White Jesus

Or hear me out, most depictions are from the renaissance when "Not being white" was a relatively new concept to Painters?

Jesus became white when Christianity spread in Europe and became a European religion. Earlier Jesus paintings had him a few shades darker. Palestinians are still light skinned and the dark skin is mostly acquired from working in the field.

I'd be shocked if they put that much thought into it. It's probably just good old unconscious ethnocentrism. Jesus is white because I'm white and that's my default setting to view the world.

Ethiopian Jesus looks like an east African.

Jesus is like a Marvel superhero. Like any pop culture fiction, it's rendition changes to reflect and is a product of the era of that particular iteration of the superhero. You even have the religious offspring sect equivalents of Invincible and The Boys.

Jesus, what do you mean by "you people"?

It's not only Jesus, but it's religious figures too. Muslims do the same to depictions of their saints, they should always look like "us".

You know that there's different depictions of Jesus in many races, right? Like, people in Africa have depictions of a black Jesus, for example.

Jesus: It's because I'm not your god. I'm god of the people that colonized your country, took some of your people as slaves and made you all believe in me instead of your original black gods.

Imma be a total dweeb and give the correct answer. Jesus is just Josh in Greek. There's many meticulous Roman records about messianic rebels in Judea, not a single Josh among them. One possible interpretation would be that the Romans were so invested I'm erasing Jesus from history, they removed the Joshes, but Christianity was a NON-factor before 77AD, so doubtful Roman clerks were furiously burning records to cover up a messianic figure nobody would give a shit about for a century.

The earliest 1st century CE images have Jesus portrayed like a little Harry Potter of indeterminate race, which seems weird since he's supposed to be 30, but maybe it's a Michael J Fox situation, where he points his magic wand at images of the miracles (like loaves and fishes) but it's more likely he never existed (thus the absence of that Josh in the meticulous records).

Rome around this time was religiously divided between an ostensible state religion of the Roman pantheon we all know and love and various "cults" such as The Cult of Saint John, which predates Christianity -- you can think of his appearance in Christianity like how Munch from Homicide: Life on The Streets carried over to Law & Order: SVU. Other cults were influential among various groups -- Cult of Isis and Osiris was for the nerds, Mithraism was for the jocks, Cult of Cybele was for the ladies.

Constantine, when he came to power, desperately wanted to reboot the Roman state religion with more of that slick theocratic energy they saw in Judea, so he decided the answer was scrapbooking: He'd call the religion Christianity, but Jesus would be sexy Apollo, and God would be bearded Zeus, both of Greco-Roman imagery. The marriage ceremony would come from Isis and Osiris, and they shoehorn in mother imagery from Cybele and Skandamata, creating Mary iconography. Throw in a dash of baptism from John the Baptist and Mitraism's bath in bull's blood, and voila! Christianity as we know it.

So the tl;dr is that's not your Jesus, that's Sexy Apollo with a Jesus skin mod, and there never was a historical Jesus, he never existed

jesus of any color is stupid. this shouldn't be about anything more than destroying religion for the sake of humanity.

Because the Vorlons have programmed the younger species to view them as holy beings

Because he was drawn by Europeans

Just like Black/Yellow Jesus existing in those populations

You ask someone to draw a person, they will likely draw someone resembling people they see. If you tell an artist a thousand years ago “from the middle east” they will say what’s that

Then you just propagate those depictions

He's white because Michelangelo had one hell of a sense of humor.

This is why deities, demons, spirits, angelic beings and so forth should be animalistic, aka furry. Have fun being racist about animals lmao.

Say it louder for the people in the back. This is how white supremacy works. One of capitalism's most powerful tools.

Ugh, this is something my FB friends need to see, but I can't post to FB because they're touchy.

There should be a black Jesus, just like there is a black Santa or a black Barbie.

The “rightymemes” version of this is a kid asking Miles Morales why he’s brown and having text below that says

“Because, I'm a psychological tool. By creating the image of a brown Spider-Man this subliminally engrains the myth of brown superiority into the subconscious minds of white people. This makes you people more compliant with our brown dominance over your lives.”

The circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant. It is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are.

It’s one thing to make an observation of how Jesus’s “image” has been adopted by different ethnicities, but when the official lore is that all humans are made in the image of God I think there are more productive ways to approach the topic of the societal impact of whitewashing.

I guess it’s the difference between saying “fictional white characters/heroes are bad because they reinforce white supremacy” vs asking “how foolish is it to look at a painting and try to judge which color of paint is ‘best’?”