Race and Appearance of Jesus - Emergence of Racial Theories

Emergence of Racial Theories

In explaining the development of racial theories in the context of scripture, Colin Kidd, in his book The forging of races, argues that the assignment of race to biblical individuals has been a mostly subjective practice based on cultural stereotypes and societal trends rather than on scientific methods. Kidd reviews a number of theories about the race of Jesus, ranging from a white Aryan Jesus to a black African Jesus, illustrating that there is no general agreement among scholars on the race of Jesus.

In his book Racializing Jesus, Shawn Kelley states that the assignment of a specific race to Jesus has been a cultural phenomenon emanating from the higher levels of intellectual circles within societies, and draws parallels between the seemingly different approaches within different settings. Cain Hope Felder has argued that New Testament passages such as Galatians 3:28 express a universalism that go beyond race.

By the 19th century theories that Jesus was European, and in particular Aryan, were developed and later appealed to those who wanted nothing Jewish about Jesus, e.g. Nazi theologians. Madison Grant for example claimed Jesus was of the Nordic race. Houston Stewart Chamberlain claimed that Jesus was of Amorite-Germanic extraction. Scholars supporting the Aryan view also argued that being a Jew by religion was distinguishable from being a Jew by race. These theories usually also include the reasoning that Jesus was Aryan because Galilee was an Aryan region, but have not gained scholarly acceptance.

The English writer Godfrey Higgins suggested in his book Anacalypsis (1836) that Jesus was a dark skinned Indian. In 1906 a German writer Theodor Plange wrote a book titled Christ-an Indian? in which he argued that Jesus was an Indian and that the Christian gospel had originated in India.

By the 20th century, theories had also been proposed that Jesus was of black African descent, e.g. based on the argument that Mary his mother was a descendant of black Jews. Martin Luther King was a proponent of the "Black Christ" movement and identified the struggle of Jesus against the authorities of the time with the struggle of African Americans in the southern parts of the United States, as he questioned why the white church leaders did not voice concern for racial equality. For some, this blackness was due to Jesus's identification with black people, not the color of his skin, while others such as Albert Cleage argued that Jesus was ethnically black.

A study on the 2001 BBC series Son of God attempted to determine what Jesus's race and appearance may have been. Assuming Jesus to be a Galilean Semite, the study concluded in conjunction with Mark Goodacre that his skin would have been "olive-coloured" and "swarthy"—these results were criticised by some media outlets for being "dismissive" and "dumbed down".

In academic studies, beyond generally agreeing that "Jesus was Jewish" modern scholarship has not successfully dealt with the question of the ethnicity of Jesus.