A poster in the southern Spanish city of Seville that depicts a young, handsome Jesus wearing only a loincloth has unleashed a storm on social media, with some calling it an affront to the figure of Christ and others posting lewd remarks and memes poking fun at the image.
The poster by internationally recognized Seville artist Salustiano García Cruz shows a fresh-faced Jesus without a crown of thorns, no suffering face and minuscule wounds on the hands and ribcage. It was commissioned and approved by the General Council of Brotherhoods, which organizes the renowned and immensely popular Holy Week processions ahead of Easter in Seville.
As soon as it was unveiled last week criticism of it went viral on social media and a debate erupted over how a resurrected Christ should be depicted. Many called it a disgrace, inappropriate, too pretty, modernist and out of line with Seville’s Easter tradition.
Spain is predominantly Catholic and church traditions such as marriage, baptisms and religious parades are immensely popular both among believers and nonbelievers. A campaign on Change.org to have the poster of Jesus withdrawn was signed by some 14,000 people from around the country.
Stupid, sexy Jesus…
Hey if you are going to take the body of Christ in your mouth…
You want a Jesus movie starring Jared Leto? Because this is how you get a Jesus movie starring Jared Leto.
Nothin’ at all! . . .
. . . Nothin’ at all! . .
Can’t help but notice that no one’s mad about him being white, but being hot is out of the question.
People really need to drop the whole “people in the middle east in the first century couldn’t be white” thing.
2 Kings 5:27 is literally about a subpopulation who have ancestrally passed skin as white as snow.
Lamentations 4:7 is about how pre-captivity there were people with skin like milk and a ruddy appearance.
Dead Sea Scroll fragment 4Q534 is either describing Noah or the Messiah as having red hair.
One of the more fascinating finds in this tomb, one that has not received much attention, was the preservation of a sample of Jewish male hair. The hair was lice-free, and was trimmed or cut evenly, probably indicating that the family buried in this tomb practiced good hygiene and grooming. The length of the hair was medium to short, averaging 3-4 inches. The color was reddish.
- The Only Ancient Jewish Male Hair Ever Found (from the same century as Jesus)
The tradition is also really concerned with skin checks and describes what may be skin cancer as its leprosy. Something that occurs at a much higher rate in redheads.
There’s even a scene where the eponymous founder of Edom (‘red’) who is born with hair all over his body and named Esau either because of that hair or the reddish porridge he ate, either gives away or has his birthright/blessing stolen from him by the guy later renamed ‘Israel’ in the Bible.
There’s a lot more to this and the underlying history, but the notion that the middle east was a monolith of appearances and that no one with pale skin or lighter hair were present is preposterous and a modern falsification of historical realities.
Jesus was probably darker skinned and haired than typically depicted, but it is by no means a certainty as it is popularly presented as.
Because its really not about whether or not the historical Jesus was or could have been white - its about the fact that white cultures will almost exclusively portray Jesus as being their own race for reasons that have nothing to do with historical interpretation of demographics is the middle east in ~0ad
People calling out White Jesus arent doing so because of a ‘notion that the middle east was a monolith of appearences’, but instead because of a hypocrisy of many Christian groups - in particular in the evangelical American right - to almost literally whitewash Jesus to look more like themselves, while often dehumanizing the people that look like Jesus ‘probably’ looked like.
Its really not about a historical question of the average middle-eastern skin colour two millenia ago. I assure you that the vast majority of ‘White Jesus’ portrayers have not engaged with that question and do not care about the answer. So to look to that as a refutation of the criticism is really missing the point.
Yeah Herodotus talks about a lot of peoples with different physical characteristics too. Although TBF like the old testament, it’s written centuries before Jesus, I’m not sure the same applies to both time periods.
So Jesus was a ginger?
Possibly. I wouldn’t put money on it, but if the odds were asymmetric enough I wouldn’t put money against it either, as I do think it’s possible.
In particular I think there’s insufficient consideration of the “Nazirite from birth” concepts in light of how one might establish that a baby is part of a social class one needs to sacrifice an entirely red haired cow to join and where one can’t shave or cut their hair.
