Even when I was a kid I wondered why Jesus was always depicted as if he were from Scandinavia or Germany.
From Don Asmussen’s comic Bad Reporter:
h/t: jsp
Jesus @ #wrongskin
June 17, 2015 • 4:30 pm
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
I identify as a billionaire.
Yes, but your banker identifies you as overdrawn, and the electric utility identifies you as being in the dark….
b&
Exactly. The discrimination is intolerable. I demand that bankers, realtors, car dealerships, credit card companies, etc, recognize my internal status as a billionaire by granting me the external benefits billionaires enjoy.
It’s only fair.
I identify as a tax man, and I’m sending “the boys” around.
I don’t think “asserted money” is taxable.
Nyah-Nyah.
This is true.
Alas, “asserted money” isn’t any more spendable than it’s taxable….
b&
Why you gotta be hatin’?
You hatin’ on us haters? Not cool, bro! Show some love for the hate!
b&
As long as you don’t hate the hatters. That would be mad.
Well, being mad makes you hate, which leads to anger, I fear…and things tend to get kinda dark after that….
b&
Telling him how it will be, eh?
b&
Sounds like “The Secret”. Wasn’t that about pretending you had money so you’d magically get rich? Let us know how that works out for you.
Ohmygod I hate self-help quacks.
Yeah, I know the secret to success: write a ridiculous self-help book and sell it to gullible rubes for an arm and a leg.
Silly Beef.
The “secret to success” isn’t to be found within the pages of a bestselling self-help book.
The secret so success is to write a bestselling self-help book.
It’s no different from anything else. You want to win big in gambling? Open a casino. You want to make a fortune on Wall Street? Open a brokerage. You want your own private vault filled to the top with piles and piles of money? Open a bank.
…now, if you want to do any of those things and still live an interesting and meaningful life and be able to look at yourself in the mirror…sorry. Can’t help you there….
b&
On that theme:
Want to make up a brutal pseudoscience of mental health?
Disdain existing psychology and psychiatry.
So do The Donald, although his net-worth is apparently something less than a quarter of that.
However straitened his circumstance, the oft-bankrupt make-believe mogul muddles along — which, apparently, is all the qualification he needs to be taken semi-seriously as the next leader of the free world.
Gaak. And so he holds wacky press conferences in a room full of reporters and clicking cameras while he shouts impossible and vague promises about what he’s-a-gonna-do. A rich megalomaniac narcissist running for president.
Come to think on it, he is likely not the only one.
A rich megalomaniac narcissist with a claque!
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It’s far more likely he was a tubby little guy with a comb-over.
What was Mary suppose to be? That would clear up half and you can just make up the other half. Actually, you can make up the whole thing.
Well, you see god has these double-dominant white genes that suppress those sissy brown middle eastern genes by epistasis.
Yeah the 6’4″ blue eyed Jesus always amused me. The JWs left a flier with the white Northern European Jesus in my door last week.
I’m happy to live in the boonies so I don’t have the door knocked on by loonies.
(Or tricker treaters!)
They come around far too rarely here.
I like bamboozling them.
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I live in the boonies too but the JWs find a way. Usually they show up with the family in a van. I always feel sad for the kids.
Maybe they have alternative editions for ethnic neighborhoods.
The article Ant linked to addresses that. Like all other gods, Jesus has always been portrayed as being just like the dominant local worshippers.
It’s worth noting that there’s absolutely nothing in ancient sources that even tangentially makes reference to Jesus’s physical appearance. Did he tower over those he preached to? Was his voice so soft those at the back had to strain to hear? Did his soft brown eyes melt those he looked at or his clear blue eyes pierce right to the very soul? These are the sorts of details you get in actual eyewitness accounts that nobody even bothered to pretend to provide in the various made-up biographies for that ancient Jewish demigod.
b&
I’d bet he looked like Charlton Heston.
Would that not had led to people thinking he was merely the second coming of Moses?
“The JWs left a flier with the white Northern European Jesus in my door last week.”
What did you do with him? I hope you at least gave him a cup of coffee and a sandwich.
cr
[Must.. learn… not.. to.. take.. things.. so.. literally…]
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7AdaVyD6qWE/UDKoMXtbqiI/AAAAAAAABNU/3vSMKmic0DA/s1600/have-you-found-jesus.jpg
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Maybe Christians have ‘Frey envy.’
