Why is Jesus protrayed as a white man with blue eyes?

Question

Something that was brought up while I was talking to a friend about all the different religions. Pretty interesting that alot of statues and drawings/paintings show Jesus as a white man with lightish brown hair and blue eyes. He was a Hebrew right? So wouldn't his skin have been a somewhat darker color? Wouldn't his hair have been dark as well? And blue eyes?? Come on.
Oh as a side note, I'm not a Christian but I do respect most all religions (excluding satan worship or like...we hate and kill animals religion)

Answer 1

Because the depictions come from European nations

Answer 2

It's rather evident that Jesus came from a region where the majority of people have dark hair, an olive-skin tone and dark eyes. The answer most likely lies in the first people who started to depict Jesus in the idealised pictures: most likely the Romans.

Answer 3

Amongst Jewish people, there are two types: dark-haired and dark-eyed, and a relatively rare but existing type of light-chestnut (almost reddish) hair and blue eyes. The Western Church accepted the fairer version, and the Eastern church accepted the version of Christ with dark hair and dark eyes (usually brown, only sometimes of the dark-olive colour). Besides, Jews of the "dark" type have a skin which colour is more like ivory (fairer than Mediterranean types of peoples), and the "fair" type has very pale skin. Maybe the choice was a consequence of the old religious painters' taste, we can't know it now. :)

Answer 4

Jesus would have been dark skinned probably with short black hair and brown eyes. They might have been blue but I suspect brown.
The westernised hippy looking Jesus appears to be a Victorian invention. No one knows what He looked like and God ensured that in order to stop people worshiping pictures of Him. However people still made icons and statues and sadly venerated and still in some places venerate these things in direct contradiction of the commandment to not make a graven image of anything ............................ happily by Grace we are saved not by the necessary demand to keep the Law.

Answer 5

Jesus' image proliferated in Christian art after the emperor Constantine embraced Christianity and made it the State religion of Rome. Because the art was composed by Romans, Jesus was given Roman features and Roman clothing. That image stayed in the minds of people as art progressed and developed through the Rennaissance, which gave us our most famous Christian paintings. Today, because of the infamy of works by such artists as Michalangelo and his contemporaries, Jesus' likeness has been handed down as a cultural representation of European descent.

That's how it happened.

Answer 6

The religious portrayals of Jesus with blue eyes and light skin have that as a reference point. For example, The Western Europeans have a majority of Blue eyed/light skinned people. It is just part of the assimilation from paganism to Christianity that pictures of "Jesus" were chosen as icons to help people in their worship. I think all pictures of Jesus are somehow forms of idolatry but that is just my opinion.

Answer 7

Anti-Semitism in the European parts of the Christian Roman Empire. This attitude also influenced the art community as well. Jews were perceived as dirty, ugly, selfish etc, all the things Jesus was not supposed to be. For many years an effigy of Judas was burned on Good Friday and that effigy was created to look ugly and had decidedly "Jewish' features according to their prejudice.

But as for Jesus, they depicted him in the most beautiful of European aesthetics.

No one wanted to own up to the fact that Jesus was a Jew native to region where Jews had olive to brown skin, dark to hazel eyes and curly hair.

Answer 8

Thank you for respect... various religions and in various parts of the world, religious icons such as Jesus Christ are depicted in a certain way as to idenitfy with those cultures. Right or wrong...that is a different question.

Answer 9

Historically, artists have had the tendency to paint themselves instead of what Jesus would have truly looked like. The fact is, He had to have had short dark hair, his skin olive and his eyes brown.

Answer 10

It's most likely Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI.

"In Volume One of Celebrated Crimes, Alexandre Dumas, père states that some pictures of Jesus Christ produced around Borgia's lifetime were based on Cesare Borgia, and that this in turn has influenced images of Jesus produced since that time."

Answer 11

You're right - He'd be Jewish. The arian Jesus is probably just a creation of artists who liked the Arian look. I've also seen a black Jesus, besides the more likely dark haired one. It's just a matter of the artists personal bias.