Race and appearance of Jesus

The race and appearance of Jesus has been a topic of discussion since the days of early Christianity. There are no firsthand accounts of Jesus' physical appearance, although some authors have suggested that physical descriptions may have been removed from the Bible at some point to emphasize his universality. Most scholars consequently believe that Jesus was similar in appearance to the modern inhabitants of the Middle East, due to the Bible (and other historical accounts) equivocally referring to him as a Galilean Israelite.

Various theories about the race of Jesus have been proposed and debated. By the Middle Ages, a number of documents, generally of unknown or questionable origin, had been composed and were circulating with details of the appearance of Jesus. Now these documents are mostly considered forgeries. By the 19th century, theories that Jesus was non-Semitic were being developed, with writers suggesting he was variously white, black, Indian, or some other race. However, as in other cases of the assignment of race to Biblical individuals, these claims have been mostly pseudoscientific, based on cultural stereotypes, ethnocentrism, and societal trends rather than on scientific analysis or historical method.

Many people have a mental image of Jesus drawn from artistic depictions. A wide range of depictions have appeared over the two millennia since Jesus's death, often influenced by cultural settings, political circumstances and theological contexts.Depiction of Jesus in art of the first Christian centuries gradually standardized his appearance with a short beard. These images are often based on second- or third-hand interpretations of spurious sources, and are generally not historically accurate.

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