No, please: Your opinion is valuable.
When the Biblical writer mentioned that Esau was hairy, does that not seem to suggest that most of his compatriots were not hairy?
To me, that suggests only that Esau was hairy in comparison to other (less-hairy) persons whom the writer (who was certainly not as well-travelled or sophisticated as a modern person, who would be familiar with numerous different races and ethnic groups) considered "average."
Or, doesn’t history place blacks as inhabiting Africa? And the Egyptian paintings definitely have the Egyptians as white when you decode their method of representation. The paintings do represent blacks with black pigmented painting, and they were represented as slaves.
It was not my intention to engage in an anthropological discussion. I know too little about the mass migration of different peoples in the Middle East thousands of years ago.
My intention was only to point out that when a writer (in a primitive culture) says "big" or "hairy" or "fair-complexioned," one should not assume that he is using the same measuring stick as the one employed in an entirely different era and geographical region, like present-day Europe / America.
Regards,
“My intention was only to point out that when a writer (in a primitive culture) says “big” or “hairy” or “fair-complexioned,” one should not assume that he is using the same measuring stick as the one employed in an entirely different era and geographical region, like present-day Europe / America.”
But you are assuming that everyone was non-white.
Today on this site there was an article about an underground church (cave type thing) discovered in Turkey that is 1500 years old. It has paintings of church fathers and saints on the walls. Guess what? They are all Caucasian.
I once read a fascinating novel written by a Jewish author. His device was to take a Jewish family from the time of the fall of Jerusalem, that managed to escape, in 70 AD and walk it down through history per generation all the way to modern times.
I noticed he described the Jews (some) of 70 AD and on down as being blonde, green and/or blue eyed.