Race and appearance of Jesus

The race of Jesus of Nazareth has been a subject of debate in the western world academia since at least the nineteenth century in Europe. The physical appearance of Jesus was debated by theologians from early on in the history of Christianity, though with no explicit emphasis on race.

Different societies have depicted Jesus and most other biblical figures as their own ethnicity in their art; for example, he is primarily European in the West. When the Native Americans in California were converted to Christianity, he appeared in their art as a Native American. The current dominant opinion among theologians and scientific theorists is that he was most likely a Galilean Jew and therefore a Semitic Caucasian that would have had features that resemble modern-day persons from the Levant in the Middle East.

Theories about the race of the historical Jesus

Baptism of Christ, fragment from the Catacombs of Marcellinus and Peter, c. 330

Jesus in the Bible

Contemporary textual evidence on Jesus's life is scarce, and specific descriptions of his appearance even more so. There are no direct references to his appearance during his physical lifetime, though Revelation 1:13–16 describes his features as he appears in his heavenly form, as seen in a vision by John of Patmos.

• 1:13 – And in the midst of the seven candlesticks [one] like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle.
• 1:14 – His head and [his] hairs [were] white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes [were] as a flame of fire;
• 1:15 – And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.
• 1:16 – And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp two edged sword: and his countenance [was] as the sun shineth in his strength. (KJV translation)

In Daniel 7:9, it says that his "ancient of days did sit, whose garment [was] white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool". It is also comparable to language used in the Apocalypse of Abraham, which describes the angel Yahoel as having a body "like sapphire," a face "like chrysolite," and "the hair of his head like snow".

The "feet of fine brass" line in John's vision of the Son of Man has also been used to argue for a dark-skinned race, but many often leave out "burnished" and "glowing". Additionally, the references to having a white "head" and a countenance that is "as the sun shineth" has been used to argue for Jesus being racially white.

Incised sarcophagus slab with the Adoration of the Magi from the Catacombs of Rome, 3rd century. Plaster cast with added color.

However, all of these descriptions are full of vague poetic imagery, and are attempts to glorify the heavenly body of Jesus rather than to accurately describe his appearance when on earth. There is also debate whether John of Patmos, the author of Revelation, was actually John the Apostle, who knew the earthly Jesus, or even if he was John the Evangelist (see authorship of the Johannine works). The relatively late date ascribed to Revelation by modern scholarship leads many scholars to argue that it seems unlikely that someone who had personally seen Jesus in life wrote the description.

There are also many other later descriptions of Jesus from saints and others who claim they have seen him in a vision.

Early theological debates

Mural painting from the catacomb of Commodilla. One of the first bearded images of Jesus, late 4th century

Most early theological debate about Jesus's appearance arose from interpretations of Messianic prophecies and on the assumption that his physical form was the result of a miraculous virgin birth and so was determined rather more by divine will than ordinary biology. However, there were complex Christological debates about mechanisms of the divine incarnation into human flesh and about how Jesus may have inherited his mother's characteristics and the lineage of King David (since prophecies stated that the Messiah should be David's descendent). This debate originated a dispute about the nature of Jesus's physical connection to the Jewish people, an issue that was later expressed in more racialized form.

Following Isaiah 53:2, most early theologians, such as Justin Martyr, insisted that Jesus was physically unprepossessing, with "no beauty that we should desire him". The anti-Christian author Celsus states that he was "short and ugly", an assertion that his Christian opponent Origen does not dispute. Paul also stated that early Christians were moved by Christ's teachings rather than exceptional charm or beauty, which he did not possess. Whether these early debates reflect a purely scriptural view or a continuing oral tradition about his actual physique and physiognomy is not known.

In later centuries this early view was reversed. The Church Fathers Saint Jerome and Saint Augustine of Hippo argued that Jesus must have been ideally beautiful in face and body. For Augustine he was "beautiful as a child, beautiful on earth, beautiful in heaven".

Supposed descriptions of Jesus

The oldest icon of Christ Pantocrator, encaustic on panel, ca 6th century (Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai). From about this time this type became the conventional appearance of Christ in Byzantine art, and later the art of the Western Church.

