I don’t care if he was purple, his message was be kind to each other and we’ve failed to grasp even that simple philosophy.
Entirely too many people give a shit about a shitass collection of bronze age bullshit in the first place.
I don’t know who you are, where you live, or what you do for work, but if you talk crap about the quality copper ingots of Ea-nāṣir, I’m gonna whip your ass. That stuff is dope!
Or is there something else to say about that time?
Iron Age*
Get your ages straight
I think they’re talking about Abrahamic belief as a whole
Yahweh is an Iron Age god. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahwism
And the God of Abraham was El. There is historical evidence of the conquests of Canaan which placed them around 1400 BCE.
In the Bronze Age.
There’s also a later period with another round of conquests and sackings in ~1250 BC that oh-so-coincidentally coincides with the infamous Sea Peoples.
There’s obviously a lot that isn’t true in the Biblical accounts but the general time period is confirmed archaeologically for when the hillbilly Israelites conquered at least some of the coastal Canaanites.
(Their cities didn’t have walls, which is interesting)
(Also it wasn’t a purge, the “Canaanites” for a certain value of the term were doing fine in Alexander’s time)
In todays standard Jesus would be a communist.
ICE would say “Papers, please” to him
I think “Gotcha, filthy Mexican!” would be more likely
In all fairness, most men named Jesus they would come across are either Mexican or have Mexican ancestry.
They can tell the difference between a Hispanic person and a Middle Easterner. I know because they call the latter group an extremely offensive racist slur while wearing their ICE gear.
Really more of a communal theocracy. It says right in the New Testament that you are expected to give all of your wealth to the church, with the implicit trust that the church is meant to distribute those resources fairly, starting with those most in need.
Yeah, in some kind of merger of state, church, and corporate power.
What’s the name for that again?
https://www.biblestudying.net/communal_living.html
Pretty much.
Lemmy moment
Considering the makeup of the population of the region back when Jesus lived, he could have had white skin due to the Roman, Greek and Anatolian (modern Turkey) presences, though light hair would be super unlikely. Of course, the most likely appearance would’ve been that of a common Egyptian, almond-ish skin,
#D5915A, and black hairThis guy is directly descended from David, and therefore would have been from the same family as The Christ, just many many generations removed. The Christ probably looked very similar to the guy in this photo.
People also think that Jesus was all love and light and goodness because they ignore or don’t know about the other parts about Jesus.
Like when he says, just two verses after the famous John 3:16 verse, that you worship him or go to hell:
18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son
Then there’s him being super racist:
21 Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22 A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.”
23 Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”
24 He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”
25 The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.
26 He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”
Mark 15:21-28
Or when he says in Matthew 19 that you can only divorce a woman (and, of course, a woman can’t divorce a man) if she’s cheating on you, essentially condoning domestic violence:
8 Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9 I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
There’s more where that came from.
I’m sure some Christian would be happy to come in here and hand wave it all away with being out of context or misinterpreted or whatever. And yet quoting the Bible out of context happens every time they go to their church and they have no issues.
People most often praise Jesus for the Golden Rule. He didn’t invent it.
Oof. Where do I begin? You actually incorrectly cited the source of the verse you are quoting, so we’re off to a great start.
First off, you’ve incorrectly cited the verse to Mark 15:21-28 which is about Jesus’ crucifixion instead of Matthew 15:21-28 which you also sneakily removed the last two verse (27, 28) which are necessary to understand the context.
27 “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”
28 Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.
Also, Jesus alludes to his Parable of The Lost Sheep (Matthew 18:10-14, Luke 15:3-7) when he said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel”. In this context, the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15 is just one of many lost sheep.
In regards to marital divorce in Matthew 19; yea, this one is pretty easy if we take into consideration that social customs have been continuously evolving. The first verse in Matthew 18 begins with Pharisees attempting to catch Jesus in an ideological “gotcha”.
“Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”
Jesus responds by saying, “…they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Keep in mind, when the Israelites were autonomous from foreign rule, they imposed the death penalty to those who committed adultery. It wasn’t until Moses that the concept of a divorce certificate was created, eliminating death to adulterers, which was a socially progressive move for that ancient time period. After all, you can’t create the act of divorce without first creating the act of marriage. I’ll continue with Matthew 19:7:
“Why then,” the Pharisees asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?” Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.”
The hearts of the people during Moses’ time had become hardened, cold, unsympathetic to those who committed adultery and sentenced them to death. The certificate of divorce that Moses proposed allowed for the hearts of people to soften instead of, you know, killing in the name of law.
