Why is Jesus portrayed as White?

[section9+1]

We cannot say what color he was. We don't know if any of his DNA came from Mary or not. At best it was only half and it may have been none. This is an area that is a waste of time.

 

[JackRT]

For an accurate depiction of the Christ refer to the shroud of Turin....

Or is it Jacques DeMolay???

 

[NW82]

I'm still waiting to a logical response as to why it matters at all...stop getting hung up on race or skin color. Either we are all brothers and sisters in Christ or we aren't.

 

[fat wee robin]

Jesus was a brown man from Middle East. Why then is he portrayed as a white man worldwide? A typical picture of Jesus looks like this:

Jesus in fact looked more like this:

Wow, I guess all those movies which casted Bruce Marchiano as Jesus came close:

Bruce Marchiano - IMDb

View attachment 224230 View attachment 224231

Jesus was probably white (and suntanned )as it has beeen white people who have taken the gospel to heart, and spread it around the world .
The Irish who took it to Europe when Rome fell are certainly white .If it was not for whites there would never have been a christianity to take to Asia and Africa ,and they would still enjoying the worst of their pagan culture and some are still very pagan in their ancient religions today .

 

[redleghunter]

Jesus was probably white (and suntanned )as it has beeen white people who have taken the gospel to heart, and spread it around the world .
The Irish who took it to Europe when Rome fell are certainly white .If it was not for whites there would never have been a christianity to take to Asia and Africa ,and they would still enjoying the worst of their pagan culture and some are still very pagan in their ancient religions today .

I have no idea how you came to this conclusion. The first Christians were black and brown.

 

[Marvin Knox]

What "new age tripe" are you talking about?

So long as she remains affiliated with Oprah Winfrey and says things like “I don’t belong to any denomination or religion, I just belong to God” (as she did in a recent interview) I will remain skeptical of her message and even sound appropriate warnings to my fellow believers.

Where has Colton Burpo said "just relax and cross over," that belief in the gospel is not necessary or any of that other stuff?

No one said he did say that. But neither does his work make a personal belief in the gospel for salvation clear. (Actually most of it is the work of his father isn't it?).

One thing which always strikes me about these kinds of things is the usual lack of a clear message being forwarded to the world about the need for personal repentance and faith in order to avoid eternal judgment to come.

The Lord told us that if people would not believe the scriptures neither would they believe it if someone returned from the dead. And yet we are supposedly to believe someone who returns from the other side preaching a vague gospel of love and acceptance is by God.

While Burpo's visions don't contain any glaring offensive theological errors - he does talk about kneeling before God's throne - that should send the antennas up on any mature believer.

My problem isn't so much with the idea that Burpo went to Heaven or even that he returned. It is that a supposedly mature pastor remains even now quite vague about what he even means by Heaven let alone what it takes to get there after death.

In the last sermon in the film he states that "heaven is something like the summation of love, but not really a place". In the same section - he even includes the possibility that all religions can experience this same heaven.

The Lord gave teachers to guide new or weak Christians through the scriptures. When a little kid tells us, among other things, that people in Heaven all have wings, Jesus rides a rainbow colored horse, in Heaven we all have lights on our heads, the angel Gabriel sits at the left hand of God, and the Holy Spirit is blue - you'll excuse me if I look elsewhere for commentary about Heaven.

IMO it is better for mature Christians to simply point people to scriptural truth and stay completely away from pabulum like that of Colon and Akiane.

 

[fat wee robin]

I'm still waiting to a logical response as to why it matters at all...stop getting hung up on race or skin color. Either we are all brothers and sisters in Christ or we aren't.

There is nothing worse than pretending cultural différences don't matter ,have never existed and doing a politically correct make over on the past .
I like the different cultural aspects when they have been purified of the worst traits . I can think of nothing worse than everyone being the same ,like clones .
But the truth of history is important and some try to change it .

 

[fat wee robin]

I have no idea how you came to this conclusion. The first Christians were black and brown.

They were a mediterranean people who are white when out of the sun . It is not a conclusion ,just another way of looking at it .There is evidence if you search, from people of the time who describe Jesus, and how He looked ,and He was beautuful whatever colour he was .
I object to the computer created picture of an ugly man to portray Jesus. Probably done by atheists .
Am going to find the article . What annoys me is this PC stuff as He must have been one or the other ,He could not be white ,and black and Asian Chinese all at once .
There were blonds ,redheads as well as other types in the M.E.which was a crossroads .
My mothers roots are from there, aound 16,000 years ago , into Spain and then Ireland .She was white with brown eyes and black hair .

 

[GirdYourLoins]

In the book/movie "Heaven is for Real." Colton Burpo a 4 year old boy, in Nebraska, had a near death experience [NDE], in a hospital ER, where he said he met Jesus. His father showed him the traditional pictures of Jesus but he said that is not what Jesus looks like. One day Colton's father was researching similar NDE online and found a painting by Akiane a teen age girl on the east coast. Colton saw the picture and said that's Jesus. Colton and Alkiane had never had any contact. Here is that picture.View attachment 224229

I have seen this in the film as well. It also fits with my view of Jewish genetics. A lot of Jews who have the scrolls showing their genealogy going back numerous generations have white skiin, dark hair and blue eyes. I have for many years considered this to be genetic trait common in Jews so would not be surprised at all that Jesus would also have looked like that.

 

[Chesterton]

I understand what you mean but descendant might have been the better term.

