a bunch of disciples, and assuming none of them either was or could hire a scribe is ridiculous.
The DNA points just as much to his brother. What leaves his brother out, according to some- is diary and guest lists. So yeah, probably Thomas, but we can’t know for sure.
Did you mean to say John? (Or did John and Paul share credit on anything either of them wrote?)
Yep. Sorry for the typo. Thanks.
Ben Franklin wrote:
That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased.
Agreed. I posted pictures of an Arab politician and a generic white actor who look like brothers. By the definition you suggest, Jesus might have been white, along with a lot of other people in his neighborhood - but he wasn’t uniquely white among a group of non-white people.
It’s not the exact area, but a Google image search of “Iranian people before the revolution” comes up with photos of people who would look right at home in a search for photos of “white people in the us 1950s-1970s”
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