Jesus Christ

Would the Cathloc Churches be any different today or have a different relationship with the other Middle East Faiths if the image of Christ reflected his DNA heritage?

I would most definately think so. All things considered.

But would the Middle East Faiths have a different relationship and different Faith if the Catholics and Christians had won in the Crusades and not been driven back by the people of the Middle East?

I venture to say that much of the conflict arises out of the fact that people even observe the race/ethnicity/DNA of any god, prophet or messiah in the first place. It is irrelevant. While some of these people may have been real, the myths surrounding them are dripping with metaphor and meant to teach lessons.

If I were to tell the story of Jesus Christ, except that Jesus was a talking elephant instead, would it change the message of the story? What if Buddha was a red-headed white girl? Would the words be more or less true?

Let's not forget that in the story, Jesus was born a carpenter. A person, church, society or entire religion could decide to discriminate against him simply for that reason alone. It is dangerous when people put so much emphasis on something completely arbitrary.

These are my thoughts and opinions, of course. There's no denying that the issue at question has been motivation for more than a few wars in the past.

I completely agree Senan. Which is funny that this comes up since I am currently reading The Book and just finished the Myths by Joseph Campbell. Much of my journal speaks to this. As I put it, Jesus Christ, God, Goddess, etc are all just vehicles for the Divine Source. We each hold a piece of the Divine Energy within us. It doesn't matter what the name is, they are all the same Divine Source, just different vehicles for us to try and understand things better.

You make a great point with what you said. It is arbitrary but still food for thought never the less. We can only really assume what people would have done and would have thought if things were different, but since they are not, we wouldn't know for sure.

Rickie The Grey wrote: Would the Cathloc Churches be any different today or have a different relationship with the other Middle East Faiths if the image of Christ reflected his DNA heritage?

ever heard of the eastern catholic church? They seem to...

Mmm...I don't think it would, all that much. The man, Son of God, or prophet - is not as important as the symbol he became. Part of the real value of that symbol is universality...and a healthy dose of self-identification. Even the different Gospel writers emphasize slightly different things and tell slightly different accounts based on their intended audiences. Without that tailoring, would the story of Jesus lose its potency? I don't believe it would - the lessons behind the symbol remain just as universal.

It's one of the first questions I remember from being a young Catholic kid; how do we know what he looked like? I'm pretty sure I remember the Nun's saying no-one knows, and that the image/idol is not what is important, and that Jesus must be looked for within oneself. In this way statues were meant to remind, ie mnemonics, and not as literal accurate representations. In this context then I guess it would make sense to have local race Jesus's
:woohoo:

Symbolism is an important aspect to culture...
In my opinion, Jesus was black, why did the cultures whitewash sculptures, etc.?
To reflect their ideology...

sidvkili wrote:

Rickie The Grey wrote: Would the Cathloc Churches be any different today or have a different relationship with the other Middle East Faiths if the image of Christ reflected his DNA heritage?

ever heard of the eastern catholic church? They seem to...

Seem to what?....

The white image of Christ is...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesare_Borgia
http://www.actuarialoutpost.com/actuarial_discussion_forum/showthread.php?t=16991
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090720134325AAJW97X
http://www.israelite.net/image.htm

Llama Su wrote: Symbolism is an important aspect to culture...
In my opinion, Jesus was black, why did the cultures whitewash sculptures, etc.?
To reflect their ideology...

he was born in bloody palestine to nazerines and raised in galilee

he wasn't white

he wasn't black

he was bloody arab!

Adder wrote: It's one of the first questions I remember from being a young Catholic kid; how do we know what he looked like? I'm pretty sure I remember the Nun's saying no-one knows, and that the image/idol is not what is important, and that Jesus must be looked for within oneself. In this way statues were meant to remind, ie mnemonics, and not as literal accurate representations. In this context then I guess it would make sense to have local race Jesus's
:woohoo:

yeah but people definitely knew...

Jesus christ ( pun intended) we are looking at a middle eastern religion strictly through a western scope it seems... The eastern churches always portrayed something that seemed reminiscent in ICONS ( not images or idols... ICONS) he was middle eastern... arab nazarene... they could tell from Jesus christ's accent. The galileans were fairly easy to identify.. and any roman Christ met, knew he was a hebrew, an ARAB ( I know I'm stressing this... but he was either black or white, apparently... it's just hilarious to me). You knew if somebody came from that area. It's like here... you know if somebody is a scot. Their walk, their accent , skin colour etc etc.

Funny story, when Peter got accused later on, he starts swearing at all of them lol.

You know, I'm an admitted and outspoken racist, and I don't have the preoccupation with race that the world seems to have. Not meaning to attack the OP, just getting that out.