(Technically, while the group being discussed in Lamentations 4:7 as being ruddy and skin like milk pre-captivity are often translated as ‘princes’ the word is more literally translated as “Our Nazirites were…”).
If John was a Nazirite from birth, and traditionally James, the brother of Jesus was a Nazirite his whole life, maybe Jesus was from an area where a number of babies came out and people looked at them and said “ok, this one is going to be a Nazirite.”
But Jesus himself isn’t depicted as having been a Nazirite at any point in his life so if I really had to get specific with a guess to bet on, I’d wager that Jesus had relatives and friends that may have been ginger but wasn’t one himself.
I met a guy from Nazareth. Arab, but basically white. Maybe you’d think Portuguese if you didn’t recognise the accent. Nice guy, don’t know what happened to him but I guess he finished his degree during COVID and went somewhere.
Man you brought receipts big time and still got downvoted. I guess Lemmy likes their race based attacks on religion too much to care.
Yeah, and one of the biggest ironies to it all is that given the various contexts informing those receipts, my money would overwhelmingly be on the red hair in the region having come from the indigenous populations of North Africa, so if Jesus were fair skinned and red haired it would mean he had African ancestry.
So the desire to sweep the notion under the rug is effectively yet another instance of the erasure of African history in Western cultures.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Reminded me of this passage:
"You’ve never seen a crucifix with a Jesus who wasn’t almost naked. You’ve never seen a fat Jesus. Or a Jesus with body hair. Every crucifix you’ve ever seen, the Jesus could be shirtless and modeling designer jeans or men’s cologne…
Nobody wants to worship you if you have the same problems, the same bad breath and messy hair and hangnails, as a regular person. You have to be everything regular people aren’t. Where they fail, you have to go all the way. Be what people are too afraid to be. Become whom they admire. People shopping for a messiah want quality. Nobody is going to follow a loser. When it comes to choosing a savior, they won’t settle for just a human being."
-Survivor by Palahniuk
One of his best books. Gotta love his innovative writing style. Each book has a unique format.
This doesn’t seem to apply to republicans 🙃
But Jesus’ light skin and blues eyes suggest that he is not Middle Eastern but European-born. And the faux-Hebrew script embroidered on Mary’s cuffs and hemline belie a complicated relationship to the Judaism of the Holy Family.
Oh yeah
You’ve gotta remember that Jesus is half god and as we know god is white.
They just wanted something that people would look at and think:
Oh. My. GOD.
Handsome, fresh faced, and not especially Semitic.
Throw the nuns and monks a bone. If they can’t spontaneously orgasm looking at Jesus’ groin and abs, after years of abstentinence, early morning mass becomes a bit of slog. I mean orgasm metaphorically of course, because they’re so devout.
I’ll quote Saint Teresa of Jesus:
In his hands, I saw a great golden spear, and at the iron tip there appeared to be a point of fire. This he plunged into my heart several times so that it penetrated to my entrails. When he pulled it out I felt that he took them with it, and left me utterly consumed by the great love of God. The pain was so severe that it made me utter several moans. The sweetness caused by this intense pain is so extreme that one cannot possibly wish it to cease, nor is one’s soul content with anything but God. This is not a physical but a spiritual pain, though the body has some share in it—even a considerable share.
Fictional character is reimagined and fanboys are annoyed, water is wet.
Fictional?
Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed historically.
Nearly all biblical scholars agree the resurrection was a true historical event and that the attributions of the authors of Gospels are correct.
Now the question is do you accept the logical fallacy of argument from authority for everything or just stuff that you agree with?
Biblical scholars aren’t history scholars
Now the question is do you accept the logical fallacy of argument from authority for everything or just stuff that you agree with?
Let’s see if you can answer a question. Or better yet you could actually advance some evidence for your Messiah instead of depending on other people to do the mental heavy lifting for you.
other people to do the mental heavy lifting for you
Nah, no heavy lifting on me side
Guess you couldn’t.
The ONE thing the bible says about his appearance is that he was average looking
I was like huh does the Bible really say that? It doesn’t use those words, but yeah it says he was born as a baby and then grew physically larger as he grew up
They could have saved a lot of material at the crucifixion if he hadn’t.
