Regarding the "History" Channel's "The Bible" - Jesus was not a white dude

[arely staircase]

The historical figure known as Jesus of Nazareth was not “white. He was not European. Based on the scholarly consensus, the historical Jesus would be a Middle Eastern Jew of medium, if not dark, complexion. He was certainly dark enough to have spent time in the Middle East and elsewhere, and not to have had his skin tone commented upon or noted.


This Jesus would be hounded and harassed by the TSA, looked at as a de facto “suspicious” person in post-9/11 America, and be racially profiled by the national security state. The historical Jesus would likely be subject to stop-and-frisk policies by the New York police and others. If it were too late at night, and the historical Jesus was trying to get a cab–especially if he were not attired “professionally”–he would be left standing curbside because brown folks in their 20s and 30s who look like him are presumed to be criminals.

Despite the “common sense” depiction of Jesus in the (white) American popular imagination, the historical Jesus Christ is not a white surfer dude with blue eyes, long flowing hair, and tanned and toned skin.

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/19/no_jesus_wasnt_a_white_dude_partner/

[Fawke Em]

1. True. Most scholars of that era think he looked more like this:

given his class, profession and living location.

[arely staircase]

5. and speaking of his class, profession and location

he and his original followers were extremely poor, probably the equivalent of today's "day laborers" in terms of wealth and social standing (though they were not immigrants in the land in which they lived). Judea was a backwater of the Roman Empire and Nazareth was a backwater within a backwater.

an yeah, he probably looked something like that picture.

[GiveMeFreedom]

34. That's not bad.

I think it is more with what he would have looked liked.

At least I won't have to think he looked like this anymore:

from:http://visualfunhouse.com/scary_illusions/scary-optical-illusion.html

[Greybnk48]

85. And it's been said he would have been 5' to 5'2" tall

based on the average stature of the inhabitants of that area of the world at that time. Peter Jennings did an amazing documentary about this in 2000.

Peter Jennings Reporting: The Search for Jesus (TV 2000) - IMDb

www.imdb.com/title/tt0251391/

[Solomon]

94. Jesus is the god of white supremacy.

That's why he always has to be depicted as white. no matter what we know.

[Number23]

104. I thought guns were?

[Hekate]

110. Couldn't the artist have come up with a better facial expression?

That one looks kind of gormless.

[undeterred]

130. Actual photo of Jesus on the sea of Galilee:

He's the one on the right.

[Warren DeMontague]

134. Herod, you're gonna need a bigger boat.

[Warren DeMontague]

132. Most BIBLE Scholars. Most independent historians think he looked like this:

...


yes, that's right.

[awoke_in_2003]

136. Thanks Warren. nt

[Angelonthesidelines]

140. Tuco!

He looks like Eli Wallach from the Spaghetti Westerns of my youth.
" target="_blank">

[brewens]

2. They'd rather not think of him as a European Jew, I would think. Some might recall

how they were often caricatured by a notorious right-wing regime.

[immoderate]

3. The son of god can appear as he pleases.

Offspring of deities often assume disparate persona.

--imm

[liberal_at_heart]

6. then why wouldn't he appear as those he is surrounded by?

Why would he chose to appear white in a brown community? What would he be trying to say? That white is superior to brown? I don't think so. People want him to appear white because people think white is superior to brown, so when they depict him, they depict him as white.

[arely staircase]

8. and

as the author notes, how would he be white and nobody notice?

[immoderate]

12. Being a deity, it's how he appears TO those who is surrounded by.

What would make you think that everyone sees the same thing?

It's as if you've never heard of "mysterious ways."

--imm

[liberal_at_heart]

17. so there is a Chinese Christ as well then, and a Dutch Christ, and an African Christ. If that is the

case then he should be depicted in art that way.

[immoderate]

19. Mortal artists have htheir limitations, but as is fitting...

...they can draw from their imaginations.

--imm

[liberal_at_heart]

20. No I still think it has to do with how people want to see him because a white face,

long curly blonde hair, blue eyes, and a thin European nose is what passes for beauty and people want to be inspired by what they find beautiful.

[immoderate]

26. That works too.

--imm

[Number23]

57. Has absolutely nothing to do with "beauty"

the article covers pretty succinctly why Jesus is portrayed the way that he is. Has not one thing to do with "beauty" unless you consider racial oppression and white supremacy "beautiful." And I know that you made this point in a post upthread, just want to reiterate what the author says here:

"Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo’s White Jesus were iconic images that enabled European colonialism and imperialism. In these grand projects of global white power and conquest, “Christian” became synonymous with free, white and civilized. “Heathen” meant that whole populations could be subjected to extermination, enslavement and exploitation.

The current and most popular image of Jesus as created by Warner Sallman in 1941 depicts the former as a white “American.” Here, American exceptionalism, Manifest Destiny, and rise as an Imperial power were ordained as being one with Jesus, and a blessing from God for a country whose elites imagined it to be a “shining city on the hill.”

