Was Jesus depicted as dark skinned during the beginning of Christianity
Upvote:-3
Jesus of Nazareth was a historical figure, by all which is known today. He was a Galilean jew, born in Nazareth. His father was a carpenter, and Jesus possibly had the same occupation, because it was customary to learn one's fathers profession. He probably did not rise much above his father economically. From spending time outside beneath the Middle Eastern sun, his skin could have become dark.
There is no reason to call him dark-skinned, apart from what the sun did. Since his parents were Galilean jews, probability theory says that they were like most Galilean jews. And the majority did not look African.
Upvote:4
Well, one should not necessarily be surprised by the depiction of Jesus as a darker skinned figure during the early years of Christianity. Remember, Jesus was from the Middle East and his earliest followers.......were from the Middle East. If one is to view the iconography of various Middle Eastern, as well as Eastern Mediterranean Churches dating to the Early Middle Ages, one will typically see a swarthy, darker complexioned looking Jesus. Again, this should not be such a surprise.
The image of Jesus has been diversely expressed for nearly 2 millennia, due to the gradual emergence of Christianity on the world stage. Yet, despite the worldwide diverse and centuries old imagery, there was only a single historical Jesus, who, was of a Middle Eastern ethno-racial background and in turn, would have had a single chromatic appearance that was commonplace within that particular region.
Upvote:10
The depiction of Christ (and other entities in the Christian pantheon, and no doubt other religions as well) tend to reflect the cultural and racial background of the audience they're intended for and/or the creator.
Thus, as in the early days Christianity was mostly confined to the middle east, where people have a darker skin than in northern Europe, they'd have those features.
I've seen depictions made in Indonesia that show them all as having Malay features, African depictions show dark brown to black skin, etc. etc. etc.
The European "standard" I've indeed heard was based on Borgia's representation, and with the large scale sending of priests around the world from Europe in the colonial era probably influenced at least at some level depictions elsewhere.
Upvote:13
First off, there are no depictions of Jesus made by contemporaries. That means any depiction you find, anywhere, is more a representation of how the artist felt like viewing Jesus than an attempt at an accurate reconstruction of the man's features.
Complicating this was the iconophobic views of early Jews (backed up by the "graven image" prohibition in the 10 Commandments)
The first exemplars we have are both from 2 centuries later, and are the following:
The first it would probably be tough to argue contained a definitive attempt to depict skin color. The second depicted him as really no darker than a well-tanned European might achieve (but also probably consistent with a Semitic person from the area).
Lest someone get excited and think old depictions were universally tanned, here's another from less than a century later:
It took a while for the "standard" bearded longhaired depiction to take shape. According to Wikipedia this took until the 6th century in the East, and until the 12th in the West.
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