Was Jesus Black?

As activists attempt to appropriate Jesus’ ethnicity and nationality for their own purposes, the Bible is clear about His background. It’s important to examine where the Lord came from and why His ethnicity and nationality make a difference in our lives today.

Many have asked me in the last few days what I think about the (legitimate) critiques of the ubiquity of White Jesus representations, like the famous painting, “Head of Christ,” by Warner Sallman.

The first thing to say is that Jesus did not look like that.

These excerpts from Walter McCray’s The Black Presence in the Bible, Volume 1 (Black Light Fellowship, 1990), reveal the author’s Afrocentric interpretation of biblical events.

Contrary to the popular opinions of many who think the Bible is the “white man’s book,” most personages mentioned in the Scripture were “people of color.” Yet, [The Black Presence in the Bible] is concerned with a particular people of color—Black people.

When we affirm that there is a Black presence in the Bible, we are affirming a definition of Blackness which includes the following. First, actual “black” skin color; second, so-called “Negroid” characteristics; and third, traceable Black or African ancestry (“Black blood”). (p. 13)

The student who searches the Scripture will find that explicit Black people were genuine and pertinent members of the Biblical community of faith. In fact, the Old Testament community of faith was Black in its roots. (p. 30)

[T]he evidence—Biblical evidence, archaeological evidence, and DNA-wise evidence—points in the direction that Blackness is humanity’s norm and whiteness is the exception rather than the rule, the derivation, not the origination. (p. 88)

It is a noted fact that where ancient civilizations have emerged on the face of this earth, they were Black. Whether Egypt, Cush, Sumer, Asia, North America or South America, each cultural center of the ancient world was “Hamitic in origin.” Blacks are the progenitors of humanity and the creative originators of culture and civilizations. (p. 91)

The geneological line through which the Jewish Messiah was to come was ethnologically Black. This is demonstrable through the implicit Blackness as well as through specific Black persons who appeared in this line. (p. 124)

The Old Covenant-Messianic community was Black, the Messianic line was Black, and the Messiah Himself was Black.… The portrayals of a “white” Jesus were not given great emphasis until the fifteenth century A.D.—hundreds of years after Christ’s incarnation into humanity and His sojourn in the world. (p. 129).

Before we consider the ethnicity and nationality of Jesus, it is helpful to define those terms because many people confuse them.

The first images of Jesus as an adult date back to the fourth century, showing him with short hair, a beard and "melanated" skin, BBC's television series "Son of God" reconstructed Jesus' facial features using forensics, early artistic portrayals and ethnic traits to get a better idea of what Jesus may have looked like and came up with this.

Ethnicity is largely a cultural term. Cultural characteristics define people who belong to specific groups. Language or accent can help define a person’s ethnicity, and religion plays a part too. Social customs, styles of dress, hairstyles, preferred foods and dietary restrictions or preferences are also part of a person’s ethnicity.

Nationality is more of a legal term. The legal perception of belonging to a specific nation has to do with a person’s citizenship, whether by birthright or by naturalization. Besides those terms, many people discuss “race,” said to involve physical characteristics such as skin, eye and hair color, hair texture, facial features, and even physique. Physical characteristics can vary within different ethnicities.

What Does the Bible Say about Jesus’ Nationality?

Legally, Jesus’ nationality was Jewish. He was born to Jewish parents in Bethlehem, in the southern portion of the Judean Mountains in what is now called the West Bank of present-day Israel. Bethlehem’s rich history as the “city of David” (Luke 2:4) — King David’s hometown — was an important part of Jesus’ earthly claim to Messiahship, a fulfillment of prophecy 600 years earlier (Micah 5:2).

The Bible chronicles His birth (Matthew 1:18-25, Matt. 2:1-2; Luke 1:26-28; Luke 2:1-20) during Herod the Great’s reign. His earthly parents, Mary and Joseph were from the northern area of Galilee in Nazareth. As citizens of Nazareth, they traveled to Bethlehem in Judea during a census decreed by Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus (Luke 2:1). They went to Bethlehem because Joseph was “of the house and lineage of David” (Luke 2:4-5).

Matthew 1:1-17 traces Jesus’ ancestry from Abraham through David (Joseph’s lineage), and Luke 3:23-38 traces His ancestry from Adam to God (Mary’s lineage). Jesus’ nationality might be addressed by several terms because technically his ancestor Abraham was a Hebrew (Genesis 14:13), Jacob was an Israelite (Genesis 35:10), and one of Jacob’s sons in the lineage of the Messiah, Judah, led to his descendants being called “Judeans,” or later, “Jews.”

What Does the Bible Say about Jesus’ Ethnicity?

Interestingly, Jesus was referred to as “King of the Jews” at His birth (Matthew 2:2) and at His death (John 19:19). Remembering that ethnicity is a cultural term, we know what cultural group Jesus belonged to. According to the scriptures, Jesus was born, lived, and died as a Jew (Matthew 2:1-12; Romans 9:4-5; John 4:9; Luke 21:37; Matthew 27:35-37). He was the “son of David, son of Abraham” (Matthew 1:1), descended from Judah (Hebrews 7:14). We have to note that all of this is taking place on the continent of Africa . So, this would make for Jesus to be a man of colour/ color.

For too long, Judeo-Christianity has been viewed as a Western Christian tradition mediated by the entrepreneurial agents of colonial missionaries from Europe for the “enlightenment” of the vast majority of the world's people, most of whom are overwhelmingly of color.

Since Christianity as we know it in most places in the world today, with the exception of places such as Egypt, Ethiopia, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, India, and other places in close proximity to the confluence of the African-Asian world, has generally been a Western European transmission with its concomitants of colonization and slavery, much of the world has ineluctably been indoctrinated with the hegemonic ideological imposition that Jesus of Nazareth was a “white man” so depicted in the plethora of books, paintings, pictures, and stained-glass windows around the world.