This logic is perfectly cogent: a racial project of exploitation and enslavement of non-whites by Europeans, one legitimized by a belief in the natural inferiority of people of color, the pseudo-science of the Great Chain of Being, a belief in the Curse of Ham as well as other myths, must, for reasons of practical necessity, be predicated on the existence of a “white” God."

[Paul E Ester]

80. Yes

Chinese Jesus


African Christ


Rambo Jesus

[RitchieRich]

84. wow....

but what would he look like in a room full of Jesus's?
what is the correct plural form of Jesus?

http://mentalfloss.com/article/26483/4-bizarre-experiments-should-never-be-repeated

[SidneyR]

87. Well, the correct plural form

would not be with an apostrophe, that's for sure. Jeez.

[RitchieRich]

92. so what then?

A. Jesuses
B. Jesi
C. Jesus's

[Paul E Ester]

96. A - even tho it's ugly

by Mignon Fogarty

For me, spending time with family is a big part of the holidays, and thinking about family reminded me of a few tricky little quirks of family names and family words that can confuse people, so today I’ll tell you how to make family names plural (even those that end in “x,” “y,” and “z”), how to refer to more than one brother- or sister-in-law, and how to formally address more than one man.

How to Make Family Names Plural

First let’s figure out how to make family names plural. Family names are like brand names, you don’t change the base spelling. For example you make “blackberry,” the fruit, plural by changing the “y” to “ies”; but you make “BlackBerry,” the phone, plural by simply adding an “s” to the end: “BlackBerrys.”

It’s the same with names. “Kennedy” becomes “the Kennedys.” A newsletter subscriber named Julie asked if she should make the last name “Bellman” plural by making it “Bellmen,” and the answer is no. Something like “Bellman” becomes “the Bellmans.”

Some names need an "es" to become plural: names that end in "s," “x,” "z," “ch,” and “sh,” for example:

The Joneses invited you to hold ladders while they hang lights.
The Foxes decorated four Christmas trees.
The Alvarezes went to visit their grandmother.
The Churches sang in the top-hat choir.
The Ashes got stuck at the train station.
The same rules apply to first names. If you have two cousins named Alex, they are the Alexes.

http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/how-to-make-family-names-plural.aspx

[ut oh]

143. I'm gonna go with

Jesi


Has a nice flow to it...

[demwing]

101. Jesi /nt

[Arugula Latte]

89. And the ever-popular "Tortilla Jesus"

[liberal_at_heart]

95. I wish we could see more of those kinds of pictures. America is no longer a colony fresh off the

boat from England. We are a very diverse country now and it would be nice to see some pictures of an African Jesus and a Mexican Jesus and a Chinese Jesus.

[Hekate]

111. You have not noticed that Jesus is depicted differently in different cultures?

My aunt and uncle spent some time in Japan in the '50s, and gave me a lovely little painting on silk of a very Japanese Madonna and Child, complete with kimono and long flowing black hair.

Missionaries to far-flung places usually seem to have no difficulty arranging their minds around this, especially because they want their stories to have appeal to the locals. There are African depictions of Jesus and his mother, and in the Americas there are certainly many brown depictions: Mexican, South American, Native American.

It's not surprising that in Europe the Madonna and Child were depicted as European, and since the original white settlers of America were of European origin, they brought the images they remembered with them.

[liberal_at_heart]

114. America is very diverse. We should be seeing different pictures of him right here in the US.

I've never seen a picture of Jesus other than white. Someone up thread posted some. Those were the first I'd ever seen.

[Hekate]

117. Well, they are everywhere in Latino communities

Look for Catholic churches in Latino neighborhoods, for starters. All over California.

My uncle in Salt Lake City took me to a Catholic church there to see the art (he was a lapsed but never ex-Catholic) -- the Stations of the Cross and some other pieces had been created by a Mexican-American artist, I am pretty sure. It was maybe 20 years ago, so I have no memory of how to find it again. I just remember how much my uncle appreciated the style and beauty and spirituality of the images -- and he and I are of Irish descent.

I think you just have to know where to look -- the Catholic tradition is very broad, and every ethnic group that immigrates brings icons from the home country. The Virgin Mary has made appearances to believers where ever they live, and the renderings reflect that. She looks Polish to the Poles, and Portuguese to the Portuguese, and Mexican to the Mexicans.

American Protestants originally followed the tradition of no artwork in churches, especially no statues (they thought they encouraged idolatry), but family Bibles always had a few color plates, and as these were white people, Jesus just got whiter and whiter. Mary disappeared, except at Christmas.

I think what people are objecting to is ignorance. American fundies tend to encourage that perception, because they by and large don't know history and think they have a lock on The Truth. But in all honesty I see an awful lot of anti-religious DUers who don't know history either, especially religious history, and they also think they have a lock on The Truth.

[AsahinaKimi]

118. I had to see it to believe it

[LibertyLover]

122. And so He has been depicted that way

Take a look at art from Asia or Latin America or Africa, especially what is known as folk art. You will see Yeshua bar Yusuf bar El depicted as the local population looks. Over the years, I've seen Black Christs, mulatto Christs, Chinese Christs, Indian (both India and Native American) Christs. The variety has been amazing.

