The Virgin Mary may have looked something like this

[Tis_Bearself]

Right, but saying it was a dream or something else “not supernatural” is not the same as saying “not genuine” which is the wording the previous poster used.

“Not genuine” suggests fake, phony, wrong, not from God, etc. Not just “not supernatural” which would be the case if it were a dream or just a person communing with God in a normal way. For example, God can send a person a dream with a message. He has done this with saints and with ordinary people like me and many others. Dreaming is not a supernatural process in and of itself though.

It may be a fine line but there is a difference.

Additionally, the test of “genuine” is not whether historical details, like Mary’s appearance, agree with the vision seen of her. The previous poster cites public revelation where Jesus had white hair, etc. it’s the same thing - Jesus likely did not have white hair in real life, but that doesn’t make the public revelation phony.

 

[YHWH_Christ]

I look like a northern Italian but my DNA discloses

That’s quite subjective but also, have you ever heard of something called recessive and dominate genes? So based on analysis of your DNA, if your genome were to be examined after your death and reconstructed then a reconstruction of your face would still be fairly accurate. But it’s also more than that. Bone structure is examined, teeth, age, even things like diet are taken into consideration to make a reconstruction, DNA is just one of the factors taken into consideration. All of those factors we find in 1st century Jewish remains match pretty closely with what we see in Iraqi Jews.

Besides, Iraqi Jewish photos I have seen really don’t look like the OP drawing.

I beg to differ. They look pretty close to what’s above from what I’ve seen.

 

[Ridgerunner]

It’s just that we have no reason to assume her appearance was particularly atypical.

Why should we assume she looked like an Egyptian circa 2020 A.D. like the OP picture? Going further back, Abraham was said to be from Ur of the Chaldees. Nobody is too sure about whether the “Chaldees” are the same people as the Chaldeans. Some think the Chaldees were Semitic. Some think they were Indo-European like Persians.

I am in no way offended by people who picture Mary as oriental, or black, or Irish or anything else. I do have a difficulty with people who insist that she (or Jesus) looked like somebody’s ethnic musings.

Nobody knows, and that’s just the fact of it.

 

[YHWH_Christ]

Well we’re not assuming she did. Numeros factors are taken into consideration as I just pointed out above. Also, for the record, here’s an ancient portrait of what Egyptian women from between the 1st-3rd centuries looked like:

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[Ridgerunner]

if your genome were to be examined after your death and reconstructed then a reconstruction of your face would still be fairly accurate.

I think we would need to see some serious evidence of that. Facial reconstruction from DNA? Let’s see that evidence, and not just a reproduction of some racial stereotype.

Bone structure is examined

And you have Mary’s skull, perhaps?

You are evidently convinced that Mary looked like an Iraqi Jew of today and that Iraqi Jews of today look like the girl in the OP drawing. I don’t think you know either thing, but this is getting uninteresting, so I’ll leave you with it.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Greeks. Did you not know that?

 

[YHWH_Christ]

I think we would need to see some serious evidence of that. Facial reconstruction from DNA? Let’s see that evidence, and not just a reproduction of some racial stereotype.

I didn’t say only from DNA, I gave you the other factors.

And you have Mary’s skull, perhaps?

Nobody is saying that… This reconstruction is based off of skulls from that era in that place of people who shared the same ethnicity as Mary and Jesus.

 

[YHWH_Christ]

The modern Coptic people are descended from those Egyptians. They are not Greeks. I wouldn’t doubt there may be some Greek admixture though, but the populations of each region in the various Empires that occupied the Mediterranean stayed relatively homogenous except when diaspora occurred.

 

[YHWH_Christ]

Right, but the majority of the Egyptian population remained Egyptian. There were Greek colonists, and yes there was some admixture, but there wasn’t any kind of dramatic population shift.

 

[RolandThompsonGunner]

Why should we assume she looked like an Egyptian circa 2020 A.D. like the OP picture? Going further back, Abraham was said to be from Ur of the Chaldees. Nobody is too sure about whether the “Chaldees” are the same people as the Chaldeans. Some think the Chaldees were Semitic. Some think they were Indo-European like Persians.

I am in no way offended by people who picture Mary as oriental, or black, or Irish or anything else. I do have a difficulty with people who insist that she (or Jesus) looked like somebody’s ethnic musings.

Nobody knows, and that’s just the fact of it.

Nobody knows, but some guesses are more probable than others. If I told you to picture an average member of a Germanic tribe in 10 AD, do you think it’s more likely that they looked roughly like the average German (adjusting for differences in hair and clothing style, of course) in 1900, or the average Korean in 1900?

Populations don’t change that much. All we’re saying is that the more probable (not guaranteed, but just if you’re playing the odds) answer is it’s likely that Mary’s physical appearance was probably more typical of the Levant than, say, Denmark or Taiwan. It really shouldn’t be a controversial statement.

You seem to be arguing that we can’t even make an educated guess on the subject, which I don’t think is true at all.

 

[YHWH_Christ]

Yes, in that they adopted Hellenistic culture. The Romans did the same yet they remained as ethnically Latin peoples. A lot of cultures in the Mediterranean did the same. This does not mean there were actual population shifts. As @RolandThompsonGunner said, this shouldn’t be controversial. What I’m seeing here seems to be a rather racist attitude towards the people of the Levant and the surrounding regions in order to prop up European people as superior and promote Christianity as the white man’s religion when it most certainly isn’t.

