Or hear me out, most depictions are from the renaissance when "Not being white" was a relatively new concept to Painters?
Jesus is white and ripped because of several very prominent renaissance painters using their hot twink lovers as their models
Unironically this!
There's also evidence that White Jesus originated as a Borgia pope, it's not nearly that cut and dry
This is a pretty flawed understanding of history.
Humans have always travelled, in Europe even serfs would hope to go on pilgrimage and Lords generally had to allow it. Although it may only be to a nearby cathedral. Italy was a trade hub, and a relatively short trip by boat to north Africa.
European painters knew that people came in different shades. As proof, go look at the school of Athens painting.
The renaissance is heavily linked to white racial superiority
Are you trying to say any historical event involving white people is racist in and of itself (As opposed to it merely being limited to the tragically high amount of ones directly linked to the exploitation of minorities) or that you are racist and believe renaissance era artwork to be proof of white racial superiority? Which brand of idiocy am I dealing with?
Demand fuels supply. Art style reflects a population. It's not hard to guess where the Renaissance is hinting at when everything is ripped white dudes.
Race as a concept and part of Renaissance life, however, has not been a central conversation in scholarship on Italy. This has made it difficult [189] for instructors to know where to start if they do want to bring the subject of race to the classroom. But the primary sources are brimming with racialized references: Petrarch extolled a white beauty, Dante condemned Mohammed to Hell, and Ariosto and Tasso both marshaled crusading themes and deified the violent expeditions of Christopher Columbus in their respective epics (and Tasso borrowed from the Aethiopica to create his heroine Clorinda, a white woman born to Black Ethiopian royalty). Racialized narratives around non-Italians, especially Muslims, Jews, and Black Africans, as well as the violent oppression of ethnic and religious minorities throughout the city-states, influenced this cultural production, and are important parts of Italian Renaissance history.
Are there a plethora of examples of black artwork depicting ripped white dudes? Or are we just saying that White Racism existed in a vacuum?
I was thinking the same. It's white people painting for rich white people, why would they EVER even think about the color of his skin? The right color is the color of whoever is paying you to paint it.
Click the article I linked if you need more context. God transforming into a white man is no coincidence.
Yeah I get that, what I'm saying is: I bet it's global. Africans probably painted Africans, Asians probably painted Asians. I don't think white man was exclusively racist.
shhhhhhh op feels smart. he used big words and everything.
Jesus became white when Christianity spread in Europe and became a European religion. Earlier Jesus paintings had him a few shades darker. Palestinians are still light skinned and the dark skin is mostly acquired from working in the field.
I'd be shocked if they put that much thought into it. It's probably just good old unconscious ethnocentrism. Jesus is white because I'm white and that's my default setting to view the world.
Jesus is like a Marvel superhero. Like any pop culture fiction, it's rendition changes to reflect and is a product of the era of that particular iteration of the superhero. You even have the religious offspring sect equivalents of Invincible and The Boys.
Was going to say... there's no shortage of art - historical or modern - that portrays Jesus as the dominant regional ethnicity.
A theory that claims multiple leaders – from Jesus to Barack Obama – are actually Turkish and that modern nations are little more than portions of a greater Turkic whole is gaining traction in many countries
You know that there's different depictions of Jesus in many races, right? Like, people in Africa have depictions of a black Jesus, for example.
Yeah, I think the far easier explanation is "people around the world depict their religious figures as looking like themselves".
It's about European churches using historical revisionism (depicting Jesus as a white European) to establish a sense of "superiority".
Those churches are by far the most dominant
Frankly this comes off almost as a conspiracy theory. Christian art in Europe developed its typical imagery when the vast majority of Europeans could have no direct contact with non-Europeans, before colonialism or coherent ideas about racial identities, when far-off lands were thought to be occupied by one-legged giants...
You know that... Christianity developed in the Roman Empire? The Middle East (more exactly Palestine and Syria. Which were larger that today's counterparts) wasn't some magical place where giants lived, but a province of said Empire
Christianity developed in the Roman Empire?
I'm pretty sure we're talking about the pictorial representation of Jesus, not when Christianity itself developed. Christian figurative art in Rome was rare and undeveloped, I highly doubt you have on your mind some examples of Roman portrayal of Jesus that actually support your idea. That's why I described what I have found to be the situation in the middle ages, when the typical iconography zook shape - to the best of my knowledge, but maybe I'm talking with an actual art historian in which case you should have no problem with proving me wrong with examples.