[backscatter712]

127. You should see him in China...

[atreides1]

79. Isaiah 53:2

"He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him."

[Blue_In_AK]

4. But did you see the African Samson?

Were there African Israelites?

[arely staircase]

7. i haven't watched any of it, mainly because I stopped watching the "History" Channel some years ago

when they went off in the UFO-ice-road-swamp-truckers-haunted-house-bullshit direction. Back in the 90s I used to call it the "Hitler Channel" because 80 percent of their shows were about WW2. I never would have guessed that was the best they would ever be.

[KittyWampus]

91. they are currently airing "The Vikings" which is amazingly detailed in production & fairly accurate

regarding the sagas the story is based on.

They also recently aired "The Men Who Built America" series which covered the Robber Barons. Which was also pretty darned good.

[NavyDavy]

138. yes they live mostly in Ethiopia.....

[Blue_In_AK]

139. Hmm, who knew?

Thanks.

That Jesus bugs me, though. He's too sweet.

[Malone]

9. ..

well to be fair Simon of Cyrene (helped carry the cross)probably wasn't a darker skinned black man. And I don't know if dreadlocks like what John had in the show existed back then, they might have since hair sort of does that naturally.

[arely staircase]

10. the hair

well we know roman men of the time wore their hair relatively short, but that doesn't mean people in Judea did. But John the Baptist with dreadlock is believable because as you note, that is what hair does, and from what little we know of the historical figure John the Baptist, he doesn't strike one as being much on grooming, even by the standards of the time and place.

[Cleita]

11. He might have been half European if it's true that Mary was raped by a Roman

soldier, which would explain why Joseph had a hesitation about marrying her because she was already pregnant and he wasn't the father. Of course the person, Celsus, who writes that he was the son of a soldier named Panthera also attacked Christians in his writings to discredit them, so it's probably pretty fishy.

[arely staircase]

13. sure you aren't thinking of the Life of Brian?

Mrs. Cohen: Brian, your father was a Roman.

Brian: Mother, you were raped?

Mrs. Cohen: Well at first.

[Cleita]

50. That's where Life of Brian got the idea.

The writer who posited this was a Greek named Celsus. Here's a brief wiki about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiberius_Iulius_Abdes_Pantera

[arely staircase]

52. did not know that

interesting theory.

[Cleita]

54. It's probably not true, but something like that could explain

Mary's pregnancy while she was betrothed to Joseph and he knew it wasn't him. She could have been subjected to stoning back in those days if Joseph had not decided to protect her. Of course, with angels and the Holy Spirit impregnating her it all got mythologized.

[arely staircase]

58. yeah, or joseph knocked her up, which also would have brought a stoning

problem with the virgin birth (well, one of many) is that the earliest Christian writings, St. Paul's letters to various churches and the Gospel of Mark make no mention of it. Interestingly the Gospel of John, the last one to be written with its fully developed Christology we recognize today makes no mention either.

Then again, a virgin giving birth is theoretically possible. Insemination does not require intercourse - though that scenario would still require an earthly father/sperm donor.

[Cleita]

98. If it were Joseph and he acknowledged it was him, there would have been no stoning

as a betrothal was considered almost marriage in those days and there could have been relations. According to the gospels, this is what he did. He said the child was his to protect her, although he had contemplated putting her away quietly like sending her to a relative far away or something like that so she wouldn't be stoned. But when the angel appeared to him, he told him what to do according to the gospels.

[raging moderate]

108. What if Joseph just didn't know much about sex?

What if he thought you couldn't get pregnant without intromission? what if he had a rip in his tunic? What if he got a little too enthusiastic in his goodnight kisses one night?

[Cleita]

109. What if none if it is true?

*scream*

[caseymoz]

119. Not quite true.

That's garbled. The source of that story is the Sepher Toldoth Yeshu, written in the middle ages by Jewish sources twelve centuries after Celsus. I'll emphasize, this is a piece of Jewish writing, but not a Jewish scripture of any sort.

The story couldn't come from Celsus, because Celsus' writing did not survive. All we know of Celsus is what Origen says about his work.

My source is Frank Zindler's The Jesus the Jews Never Knew.

[Cleita]

121. I'm not saying it's true. It's just something that's out there to think about.

It's probably no more bona fide that the Shroud of Turin. Frank Zindler knows about as much as we do from the sources. Frankly, IMHO, we don't really know if Jesus existed at all. He could have been a compilation of Messiahs that were appearing around that time. There are few outside sources that confirm the gospels or his existence. I mean why aren't there records out there that record the events described in the gospels, like the Star of Bethlehem? Herod's slaughter of the innocents should have generated enough shock that historians would have written about it. What about Augustus' census? There seems to be no evidence the Roman emperor did such a thing and many other events that should have had collaborating records.