Sid's right- the Eastern churches, some of them anyway, depict Christ as non-white. For instance, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church depicts him as black, and the Antiochian church depicts him as Arab. I believe the Egyptian Christians also depict him as an Arab. My belief is that the images of Jesus we see today are so old that they came from a time when people weren't likely to regularly encounter a person of another race, if at all. That's why the European Jesus is white, the Ethiopian Jesus is black, et cetera.

As for his actual race, I imagine he'd look like a modern-day Sephardi or Mizrahi Jew, as in, the ones that are native to the middle east, not the Ashkenazim that we are more familiar with, which look European. There's a theory that he was more European looking due to his Amorite heritage, but personally, Isa al-Masih is Isa al-Masih to me, no matter what race he was.

sidvkili wrote: You knew if somebody came from that area. It's like here... you know if somebody is a scot. Their walk, their accent , skin colour etc etc.

Jing's, crivvens an help m'boab laddie, whitiver gien yi thon idea?, ah mean it's nae like wir aw dain the highland fling doon thi road in wir kilts y'ken!.

Leandros Von wrote:

sidvkili wrote: You knew if somebody came from that area. It's like here... you know if somebody is a scot. Their walk, their accent , skin colour etc etc.

Jing's, crivvens an help m'boab laddie, whitiver gien yi thon idea?, ah mean it's nae like wir aw dain the highland fling doon thi road in wir kilts y'ken!.

thankk ah'rve biin pruuvin wronng

The real Hebrew Israelites are black... Or are you saying Jesus was a Ashkenazi Jew??
Because you migrate somewhere, that destination does not change your origin...
"You can take the kid out the street, but you cannot take the street out the kid."
The real Jews left Israel, fake Jews arrived...
Can there not be black Arabs?
Arabs are dark skinned, too, no?

This is just speculation anyhow, opinion...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_appearance_of_Jesus

Llama Su wrote: The real Hebrew Israelites are black... Or are you saying Jesus was a Ashkenazi Jew??
Because you migrate somewhere, that destination does not change your origin...
"You can take the kid out the street, but you cannot take the street out the kid."
The real Jews left Israel, fake Jews arrived...
Can there not be black Arabs?
Arabs are dark skinned, too, no?

This is just speculation anyhow, opinion...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_appearance_of_Jesus

Nobody's saying that Jesus was an Ashkenazi. Ashkenazim didn't even exist until over half a millenium after Jesus died, and are not very Semitic, being essentially a mix of Turkic (Khazar) and white, with some Semite thrown in.

"Black Arabs" do exist, but all the term really means is a black person who is culturally Arab. In other words, blacks who directly or indirectly were brought into Arab society due to the slave trade, and their descendants. In Jesus' day, though, the Arab slave trade hadn't started, so there would be no substantial number of blacks in the area in which the New Testament events take place.

Saying that the Israelites were black is no different than British Israelism, or the Christian Identity Movement, except that it's Afrocentric instead of white nationalist/supremacist. There are Jews native to Israel/Palestine. They are the Sephardim and Mizrahim. They are Semitic and I've met some that are physically indistinguishable from Arabs.

Llama Su wrote: The real Hebrew Israelites are black... Or are you saying Jesus was a Ashkenazi Jew??
Because you migrate somewhere, that destination does not change your origin...
"You can take the kid out the street, but you cannot take the street out the kid."
The real Jews left Israel, fake Jews arrived...
Can there not be black Arabs?
Arabs are dark skinned, too, no?

This is just speculation anyhow, opinion...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_appearance_of_Jesus

they're can be black israelites. But to say the " real hebrews" were black is really uneducated and it reflects in your citation lol.

Star pointed out the black intergration in hebrew culture... they had africans in the area yes... but they would be as dark as the egyptians

So he (Jesus)has Jewish culture and Jewish heritage, being born in Israel/Palestine...
He was dark skinned... If it even matters...
The uneducated need to be taught, This is why I say the "real" Hebrew Israelites, because some claim this heritage, and are not...

Llama Su wrote: So he (Jesus)has Jewish culture and Jewish heritage, being born in Israel/Palestine...
He was dark skinned... If it even matters...
The uneducated need to be taught, This is why I say the "real" Hebrew Israelites, because some claim this heritage, and are not...

Many Semites are dark-skinned... I think the average Arab or Middle-Eastern Jew could qualify as dark-skinned.

If you're arguing that sub-Saharan Africans are the true Israelites... go talk to Farrakhan about that. That argument has no place in a rational discussion. I'm a racialist white person who fully admits that Isa/Jesus was a Semite, not an Aryan/white. If I brought the "white Jews" argument in here, I'd get banned like nobody's business. What I'm reading here is pure anti-Semitism.