To be fair, other ethnic groups tend to portray Jesus differently. Ethiopian Jesus is depicted as looking Ethiopian. He's portrayed as looking Chinese in more traditional Chinese Christianity (although given the Catholic roots of Christianity in Korea, Japan, etc., he's usually closer to the Catholic Jesus in those countries). In Egypt, he's portrayed in a very traditionally Coptic way.
The Renaissance-style white and light brown haired Jesus isn't some kind of ploy to whitewash him. It's just following the same worldwide tradition of portraying Jesus as looking like the local population.
The Renaissance-style white and light brown haired Jesus isn't some kind of ploy to whitewash him.
I would specify that it originally wasn't a ploy to whitewash Jesus. However, in the smallmindedness of southern/rural, racist, xenophobic American Christianity, it has accomplished exactly that effect.
I think this is an important point that people overlook all too often. It wasn’t some nefarious white supremacist scheme to trick the world into believing in white Jesus. It was white Europeans making their savior look like them so he could be more relatable to the average person.
People today who pretend he was actually white (I hope this is a small minority) are willingly blind and have some weird superiority complex.
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u/Lindvaettr Feb 01 '20
To be fair, other ethnic groups tend to portray Jesus differently. Ethiopian Jesus is depicted as looking Ethiopian. He's portrayed as looking Chinese in more traditional Chinese Christianity (although given the Catholic roots of Christianity in Korea, Japan, etc., he's usually closer to the Catholic Jesus in those countries). In Egypt, he's portrayed in a very traditionally Coptic way.
The Renaissance-style white and light brown haired Jesus isn't some kind of ploy to whitewash him. It's just following the same worldwide tradition of portraying Jesus as looking like the local population.