By the Early Middle Ages the positive view of Jesus's looks was bolstered by a number of descriptions of him purporting to date from his lifetime. Nicephorus Callistus quotes a description of him as tall and beautiful with fair wavy hair and dark eyebrows that met in the middle. He had an olive-tinted complexion, "the color of wheat". One Publius Lentulus is supposed to have described him as perfectly beautiful in features, with "hazel-colored" hair that flowed to his shoulders, and a forked beard. His eyes continually "change their color". Epiphanius Monachus provides a similar description, in which Jesus is six feet tall, golden haired, with black eyebrows, light brown eyes and swarthy skin "like David's".

Almost all modern authors dismiss these descriptions as medieval fabrications. They were, however, copied in many Western artistic portrayals.

Emergence of racial theories

While the early descriptions of hair, skin and eye color clearly have implications for defining Jesus's "race", they are not explicit in their desire to ascribe a racial identity to him in the modern sense. By the 19th century, however, theological arguments were increasingly replaced by more secular biological ones, as attempts were made to envisage Jesus in the context of the people and culture of the Middle East. While some writers stressed his Jewishness, the growth of anti-Semitic racial theory led others, such as Emile Burnouf and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, to argue that he was racially an "Aryan". This led to portrayals of Jesus as a blond Nordic individual, a concept that was taken up by the Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg and by Hitler himself. As quoted in the book Hitler's Table Talk, Hitler argued that Jesus was of Celtic ancestry on the grounds that "the Jews would never have handed one of their own people to the Roman courts; they would have condemned Him themselves. It is quite probable that a large number of the descendants of the Roman legionaries, mostly Gauls, were living in Galilee, and Jesus was probably one of them".

In more recent times the fact that the Middle East was a meeting point of cultures and races has led to suggestions that Jesus may have been African or Arabian. The ancient Near East was the primary means of access for traders and travelers seeking to access Africa via the adjoining Levant. Hence, the bordering Roman provinces of Judea and Galilee (Jesus's home region) witnessed many waves of immigrants passing through those primarily Semitic lands. As such, it is conceivable that Jesus's lineage could have borne traces of Arab, Aramean, Berber, Roman, Greek, Black African, Persian or Indian ancestry. The aggressive policy of territorial expansion and forced conversion to Judaism practiced by John Hyrcanus a century before Jesus's birth may also have affected the ethnic make-up of the local Jewish populations.

The CGI model created in 2001 suggested that Jesus's skin color would have been darker and more olive-colored than his traditional depictions in Western art.

It is most commonly argued that Jesus was probably of Middle Eastern descent because of the geographic location of the events described in the Gospels, and, among some modern Christian scholars, the genealogy ascribed to him. For this reason, he has been portrayed as an olive-skinned individual typical of the Levant region. In 2001, a new attempt was made to discover what the true race and face of Jesus might have been. The study, sponsored by the BBC, France 3 and Discovery Channel, used one of three first-century Jewish skulls from a leading department of forensic science in Israel. A face was constructed using forensic anthropology by Richard Neave, a retired medical artist from the Unit of Art in Medicine at the University of Manchester. The face that Neave constructed suggested that Jesus would have had a broad face and large nose, and differed significantly from the traditional depictions of Jesus in renaissance art.

Additional information about Jesus's skin color and hair was provided by Mark Goodacre, a senior lecturer at the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham. Using third-century images from a synagogue—the earliest pictures of Jewish people—Goodacre proposed that Jesus's skin color would have been darker and swarthier than his traditional Western image. He also suggested that he would have had short, curly hair and a short cropped beard. This is also confirmed in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, where Paul the Apostle states that it is "disgraceful" for a man to have long hair. As Paul allegedly knew many of the disciples and members of Jesus's family, it is unlikely that he would have written such a thing had Jesus had long hair.

Although not literally the face of Jesus, the result of the study determined that Jesus's skin would have been more olive-colored than white, and that he would have looked like a typical Galilean Semite. Among the points made was that the Bible records that Jesus's disciple Judas had to point him out to those arresting him. The implied argument is that if Jesus's physical appearance had differed markedly from his disciples, then he would have been relatively easy to identify.

More recently the claim that Jesus was black has gained some currency among African American religious movements, either as a historical hypothesis often rooted in Afrocentric doctrine or as a symbolic statement of Black Pride. Groups such as Black Hebrew Israelites claim that black people are descended from Israelites and that therefore Jesus was black.

Artistic portrayals

Not all depictions of Jesus are intended to literally represent how he is thought to have looked; many such representations are largely symbolic, spiritual, and personal, and the race chosen may be intended only to reflect, or more recently to contradict, local expectations. This may be true of both pictorial and cinematic portrayals.

