- Jesus has been named the top black icon by the New Nation
newspaper. Their assertion that Jesus was black has raised eyebrows in
some quarters - so what colour was he?
-
- Just as no one will ever produce proof for the existence
of God, the question of Jesus's colour may always be a matter for personal
belief.
-
- Was he white, white-ish, olive-skinned, swarthy, dark-skinned
or black? There are people who believe he was any one of those shades,
but there seem to be only two things about the debate that can be said
with any degree of certainty.
-
- First - if the past 2,000 years of Western art were the
judge, Jesus would be white, handsome, probably with long hair and an ethereal
glow.
-
- Second - it can almost certainly be said that Jesus would
not have been white. His hair was also probably cut short.
-
- Yet the notion that Jesus was black - highlighted this
week in a survey of black icons by the New Nation newspaper which ranked
him at number one - is genuinely held by some. One school of thought has
it that Jesus was part of a tribe which had migrated from Nigeria.
-
- And Jesus probably did have some African links - after
all the conventional theory is that he lived as a child in Egypt where,
presumably, his appearance did not make him stand out.
-
- The New Nation takes it further: "Ethiopian Christianity,
which pre-dates European Christianity, always depicts Christ as an African
and it generally agreed that people of the region where Jesus came from
looked nothing like Boris Johnson," the paper says. As light-hearted
evidence that Jesus was black, it adds that he "called everybody 'brother',
liked Gospel, and couldn't get a fair trial".
-
- But the truth, says New Testament scholar Dr Mark Goodacre,
of the University of Birmingham, is probably somewhere in between.
-
- "There is absolutely no evidence as to what Jesus
looked like," he says. "The artistic depictions down the ages
have total and complete variation, which indicates that nobody did a portrait
of Jesus or wrote down a description, it's all been forgotten."
-
- Traditional depictions
-
- Dr Goodacre was involved in the reconstruction of a Middle
Eastern first century skull for the BBC's Son of God programme in 2001,
which resulted in a suggestion of what a man like Jesus might have looked
like. He advised on hair and skin colour.
-
- "The hair was the easiest - there's a reference
in Paul which says it's disgraceful for a man to wear long hair, so it
looks pretty sure that people of that period had to have reasonably short
hair. The traditional depictions of Jesus with long flowing golden hair
are probably inaccurate."
-
- Deciding on skin colour was more difficult, though. But
the earliest depictions of Jews, which date from the 3rd Century, are -
as far as can be determined - dark-skinned.
-
- "We do seem to have a relatively dark skinned Jesus.
In contemporary parlance I think the safest thing is to talk about Jesus
as 'a man of colour'." This probably means olive-coloured, he says.
-
- 'Fascinating' debate
-
- Professor Vincent Wimbush, of California's Claremont
Graduate University, who is an expert on ethnic interpretations of the
Bible, says the matter of the historical colour of Jesus seems to him a
"flat, dead-end issue".
-
- "He's of Mediterranean stock, and it's quite clear
what that means. We see people like that in the world today, and that should
end the matter." The fact that the debate rages on regardless is fascinating,
he says, because of what it says about people's other issues.
-
- The artistic representations of Jesus which are so familiar
are not necessarily a negative thing, Dr Goodacre says. There is "theologically
something quite profound" in the fact that throughout history people
have tried to depict Jesus in their own image.
-
- "This is not a rough image of themselves people
have been depicting. It's an ideal image of themselves, painting Jesus
as something they are aspiring to.
-
- "Things have changed a bit in recent culture because
people are conscious of the need to be challenged by him and shocked. I
think that's why in more contemporary representations, even those coming
from a white, western background, people will think very carefully about
the representation."
-
- Even the world of film is catching up, albeit slowly.
Robert Powell had famously piercing blue eyes in Jesus of Nazareth in 1977.
And although Jim Caviezel, who played the lead in Mel Gibson's The Passion
of the Christ, also has piercing blue eyes, by the time the film was shown
they had miraculously become brown.
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- © BBC MMIV http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3958241.stm
-
-
-
- Comment
From Mary Sparrowdancer
10-28-4
The question is not "what color WAS Jesus," the question should
better be, "what color IS Jesus."
Because he is here, right now, and he is now walking among us.
But, let's get rid of that name, "Jesus." It has been ruined
and shamed. It is no longer associated with wisdom and compassion.
Let us not know him by his name, or by how we might think he might look.
Let us know him by his words and actions.
If his words and actions are coming from compassion and wisdom, then that
is the true test. Not name or appearance.
He is from the underlying dimension of Light. So, what is the color of
Light?
Light is translated for us by out brains, and at least a portion of the
way it is translated is due to what we have been conditioned to, and what
we have been taught.
Can one who is visiting from the dimension of Light appear as a Black person?
Absolutely.
Not only this, but they can also appear as a Brown person, a White person,
a Tan person, an Indian person, a Russian person, an Iraqi, a Native American...a
homeless person...
And so on...
The "passion of the christ" seems to be just washing us with
more blood and violence. I do not wish to wash myself with this. I wish
to wash myself with living water, not blood. Living water comes from
the Light. The Light is living water. It is fluid and it is flowing
through every partical of physical creation.
The true "passion of the christ" is about compassion and wisdom.
And we need both of these now. We need the Krestos and the Kristos - one
means compassion, and the other means to be on a mission.
If we have compassion without a mission, then we have nothing healing going
forth into the world. If we have a mission without compassion, then we
have...well, we have a mission without compassion.
We have had enough of the missions without compassion.
It is time for us to awaken and embrace compassion and wisdom once again.
These are the two wings of the butterfly that are the real christ consciousness
- compassion and wisdom.
Send in the butterflies...we've had enough of the clowns.
mary sparrowdancer
- www.sparrowdancer.com
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