[caseymoz]

125. I miscommunicated.

I meant the source wasn't really Celsus. The details you reported were correct.

And I agree with everything else you've written. Nothing in the Gospels can be verified.

[raging moderate]

14. Tall, dark, gaunt

I have seen the earliest pictures, in which he looks tall, dark, and gaunt, skinny with a long nose, black eyes, and long black hair. And isn't there s quotation from that contemporary Jewish commentator Josephus (not an admirer) describing Jesus's black glittering eyes and long black tangled hair? Definitely fitting the profile of a terrorist in our time! Of course our ideas have been swayed by the European painters, cheerfully posing their blue-eyed brothers and blonde girlfriends in these Nativity pictures.

[arely staircase]

22. i don't know of any physical description of him

either by the authors of the Gospels (who probably never saw him), his brother James (who maybe wrote the Epistle of St. James, and was definitely the leader of the Church in Jerusalem after Jesus' execution) or historians like Josephus.

You make a good point about models.

[dimbear]

65. There is some description in Josephus, but most agree it is a later fake add on. There is a real

2nd century tradition, however, the Jesus wasn't particularly good looking. Surprising.
When you look at very successful preachers today, doubly surprising.

[snooper2]

73. what earliest pictures? From what year?

The article above says "Based on the scholarly consensus"



So they made intelligent guesses of what a dude born in that area would look like thousands of years ago. That was difficult

Not one piece of secular evidence that the person ever really lived, or did any "miracles". Yet here we are talking about skin tones

[awoke_in_2003]

15. I wonder why the show is on...

the History Channel to begin with. The station has really taken a slide from 10 years ago, what with shows like Ancient Aliens and accepting the bible as a historical document.

[arely staircase]

55. the bible, though not a work of history, is a subject of great historical import

one cannot discuss the English Civil War or the Reconquista of Spain, the division of Ireland or many other historical events intelligently without at least a basic understanding of the bible and Christianity/Judaism.

however, the HC approach to it is ridiculous and transparently pandering. and yeah, they have really hit rock bottom. I thought they sucked ten years ago because every show seemed to be about ww2. now I long for those days.

[awoke_in_2003]

112. good points...

and the Gutenberg bible is probably the most important book ever printed- the first mass produced book readily available to the common man.

[Moostache]

106. What happened to the Discovery Channel and TLC (The LEARNING Channel) is even worse...

10 years ago, I could have a reasonable expectation that if I had cable TV with Discovery, TLC, History or Science channels on the menu, there would be at least ONE show worth watching every day. I am horrified by the programming on all of those stations now. If there is one show a MONTH, I consider that amazing.

Just more of the epic dumbing down of Americans. More people know what a Honey Boo-Boo is than realize there is a massive Honey Bee collapse in progress that no one can fully explain. I often wonder what the eventual human replacements will look like after they evolve from cockroaches to inherit this planet from us. What will the second form of intelligent life on earth look like? What will they think of our relics and fossils? Will evolution even manage to arrive at intelligent life again or were we just a miracle of circumstance and something never to be replicated? This kind of questions used to be addressed on all of those previously mentioned channels.

I hate that my wife is addicted to watching some of this pap, otherwise I would have dropped it years ago. Such a waste of an opportunity.

[awoke_in_2003]

113. Don't get me started on TLC...

that channel seems to be dedicated to "reality" shows about people with irresponsibly large families.

[Jamastiene]

142. Are we really all that intelligent though?

If we ignore things like the Honey Bee collapse and global warming and would rather watch reality TV shows about tiny little kid beauty queens and families that are way too large, what does that say about us?

I know you and I would prefer the good programming TLC and Discovery had on years ago, but they wouldn't have all these reality shows on if no one was watching, would they? Are they airing crap shows nowadays because that is what the majority would prefer to see?

I hope not. I miss the shows they used to have on years ago too. They were actually interesting to watch. Maybe we could get them interested in airing good documentaries about the Honey Bees again if we offered them a bee named Honey Bee Bee.

[niyad]

16. as z. budapest said, "white european christians worship a book that has no white european

christians in it."

[Gregorian]

18. And Adam and Eve couldn't have had names because there wasn't even an alphabet yet.

Just had to chime in.

[arely staircase]

24. for some reason that makes me think of this

"If the Reds were baseball's first team, who did they play?"
George Carlin

[Gregorian]

93. Haha.

He was brilliant. I wish I could be so smart.

This morning I got in front of my video camera and tried doing a sort of comedic skit. It was the "morning news with Gregg". I don't know how he did it. I look like a dork when I try. Anyways...

[frazzled]

21. "Middle Eastern Jew" is sort of redundant

All Jews were Middle-Eastern at that time.

Both Jews and Arabs are technically listed as "white," by the way. Probably for lack of anything better.

[arely staircase]

23. Middle Eastern Jew is not redundant now, the time in which the audience of Salon.com lives

and, though Arabs and Middle Eastern Jews are Caucasian (to the extent that term still has meaning) they are certainly different looking enough from European/European Americans that they get profiled at airports and other places for their swarthiness.