Baldr? Wasn’t he killed on a tree?
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Yeah in hindsight he seems a more apt parallel, but both gods have some Jesus-like components. Baldr is the son of Odin and god of light; both those traits seem applicable to Jesus. But Frey is the god of peace, a big theme of Jesus’ story.
Also its amusing to note that – relevant to Asmussen’s joke – one translation of the word Baldr is ‘white.’
Oh now I get it.
What’s that?
http://grapeshotmq.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Jesus-of-Nazareth_History-in-Review.jpg
More here.
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That doesn’t look anything like him. First of all, he’s not wearing any rouge!
Well, what more could we ask for? Case closed. Eat it, mythicists.
A fictional painting of a fictional character….
b&
Painting Jesus is a little like coming up with your own comic book superhero. The possibilities are endless.
Look at his neck; he’s not ripped at all.
He’s metaphorically ripped.
I drank some beer last night, which is a metaphor for working out. It seemed to have the same effect on muscle development as the metaphorical Jesus does when one prays. These exercise literalists and their actual exercise are so 16th century. No sophisticated healthy person would ever actually entertain silly notions of moving around to elevate his heart rate. We are metaphorically healthier than ever here in the U.S.
🙂
“metaphorically” meaning “not remotely like”, I take it.
cr
(metaphorically tall, dark and handsome)
Yes, if you mean that in the metaphorical sense, which I guess means it’s a metametaphor?
Fanfic.
b&
Legitimate design by committee. I’d contribute a clown nose and big shoes.
http://www.jesusdressup.com/number2.html
b&
I wonder if there’s something of him in the Barbie and Ken series?
Speaking of earworms….
b&
Oh, to be 25 again…
Hmmm…an interesting thought…but, honestly? I much prefer my life now at 45 than at 25.
I suppose the day will come when 25 is better than whatever my current age happens to be at the time, but I don’t think that’s going to come for quite some time.
b&
I’d give it about another 20.
love the Jesus dress up!!
IIRC that is a reconstruction of the face of an Israelite who live 2,000 years ago. Certainly not Jesus.
Best way to get a straight answer would be to ask Rachel Dolezal…
haha…you read my mind…or I yours!
Ah yes. Great minds think alike. So you’re not the smartest bulb on the tree either.
It sounds like the Rachel Dolezal syndrome.
What I want to know is how she got her race changed on her id. I’ve heard that’s practically impossible to do.
Anyone know how Jesus is depicted in non-Caucasian countries?
Caucasians in Russia are often considered Black, not White.
We had to read a short story in high school (70’s) about a school kid who painted Jesus as being black. Caused a huge stink; when the Principal defended the child, he lost his job.
As far as I know, the story was fictional, but there probably was a period in US history in which that would have been a predictable course of events.
Americans seem to think that the only sanction is sacking, and use it for every infraction. It often seems a bit draconian to me. Surely on some occasions a warning or something would be more appropriate.
I don’t have any data, but it seems to me that sacking is most often resorted to when some issue becomes political. That’s probably why you see a lot of news articles about people getting the boot…whatever the issue is, it’s already gotten bad publicity and anyone that wishes to shield the transgressor will start taking heat, too.
In the real world, any mature employer knows that replacing a worker can be expensive and time-consuming, so they’re not going to get rid of anyone lightly.
Because of that, I’m skeptical that single-infraction firing is any more common in the US than in other western countries, even though it could be done, particularly in the right-to-work states, which allow termination for no cause.
What about tolerance and open discussion?
Nah, too hard.
Sub
There’s a church here in South Florida that thinks Baby Jesus had blonde hair. (Hope this link works.)
It’s funny the way that Google software blurs out the faces!
There’s no “Middle Eastern” on U.S. census forms. So Middle Easterners usually count themselves as “white” there.
http://www.census.gov/2010census/about/interactive-form.php
Yep! And “Middle Eastern” wouldn’t really work as a racial category either, since folks from Turkey or Iran can have considerably lighter skin than someone from Yemen or Bahrain. I’m from a Turkish/Lebanese family and I could pass as a Northern European, though my brothers have been mistaken for Mexicans. My experiences in the middle-east suggest that many there view themselves as white, and there’s certainly a good deal of racism against the Filipinos and Africans who take lower-paying jobs there.
That is so funny! I needed that laugh. Thank you.