So, when the Pharisees present this question to Jesus, he doesn’t actually say anything about whether women can or cannot divorce their husband, as you seem to imply. Jesus simply explains the history of the Pharisees’ own religious law back to them. They wanted him to take a definitive side so they could have him arrested for heresy and he didn’t take that bait.
So Jesus called gentiles dogs and only healed the daughter after her mother crawled in the dust? Not very loving, which is what OP pointed out. The two added verses don’t change that.
Also, he admits here that he is there for the lost Sheep of Israel.
I always find it funny how Christians rally around a guy who called them dogs and made it clear he doesn’t care about them, just because a random dude (Paul) had “visions” of Jesus 30 years after his death and from there on pretended that gentiles were part of the ingoup. While contradicting Jesus as well if the church of Jesus actual fucking brother on this very issue.
It’s just wild.
Hey, I called it.
Well, you did incorrectly cite your source and disingenuously remove the last two verses of the passage you were trying to attack.
Adding a tag at the end of your comment that “some Christian is going to tell me I’m quoting out of context or misinterpreting the text” doesn’t dispel you of literally doing those things. Also, I didn’t “handwave” away your argument. I systematically approached each of your points and rebutted them with the correct sources.
The bible contradicts itself a few times. I think ultimately faith is faith based. (shocking I know)
The golden rule is so stupid too, I want to be left alone, should I leave people alone? My friend likes people coming to his place unannounced, should he come to places unanounced?
It’s like everyone takes the rule and twists it so it benefits/excuses how they live and do.
May just be the neurospicy in me, but who likes people unannounced? Like, people can go about their day, knowing anyone could come at any time and they’re ok with that?
He’s a bit a one of a kind, his home is always open and that’s what he likes.
Those seem like misinterpretations to me. Underlying your desire to be left alone is the desire to be treated how you want to be treated. So you can quite easily extend that reasoning, how do others want to be approached? The golden rule then suggests we should have the conscientiousness to inquire and respect the relative boundaries that each of us have.
This gets into letter of the law, vs spirit of the law. If you care about the latter, then the golden rule is quite good. But if you take advantage of the former, then you can subvert and break down any rule.
But for this to work, everyone has to understand every other person. I don’t feel the golden rule is about that. Also, a rule which is abused if you use it straight out of the box without enough thinking is IMO not a very good rule, especially if it’s supposed to be some sort of catch-all good rule.
As far as catch-all rule of life rules go, do you have any greater alternatives?
But again, your problems aren’t really problems with the idea itself. You’re just trying to make a general life guideline do more heavy lifting than it was meant to, and all your issues are again solved with a little bit of common sense and conscientiousness.
As a quick sidenote, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” is not Yeshua’s (Jesus’s) principle law. His highest commandment was, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'”
“Be nice to eachother” is good.
The idea itself is, IMO, wrong. That’s why the rule is just bad. I won’t do onto you what I want you to do onto me. Obviously if you think about it. There is no magic hidden idea inside it, it just sounds good if you don’t think about it.
I couldn’t care less who invented it but yes I know it wasn’t jesus or santa claus lol.
I like my sky wizards to be of authentic skin color thank you very much.
If The Christ was, in fact, directly descended from David, then this guy would have been one of his Niblings/ Cousins, many many generations removed. The Christ probably would have looked very similar to the man in this photo.
I’m not really up on the Bible, but wasn’t it Joseph who was allegedly descended from David? Joseph, who definitely wasn’t the father of Jesus?
It’s kind of like being European and being descended from Charlemagne, or having almost any Middle Eastern, Russian, Tibetian, or Siberian ancestry, and claiming to be descended from Chingis Khan. Yes, it’s probably technically true for the majority of the people in those immediate geographic areas.
If David was one historical figure, and not an amalgamation of people, kinda like Shakespeare might have been, at the time that The New Testaments would have been written, then, David would have been dead for a few thousand years. We know from DNA that a single figure, namely Chingis Khan, fathered so many children that something like 20% of all people alive are descended from him. He existed less than 1000 years ago.
Charlemagne existed about 1000 years ago and fathered about 20% of Europeans that exist today, again according to DNA.
Even in the time of the Christ, David would have been a few thousand years old, and was similarly prolific with his wives as Khan and Charlemagne. It’s entirely probable that Mary was also descended from David since most of The Tribe of Israel would have intermarried a lot more frequently than we would today.
Also… A lot of The Torah especially doesn’t hold up with archeological evidence, but even with The New Testament, there definitely seems to be some historical fuckery going on. Did The Christ even exist? Probably, seems to be the answer there. Did the historical person do everything they are credited with doing? Unlikely seems to be the answer to that question. Doesn’t seem to be the authors’ faults though. In both cases they were writing from perspectives that seemed reasonable at the time.