This chapter/post takes issue with this lethal Eurocentric definition and depiction of Jesus of Nazareth in Palestine. Because Christianity has essentially functioned as an ideological ploy by Western colonialism to proclaim the superlative distinction of Christendom in contrast to other traditions as part and parcel of the fabrication of the supremacy of European cultures in comparison to other world cultures, Western Christianity has always speciously claimed that it was derived from a tradition of unadulterated essentialist Judaic tradition that signified divine intervention in the lives of Judeo-Christians unparalleled in any other people's history. Not true.

Note that Canaan and his family are the original inhabitants of Israel and Palestine. Canaan’s brother, Cush, and his family are the original inhabitants of Ethiopia and the Sudan. Another brother, Mizraim, and his family are the original inhabitants of Egypt.

And yet another brother, Phut, and his family are the original inhabitants of Libya. Canaan’s uncle, Japheth, has a group of descendants (including Ruth) who are known as the Moabites .This means that Jesus’s bloodline has Israelis, Palestinians, Ethiopians, Sudanese, Egyptians, Libyans, and various ethnic groups in it. But not white. "Historically, white Jesus has been used to oppress and erase the histories of people of color..."

The biblical world of Jesus thus spans Africa , Asia .

The Black Biblican Heritage is the endeavor of the twenty-five years of intensive research exposing many doubts and myths handed down through the centuries by European clergy to Africa, Asia and the Western Hemisphere. Aside from the New and Old Testaments, this remarkable book is the first printed material of its kind to highlight the lineage of Ham, the patriarchal- ancestral father of Africa and sections of Asia.

It wasn't until the Middle Ages when artists began depicting Jesus as white because Christians didn't like the idea of Jesus having Jewish features, even though he was Jewish. Also that many speculate that Biblical passages that referred to lightness symbolizing purity and darkness symbolizing sin and evil played into how people perceived Jesus' appearance.

"Again, we see this narrative of dark skin people being bad, thus needing to be tamed or killed in order to confirm to the good, or white, standard,"

The notion of white supremacy being used in Christianity to colonize and control before and during slavery. Despite white people using Christianity to justify their wrongdoings, black people found their own way of practicing it to seek liberation.

Jesus is the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. Judah was the first Jew and he had five sons by two black women from a Canaanite'tribe, and Ham, the father of the black race and Ham, "is the father of Canaan" the founding father of all Canaanites (Rev 5:5; Gen 38; 9:24 ). Thus, the tribe of Judah began half-black and half-Jew.

In Matthew 1:5, Rahab a Canaanite prostitute is in the lineage of Jesus by her marriage to Salmon from the tribe of Judah. This black former harlot is King David's great grandmother, and David thought he could easily pass his seed out as that of his black Canaanite warrior Uriiah.

David had his Hittite-Canaanite soldier killed for not bedding his own wife whom David impregnated. Uriah's wife was Bathsheba a Gilonite-Canaanite whose people Joshua conquered when he took the Canaanite town of Giloh as territory for the tribe of Judah (2 Sam 23:24; 11:3; Josh 15:20, 51). This proselytized Canaanite named Bathsheba, whose wise grandfather was David's wise advisor, Athitophel, a Gilonite-Canaanite, gave birth to their half-black half-Jewish son King Solomon who developed a penchant for black women in his harem of over 700 wives women.

Solomon dedicated an entire book in the Bible to one black woman in particular in his love called the Song of Solomon where he calls his black love interests in his wise estimation "the fairest among women." She references that she was as black as the blackout curtains that surrounded his king sized bed. King Solomon infused more black blood in the lineage of Jesus Christ's ancestry by his marriage to an Ammonite, the tribe Lot produced by his incest with his half-Canaanite daughter that produced the half-black tribe of Ammonites. Solomon's wife Naamah the Ammonitess, gave birth to his foolish son Rehoboam.

"Remember Lot's wife?" Well, you better. She was also a black woman being a Canaanite who dwelled in the Canaanite city of Sodom, the infamous black township that now lies in a watery grave at the bottom of the Dead Sea. Lot had incest with his other half Canaanite daughter who gave birth to Ammon's half-black half-Semitic brother named Moab.

The Moabites were a half-black tribe from whom Ruth the Moabitess in Jesus' lineage descended as King David's grandmother to King David who she married Boaz. Her black heritage infused more melanin into King David that gave him a complexion so "rudddy" that he thought he could pass his seed off as a black man's. This seed of David's is in the ancestry of the Virgin Mary and her husband Joseph who both descended from this Semitic and Hamitic blend of Jew and black ancestry.

These are sketches from Jesus was a Black man inconvenient Truth that is shamelessly concealed by Judeo-Christianity but revealed in the "Scripture of truth." Another infusion of black blood came into the tribe of Judah “from whence our Lord sprang” is noted in Genesis 46 where Joseph summoned every Hebrew in the world to Egypt "the land of Ham" where they numbered 70 souls; 68 were males and two females (Gen 46:5-27; Ps 106:22).

So, who did Judah's bachelor grandsons marry to keep the tribe in existence in Africa but women in "the land of Ham." The information has biblical genealogical charts that will serve to shut the mouths of those who want to project Jesus as a white skin Jew when not one drop of Caucasian blood from the lineage of Noah's firstborn son Japheth, father of Caucasians, is recorded in the Bible's story's lineage of Jesus Christ. However, numerous infusions of black blood in Hebrews and Jews are recorded in the record of Scripture with Moses cited as being married to an "Ethiopian woman" in the KJV in Numbers 12:1. You are invited to share in truth that is stranger than fiction that the majority of non-bible students are unaware of Jesus was a Black Skin an Inconvenient Truth.