I wasn't going to respond to this. I thought, it's just Archivist being pedantic. But on second thought I got really curious about why you said this. Grandson or descendant would both technically apply, and I think "grandson" is better because it's more specific, so why exactly do you think "descendant" is better?

My family uses the "white Jesus", It's just the most wide spread image. However they also have "black angels" around their houses.

I'm white and I have a black angel decoration I put out at Christmas. Doesn't make any difference to me.

 

[Vicomte13]

The trouble I have with the Shroud of Turin is that it's in one piece.

Reference John 20:6-7, quoted here from the King James: Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie, And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself.

That would indicate that that His grave clothes were in at least two pieces.

There are two pieces. The Shroud is one. The other is called the Sudarion (meaning facecloth), or the Oviedo Cloth. It is in a monastery in Spain, where it was brought circa 650 AD, from the middle east.

The same blood and Judean pollen are on it as is on the Shroud. God preserved both pieces of his burial clothes for us through the ages, so that the Thomases among us could see and believe.

 

[ViaCrucis]

We cannot say what color he was. We don't know if any of his DNA came from Mary or not.

If Jesus isn't the biological offspring of Mary then we have a serious problem. The doctrine of the Hypostatic Union is that Jesus Christ is truly God and truly human; being truly human means being truly--really--part of the human family, and He is part of the human family by way of Mary, He is her flesh and blood.

We can be confident that Jesus, as the flesh and blood Child of the Virgin Mary would have looked like other people from that region in that time and place.

People look at modern Ashkenazi Jews and assume that's what all Jews have looked like at all times and places, but that's not accurate. The Ashkenazim are those Jews in the Diaspora who settled in Eastern and Central Europe, but there are many different Jewish cultural groups, such as Sephardim and Mizrahim, Sephardi Jews are Jews among the Diaspora who settled in North Africa (the Maghreb) and the Iberian Peninsula, Mizrahi Jews are Jews who remained in the Levant and the Middle East. As such if you want to know what Jesus' skin color was, then the Mizrahim would be a good place to start.

We can very safely say that Jesus was a brown man. And chances are He would have been dark, as the step-son of a carpenter living in a backwater village like Nazareth He would have spent a lot of time outside.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Archivist]

I wasn't going to respond to this. I thought, it's just Archivist being pedantic. But on second thought I got really curious about why you said this. Grandson or descendant would both technically apply, and I think "grandson" is better because it's more specific, so why exactly do you think "descendant" is better?

Because the person you show d isn’t Mohammed’s grandson, but he is Mohammed’s descendant. Calling him a grabdson when he isn’t is wrong.

 

[ViaCrucis]

They were a mediterranean people who are white when out of the sun . It is not a conclusion ,just another way of looking at it .There is evidence if you search, from people of the time who describe Jesus, and how He looked ,and He was beautuful whatever colour he was .
I object to the computer created picture of an ugly man to portray Jesus. Probably done by atheists .
Am going to find the article . What annoys me is this PC stuff as He must have been one or the other ,He could not be white ,and black and Asian Chinese all at once .
There were blonds ,redheads as well as other types in the M.E.which was a crossroads .
My mothers roots are from there, aound 16,000 years ago , into Spain and then Ireland .She was white with brown eyes and black hair .

The first Christians were Palestinian Jews, Samaritans, and Middle Eastern Gentiles. As the Gospel made its way from Jerusalem and Judea, to Samaria, and eventually to places like Antioch and Damascus. As it made its way around the Mediteranean, it would have gone out to Berbers, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. There would have been lighter skinned, i.e. "white", people among the first and second generation Christians, but Jesus and the Apostles definitely weren't white. They were Jews from Galilee and Judea.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Chesterton]

Because the person you show d isn’t Mohammed’s grandson, but he is Mohammed’s descendant. Calling him a grabdson when he isn’t is wrong.

The 34th grandson of Muhammad - that's what Islamic scholars call him, that's what he calls himself. Why do you think he isn't a grandson of Muhammad?

 

[ViaCrucis]

I'm still waiting to a logical response as to why it matters at all...stop getting hung up on race or skin color. Either we are all brothers and sisters in Christ or we aren't.

Theologically, it's not important, at least not on its own.

But as a matter of historical accuracy it's worth discussing, and it does become important if or when there are people who choose to engage in racialist theologies. Christian Identity cults insist that Jesus was a white man, because they believe white people are the chosen people and white people are superior; it becomes necessary to point out that Jesus wasn't white and that their theology and doctrines about race are both evil and heretical.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Hieronymus]

Well, he wasn't black either.
Judean complexion is more white than it is black, but sun tans the skin.
I think we can assume he was Judean looking.
Anybody who has a problem with that should ask him- / herself why.

 

[Archivist]

The 34th grandson of Muhammad - that's what Islamic scholars call him, that's what he calls himself. Why do you think he isn't a grandson of Muhammad?

Because he isn’t. He is a great-great-great- (keep it going 30 more times) grandson. To simply say that he is a grandson is incorrect. To say that he is a descendant is correct.

 

[Chesterton]

Because he isn’t. He is a great-great-great- (keep it going 30 more times) grandson. To simply say that he is a grandson is incorrect. To say that he is a descendant is correct.

Okay, well, "great" is an adjective here. An apple can be a red apple or a green apple, but it's still an apple.

 

[Hieronymus]

Guys... we get it..