 

[YHWH_Christ]

While previously believed to represent Greek settlers in Egypt,[17][18] modern studies conclude that the Faiyum portraits instead represent mostly native Egyptians, reflecting the complex synthesis of the predominant Egyptian culture and that of the elite Greek minority in the city.[19][20][21]

A DNA study shows genetic continuity between the Pre-Ptolemaic, Ptolemaic and Roman populations of Egypt, indicating that foreign rule impacted Egypt’s population only to a very limited degree at the genetic level.[24]

The dental morphology[18] of the Roman-period Faiyum mummies was also compared with that of earlier Egyptian populations, and was found to be “much more closely akin” to that of ancient Egyptians than to Greeks or other European populations.[19]

From Wikipedia.

 

[Lea101]

This is a pretty awkward thread, because I look eerily similar to this when I was younger…eyebrows and all…with a couple of imperfections of course ‘offputting’ indeed

I’ll give a side-eye towards people who seem to protest too much at a brown Jesus/Mary, but that aside, I think it seems straightforward to say that while we do not know for sure, the probability of a brown Mary is higher than a lily white one. And also…why should we care?

 

[Ridgerunner]

The modern Coptic people are descended from those Egyptians. They are not Greeks. I wouldn’t doubt there may be some Greek admixture though, but the populations of each region in the various Empires that occupied the Mediterranean stayed relatively homogenous except when diaspora occurred.

I agree that Copts are largely descended from ancient Egyptians. But Egyptian art did not include portraiture of this type. These portraits are almost certainly coffin portraits of Greeks during the Ptolemaic period or Romans somewhat later. Later Romans picked up the practice, and it would take a scholar to discern the difference between Greek and Roman. The accompanying decorative elements are Greco-Roman, not Egyptian. Some of the conventions are as well. The exaggerated eye size is a Greek convention which Romans adopted and lasted well into the Byzantine period.

These portraits were painted on thin slabs of wood which covered mummies (Greeks and Romans adopted mummification somewhat in Egypt).

 

[Ridgerunner]

If I told you to picture an average member of a Germanic tribe in 10 AD

Of possible interest, there were two Roman legions stationed in Syria during the period in which Christ walked the land. They were composed of Teutonic mercenaries. There are a great number of fair people in the Levant. Some claim they’re descended from those legions. Some claim from Crusaders. Some say from earlier Indo-European invaders like the Hyksos. The area was a crossroads of diverse peoples for millenia.

You seem to be arguing that we can’t even make an educated guess

Of course we can. But the subject seems to take unattractive and seemingly ideological turns at times. Example below:

What I’m seeing here seems to be a rather racist attitude towards the people of the Levant and the surrounding regions in order to prop up European people as superior and promote Christianity as the white man’s religion when it most certainly isn’t.

 

[RolandThompsonGunner]

Of course we can. But the subject seems to take unattractive and seemingly ideological turns at times. Example below:

He’s not wrong, though. If someone is really convinced that Mary was fair skinned, which I think you’d agree is at least the less likely possibility, it makes one wonder why they’re so opposed to the idea that the Holy Family likely had olive or copper skin.

I’m not saying you here. But if we agree that people from the Levant more commonly (but not always) have a dark olive complexion, I think any fair minded person has to acknowledge that that is the likelier scenario. If someone finds that troubling or disquieting somehow, it’s not crazy to wonder why they’re so bothered, or so motivated to argue that Mary and Jesus were outliers.

 

[RolandThompsonGunner]

Of possible interest, there were two Roman legions stationed in Syria during the period in which Christ walked the land. They were composed of Teutonic mercenaries. There are a great number of fair people in the Levant

I know. Incidentally, I think that’s a reasonably compelling argument against Jesus having fair skin.

 

[Ridgerunner]

It’s not the possibility that they were dark skinned that’s troubling. I am not Hispanic, but I can tan so deeply I have been taken for Mexican by Mexicans. That’s not the concern. It’s the insistence that Mary and Jesus looked like some fanciful representation that to me is off-putting. Oppose such musings and one is almost certainly to be called racist at some point. Since the speculation is pointless anyway, one sometimes suspects that some of the promoters of various imagined portraits are playing the role of provocateurs.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Incidentally, I think that’s a reasonably compelling argument against Jesus having fair skin.

Why?. You didn’t explain your response.

 

[RolandThompsonGunner]

It’s not the possibility that they were dark skinned that’s troubling. I am not Hispanic, but I can tan so deeply I have been taken for Mexican by Mexicans. That’s not the concern. It’s the insistence that Mary and Jesus looked like some fanciful representation that to me is off-putting. Oppose such musings and one is almost certainly to be called racist at some point. Since the speculation is pointless anyway, one sometimes suspects that some of the promoters of various imagined portraits are playing the role of provocateurs.

No, but most people who post images like the OP aren’t saying “this is 100% guaranteed to be exactly what Mary looked like.” It’s “this is roughly what the average person looked like at that time, so we can guess that Mary probably looked somewhat similar.” I don’t think anyone is claiming that she absolutely 100% had a dark complexion. It’s certainly possible she was unusually light skinned.