Additionally, whether intended to be realistic or not, images of Jesus throughout history have almost always characterized him as being of the race of the artist or target audience, further complicating the task of determining Jesus's race and sometimes leading to racial tensions. Categories of racial difference have also changed over time. While the German artist Albrecht Dürer often depicted Jesus as blond and the Spanish artist Velázquez depicted him as Mediterranean, there is no evidence that either of them would have interpreted these differences in terms of separate racial identities as they might be in modern America, in which "WASP" and Hispanic peoples are sometimes characterized as racially distinct.

Middle Eastern

Middle Eastern icon of Jesus from Saidnaya, Syria

Many images portraying Jesus and Mary traditionally used by Melkite churches display bronzed individuals with large brown eyes, characteristic of Middle Eastern peoples. In 19th century Europe a number of artists sought to produce realistic images of Jesus based on the assumption that he was of Middle Eastern appearance. In 1850 John Everett Millais was attacked for his painting Christ in the House of his Parents because it was "painful" to see "the youthful Saviour" depicted as "a red-headed Jew boy". The most assiduous of such artists was William Holman Hunt, who traveled several times to the Holy Land to portray Jesus using local people as models for his works The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple and The Shadow of Death, though he retained many conventions derived from medieval descriptions. Other painters such as James Tissot and Vassili Vereshchagin used what they believed to be more specifically Judaic features, causing some controversy. By the late 19th century several artists sought such ethnographic accuracy. The African American painter Henry Ossawa Tanner painted many episodes from the life of Jesus based on his studies of the population of Palestine.

Middle Eastern Jesus, by William Holman Hunt.

More recent artistic and cinematic portrayals have also made an effort to characterize Jesus as Middle Eastern. In the 2004 movie, The Passion Of The Christ, Jesus was portrayed by James Caviezel who wore a prosthetic nose during filming and had his blue eyes digitally changed to brown to give him a Middle Eastern appearance. According to designer Miles Teves, who created the prosthesis: "Mel [Gibson] wanted to make the actor playing Jesus, James Caviezel, look more ethnically Middle Eastern, and it was decided that we could do it best by changing the shape of his nose."

In the 2007 Iranian movie Mesih (Messiah), which depicts an Islamic version of Jesus's life, Jesus is played by the actor Ahmad Soleimani Nia whose appearance is akin to that of the Iranic ethnic grouping.

European

In most Western art, narrative and cinema depicting Jesus, he is portrayed with long brown hair and brown eyes, having a short beard and white skin. However, some artists, including notably Dürer, have also depicted him as blond and/or blue-eyed. This is also the case in several films, including Jesus of Nazareth (1977) in which he has dark brown hair but pale blue eyes. Nonetheless, because Western or European ethnicities are composed of many subgroups (whether biological or perceived), such as Mediterrean, Slavic, Northern European (Nordic), the issue is more complex than monolithic. In addition, it is possible many European portrayals of Jesus may be based on the appearance of European (Ashkenazi) Jews, who often have "white" skin tones or facial features, and sometimes blond hair and blue eyes. There is wide variation in appearance in the modern Jewish population on whose appearance artists may base their depictions.

Artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Fra Angelico and Michelangelo all depicted Jesus as white. Nonetheless, it must be noted that most figures of the Bible, including the Israelites and Egyptians described in the Hebrew Scriptures (or Old Testament), were also portrayed as identical in appearance to European whites. In this sense the portrayal may be largely unselfconscious, as might also be the case even in periods with more prominent awareness of race, such as the 20th and 21st centuries.

Because of the commonness of this depiction, it is often confused with historical fact. It has dispersed so widely that many cultures have at least to some extent assimilated the image of a white Jesus. Western Christians spread images of a European Jesus through their encounters with peoples of Africa, the Americas, Australia and parts of Asia (often through colonization), from the 16th to the 20th century. Many nonwhite regions and ethnicities have depicted Jesus in this way, sometimes routinely, though sometimes with partial adaptations to the local setting, including dress. Moreover, in addition to images, the fact that Christianity was predominantly introduced to them by white individuals makes the racial connection even more complex. Nonetheless, portrayal of Jesus with local features is also common, especially in areas where Christianity has been prominent for a longer period of history.

Additionally, in some cultures nonwhite depictions of Jesus are actually criticized or dismissed outright, with a few considering it blasphemous to portray of Jesus as being of another ethnicity. Ever since the Nazi claim that Jesus was Nordic, Christian white supremacists have commonly equated Christian identity with white racial separatism, sometimes using exegesis of Biblical passages to argue their position.