This reminds me of an experience I had some years ago. I watched a DVD of the film Frost/Nixon, a dramatization of the TV interviews that host David Frost did with Richard Nixon in 1977. Frank Langella played Nixon; Michael Sheen, Frost. I thought it was a fairly riveting film, but what I found interesting was watching segments of the actual interviews that were a bonus feature of the disk. The real Frost and Nixon looked somehow smaller and less significant than their acting counterparts!
Now imagine, say, the Sermon on the Mount, or perhaps one of the “feeding the multitude” incidents (yes, there appears to be more than one). Do you see in your mind’s eye a “movie” version of the event? Jesus somewhat taller and more majestic than anyone else, with brighter colored robes, handsome face, and oh those eyes!?
Assuming that these stories are based somehow on actual events, if you could go back in time to that event, what would you witness? Maybe a rag-tag band of people listening to someone pretty much indistinguishable from the others, perhaps 5’3″ or 5’4″, perhaps with a kind of charisma, but certainly not godlike. Nothing to get excited about.
That actually is the original version of the story.
Here, let me quote:
There’s the oldest mention of Jesus I’m aware of, half a millennium or so before the time of the Caesars. He is, in essence, a Jewish demigod who is the architect and craftsman and high priest of the Jewish equivalent of the Olympic palace.
So, yeah. Larger than life. As much larger than life as Zeus and Hercules.
b&
and you get Yeshue bar Yussef and the sermon on the mount out of this exactly how?
“Jesus somewhat taller and more majestic than anyone else, with brighter colored robes, handsome face, and oh those eyes!”
That’s carrying biblical interpretation rather far don’t you think?
The Sermon on the Mount didn’t exist until Mark wrote it well after the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans.
The Joshua / Jesus (same name, just like Sandy and Alex are the same name as Alexander) in Zechariah 6 has all the fundamental theological characteristics of today’s Christian Jesus — Prince of Peace, Crowned (/ anointed / Christened) with many crowns, builder of the true church, The Branch (which word is also translated as The Rising), and so on.
Philo of Alexandria explicitly equated the Jesus of Zechariah with the Logos, and wrote at some length at the significance of Jesus being called “The Rising” (the word the KJV translates as “The Branch”)
Paul’s Jesus is indistinguishable from Philo’s Logos. Indeed, the Epistles almost read as if Paul just did a search / replace of “Logos” with “Jesus.” Adam was the Platonic archetype of the body, but Jesus / the Logos was the Platonic archetype of the soul, and so on. And Paul knows nothing of the Sermon on the Mount or anything else of the Gospel Jesus…
…because, again, the Gospel Jesus was invented by Mark after the Roman conquest, and was a very typical example of an Euhemerized terrestrial biography invented for a celestial being.
In short, there’s a blindingly clear development over the centuries from the original Jesus of Zechariah (though, to be fair, Zechariah’s Jesus was likely already ancient) to Philo to Paul to Mark to the other Gospels and so on. Each builds on and makes explicit and unambiguous reference to the prior, and the earlier versions are ignorant of the later ones. Which is exactly what you’d expect if an ancient minor Jewish demigod gained increasing theological significance and eventually a biography.
Cheers,
b&
would there be a book with more details about this, Ben?
Richard Carrier’s On the Historicity of Jesus goes into it all in great detail.
b&
figured it had to be somewhere. I haven’t picked up any of Carrier’s books yet.
The Sermon on the Mount is not in Mark, but in Matthew and Luke. All 3 of these are held to predate John which is where Jesus(in the Gospels anyway) gets identified with the Logos.
In Matthew, Jesus is essentially “adopted” as Son of God at his baptism, but is not SofG prior to this time, and Matthew’s Gospel has a theology utterly at variance with Paul’s. Matthew’s Gospel is evidently by a Jewish Christian who thought Jesus was just the Jewish Messiah, but not the sacrificial Savior of the world. Matthew’s Jesus is mainly a reformer of the Law bringing a new Torah, very much in tension with Paul’s theology of Jesus as abolishing/superceding the Law.
I suppose a modest case could be made for Mark being a euhemerized celestial being, but I don’t think this can be maintained of Matthew.
Gah — brainfart. I hate it when I switch the two in type or speech, and I do it all the effin’ time.
John is where you get the famous opening verse to that effect, but there’s just no way to read both Paul and Philo without coming away with the conclusion that the two are writing about the same entity.
