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.
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.
https://www.biblestudying.net/communal_living.html
Pretty much.
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?
Lemmy moment
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Far too many people only think they’re following Jesus.
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
Too
Levantine people don’t have very dark skin, they definitely aren’t as white as Western Europeans though
All the applying of modern ethnic categories here is making my head spin.
I mean, rendering Jesus as a blonde guy is weird, but the way the pushback is parsed is just about as weird in the exact same way.
Modern Levant and Levant people three thousand years ago are both different in appearance. You can thank the Romans and Crusaders from Europe for changing this.
Ancient Romans weren’t even really white. More olive toned.
There aren’t any white people in the Bible.
All Europeans are white… You mean to tell me Italy is not in Europe or that the amount of melanin in their skin is inconsequential?
no white people in the Bible
What about the Greeks?
I could give two shits about the Bible, but what you are saying is dumb as fuck.
Italians and Irish weren’t considered white just 100 years ago. Haven’t you seen the photos of signs posted on US shops that read “Help Wanted, Irish and Italians need not apply!” ?
Like I said, more Olive toned. Sorry it offends you but ancient Europeans, especially people in the Italian peninsula and Greece didn’t exactly look like the Europeans of today, being as most of them came from a different part of the world
They weren’t white people who left the middle east, they were middle eastern people who eventually turned white due to the different climate conditions of the area.
Not dumb as fuck, nuanced. History is neat like that
Good info. Looks like I’m the one here who is dumb as fuck.
Even relatively recently, Italians weren’t really considered “white”, especially by Americans. The KKK considered them “coloured” people with their olive skin and dangerous Catholicism. There was a big wave of “italiapobia” in the late 19th/early 20th century.
The governer of Louisiana in 1911 described Italians as “just a little worse than the Negro, being if anything filthier in their habits, lawless, and treacherous”.
People can be pretty terrible when it comes to race and ethnicity.
Got any further readings for this? Thank you for sharing that knowledge. Yeah racists are going to racist
You’re not dumb as fuck.
It’s a common misconception. Wasn’t even really until around the time of Queen Isabella (Might have the wrong queen as it’s pretty late here) that fair skin was considered preferable and a sign of religious purity.
Humans are a weird species.
To expand on this with some small context albeit way older than the Romans. Egyptians gave the Peleset land in the Levant. Theorised that they were warrior peoples of the sea and the Philistines of biblical text somewhere in the late second millennium BC before the bronze age colapse. There is an incredible documentary by Pete Kelly (History Time) on youtube. Well worth the watch. Another great video he did about the Akkadians called The first Empire. He also did a great video about the Hittites. His whole channel is a goldmine of knowledge of the ancient world.
Any way the ancient world is filled with peoples from all over, moving around. Trade was a major factor. War was another. People from all over the Mediterranean and beyond mixed knowledge, their trades, their crafts, blood on battlefields and likely genes. Probably long before there was a written word pressed in clay.
Were all muts.
Sure, but we all know you’re a liar, who tells one truth per dragonbreak. Where did you get a potion of eternal youth anyway?
M’aiq is very practical. He has no need for mysticism.
He rode into battle on his noble T-Rex named Herbert. He can be any color he wants.
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/
When you picture God what skin color do you see? What gender do you see?