[frazzled]

27. Um, they used the term to describe what Jesus would have looked like

In the first century B.C. That is what I was referring to as redundant.

I'm not talking about today. I'm not even sure what you're calling a Middle-Eastern Jew today. A Jew who lives in the Middle-East? (Many there are from families that spent generation after generation in Eastern Europe, Spain, or even Africa--but they were all from the Middle-East way back when. My daughter in law might be called a "Middle-Eastern Jew," since her family came from Greece and elsewhere in the Middle-East).

Middle-Eastern Jew is not really a term.

[arely staircase]

30. middle Eastern jew means not Ashkenazim (european jews)

these two groups very much distinguish themselves from one another in Israel today. there are the jews whose ancestors never left Palestine and those whose migrated their way to Europe centuries ago (there modern, whiter, European descendants migrating back to Palestine after ww2 and the holocaust.)

This is a distinct and well-known cultural divide in Israel, with the Middle Eastern Jews being more conservative and religious and the Europeans more liberal and secular.

[Behind the Aegis]

44. Middle Eastern Jews are called Mizrahi.

Then there are the Ashkenazi, the Sephardi, and the Maghrebi.

[arely staircase]

45. did i misuse the term?

i'm not being snarky, i'm really asking. Ashkenazim is the correct term for European Jews, no?

[Behind the Aegis]

47. No, you are correct. I was just adding some more info.

The Ashkenazim are mainly Polish, German, and various Russian states, including Russia. I think it also includes the rest of Eastern Europe. Honestly, I meant to post to the other poster.

[arely staircase]

49. cool, thanks

eom

[frazzled]

72. Yes, being Ashkenazi myself, I am aware ...

of the distinction, but my Ashkenazi husband and son are nearly black haired and olive skinned. And that is what we are talking about here: the way Jesus would have looked.

Ashkenazim are originally Middle Eastern Jews as well, who did not migrate to Europe until the Middle Ages (a thousand years after Jesus). There was obviously more or less integration within the European culture, depending on the place and time.

[Gravitycollapse]

141. Actually, many Jews were African.

[Phillip McCleod]

25. (a) you assumed incorrectly that there is a scholarly consensus..

..that jesus the historical personage spoken of in the bible ever existed, at all. some might choose to stop and pick that bone. let's say i'm not one of them today (another perhaps).

(b) before the advent of an orthodoxy or the rumblings of a universal christian church, from the 1st-4th CE (the period *closest* to the events in question) there were a plethora of myths and legends surrounding this figure, which were culled to comprise the books of the New Testament.

not all of these many 'lost books' and apocrypha describe a jesus anything resembling the familiar figure. christians cherry-picked back then too and apparently still at it today.

[arely staircase]

28. i didn't write the article

and the "mythicist" position that there was no Jesus of Nazareth is virtually non-existent among scholars.

I am very aware of other gospels, epistles and revelations,gnostic and otherwise, that didn't make the cut at Nicea. But the point is that a guy from 1st C Judea would not and could not have looked like the white guy on TV or Renaissance paintings - and that is a valid point even if Jesus wasn't an actual person. If he were completely made up (which, again, almost no serious historian argues) he is still a made up guy from the Middle East.

[Phillip McCleod]

31. yeah, because a majority of biblical scholars are believers..

..is the only reason the mythicist position isn't the dominant one. calling it 'virtually non-existent' is just, uh, completely wrong. (doesn't need condescending air quotes thanks. i didn't write "jesus" did i?) the thesis has a hell of a lot more going for it than a scant few scraps of untrustworthy latter-day propaganda and erratica.

what you say is true, otherwise. the fictional jesus on the history channel should've been truer to the book. i felt the same way about harry potter.

[arely staircase]

33. really?

In a society in which people still claim the Holocaust did not happen, and in which there are resounding claims that the American president is, in fact, a Muslim born on foreign soil, is it any surprise to learn that the greatest figure in the history of Western civilization, the man on whom the most powerful and influential social, political, economic, cultural and religious institution in the world -- the Christian church -- was built, the man worshipped, literally, by billions of people today -- is it any surprise to hear that Jesus never even existed?

That is the claim made by a small but growing cadre of (published ) writers, bloggers and Internet junkies who call themselves mythicists. This unusually vociferous group of nay-sayers maintains that Jesus is a myth invented for nefarious (or altruistic) purposes by the early Christians who modeled their savior along the lines of pagan divine men who, it is alleged, were also born of a virgin on Dec. 25, who also did miracles, who also died as an atonement for sin and were then raised from the dead.

