Jesus wasn't white: he was a brown-skinned, Middle Eastern Jew. Here's why that matters

Australian Broadcast Company ^ | March 28, 2018 | Robyn J. Whitaker

[C19fan]

I grew up in a Christian home, where a photo of Jesus hung on my bedroom wall. I still have it. It is schmaltzy and rather tacky in that 1970s kind of way, but as a little girl I loved it. In this picture, Jesus looks kind and gentle, he gazes down at me lovingly. He is also light-haired, blue-eyed, and very white. The problem is, Jesus was not white.

[Albion Wilde]

Jesus was not a Jew. If Jesus was a Jew, the Jewish high priests would not have been calling for his death as a heretic.

Jesus was ethnically a Jew. Christians do not possess an ethnicity. Jews do. This double meaning of the word "Jew" causes many misunderstandings.

And of course people in authority execute lawbreakers of their own ethnicity or religion, on the level of political or social organization. The transcendent level of Truth is that God sent Himself as a human to continue the work he had started with Moses in developing His Chosen People Israel, a Biblical term which now encompasses all Christian believers, and may also encompass the "remnant" of believing Jews in order to bring about the final confrontation between Islam and Western Civ (which started with the Jews).

[Albion Wilde]

yes, Jesus broke away and founded Christianity. His followers became known as Christians, and the Jewish leaders had him crucified.

Your words sound like an attack and blame on the Jewish people, and that's inappropriate and poorly understood, if understood at all. The Hebrew prophet Isaiah, many generations before the appearance of Jesus, wrote:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Had Jesus not have gone to the cross, He would not have taken on the sins of the world and no one would have the eternal ife promised in scripture. God worked through the people of that time to accomplish what He wants.

Therefore it is foolish and racist to assign blame to "the Jews", since many Jews were followers of Jesus. That would be like blaming you and your descendents for illegal immigration or for pre-Civil War slavery because you are an American and "your leaders" upheld those practices.

[The Deplorable Miss Lemon]

Beautiful. Thank you for posting those portraits.

[Leep]

Haven’t heard this argument for awhile.
Jesus would have been a Democrat must be in the cue?

[Yaelle]

Thanks for that. Maybe he didn’t mean it to sound that way so I left it at “Happy Easter” and moved on. Good explanation.

[Neoliberalnot]

Judaism is a religion, not an ethnicity. Semites are the ethnicity of people of many religions in the middle east, including muslims.

[Wallace T.]

While the majority of Jews have dark hair and eyes, fair hair and light eyes are not unknown. Kirk Douglas and Sarah Michelle Gellar are fully Jewish, for example. Light hair and eyes are not unknown among non-Jewish Middle Easterners. The Assad family. the dynasty that rules Syria, would not be out of place in Europe. Issat al-Douri, a key adviser to Iraqi dictator Sadaam Hussein, had red hair, blue eyes, and fair skin. He would not be out of place in a British uniform, although he is a native Iraqi.

Since the Jewish people are more or less the descendants of the Biblical Israelites, it is presumptuous to assume that they were all dark complected. Jesus's appearance on earth is unknown, but for the comment in Isaiah 53:2 that the Messiah was not remarkable.

[Hugh the Scot]

You may define what “Jew” means to you, but you cannot change God’s word.

King of the Jews.

[vladimir998]

“Jesus rejected the Oral Torah of the Pharisees, which is why they were angry with him. So, by that standard, modern Jews would not accept him as having been a Jew.”

Matthew 23:2-3.

[Neoliberalnot]

I believe Jesus is the Son of God and that does not make him Jewish, which is not an ethnicity. Some recent genetic studies have found (by analysis of the DNA of Semitic-speaking peoples) that they have some common ancestry. Although no significant common mitochondrial results have been found, Y-chromosomal links between Semitic-speaking peoples of the Middle East like Arabs, Jews, Mandaeans, Samaritans, and Assyrians have shown links, despite differences contributed from other groups (see Y-chromosomal Aaron).

A DNA study of Jews and Palestinian Arabs (including Bedouins) found that these were more closely related to each other than to neighboring Arabs.[12][13]

[Neoliberalnot]

No need to engage the race card, since it was the leaders of the Jewish religion, which is not a race, that did in fact instigate Jesus be crucified. Jesus never objected since this was God’s plan.

[Neoliberalnot]

I can’t answer for Jesus. Jesus did place great value on the individual which is completely the opposite of group think demrats.

[Neoliberalnot]

I did not mention their color or complexion. Semites come in all shades.

[Neoliberalnot]

Jesus never said he was king of the Jews, that was what the Romans labeled him much to the chagrin of the leaders of the Jewish religion, Judaism.

[RegulatorCountry]

There were tribes of Israel and certainly individuals who were describes as ruddy complected with red hair in the Old Testament. They didn’t all look as Middle Easterners look today. Next thing you know, somebody’s going to try to tell you that modern Jews all look alike, too. That’ll be a big surprise to my college best friend who was pale with blond hair and blue eyes but Jewish as he could be.

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

Excellent point. I had forgotten that Jewish is an ethnicity along with Israelite and Hebrew. This is easy to forget for for people who’s nationality and ethnicity AND religion can’t be covered with one word. While incredibly efficient it sure makes for easy misunderstandings. I didn’t even think to ask what people meant by “Jewish”. I was using it as a religious description and forgot it is a word also for an ethnicity.

Thanks for the reminder.

[exDemMom]

Interesting.

I hate to say this, but the bottom picture strongly resembles the painting of Jesus in that Spanish church after the old caretaker “restored” it.

[Albion Wilde]

I hate to say this, but the bottom picture strongly resembles the painting of Jesus in that Spanish church after the old caretaker “restored” it.

Surely you jest:

[The Toll]

That bottom painting is Barry Manillo.

[Yulee]

“Jesus was not a Jew. He was of Semitic origin as most of the middle easterners are.”
-
Muslims preach that he was Muslim. The truth is not in them nor the Koran.

He was a descendant of King David of the tribe of Judah. So, no matter what may be said elsewhere, he was Jewish, and was also called Rabbi.

Never heard of anyone called Rabbi, who was not Jewish.

Quote from Orwell found on another thread:

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture repainted, every statue and street building renamed, every date altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has been stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

Seems we are traveling that path.