Jesus Calming the Storm, based on a Chinese painting:
The Shroud of Turin?
who cares? I like fat baby Jesus the best.
What does the word Adam mean? What is the key of David?
Isaiah 53:2 For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, And like a root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty That we should look upon Him, Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.
“How, then, did we end up with a white Jesus in Europe and America?”
The available actors were blue-eyed, white and blond/brown hair, IIRC.
Hint, using modern wisdom: The content of his character, not the color of his skin, is what's important.
The Message that He brought, not the handwriting it was written in, is what one should focus on.
The Bible gives some good clues.
He obviously looked like an ordinary person of that area in 30 AD. Judas had to identify him to the soldiers.
He was descended from David on his Mother’s side. The Bible describes David as having a ruddy complexion. That would be like your average Scot.
Jesus doesn’t have a race. He’s the King of Heaven. There’s no race in Heaven.
Jesus was born a Jew. His family was Jewish. His mother was Jewish. He founded Christianity. The roots of Catholicism, I which He founded, are Jewish. The Catholic Mass is modeled on a Seder meal. We share the same Old Testament. Catholicism teaches to not hate anyone, individuals as well as groups
What could be the problem? Jesus has no race. He’s not here. While He was on earth, He was whatever race God chose Him to be. He’s no better or worse than anyone else. His spirit doesn’t have a race No does any of ours. It’s tge basis of why we’re not supposed to be prejudiced. We’re all equal.
His human parents were of the peoples of the Middle East. While it may not be perfect to classify Middle East persons as “white”, they are generally light skinned and certainly lighter skinned than most central and southern Africans.
Yes, most portraits of Yeshua were first done by Europeans, who may have made Yeshua look more European than Middle Eastern.
But, that distinction is less of a stretch of the truth than if their early portraits had made Yeshua black, like most Africans south of the Sahara.
Biblicaly speaking, there is/was no painting of Jeseus because... it would be a graven image according to the Ten Commandments.
Maybe for the reason we see here, we are arguing about the Son of God’s physical features and not his message.
I am silly enough to believe Jesus is light, He does have a glorified body now, but now He is like the shekinah glory that once filled the temple .
As for his color in Bethlehem it would have been brown.
Isaiah 53 1-3
1 Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
What Christian doesn’t know Jesus was a Jew? It doesn’t matter what he looked liked though it is certain he looked like what the Jews of the time looked like. What *is* absolutely critical is not his looks but that his own people, Jews, were responsible for his crucifixion.
White Jesus?
They broke up in ‘73
One of the cable channels recently did a show where they took the 3-D from the shroud of Turin and recreated the face. The face they came up with more than just slightly resembles Orthodox Jews I know in Brooklyn. Kinda surprised me.
Google
Buddhist worship involves religious acts of praise, honour and devotion, usually directed towards a deity or another figure worthy of this degree of respect. Most Buddhists do not believe in God. Although they respect and look up to the Buddha , they do not believe he was a god but they worship him as a form of respect.
That, of course, is the big difference. Other cultures made the Buddha supernatural but not the Indians.
There is still no Christianity in India except for the very SOUTHERN part of India. That is where St. Thomas, Jesus' "doubting" Apostle traveled to and evangelized.
Many Catholic families STILL name their sons THOMAS, after that great Apostle.
Saudi ARAMCO brought in Indians as workers but ONLY if they were Christian. No Hindus work in the K.S.A. because they aren't "People of the Book." (Bible)
What color was Jesus? I’m going to file that one under “Who gives a rat’s behind?”.
He must have looked very ordinary.
Theologically he is supposed to be a representative for of us, the average Joe, a literal everyman.
Practically, He must have been quite average for his time and place, if He had any distinguishing characteristics Judas could have just said ‘He’s the only white guy in town’, or ‘He’s a foot taller than everybody else in the room’, or ‘He has red hair’, or ‘Dude! He has a halo!’ and wouldn’t have needed to betray him with a kiss.
I think it’s proper for a church to portray Him as looking like an average parishioner/resident in that church’s area.
He is supposed to be someone a person in need of salvation can relate to as being just like him, able to understand his life and take on his burdens.
The earliest images of Jews in the ME come from the Dura-Europos synagogue, circa 244 CE, in Eastern Syria. While no image a blond they certainly aren’t of a what we would consider non white. Most Syrians would take offense at the sughestion.