Few of these mythicists are actually scholars trained in ancient history, religion, biblical studies or any cognate field, let alone in the ancient languages generally thought to matter for those who want to say something with any degree of authority about a Jewish teacher who (allegedly) lived in first-century Palestine. There are a couple of exceptions: of the hundreds -- thousands? -- of mythicists, two (to my knowledge) actually have Ph.D. credentials in relevant fields of study. But even taking these into account, there is not a single mythicist who teaches New Testament or Early Christianity or even Classics at any accredited institution of higher learning in the Western world. And it is no wonder why. These views are so extreme and so unconvincing to 99.99 percent of the real experts that anyone holding them is as likely to get a teaching job in an established department of religion as a six-day creationist is likely to land on in a bona fide department of biology.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bart-d-ehrman/did-jesus-exist_b_1349544.html

[Warren DeMontague]

135. Exactly. Expecting "Bible Scholars" to discount the premise that constitutes most of the Bible...

not gonna happen, because then what are they studying?

[liberal_at_heart]

29. just because not every historian believes there was a Jesus does not mean there isn't a consensus.

Some Christian scientists believe in creationism, but the consensus among the scientific community is that evolution is how the human species started. There may be some historians that don't believe there was a historical Jesus, but the consensus among the historical community is that there was.

[Phillip McCleod]

32. no there is much more vigorous debate about the historicity of jesus than that.

a completely false analogy, and rather insulting. i'm not sure where y'all get this idea that historians actually take the historical jesus seriously in such overwhelming numbers that you can so lightly dismiss it.

i'd best be moving on from this thread, but that's for the hoots.

[arely staircase]

36. "These views are so extreme and so unconvincing to 99.99 percent of the real experts

that anyone holding them is as likely to get a teaching job in an established department of religion as a six-day creationist is likely to land on in a bona fide department of biology."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bart-d-ehrman/did-jesus-exist_b_1349544.html

[Phillip McCleod]

38. really quoting bart ehrman at me?

gahg.

i win.

[arely staircase]

39. no, the ad hominem always loses

Last edited Wed Apr 3, 2013, 02:49 AM - Edit history (1)

edited to say - I bet you liked bart erhrman before his last book.

for those who don't know, he is an agnostic scholar who has written extensively about how the bible is full of contradictions and can't be real history but has recently pissed off mythicists with his latest book explaining why there is indeed academic consensus that Jesus existed - but as a man, not a god.

"His book Jesus, Interrupted critically assesses the New Testament documents and early Christianity. In his book Forged which was released in 2011, he asserts that 11 or more books of the Christian New Testament were essentially politically expeditious forgeries, intended to advance various theological positions and were in fact not written by the authors traditionally ascribed to them...In 2012, Ehrman published Did Jesus Exist? defending the thesis that Jesus of Nazareth existed in contrast to the mythicist theory that Jesus is an entirely mythical or fictitious being woven whole-cloth out of legendary material. He states he expects the book to be criticized both by some atheists as well as fundamentalist Christians. In response, Richard Carrier published a lengthy criticism of the book in April 2012, particularly questioning both Ehrman's facts and methodology.[7] Ehrman replied to Carrier's criticisms on his website, primarily defending himself against Carrier's allegations of factual errors.[8]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_Ehrman

[arely staircase]

40. name at least three published PhDs in history who thinks Jesus did not exist

eom

[pnwmom]

35. Are you saying that Jewish and Israeli people aren't "white"? Most of them would disagree. n/t

[arely staircase]

37. Middle Easterners, semetic or otherwise, are certainly distingishable enough from europeans to get

profiled at the airport, no?

[pnwmom]

41. So are Greeks, southern Italians and French, and anyone else with dark hair and olive skin.

It happens to my son-in-law all the time, even though his passport says "white."

[arely staircase]

42. and why do these greeks get profiled?

it isn't because their passport says "white."

[pnwmom]

60. I just don't get your point.

Jesus most likely had olive skin and dark hair, like most Israelis, but that doesn't make him "non-white" according to any commonly used definition. No human being has literally white skin, including the groups of people commonly referred to as "white."

I agree he wasn't a blue-eyed blond, but who is honestly arguing that he was?

[arely staircase]

62. the white/not-white distinction is made by the author

of the salon article - who is African American. Now, I understand what you are saying and perhaps a better way of putting it would be Jesus wasn't the Anglo-Irish, Northern European he is portrayed as on t.v. and renaissance paintings.

who is white and who is not has always been a shifting racist social construct. read about spain's blood purity laws during the Reconquest and the conquest of the America's. to be a "real" Spaniard one had to be or at least pretend to be a white Visigoth, free of Moorish "contamination." Problem was, it was mostly fiction since 700 years of Moorish rule had pretty much spread their DNA far and wide across the Iberian Peninsula. So they were basically a strange mix of, well, mixing and white supremacy. And the English of the time wouldn't have considered any Spaniard a white person.

Anyway, I digress. I think we agree that olive skinned, dark-haired people are sufficiently exotic in the eyes of many that it is enough to get them racially profiled - and if the historical Jesus went through the airport today he'd probably get some extra attention due to his ethnicity. That is the author's thesis and I agree with it, though the use of white/non-white may be awkward and imprecise. You ask who is arguing that he was? Well, just about every Renaissance painter and the many modern film/tv directors through their inaccurate works.

