The Fascinating History of (Wildly Unrealistic) Depictions of the Savior

How Did Jesus Get to be So Hot? The Fascinating History of (Wildly Unrealistic) Depictions of the Savior

Let's start with the question of why Jesus is depicted as a white guy.
By Valerie Tarico / AlterNet

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It’s All Guesswork

In contrast to what many people believe, we have no authentic physical artifacts confirming the gospel stories, nor descriptions of Jesus from any of his contemporaries. Even the gospels themselves never claim to be eyewitness accounts. Scholars now believe that the stories of Jesus’ life and ministry that have been handed down to us—both within the Bible and outside--were written decades (or more) after Jesus would have lived, by unknown authors. This means that Christians have been free for almost two millennia to depict Jesus in a form that best suits their own culture and purposes, and they have.

Not long ago a picture of a cherubic golden-haired Jesus circled Facebook with the following caption, “Mommy, why are we the only white people in the Middle East?” The answer, obviously, lies more in the psychology of human racism than in any likely historical reality.

In 2002, forensic anthropologist Richard Neave, analyzed skeletal remains of Semitic men from the first century and applied the tools of his trade to construct a model showing a “most likely” head of Jesus. His model is broad featured and swarthy, with a wide face framed in the beard and cropped, tight-curled hair characteristic of Jews at that time. The head is scaled for a muscular male frame about 5”1” in height, average for the time and place.

... The eyes of a standard American Jesus, whether brown or blue, are piercing; his skin flawless; his features either aristocratic or classically masculine. Even on the cross, his muscles are well defined. In a culture that cares tremendously about youth and beauty, Jesus is a fine specimen of manhood.

But that was not always the case.

The earliest Christians depicted Jesus via pictograms such as the anchor, peacock, or the still popular fish. Early Jesus worship was furtive but also imbued with the Jewish aversion to “graven images,” ...

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It wasn’t until the early Middle Ages that Christian iconography converged on the bearded, mature Jesus familiar today. ... Forged writings and fake artifacts have been common throughout Christian history ...

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As the tale goes, European crusaders were troubled by the idea of killing Middle Easterners who looked like Jesus, and the ecclesiastical powers of the Catholic hierarchy wanted to assure crusaders that Jesus was not at all like the people they were slaughtering. Cesare Borgia had the perfect visage to provide an alternative.

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... story says something about each person’s tendency to create God in his or her own image and in the words of Anglican theologian Charles D. Hackett, to “appropriate him in the service of our cultural values."

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More
http://www.alternet.org/how-did-jesus-get-be-so-hot-fascinating-history-wildly-unrealistic-depictions-savior?akid=12893.1924881.2ubblf&rd=1&src=newsletter1033250&t=7

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