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SUNDAY REVELATIONS: What “Race” was Jesus?

This is a messed up question.  In that era, the modern issue of “race” did not exist.


By the purported time of Jesus , Judea, Canaan, whatever you think today’s Palestine was called, had been occupied by the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Persian for 500 years.  Even in Egypt,  Persia had a large military base on the Nile, at Elephantine.  Many of the mercenaries there were Jewish men ..  progeny from the upper Nile, where “Egyptians” were as likely to be “black” as not, is pretty high.  Even in murals of the Persian army, facesor are painted in “multiracial” tones  ,  pink, white, black and yellow.  Greek and Roman armies were also quite divers.  

 
The preoccupation with race,  the idea that humans come on breeds like dogs, is relatively modern.  The Spaniards began it when they decided Jews inherited blood guilt and then used the same concept to turn Africans into a form of subhuman animal property.  The Persian murals contradict the modern Eurocentric concept of race.  While we do not have photography,m we do have paintings and sculpture from each of these pre Christian empires and they show a mix of “racial” features … certainly including  Est Africans we would now call Black.  Roman writings refer to Romans of African origin and even when referring to enemies make no emphasis on the others being blondes  or black,  Islam, from the days of the Prophet recognized peoples but not the idea that poeple was defined like race. 
 
As for the Jews, we were then as now people, not a race.  We know from Jewish writings that conversion did occur and was not only accepted, it was celebrated. Read about Akiba or Hillel! Oh yeh, who did Moses marry? 
 
Today we have considerable genetic evidence about the Jews of the Arabian peninsula and their relationship to the people who we now think of as Djibouti, Ethiopia, Yemen and Eritrea to be certain that Jews in that era were NOT race conscious!
 
Finally, there is the story of Yoshua ben Pantera, the bastard son of a German/Roman who is claimed by many to be the real Jesus.
So, if Jesus existed, I doubt anyone cared what he looked lile. 

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