My friend and I always thought of Jesus as a Hebrew Arab looking guy.
Yeah based on where he lived I seriously doubt he looked like a Caucasian European.
yes, but remember Christianity was mainly dominant in Europe.
Thanks for the information, I looked at it, very interesting. God bless
Not to be a language nut, but I think you are misusing the term “racist” in your question. The definition of racism is “Prejudice or discrimination directed against someone of a different race based on such a belief.” So how is viewing Jesus as white discrimination? Who is being discriminated? What group is being singled out?
I am not missing the term. Assuming Jesus was white and not taking into account what he most likely looked like could be considered racist. Most people love the our Lord regardless of what he looks like. Unfortunately there are some out there who may not want to follow a middle eastern looking Jesus.
Is it racist that in many places he is portrayed as black, when looking at people of that region they are more olive skinned? No-one knows exactly what Christ looked like and it is unimportant. There is a stunning Polish icon in my cathedral of a black Virgin and Infant Jesus. There is a natural tendency to feel more of an affinity with people of your own race - hence why European tradition portrays Jesus as white, African icons show Him as black, In the Far East portraits show him as Asian. It doesn’t matter what the portrait looks like, what matters is that we understand that these images represent the Lord.
But why does what He looked like matter? We do not follow the Lord because of His appearance, whether we share His human ethnicity or not. That is not important. It’s tantamount to saying ‘Christ probably had brown eyes but this icon shows Him with blue eyes’. The ‘accuracy’ of the depiction really doesn’t matter. What matters is that we have love for and faith in Him and see the images as just what they are: images and representations, not actually the Lord Himself.
i have a joke for you that covers this issue. A white man and a black man are driving down a road the white man is trying to convince the black man that Jesus is white the black man is trying to convince the white man that Jesus is black. they are so busy arguing that they don’t see the big tree and crash into it. both are killed they go to heaven St Peter sees them and says wait here Jesus comes out and says Buenos días amigos?
the Blessed Mother is black because the portrait of her was burned and tried to be destroyed by the turks when they invaded poland. now matter what they did to the picture they could not destroy it so finally they tried to burn it and that is why she is black.
Let’s go back a little into art history. It was around the late Middle Ages followed by the Renaissance that we started seeing realistic portrayals of Jesus. Now, the artists at the time basically drew inspiration and direction from the world around them. This is why many works of religious art depicting Jesus have people wearing Renaissance clothing which is totally historically inaccurate. This is also why Jesus looks very Western European. The European artists most likely had European models. Flash forward several centuries. The US’s cultural history is rooted in Western, Christian Europe. So what do we have as our prevailing model of Jesus? A white man.
GS
That’s really cool, thanks for sharing that. God bless
He was metamorphosed by artists into a white man to Christianize Europe. It is the same reason why we celebrate his birthday on December 25. Jesus real birthday is not December 25. It was used only to Christianize the pagans who celebrate winter festival or solstice.
