Why does Jesus look White on Christian literature pamphlets when infact he was a Jew?

Answer 1

Most of our ideas of him and the rest of his guys, come down to us from middle ages artists. Italians, Belgians, Germans, English. Since they were not very smart, and had never seen a jew or arab, they did not know the difference.

Answer 2

I'm sure it has a lot to do with the Northern Europeans who helped push the religion along, in that time period the darker skinned Jews weren't very accepted. If you think about it as if Jesus was a normal guy from the time period he came from, he would be very dark skinned with long dark hair. Its possible he could have been dark enough to be considered black.. that side of the world was different from the way it is now.. also climate and location take part in how light or dark you are..

Answer 3

That's a good question. Back in those days, the Jews hadn't scattered all over the earth yet, so they hadn't married any Europeans yet, so most likely, they were light brown like their neighbors.

Here's my question for you: why is Jesus' hair almost always shown as being long? In those days, men wore their hair short. St. Paul writes that women should wear their hair long and that it is a shame to a man to wear it that way. The only time men wore their hair long was when they made a certain vow--e.g. Samson and John the Baptizer. No matter--we don't know what Jesus looked like because they didn't have cameras and apparently, no one drew a picture either. If someone did, it didn't survive the ravages of time. So people paint Him as they imagine He might've looked.

Answer 4

unfortunately the camera man wasnt present at his birth or life or aferwards however whenthe christian church became the roman church by order of the eastern emporer it established the idea that building roman type temples and having images of god and the saints and Jesus was the thing to do even if the bible plainly prohibits photos and graven images of god being used as worship objects ,, how ever the artists commissioned to build and decorate these palaces of God came from italy or greece france or germany or europe so the folkes they picked as modedls where folks in the streets and the markets in one painting of the last supper one of the deciples is actualy leonardo da vinci so see you will find the Black Madonna in mexico and italian Jesus' in italy and dutch saints in pictures in holland its not science its a reprsentation of something from the book not a real photo actually find a hebrew middle aged carpenter of a middle class background and thats pretty close like Norm abrams or howard stern or heres a thought the genome project for israel has the actual genome of the tribes and have tracked down the tribes of israel so the decendants of the tribe of Jesus are alive today

Answer 5

One of life's ultimate questions my friend! You have a legit complaint. At the Christian University I am currently at, we ask ourselves questions like that all the time, and can never really figure out what the hell actually happened, like, who the hell actually dropped the egg on this one? If it is offensive to you that they have done this misrepresentation of Jesus, I apologize for that to you because it should not have happened in the first place. Hopefully, one of these days, they'll get it right. Until then, we will just have to keep scratching our heads and asking "why?"

Answer 6

Funny,he's not portayed as white on any of my church's literature.Also,many of the artists that painted pictures of Jesus,were European.You can hardly fault a Christian for using whatever artwork is available.
Seriously,there is no white supremacist,anti-Semitical Christian plot.

Answer 7

The same reason he looks black on some Christian literature. The illustrator's choice.

The Lord was most probably of a skin color similar to Indians (people from India, not native americans).

In addition, he was probably a stone mason instead of a carpenter. Stone masons were muscular, not skinny hippie that you always see in those paintings.

Answer 8

Because that is how the artist chose to depict Him. In Japan, He is illustrated to appear asian, in Africa black, etc. Perhaps because that helps the artist feel a closer connection or feeling of similarity (which is, after all, why Christians believe Jesus became human in the first place).

Answer 9

Because once Europians got a hold of christianity they wanted any spot of color removed from it. Like the queen of Sheba, sometimes portrayed as someone with flowing gold locks of hair, when she was actually a black woman from Ethiopia. It's really horrible.

Answer 10

Good question. Jesus was Jewish born to Jewish parents and lived a Jewish life. Artist tend to draw people as they see them. Since no one was there to paint a picture of Jesus, Artist have taken the liberty to paint Him as they so pleased.