Single nail?
fax
This was average back then! We’re actually getting fuglier as a species
Um that was written by someone who died hundreds of years before Jesus was born.
I think you must be confused about something
No, I’m pretty sure I know who Isaiah was
deleted by creator
eh, Buddy Christ did it better
Well considering Jesus is as real as Bugs Bunny I really don’t see the issue.
I don’t know about as real. I’ve seen pictures and movies of Bugs Bunny. I know what Bugs Bunny sounds like. Also, if I do something Bugs doesn’t like, he gets revenge. He doesn’t send me to a fictional land where I burn for eternity.
Bugs definitely seems more real to me.
Fair enough.
There is historical evidence that a man named Jesus existed at the time. Not quite 100% conclusive, but probably as good as it will get when looking for evidence from 2000 years ago.
Whether that human was also divine is a matter of faith, of course. Most scholars who are serious about this make a distinction between the historical Jesus and the divine one from Christian beliefs. The only two events that have this general historical consensus are that the historical Jesus was baptized, and that Pontius Pilate (who most definitely did exist) had him executed. Everything else around Jesus from the Bible can’t really be verified one way or another.
Yeah, I got most of this from a Wiki link. So what. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_for_the_historicity_of_Jesus
*Yeshua
There most certainly was nobody named Jesus in Judaea at the time.
Which comes from the expression “god saves” an expression that was aspirational for the people to be saved from their Roman rulers.
What are the odds that a man who would be the supposed saviour would be named that? About the odds of someone named Dr. Octavious would get 8 limbs.
Actually pretty good since like one out of every six dudes in Judaea was named that at the time.
Even if true that would mean 5/6 were not.
There is historical evidence that a man named Jesus existed at the time. Not quite 100% conclusive, but probably as good as it will get when looking for evidence from 2000 years ago.
There is more evidence of Bigfoot and yet I doubt you believe in it.
.>The only two events that have this general historical consensus are that the historical Jesus was baptized,
Paul didn’t mention that. Why not? It would have certainly helped his case.
and that Pontius Pilate (who most definitely did exist) had him executed
And yet for no reason whatsoever didn’t kill the rest of the 12 and let them openly operate.
You’re kind of going off the rails a bit here. The case for the historical Jesus doesn’t come out of Paul or any other part of the Bible, but rather out of accounts from ancient historians that have been validated as best as those sources can be.
And if you are an Atheist, why do you seem so troubled by the idea that the man might have existed? Why couldn’t there have been a subversive Rabbi talking truth to power in Judea, who got on the wrong side of the local government , leading to his death, and further leading his followers to do a bit of (literal) hero worship? None of that requires any belief in his divinity, and fits all the available historical sources.
Actually, most of the evidence of a historical Jesus comes precisely from the Bible. The earliest mention of Jesus outside of the Gospels comes from Josepheus, who was not a contemporary of Jesus, and the oldest surviving manuscripts are early medieval Christian copies.
Those who argue for the historicity of Jesus base the claim mostly in the early preserved copies of the gospels and historical accounts of early Christians. There is a little more to it, but it basically comes down to the presumed works of those who were presumably contemporaries of Jesus.
The case for the historical Jesus doesn’t come out of Paul or any other part of the Bible, but rather out of accounts from ancient historians that have been validated as best as those sources can be.
Such as who? Tell me the name of these historians, how they knew what they reported was the truth, what they said, and prove that what they said hasn’t been tampered with.
And if you are an Atheist, why do you seem so troubled by the idea that the man might have existed?
I am an atheist. And I am not troubled by it. I am upset that people are believing in something that they do not have good evidence for and using that to alter their lives. It is not an academic question.
Why couldn’t there have been a subversive Rabbi talking truth to power in Judea, who got on the wrong side of the local government , leading to his death, and further leading his followers to do a bit of (literal) hero worship?
There could have been but that isn’t the claim that is you weakening the claim so very much that you hope I will concede it is possible. The exact opposite of what we do in other branches of knowledge. Superstitions shrink in claims as time goes on. Which is why horoscopes went from predicting the fate of empires to telling you if you should break up with your cheating partner.