Wish I could remember where Philo writes about Adam being the master archetype of the body and the Logos that of the Soul, as Paul does, for example, in 1 Corinthians 15…but here’s a random sample of Philo that gives you a good idea of the flavor that Paul leans so heavily on:
Can you honestly read that and not think it a perfect description of Jesus? Save, of course, for the minor little detail that he hasn’t yet arrived.
Matthew copied Mark wholesale. Whatever Matthew’s intentions are irrelevant, as he was copying and rebutting and revising Mark.
b&
Blessed are the cheese makers.
Ramen! Without cheesemakers, we wouldn’t have cheese…and then where would we be?
b&
I don’t get why people are so fixated on Jesus’ ethnicity when they don’t even get his SPECIES right… http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Raptor_Jesus
I once read a book on the Bible in which the author matter-of-factly dropped “We know Jesus was blonde” into a sentence. Unfortunately, he didn’t say HOW we know that, so I can’t tell you.
Yeah, you don’t see many blonde Jews around. Kinda weird the author wrote that.
Wasn’t Jesus just a nice Jewish boy who went into his Father’s line of work>
Although, like step two in the Sidney Harris cartoon, the Gospel of Luke could be more explicit about just what was in whatever ersatz Iron Age turkey baster the angel Gabriel must have shown up with when he came to tell Mary she’d been selected for impregnation with the seed of the Holy Ghost.
“why Jesus was always depicted as if he were from Scandinavia or Germany”
Probably the same reason Buddha is depicted as oriental in China?
+1
That is so funny. I think Diogenes would be proud! I like to think that man had a great laugh from his barrel, for us to hear on our way to the agora.
Just for fun, try saying in fake Hindi accent- Oh My Gott, dhere he vill still be doing it!
sub2
Submarine
🙂
I’m having annoying subbing travails with my iPad.
All three of the Jesus movies of the 60s and 70s had a blonde blue-eyed Jesus but the 6 hour TV series (later expanded to 8) directed by Franco Zeffirelli was really bizarre, because so many of the supporting roles were swarthy Mediterranean Semitic types, and then in the midst of all of these is this very British Jesus.
At least when an earlier movie cast Swedish actor Max von Sydow as Jesus, they gave him dark hair!!
Over 30 years later, Sydow would play Satan in the film of Stephen King’s “Needful Things”.
Trivia fans might like to know that the Sydow movie (The Greatest Story Ever Told) has THREE actors who would later play the James Bond villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld (including Sydow).
I think I can confidently say that it is well known that God is an Englishman (some deny it for political reasons, but they know it in their hearts); Mr Podsnap settled this question long ago. It is therefore quite certain that His Son was also of the English persuasion.
Around the time of 0 AD, “Englishmen” were Brythonic. Probably not blond-haired or blue-eyed in any significant percent, as AFAIK those traits come from the Angle, Saxon, and Jute incursions of the early middle ages.
Thanks for the head up
are you a Viking?
But god is white, shirley, so his son must be white as well?
Well, to be precise they are of course both north european protestants. Any fule kno that.
Old joke: What’s the worst thing you can tell a Klansman about God?
A: She’s black!
Enough about God. Let’s talk about something you really know: rejection
sub
I had an online correspondent who used to troll by saying that Jesus would have looked like Yassir Arafat. This got the Christian Zionists *doubly* annoyed.
If John Cannell and others know what they are talking about, it would appear that, especially around 2000 BCE, people of the Mediterranean region, particularly the eastern regions, would most likely have been dark-skinned, if not predominantly black.
Cannell posits that “white” skin is due to adaptation to lowered levels of sun exposure resulting in rickets in dark-skinned individuals, resulting in an increase in deaths in childbirth, shifting populations toward lighter skin. Cannell suggest that light skin developed this way in just a few generations.
We cannot know what genes were expressed in a person who has been dead for over 2000 years, but the preponderance of the evidence would seem to suggest that dark skin would have been more likely than white skin in regional populations at that time.
It is highly likely that Adam and Eve, if they existed, would have been black. “In the beginning, all folks were black,” goes an old American Black folk tale, and it is most likely more true than untrue. Many of the American Black culture do not believe this, yea, many vigorously deny it (according to my observations, not any scientific survey, and I would like to be proven wrong in this).