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Jul 27

2007

What Color is Jesus?

Posted at 2:05 pm in Christian Blogs, Christian LivingAdd comments

I noticed this post at Desiring God blog,

What Color Should Jesus Be?
Listen to John Piper talk about whether artistic portrayals of Jesus should be racially diverse.

I haven’t had time to listen to Piper’s sermon yet, but it reminded me of the Discovery Channel special that created a model of what they thought Jesus might have looked like:

The new face was created as part of a documentary television series co-produced by the British Broadcasting Corp. and the Discovery Channel, and slated to be aired on April 15 in the midst of Christianity’s Easter celebration. A forensic artist at the University of Manchester created the image using a 2,000-year-old skull of a Jewish man from Israel, and based hair and skin tone on third-century frescoes of Jewish faces.

Their verdict?
jesus_discovery.jpg

I do think all those blue-eyed blonde portraits are pretty unlikely, but I’ll find out sooner or later and whatever He looks like, it’ll be more than good enough for me.

written by Laura

One Response to “What Color is Jesus?”

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  1. Tioedong Says:
    July 28th, 2007 at 3:10 am

    When we see Jesus, stupid things like skin colour won’t matter.

    However, iconology is about us, not God. It is showing us a picture of a person in order to concentrate our ability to pray, in the same way we “talk” to our dead relatives when we look at a photo: Not as an idol, but to the person the picture represents.

    And in religious art, Jesus is usually portrayed like the people of the artist: In Italy, tan skin and brown hair, in England light brown hair and light white skin. But in Africa, he may be portrayed as a black man, and in Asia in native costume. In the catecombs, there is a picture of Jesus beardless with a toga carrying a lamb: The good shepherd.

    The problem with theBBC is that they chose a random worker who may or may not have been Jewish. The round head goes against the elongated face of most Semites, be they modern Jews or Arabs or ancient byzantine icons.

    Since most european Jews intermarried I suspect he looks like the Israeli immigrants who came from Morocco or Iraq. neither black nor white.

    But in Heaven we really won’t care about such stupid 20th century prejudices.

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