Jesus was born in Palestine to Palestinian parents. Why do all the paintings and movies show Jesus as white? I don’t know any white skinned Palestinians. They are all dark skinned. Is it just that the European Christian world was racist, and they refused to admit their lord was dark skinned? What gives?
He was beige.
Us “white” folks are really beige if you look closely.
Two quick points:
#1 This topic has been addressed a number of times. Just do a quick search. Just off of the top of my head, I can think of 3 or 4 posts on this very topic.
#2 Although Jesus would have been more than likely olive complexioned, when I watch the news, I see plenty of light skinned Palestinians.
Isn’t Arafat’s wife pretty light skinned? I know that some “Arabs” are quite light skinned for example the red headed Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri. Palestinians are still caucasoid anyway not negroid or mongoloid.
Well, what paintings and movies? The most famous ones?
Because the painters (and models) and movie-makers (and actors) are European (which is what I assume you mean by ‘white’) or of primarily European descent?
White people prefer a white savior, just as black people prefer a black savior. It’s not really that hard to fathom.
Good discussion develops from kinda lame OP in this thread.
Actually, I’d say it pretty much stems back from the famous Europeon paintings from the middle ages and since then. Those were probably a result of artistic bias(everyone around them was more or less white, so that’s how they’d frame their subjects). Pretty much all the depictions since then have come from that image, without people really thinking about it.
How does the saying go? Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity? Insert “compounded error” at the in place of “Stupidity” for roughly the same idea.
In many cases in mythology, if the character had fair eyes, hair, and skin, it usually meant he was the hero or an important character. I doubt that the main reason to why we have a European looking Jesus, but you never know.
Jesus was born in Judea, to Jewish parent.
I have no idea why he is portrayed as white.
Oh, can we please get over this “black Jesus” nonsense?
He was Mediterranean. What we think of as “black” is West African mostly, but definitely well south of Eygpt/Carthage/etc. He probably looked more “white” than he did “black”, unless you consider Egyptians and Greeks and Palestinians to be “black”.
I’m sure he looks a little more “white” in portrayals, because it makes white people sympathize more with him. That’s natural tribalist instincts at play.
Anyways, if you believe Jesus is who he (or those after him) said he is, then possibly half or all of his DNA was created by divine intervention, so there’s no telling what he looked like. We can only conclude (and only speculatively) that he looked at least enough like his surrounding population not to draw notice or comment, since there is none in the synoptic gospels.
Another thing is Palestine has always been a “highway” for all sorts of ethnic groups. The people there today are descended from Neolithic farming peoples we barely know of, the nomadic Semitic herders such as the Hebrews, Indo-European Hittites, Egyptians, Nubians, Cushites, Babylonians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans (who in Palestine’s case were mostly Greeks)…and that was just up to Jesus’ day. Since then we can add more Greeks, Arabian Penisula Arabs, Turks, Armenians, Western Crusaders, and all sorts of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish pilgrims who stayed for good.
So anyone who makes any sorts of claim as to what Jesus really was, or what the origins of modern day Palestinians are must keep that in mind.
Why does it matter so much to people? I’m white therefore my anthropomorphic perception of God is white. In the Last Supper, the Jesus in the painting looks exactly like me, so that’s how I view Jesus. Does it really matter to you how I view him other than as a passing interest in how other people view things? I won’t stop you from painting him as an alien nailed to the cross if you want to. I play up the fact that I look like Jesus all the time, wearing Christian propaganda T-shirts to clubs, or in my big pimp coat as a pimp Jesus. I believe deeply in the idea presented by Jesus, and use it in my own faith, and it really doesn’t matter to me what anyone else says about it in the end, though it’s bound to annoy me if you harp on how I go about my own personal spirituality. So I’m going to go with the Jesus that looks exactly like me, why not?
Erek
Because if Jesus, who is presented as everything you should aspire to be, is presented as looking nothing like you, if you’re a child, you start to count that as one other thing that’s wrong with you. This is simplistic, but so are children. When I was growing up, blonde hair and blue eyes were part of the image of being a good person. I’ve described my highly successful younger brother as literally being the family’s “fair-haired boy”. Me, I’ve got brown hair and hazel eyes. I know it sounds silly, but that image was one more strike against me, if only in my own mind.
When I read in the news that someone has seen Jesus’ or Mary’s face in a tortilla, water tower, etc., my first questions is “How do they know what He (or she) looked like?” Why would it be Jesus’ face rather than, say Peter’s or Paul’s, or Mary, the Mother of Jesus, rather than Mary Magdalene or Martha?
CJ
In the first place Palestinians did not exist at that time–you cannot validly use modern Palestinians as a reference. In the second place, the practice is a continuation of an artistic convention that had Biblican scenes illustrated as if they were contemperaneous to the author, not as historical pieces. Later, the trappings of history were tossed back in. Likewise, I’d say that there are definite racist elements in it, if my great-grandmother is anything to go by.
Jesus is portrayed as white for the same reason that it’s often assumed that Adam and Eve, Noah, Moses, Abraham, and God Himself are all white.
Makes me think of the episode of the Good Times when JJ paints a picture of a black Jesus. Florida thinks it looks like a wino and rejects it, choosing instead to keep the white, blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus up on the wall. It must have seemed sacrilegious to the white writers of the show to have an image of a black Jesus compete with the more accepted, more easily believed white one. It must have seemed funny to them to make the black Jesus out to be a wino, and the white Jesus to be pure.
It doesn’t matter what Jesus looked like, especially since Christians aren’t supposed to drool over images anyway. But I think an unfortunate number of people actually do care. I think the white, blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus is so entrenched in our culture that it plays a significant role in people’s faith.
It just looks strange to me. I’m used to “Christ Pantokrator” (Christ the all-powerful) Ikons, and He is portrayed as olive-complected, dark-haired, dark-eyed, and usually quite the aquiline nose.
BAND NAME!!!
NotSuitableforChildren, you are probably correct that Jesus would look more like the current inhabitants of Palestine, but they were initially classified as caucasian (when it was still the “big three”, now we define several sub-divisions).
I agree, he would be on the darker end of the spectrum and not even close to my pale Irish/Polish look, but as previously stated, I don’t think many whites were keen to have a “dark complected” savior.
Trivia maven L. M. Boyd once mentioned a painting of the Last Supper done by a Medieval German artist. On the table in front of Jesus were a beer stein, a loaf of pumpernickel and a large ham.