[defacto7]

43. The historic Jesus was not

......

No, I did not forget anything.

...and why is this in GD? Maybe in Religion.

[arely staircase]

46. criticism of the "history" channel has to be posted under religion?

you are not required to participate.

[defacto7]

48. OK....

Not really my call... but it was a subject of major religious content. Looks like it has become what it is and I did participate.

[arely staircase]

51. i regret that it has somewhat gone off course

the point of my op is that the history channel is teh stoopid.

let's assume for the sake of argument Jesus did not exist. He is still a fictional Jew from 1CE Palestine. So portraying him as a white guy would be like someone writing a story about Thor, and someone else coming along and painting him as a Japanese man.

that was my point in posting the srticle, not that Jesus did or did not exist.

[defacto7]

53. Thanks for clarification

or setting me strait. I'm just overwhelmed by how the subject matter in many GD discussions turns into this kind of .... I won't say it.

[arely staircase]

56. i know what you mean

eom

[DonCoquixote]

59. at the very least

He would get mistaken for Italian or Hispanic. He was born before the Romans did a forced resettlment of Jews across Europe (aka the Diaspora), so you would not have had too many fair, blonde, Blue-eyed Jews.

Now, I do not believe in the Shroud of Turin, but even the "image" on that shropud depictssomeone whose facial features do NOT look Western European. it means that even a forger would know that someone from Jerusalem had to have certain facial features.

[jambo101]

61. He probably didnt speak English either.

[arely staircase]

63. fancy Shakespeare english eom

[MFM008]

64. I suppose.....

IF you accept the ideas of christianity, Virgin birth/conception, miracles, raising the dead and resurrection, you can believe Jesus looked like Brad Pitt , I suppose he could have looked like anything.

[Victor_c3]

66. Yeah, I never understood why everyone pictures Jesus as a white dude

Even today, how many white guys named Jesus that are carpenters have you ever seen? I've only ever met a few guys who were named Jesus - and they were all Hispanic.

[quaker bill]

67. The bigger challenge

would be the ideas he was reported to have preached. Particularly coming from someone who looked a bit like an Arab.

[OldDem2012]

68. Shocker. Not. nt.

[panader0]

69. Wait a minute--you say Jesus was not a surfer?!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

81. It's all about balance...

[oldandhappy]

70. yep. Think about this when I see a white Jesus.

Interesting pic in number one comment. Anyway, thank you for the article.

[warrior1]

71. Did a historical Jesus exist?

http://www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm

Amazingly, the question of an actual historical Jesus rarely confronts the religious believer. The power of faith has so forcefully driven the minds of most believers, and even apologetic scholars, that the question of reliable evidence gets obscured by tradition, religious subterfuge, and outrageous claims. The following gives a brief outlook about the claims of a historical Jesus and why the evidence the Christians present us cannot serve as justification for reliable evidence for a historical Jesus.



ALL CLAIMS OF JESUS DERIVE FROM HEARSAY ACCOUNTS

No one has the slightest physical evidence to support a historical Jesus; no artifacts, dwelling, works of carpentry, or self-written manuscripts. All claims about Jesus derive from writings of other people. There occurs no contemporary Roman record that shows Pontius Pilate executing a man named Jesus. Devastating to historians, there occurs not a single contemporary writing that mentions Jesus. All documents about Jesus came well after the life of the alleged Jesus from either: unknown authors, people who had never met an earthly Jesus, or from fraudulent, mythical or allegorical writings. Although one can argue that many of these writings come from fraud or interpolations, I will use the information and dates to show that even if these sources did not come from interpolations, they could still not serve as reliable evidence for a historical Jesus, simply because all sources about Jesus derive from hearsay accounts.

Hearsay means information derived from other people rather than on a witness' own knowledge.

Courts of law do not generally allow hearsay as testimony, and nor does honest modern scholarship. Hearsay does not provide good evidence, and therefore, we should dismiss it.

snip

[The CCC]

74. Jesus was not white

He was Caucasian which includes a variety of skin hues.

[kurtzapril4]

75. I was born and raised

in Covington, KY, until I was 6. This was about 1963-'64. When I was 4, I started going to the Baptist Church, to Sunday school. We did lots and lots of colouring. So, one day, we were given a picture of Jesus and some of his disciples to color. I figured, since they lived in the desert, they had dark suntans. So I coloured in everything, staying in the lines, and I coloured Jeebus and his followers brown, and turned the picture in to the Sunday school teacher. She about had a stroke. "Jesus was NOT BROWN, young lady, and I want you to FIX THIS." So she made me scratch off all the brown crayon, and color it over with flesh colour...the flesh colour being caucasian, of course.

[renate]

90. what a great story, for all kinds of reasons

What a smart and logical little thing you were! I love how a 4-year-old would have been so innocent of any idea that a brown Jesus could possibly be objectionable. And how sad, and revealing, is it that the teacher didn't even question why on earth would Jesus be white. At four years old you were a deeper thinker than she was. A little child shall lead them....