I'm also confused about how you actually imagine the development of the supposedly racist Roman images of Jesus went about. At which stage did that happen, before or after Christianity became the state religion? Were Romans racist against the Middle East populations before Christianity too? Were Romans from the Apennine peninsula racist against them based on their darker skin colour, while themselves certainly being darker-skinned than e.g. Gauls?
Dude: ports exist, people trade, across the Mediterranean you can find lots of different skin colours and customs.
Nobility and their favoured travelled extensively, skilled tradespeople would undertake elaborate pilgramidge if they could afford it all the way to Jerusalem. Even serfs got to go on pilgrimage although usually not to Jerusalem but to other cathedrals.
Stop with this ahistorical nonsense. Maybe someone in the British isles might not have much contact of the greater world but the HRE? Spain? Italy? The eastern Roman empire? Of fucking course they did.
I prefer juiced up Korean Jesus. Does thy god even lift?
I had to check this out. Jesus!!!
Jesus the Barbarian, amazing ✨
It's not only Jesus, but it's religious figures too. Muslims do the same to depictions of their saints, they should always look like "us".
Majority of Muslims actively avoid portrayals of religious figures. They would rather have the persons head glowing or something like that to avoid misrepresentation.
Yes, despite that there are pictures from saints (imams) and paintings at least in Iran, which are purely imaginary and look like Iranians.
Imams aren't prophets like Jesus is in Islam. And some of the imams are Iranian, or at least middle-eastern. It also varies, some do block out depictions of the imams as well.
Imma be a total dweeb and give the correct answer. Jesus is just Josh in Greek. There's many meticulous Roman records about messianic rebels in Judea, not a single Josh among them. One possible interpretation would be that the Romans were so invested I'm erasing Jesus from history, they removed the Joshes, but Christianity was a NON-factor before 77AD, so doubtful Roman clerks were furiously burning records to cover up a messianic figure nobody would give a shit about for a century.
The earliest 1st century CE images have Jesus portrayed like a little Harry Potter of indeterminate race, which seems weird since he's supposed to be 30, but maybe it's a Michael J Fox situation, where he points his magic wand at images of the miracles (like loaves and fishes) but it's more likely he never existed (thus the absence of that Josh in the meticulous records).
Rome around this time was religiously divided between an ostensible state religion of the Roman pantheon we all know and love and various "cults" such as The Cult of Saint John, which predates Christianity -- you can think of his appearance in Christianity like how Munch from Homicide: Life on The Streets carried over to Law & Order: SVU. Other cults were influential among various groups -- Cult of Isis and Osiris was for the nerds, Mithraism was for the jocks, Cult of Cybele was for the ladies.
Constantine, when he came to power, desperately wanted to reboot the Roman state religion with more of that slick theocratic energy they saw in Judea, so he decided the answer was scrapbooking: He'd call the religion Christianity, but Jesus would be sexy Apollo, and God would be bearded Zeus, both of Greco-Roman imagery. The marriage ceremony would come from Isis and Osiris, and they shoehorn in mother imagery from Cybele and Skandamata, creating Mary iconography. Throw in a dash of baptism from John the Baptist and Mitraism's bath in bull's blood, and voila! Christianity as we know it.
So the tl;dr is that's not your Jesus, that's Sexy Apollo with a Jesus skin mod, and there never was a historical Jesus, he never existed
There's many meticulous Roman records about messianic rebels in Judea
No, there’s not. And the consensus of historians who actually study this is that Jesus was a historical person.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus
You’re repeating a fringe theory that has been examined and rejected by scholars.
Jesus: It's because I'm not your god. I'm god of the people that colonized your country, took some of your people as slaves and made you all believe in me instead of your original black gods.
Say it louder for the people in the back. This is how white supremacy works. One of capitalism's most powerful tools.
Because he was drawn by Europeans
Just like Black/Yellow Jesus existing in those populations
You ask someone to draw a person, they will likely draw someone resembling people they see. If you tell an artist a thousand years ago “from the middle east” they will say what’s that
Then you just propagate those depictions
Because the Vorlons have programmed the younger species to view them as holy beings
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