If Jesus was born in the middle east.......?

Question

If Jesus was born in the middle east, why are we bombarded with visions of a white man with golden coloured hair? How could christianity get it so wrong?

Answer 1

Just depends on where you live and what you believe. In many black households, you can see pictures of black Jesus and I hear that in Italy the Madonna is black, so different strokes for different folks.

Answer 2

During the Middle Ages, there wasn't much in the way of communication or transportation. This is the period when Christian art began to flourish, very slowly at first. People were not knowledgeable enough to know that He was different from the people in their own community. A man who lived in central Europe did not know ancient peoples were different from them. That is also why they usually painted the apostles and others as wearing contemporary clothing of the period when the time the painting was done.

Answer 3

He wasn't blond haired and blue eyed, but you got to remember it was the english christians that painted these portraits from like, the fourteenth century to the early nineteenth. In those days a black man was considered evil and primitive so in their eyes Jesus couldn't possibly have darker skin.
This isn't some deep consipiracy by christians, it's just ancient artists painting what they imagine Jesus to be like.

Answer 4

That's because artistic depictions of Christ didn't begin until long after his death. The earliest of his followers followed the Jewish law of no idolatry or religious imagery. It wasn't until after Rome had began converting to Christianity that the Christians relaxed on this law and followed in the pagan footsteps of creating political (yes, political) images of Christ. It's a lot of detail regarding how the Roman emperors were blessed by the gods, so to keep that tradition, the Christian emperors were blessed by Jesus in artwork. And more detail of adding pagan traditions to Christianity in order to obtain more converts to Christianity. Anyways, by this time, the artists were people from Europe who had no idea what Jesus would have looked like, so they used their own people as models.

Answer 5

There is no physical description of Jesus anywhere in scripture. At different times in the gospel narrative we are told how people responded to his character or his teaching, but there is no hint that anyone was drawn to him because of 'film-star' good looks.

And it is simply not true to say that Christianity has always portrayed him in one particular manner: "he was made man" - so the theological truth about Jesus is that he is Everyman. Thus he is legitimately represented in every race and culture as belonging to that race and culture. There are so many pale-skinned images in Western art simply because of the explosion in painting that occurred at the Renaissance. Physically, two thousand years ago, it is likely that he conformed to the racial type of the Jewish people; but no-one can say for certain.

Answer 6

If you want to know what Jesus looked like, just look at any thirty-something Israeli man whose family came originally from an Arab country. They are very attractive: brown or blue eyes, tanned skin, dark hair......

Christianity has always portrayed Jesus as a blue-eyed blonde, which is utterly absurd.

Jesus lived and died a practising Jew.

Answer 7

Nowhere in the Christian faith does it say Jesus was a white guy with blonde hair.

I will agree that most churches have a white Jeus on the cross, but never blonde.

However, that is simply an artists conception, and has nothing to do with our faith.

Good day!

Answer 8

Simple:
Those "white man with golden coloured hair" images come from Renaissance and/or previous-era painters which used european models for their widely famous paintings instead of men from Israel or middle east area.

Examples:
* Leonardo Da vinci's "Last Supper".
* An 8th Century Mosaic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Christus_Ravenna_Mosaic.jpg
* Ary Sheffer's : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Temptation_of_Christ.jpg
* El Greco: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Christ_Carrying_the_Cross_1580.jpg

Answer 9

because it was an ideal image bought by men hundreds of years ago who likened jesus to the higher society/royalty who were pale (not being pale menat you were out working and thus had dark tanned skin).

The icon was bought about by artists who painted and created the images, from thier imagination, you'd have to ask them why the chose to select such a different image, but I suspect its along the lines of needing to sell the work they created, and if the royalty or high society felt jesus looked similar to them, there would be a better chance of getting some payment of the work.

Answer 10

A very good question.
The image of Jesus you see with blond hair comes from a painting of Zeus in Greece. It is based on Alexander the great’s picture, who was considered a god.

The story behind it is more intriguing. The early Hebrews were probably blond or were connected to the migration of tribes out of southern Russia after the discovery of the wheel and grain production. You see their symbols right across Eurasia associated with wheels and the indo-European theory of religion. { the tomb attributed to Joseph in Egypt is shown with red hair, Jews often have red hair and Bedouins share this characteristic.]

This image is central to indo-European belief systems. The sun is born in mid winter, overcomes winter in the spring, gives good fortune to man in the summer, and dies of mans excesses in the fall. Then on all hallows he is lain on an upside down oak trunk where his flesh falls off. This is all Christian core belief.

Why blond? That is because Indo-Europeans believed that they were gods people and being blond was a symbolic of being part of the sun thereby God. Records exist in Europe of widespread bleaching of hair to achieve godlike characteristics.

It sounds quite weird but Celtic type peoples with tartans and strange tall hats reached northern Japan and settled for millennia in northern china.