Put another way how is what you are doing now any different than people who have reduced skydaddy to a diest god and demand that since I can’t know what happened in the first billionth of a second of the Big Bang I have to concede magic?
I follow evidence where it leads, I don’t look for a way to sneak a claim in by watering it down to nothing.
None of that requires any belief in his divinity, and fits all the available historical sources.
It does? Josphius, even if everything we have from him was unaltered, doesn’t say that he was a subversive Rabbi. Tactius doesn’t say that either. Plus it doesn’t really fit in. We aren’t told by those historians why he was executed, what the nature of the trial was, and most importantly why he alone was instead of the 12.
If it was because he was going against Judaism we know that the Phrariess had a secret police and a rule against handing over heretics to secular authorities (see the Talmud). If it was because Jesus was going against Rome, well the Romans had a way of dealing with that and making sure that anyone even remotely connected to it was taken care of. And yet we are told that both groups acted in a contrary way. Joint probability here.
This is what people mean when they keep bringing up that even a minimum historical Jesus requires so many crazy things to happen in a precise sequence of events.
Didn’t you just make my point for me? You are debating why Josephus mentioned Jesus’s execution, not whether he did or not. True, we don’t really know whether his account had been altered before we got to it, but we’re never going to have that certainty.
No. I conceded a point to show how your idea still doesn’t work “even if everything we have from him was unaltered,”.
We have two passages from this man.
One that refers to James the Brother and contains the exact turn of phrase that Matthew uses in 1:16 “legomenos Christos” “so-called Annoited one”. Given the complete context of the passage and the exact quote of the Bible it is most likely a fraud. We know that there was a tradition that James was killed and we have a page that talks about a James and another guy named Jesus. To make it refer to James the Just would take a two words addition. It doesn’t even make sense since it requires James to be very old, for a known hertic to be appointed head of the temple, and for the general population (who were hostile to James) to be upset that he died, and James to be descended from the temple priest clan which means he can’t be from David line, a claim he would have had to defend for his brothers claim of son of god status. None of it works.
The second passage is so obviously fraud even religious scholars don’t defend it. It expressed 2nd century Trinity ideas, it isn’t in Josphius writing style, it doesn’t fit in the context of the chapter, it goes against Messianic ideas that Josphius had, it isn’t written the same way he describes other Messiahs, and describes Jesus in glowing terms that no religious Jewish person would use.
My point was even if we somehow someway accept that Josphius really did write this stuff in 71AD it still doesn’t get us anywhere since he could have just been repeating what Christians told him without doing any work of verification.
I’m fascinated by the decolonization of Christianity, because it’s clear that (at the time) the Jesus movement was revolutionary and political. The Jesus movement wasn’t just a sectarian split from Judaism, it was a rebellion against both the Roman empire and the doctrine of an elite chosen people, presenting salvation universally to the masses. For the first time, everyone could be saved as long as they were faithful. That’s why the ruling class killed him.
For the first time, everyone could be saved as long as they were faithful. That’s why the ruling class killed him.
Really? Which text says that?
16 Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”
17 “Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.”
18 “Which ones?” he inquired. Jesus replied, “ ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony,
19 honor your father and mother,’ and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’ ”
20 “All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”
21 Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
22 When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.
23 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.
24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
25 When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?”
26 Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
That was the whole point of the Jesus movement. I should clarify, “faithful” in the sense that they not only believe but also are loyal and trust God will save them. That’s a radical message! No more was salvation only for the chosen people, it was for everyone.
Of course, Christians today don’t seem to remember this passage lol
The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?” He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them.
He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”
Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.
For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing;
Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor [a]homosexuals, nor [b]sodomites, 10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.
Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.
I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.
Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.
Noticed how my passages reinforce my point and yours did not? Consistent message in the NT is that authority is to be obeyed. That to use your mind or assert any dignity for yourself leads to hell. Instead you are to blindly obey. It is about as revolutionary as Stalinism.
