Why does 90% of the Christian faith worship a white, blonde haired and blue eye fella, when if he truly was born in Jerusalem he would have more than likely had dark skin, brown/black hair and brown eyes (guessing on the eyes)?
Surely they are worshipping a false idol.
__________________ "Teach a man to build a fire he will be warm for a day, set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life."
What you have to remember is artists do not know what he looked like- they just assume, because of who is he, that he was very beautiful. Therefore they paint/draw what they understand to be beauty.
I think all Christians know that Jesus was of the Mediterranean and would have a skin complexion similar to that of the people of the Mediterranean area.
Ultimately it does not matter- because they are not worshipping the pictures or the statues. Though, I have never seen a blonde/blue eyed Jesus...is that an American thing? He is always usually dark haired and brown/black eyed...though I have seen very pale Jesus' as well as black Jesus' and Chinese Jesus'.
It only matters if his ethnicity is so important to you that you can not worship Jesus if he is not depicted in an ethnicity of your choice.
I've never seen the fabled "blond Jesus" he always seems to have red or brown hair. White though. It doesn't matter anyway because our modern conception is based on the Shroud of Turin which even most Christians think is fraudulent.
Didn't the European Jesus image become popular during the Middle Ages, when the Church was dominant, so it was to any artist's best interest to depict Jesus ethnically similar to the Church leaders?
__________________
Shinier than a speeding bullet.
I find that unlikely- since most of the earlier Church leaders were Italian they would have had darker skin not so different from Jesus' contemporaries.
Though in the case of the middle ages it might be good to remember that in those times being pale indicated high status. The poorer people had to work in the fields all day and so were very tanned, only the wealthy and high-classes could afford to stay in the shade all day and thus, the great and the good were seen as pale skinned people. (Note the contast with fashion today though.) Therefore artists would be more likely to depict Jesus as pale to indicate his high-status. Though I am sure they would have been aware that he would most likely have been out in the fields and thus be tanned.
The thread starter clearly doesn't know what a false idol is...though evidently he thought (not the first time I have encountered such an argument) that the Middle Age Europeans believed Jesus to be white and therefore he was not the man of the gospel- ergo they are worshipping the wrong person. However, this is a ridiculous idea. I am sure many of the peasentry did believe Jesus to be just the same as them, those who knew better knew where he was from and would probably have had an idea of what he looked like.
However it is totally unimportant- noone knows what Jesus looks like and it is not important. His message is the same regardless of the image you attribute to him.
Yeah, he looks like a fairly normal Greek man... Though you are probably going to go for the "Jesus is Zeus" repacked thing...which would be wrong. It is not indicative of anything that European people often associate powerful and wise beings i.e. God with the stereotypical wise man- Old and bearded. Like Socrates or Aristotle are usually depicted. These are just images used by men to picture God. The image itself is not really got much to do with the message.
Gender: Male Location: Southern Oregon,
Looking at you.
It's not the power thing, it's that the image was known by the people of the early church. It only make sense to use a common image for Jesus. The truth is the image of Jesus was lost over time. No one knows what he really looked like. However, the need for an image is natural and was simply borrowed from the image of Zeus.
Rev. 1:14-16. His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; 15And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. 16And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.
I think you are totally wrong and would like to see your evidence for that. I have never seen evidence that the earlier charge had a collective image of Jesus that was lost...
Jesus is nothing like Zeus, first off- he is young. He looks like any Jew of that period would look like. Long hair and a beard. Do all depictions from this period of long hair and beards mean that the people were simply using Zeus as a basis? Zeus was a wise god, as such he was depicted as a wise man. Old and bearded- this is how people always depict wise people in our culture.
Your argument might have had more credence if you compared God the Father to Zeus, they are fairly similar in terms of image. However again your point is not based on evidence or likelihood. I suspect it is based on that line out of the Da Vinci Code (or is it Angels and Demons?)
Not really a proper description is it...kinda metaphorical. Plus it is the book of Revelation, not one of the Gospels.
[edit] I tend to agree with Robtard, Jesus was probably darker than many modern Jews...
__________________
Last edited by Grand-Moff-Gav on Feb 19th, 2009 at 12:02 AM
Somehow I doubt Jesus had a sword for a tongue. But I have to admit that it would awesome to see a picture of him based on that description and ask fundies who it was.
__________________
Graffiti outside Latin class.
Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
A juvenal prank.
Why not, do the Gospels trump Revelations? But yeah, it is kinda metaphorical.
The whole "he was a negro" that some claim is stretch, but I don't buy the light skinned and eyes version either. Jesus probably looked more like Osama Bin Laden.
Take it into context, the hair and skin color probably have some truth in regards to physical appearance, while the 'flaming eyes' and 'sword tongue' are clearly just metaphors describing his intensity.
Then again, he is God, so a sword tongue would be possible.
The Gospels do trump Revelations yeah. The Synoptic (Matt, Mark, Luke) are the most senior pieces of scripture...though at the same time scripture is one and equal...or so the Prods pretend.
(please log in to view the image)
You may have seen this before, it is what experts from some university somewhere believe Jesus would have looked something like.
The black Jesus thing tends to tie into a more Black Israelite thing which I see as more a national expression than an actually Christian group. Race is ultra-important. However for the more general black Church sometimes the depiction of Jesus as black is used as a response to the Euro-white Jesus. Kinda balancing it all out after all, both are false.
KMC Community Forums
Feb 18th, 2009 08:04 AM
FER TEA!!