[kurtzapril4]

120. Thanks, Renate

I just used to watch my mom sunbathe, and I noticed she turned brown...so I figured everybody did, LOL! I remember going to visit relatives in southern KY, and I still remember seeing whites only bathrooms and drinking fountains in the bus station.

[cvoogt]

76. I wonder

how many people realize they are worshiping a brown-skinned Middle Eastern radical

[moobu2]

77. But Santa Claus is still white right?

[LeftishBrit]

115. Santa Claus is based on St Nicholas, who was Greek

So white, sort of, but not the North Europaean figure who appears on the Christmas cards.

[DavidDvorkin]

78. Jesus was not

Period.

Stories about him should be on the Mythology Channel.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

82. The Nazis not only claimed Jesus was Aryan but that he wasn't even a Jew....

But then,...they had an agenda...

[bigbrother05]

83. The media misrepresents the Romans and Greeks as well

Don't think the Ceasers looked like Laurence Olivier.

[cbdo2007]

86. I think he was probably a "Grey"

[Vinnie From Indy]

88. "Christ didn't come to Earth to give us the willies..."

Catholicism WOW!

[Bluenorthwest]

97. Some strange elements in this piece.

I had to look up the actor from History Channel to see this surfer dude with blue eyes and I found a Portuguese actor with dark eyes and olive skin. I find the 'surfer dude with blue eyes' bit confusing.


Also, the part that assumes someone would have 'commented on his skin tone' is odd in a body of literature that contains no physical description whatsoever, why would one assume that complexion would be noted? Nothing is noted about Jesus' appearance in the NT. Nor about that of others.

[yellowcanine]

99. I am guessing he didn't look like Brad Pitt either.

[OldRedneck]

100. If Jesus were in George Zimmerman's neighborhood after dark . . .

Z'man would shoot him.

[Wolf Frankula]

102. Every Real Amurkan Krischin knows

Jesus was a blond haired, blue eyed man who wore a Caterpillar cap and spoke King James Bible English with a Southern Accent.

Wolf

[tout_le_monde]

103. "Historical?"

Let's see his birth certificate!

[just1voice]

105. But Mary still became magically impregnated right? LOL

Good thing the "Revising History Channel" is on top of things.

[DeeBunker]

107. No foolin', Jesus Definately wasn't a white dude..

No foolin', Jesus Definately wasn't a white dude.. Orig Palestinian Jews in Jesus' time were a 'race of people', being a branch of semetic/arab speaking mediteranian peoples known as 'Phonecians'; They weren't the 'religious made jews' of 2day, esp not the 'Ashken Nazi's' whose race came out of the tiny Caucasus zone that adopted Jewery/Mosaic's. These 'white adapted jews' became the polish/german euro jews of the day. Spanish/euro jews were more darkly populated jewery sometimes called separdim or others. Ck the Rand/McNally ethno maps, therein are the semetic speaking tribes of the world, all being Arabs. All real orig jews were probably arabs including Jesus, 2 which he probably did exist; Just the Facts..

[caseymoz]

116. Hate to rain more skepticism on this,

But I'd say there's a fifty percent chance that Jesus and his apostles did not even exist.

[cleanhippie]

123. Considering the complete lack of extra-biblical contemporary evidence, it's more like 95%

[caseymoz]

124. I wouldn't go that far.

The chance is good, but I wouldn't bet my house on it. If I had one.

[cleanhippie]

126. Ok, 94%

But that is my final offer!

[backscatter712]

128. I'm still waiting for Cult of Dusty to do the rest of History of the Bible.

But here's his take on the first four hours...

[d_r]

129. I just wanted to post this video

because this thread stuck the song in my head

[PolitFreak]

131. Yes He WAS, dammit!

In fact, he was an Episcopalian! So there!

[Warren DeMontague]

133. Sorry, but "Jesus" as an actual, historical entity, quite possibly didn't exist at all.

http://www.jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/

The origins of the Mithras/Horus-like mystery cult that evolved into Early Christianity make it quite likely that he started out as a mythical figure who was only retroactively given an objective historical "life".

This hypothesis is backed up by the total lack of ANY historical corroboration outside of the bible, for any of it.

[Coyotl]

137. There are no white dudes in the bible.

[sulphurdunn]

144. With the exception

of the Romans, the Philistines, the Galileans and possibly the Hittites.

[sulphurdunn]

145. Not that it matters,

but the Biblical place names Galatia and Galilee were used to refer to Celtic tribes that invaded and settled those areas in the 3rd century BCE. These tribes intermingled with native peoples. They were conquered and forcibly converted to Judaism by the Hasmonean Dynasty in the 1st BCE. During the time of Jesus, Galilee was a melting pot, and Galileans were held about a notch above Samaritans by Judeans. Galilee is referred to in Matthew as "Galilee of the Gentiles," Jesus of Nazareth could have as easily been a white guy with blond hair and blue eyes as a dark, brown eyed middle eastern Semite. Jesus was probably a mutt, like most of us.