Let me clarify something: I am not saying anyone should follow Jesus today. He was a man born over 2000ish years ago, obviously by today’s standards it’s not revolutionary at all. My only point was that the Jesus movement was radical at the time, which is why he was killed.
Also, what do you mean I didn’t address your point? He said anyone who is “with god” can be saved, which contradicted the ruling class at the time. At the time salvation was reserved for the chosen people, essentially a caste system, so no matter how godly or faithful a gentile was they could not be saved. He broke those barriers and that, for the time, was a radical departure from mainstream religious teaching.
He was a man born over 2000ish years ago
Why can’t you tell me the year he was born? Also what city was he born in? What was the name of his dad?
My only point was that the Jesus movement was radical at the time
In what way? And how do you know that? Because the only sources we have for him on what he supposedly said don’t say what you are communicating.
which is why he was killed.
Again. How do you know that? The only sources we have make it out that he was claiming the throne. King of the Jews. Wanting to be a dictator doesn’t mean you have bold new ideas about society.
He said anyone who is “with god” can be saved, which contradicted the ruling class at the time. At the time salvation was reserved for the chosen people, essentially a caste system, so no matter how godly or faithful a gentile was they could not be saved. He broke those barriers and that, for the time, was a radical departure from mainstream religious teaching.
No. There are were multiple Jewish afterlife ideas at the time. Including that there was no afterlife, that there would be an afterlife someday but not now, that there was a vague sleeping like state afterlife, a more traditional heaven-hell afterlife system, and the one Judaism has today with temporary hell. All of this is documented in the works of Pliny, the Talmud, Josphius and you can even see the arguments when Paul was talking about the bodily resurrection in his letters. There is no strain of thought that put the chosen people as the only ones capable of going to heaven even amongst the minority of believers in heaven.
Plus full monotheism wasn’t a thing yet for them, that would take another 3 centuries. The Jews had their God, and other tribes had their own.
So where did this idea of only choose people get to go to heaven come from? Christianity. We see James arguing that people have to convert first to Judaism and then become Christians while Paul arguing that you could bypass that step if you were hetro and cis.
If there were a historical Jesus, which again super unlikely, the only idea he invented was ideological purity as a means of salvation over acts of kindness or even just allowing a person to be a freethinker. He invented Stalinism. A society that rewards the ability to echo back the right ideas over character, thought, or merit and what’s more he is very blunt about it.
Or its about a greedy guy who wanted to be a messiah, and promised people whatever they wanted to hear because he didnt care. We have very little evidence to be making such broad remarks about him.
I say we give him like the deepest cum gutters possible.
Bugs Bunny?
I’m sure they’ll take the opinion of random internet atheist edgelords to heart.
Maybe they should consider arguments and evidence on their own merits instead of demand perfect messengers. You know avoiding basic logical fallacies.
Nah, too complicated for skydaddy followers.
I’m an atheist, but I was raised Roman Catholic.
These people that attempt to paint Jesus as some clean cut, light skinned fashion model is some prosperity gospel shit that intentionally glosses over the teachings of Jesus Christ as written in the New Testament.
Jesus had disdain for those that reveled in greed and decadence. He basically told them they wouldn’t be welcome in heaven as they were. If Jesus were real, I can’t imagine he’d be pleased being portrayed as some stylish, vain douche of means.
If Christians actually practiced the teachings of Jesus Christ of the new testament, I might not have been so quick to run away. That would involve praising selflessness, acceptance of different cultures, and giving till it it hurts, and shunning greed, gluttony, vanity, and self-interest though, so it was always a non-starter.
The teachings of Jesus of Nazareth are just plain wholly incompatible with the modern global economy, which is human civilization’s true god.
The urge for power and refusal to admit fault was the reason why I started to doubt Christianity as a whole, despite growing up Catholic.
I can’t understand how it can be so easy for some to preach love, acceptance, and hope while simultaneously using such ideas to push hate or fear.
“Easter poster depicting a handsome, fresh-faced White Jesus prompts criticism in Spain”
ftfy
Come on, he died at 33 and was propably at least charismatic… Now find a palestinian that looks as this and you are good (that’s the tricky part, but not impossible).