African

An 18th century Ethiopian image of Jesus

Depictions of a Jesus with predominantly African features have existed for several centuries, such as those maintained by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church. Yet the widespread portrayal of a black Jesus is relatively recent in Christian imagery. The late-20th and early-21st Centuries saw several examples of artists casting Jesus as black, including Vincent Barzoni's image of Jesus in the tradition of the "Man of Sorrows", Janet Mackenzie's Jesus of the People and Ronald Harrison's Black Christ.

In American pop culture, the idea of a black Jesus has also been explored in both cinema and television. In 1992, Blair Underwood starred as Jesus in The Second Coming, in which Christ returns to earth in the form of a black man. The Kevin Smith film Dogma also satirically treats the idea of Jesus as black. The 1996 TV movie America's Dream includes a segment entitled "The Boy Who Painted Christ Black", based on a short story by John Henrik Clarke, about a school principal (Wesley Snipes) in 1940s Georgia torn between supporting the student who painted a black Jesus for entry into an art contest or appeasing the white state school supervisor (Timothy Carhart) who is offended by such a portrayal. The cartoon series The Boondocks also regularly refers to competing concepts of a "black Jesus" and "white Jesus".

Debate on the color of Jesus's skin has often resulted from interpretations of various darkly-colored, aged depictions of Jesus's mother Mary, referred to as the Black Madonna. Another catalyst for such debate can be found in the Philippines, where, in the nation's capital, Manila, an image of the Black Nazarene carrying the cross is revered by thousands of devotees. Yet, it is traditionally posited that the statue was burnt in the ship carrying it to the Philippines, hence the image's dark hue.

Other races

A Chinese painting from 1879 of the story of Jesus and the rich man from Mark 10.

Throughout Latin America many saints have been depicted with local mestizo or Amerindian (or even mulatto) features, adapting from Spanish traditions. More often however, Jesus and the saints are depicted with Spanish features (basically, European features). The Mexican muralists of the early 20th century depicted Jesus in a variety of dramatic ways, as a revolutionary figure often with local mixed (mestizo) features. The mother of Jesus is depicted as a native Amerindian woman in the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

In India, where the St. Thomas Christians have been established for nearly two thousand years, there is a long-standing tradition of depicting Jesus's family with local features and costume. During the colonial period many European prints or icons were later copied and adapted to be given more Indian features.

Worshippers in Japan, where Francis Xavier preached, often depict him with East Asian features, as do Chinese artists.

See also

• Adolf Hitler's religious views
• Ancient Egyptian race controversy
• Christian Identity
• Christian mythology
• German Christians
• Nazism and Religion
• Positive Christianity
• The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century

References

Bible passages

Bibliography

• Ehrman, Bart D. (2004). Ehrman, Bart D (ed.). The New Testament: a Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, Part 1 (3rd, illustrated ed.). New York City: Oxford University. ISBN 978-0-19-515462-7. OCLC 52430805. Retrieved June 18, 2011. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Farrar, Frederic William (2008) [1894]. The Life of Christ as Represented in Art. Mysore. ISBN 978-1-44-370386-4. OCLC 475765298. Retrieved June 18, 2011. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Glasgow, James (2010) [1872]. The Apocalypse Translated and Expounded. Edinburgh: T&T Clark. ISBN 978-1-15-328844-6. OCLC 557904029. Retrieved June 18, 2011. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Mosley, William (1987). What Color Was Jesus? (1st ed.). Chicago: African American Images. ISBN 978-0-91-354309-2. OCLC 17281825. Retrieved June 18, 2011. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Niehaus, Jeffrey Jay (1995). God at Sinai: Covenant and Theophany in the Bible and Ancient Near East. Studies in Old Testament Biblical Theology. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan. ISBN 978-0-31-049471-3. OCLC 31434584. Retrieved June 18, 2011. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Rodriguez, Clara E. (2000). Changing Race: Latinos, the Census, and the History of Ethnicity in the United States. Critical America (illustrated ed.). New York City: New York University. ISBN 978-0-81-477547-9. OCLC 43684476. Retrieved June 18, 2011. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• York, Malachi Z. (1993). What Race Was Jesus?. Egipt. ISBN 978-1-59-517030-9. Retrieved June 18, 2011. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)

External links

• Commentators of Jesus's race