David was not a historical figure tough.
Handsome devil.
We have an American commercial illustrator named Warner Sallman to blame for the canonical Jesus’ melanin deficit.
Yeah, I think Italian Renaissance painters may have pre-dated that somewhat.
Blonde, light-skinned with blue eyes? Nope.
That’s a ridiculous claim.
Here’s a picture of Jesus’ baptism from Normandy, painted in 1185.
Plenty of others here: https://smarthistory.org/standard-scenes-from-the-life-of-christ-in-art/
Europeans tended to paint Jesus as white because they didn’t understand there were no photos or movies or TV around, so someone in Norman France didn’t know there was an alternative possibility.
i think it goes back a little further than some dude from the US…
That would go against the narrative that every thing bad comes from the US
After reading that I just had an idea for what I think would be a good premise for a film. In the 70s Jesus “returns” in the US somewhere, but as someone who gets labelled as a black man, noone believes him. Because he keeps getting knocked down at every turn due to systemic racism, and because he is so fed-up with the “White Jesus” trope he joins the Black Panther Party. He ends up being shot by a cop. Final shot slow-zooms in to show cop’s name on a tag. First name Judas.
Do you think Ancient Jewish people were black? Have you ever met anyone who lives around the Mediterranean? He would look like a version of that guy who worked outdoors. He was from the Levant not sub-Saharan Africa. He wouldn’t be “black” rather he would be seen as Middle Eastern.
Have you ever met anyone who lives around the Mediterranean? He would look like a version of that guy who worked outdoors. He was from the Levant not sub-Saharan Africa.
I live in Greece, so …yes, I meet lots of them every day. Firstly when I had the script-idea I didn’t think there would necessarily be a need to “prove” that he “returns” as the same race as previously anyway. Of course just having him return “not white” would nudge people to connect dots to the historical whitewashing regardless. As an atheist I would see the whole thing as a fiction-based-on-fiction-based parable anyway. Aside from that there are quite a few who debate that he wasn’t from the Levant, as mentioned here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_appearance_of_Jesus (not that I agree with any particular theory, just that there are many competing theories, and I’m not even convinced such a human even existed).
Nah, he would have been seen as Arabic and thus be labelled as a Muslim, being even more intenselly and more widelly hated in the US than if he had been deemed a Black man.
Also in terms of probability he would’ve probably ‘return’ to somewhere in Asia or Africa since there’s were most of the population is nowadays.
Due to deep frustration with cultural imperialism and pervasive US exceptionalism I am one of the first to cheer when some popular-culture artefact dares to [shock, horror] not be based in the US. When District 9 was based in Johannesburg I remember thinking 1. Due to the apartheid subtext it makes sense, and 2. How on earth did they get decent funding without it being based in LA?! Having said that, I think the premise of such a script requires he “return” to the US in order to comment on events and prejudices there during that time (and the after-effects of events leading up to it - Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr, etc).
It’s funny that District 9 is one of my favorite films and yeah, I also felt both that it was very much a comment on Apartheid and was pleasantly surprised with the quality of their production values and their cast.
Yeah, I guess that if the purpose is for Americans to “see themselves through the eyes of Jesus” then said film with the return of Christ would have to be set in America.
I was going to paste the same link. :) Have my upvote instead.
I have family, DEVOUT Christians, that live in the actual holy land. I asked them “who is that?” in response to their posting a picture of white-as-fuck Jesus on the Facebook page for the family village. They have yet to respond
Far too many people only think they’re following Jesus.
The first person of color to be killed by the police.
I mean I know it’s a joke but it’s not even biblically accurate bud.
Plus everyone knows old testament god was an ex cop with tendencies towards beating his kids.
Dad nailing his son ? That’s Eww on so many levels…
Absolute fire my man
Very nice episode about this came out lately on the 99% Invisible podcast. Here’s the link: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/615-your-own-personal-jesus/
According to the usa census it you are from the Middle East you have to put caucasian. My family on my dads side came from Syria
When you picture God what skin color do you see? What gender do you see?
Modern day Palestinians come in all shades from “white” to “black”. As someone who studied and argued the genealogy and ancestry of the region, here’s the gist of it:
- Ancient Egyptians and Ancient Levantines are closely related.
- The closest people to Ancinet Egyptians are modern day Egyptians.
- The closest people to Ancient Levantines are modern day Yemenis, then Saudis.
- Modern Levantines reflect millennia of migrations and conquests since the collapse of the Bronze Age.
If I learned anything from all of the Sunday school my parents forced me to go to it’s that Jesus was a white dude with amazing abs.
Korean Jesus?
