Talk:Race of Jesus
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[edit] The "feet of fine brass" line has also been used to argue for a black or Middle Eastern race
There's no such thing as a "Middle Eastern race". The term Middle East is an Euro-centric description of the world in proximity to the continent of Europe...as in Near East, Middle East and Far East. ---Rawoyster (talk) 08:17, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
- Let's say ethnicity then. Funkynusayri (talk) 10:15, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
- There's nothing "eurocentric" about the use of the term race. As for 'middle eastern', of course it defines cultures in relation to Europe. English is a European language. The point is that it is established usage in English. You seem to be confusing two separate issues here - the use of 'middle eastern' and the use of 'race'. The problem with 'ethnicity' is that it implies cultural identity - and no-one disputes that he had a middle eastern ethnicity. Paul B (talk) 11:39, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
- It's a bit problematic with this article, as it is called "race of Jesus", rather than "appearance" or similar, because there is no European or Middle Eastern race for example, so if we should use a depiction of Jesus made in Greece, it wouldn't necessarily show a person of the "European race", but could just as well show a Middle Easterner. There is simply no "racialist motive" behind those early depictions, and the peoples in these regions where Christianity originated look and looked so similar that trying to separate them by race in the article doesn't really make sense. Back then, when Islam didn't exist, the Eastern Mediterranean was pretty much a cultural region within itself, with more things in common with each other than with anyone else. Today a Greek might have more culturally in common with a German than with an Iraqi, but it certainly wasn't like that back then. Funkynusayri (talk) 12:39, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
- I never said the term race was "eurocentric". The term Middle East is however. Western Asia is more appropriate but sadly, the casual reader may not know that the "Middle East" is part of Asia. Getting back to the subject, I personally would have said "of African and or Western Mediterranean origin". Leaving out the term race alltogether, as it sounds too national socialist.---Rawoyster (talk) 02:05, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Unremarkable
Isn't it safe to say that Jesus was whatever everyone else in the greater area was? I seem to remember that the only passages that ever describe his looks say that he was unremarkable, and looked pretty much like everyone else. That combined with the fact that an Ethiopian was -not- described as fitting in among the common populace, and the fact that people kept identifying Jesus as "isn't he from Nazareth, that guy?" seem to indicate ... something. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.72.21.221 (talk) 01:17, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
- Well, yes, but some people seem to argue that the entire region had a different looking population back then than it has now, which is of course bullshit. Funkynusayri (talk) 01:24, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Sturmer Nordic Jesus.JPG
Image:Sturmer Nordic Jesus.JPG is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.
Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.
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BetacommandBot (talk) 06:25, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Circumstantial evidence for shortness.
Wasn't there a story about how some guy climbed up a tree to see him over the crowds head? Not saying this is evidence of it being Jeshua who was not tall, coul've easily being the guy who climbed... -- Cimon Avaro; on a pogostick. (talk) 13:36, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
- The earliest recorded commentators on his appearence say he was short, but that's all. Paul B (talk) 13:57, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
The man who climbed the tree was Zacchaeus. He had to climb the tree to see over others because he was small, not Jesus. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.200.214.172 (talk) 19:17, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
[edit] The color people in Jesus' time
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Seti.jpg <----The ones on the top right are Jews according to the Egyptians. They look nothing like that hypothetical 3d Jesus. 70.89.165.91 (talk) 18:48, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
- As far as I know, they're supposed to be Libyans, whatever that meant at the time. Funkynusayri (talk) 19:11, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
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- Yes, the ones at the top right are Libyans, with the long coats and feathers in their hair. The Semitic figures are the bearded ones at the top left and bottom right. They are not "Jews" as such, but generic depictions of inhabitants of the areas of Asia known to the Egyptians. Anyway, this is over a thousand years before the guy in the "3D Jesus", if by that is meant the reconstructed face from a 1st century skull. Paul B (talk) 14:52, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
[edit] The concept of "race"
What I'm claiming here - that there IS a severe controversy about the applicability of the concept of "race" to human beings - is common knowledge (if this does not apply to any given individual, it can be easily read up on the article race (classification of human beings). Thus, an article that is talking about nothing but race has to mention this controversy right in the introduction. Removing this remark can be considered not much else but pushing the POV that humans are without any doubt classifiable in races, and that there is no considerable controversy about that. -- 790 (talk) 08:07, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
- It is very very tedious to be accused of POV pushing when the issue is relevance. There is debate about whether there is a useful scientific concept of race in humans comparable to the biological term, but there is no debate about whether there is a de facto concept of race that determines a whole range of social programme: for example in census definitions and other government statistics. This is an undisputed fact of life is inscribed in legal and goivernmental discourse (eg census records)). Adding an irrelevant comment about the dispute about scientific models misses the whole point that this article is about historical models and social/cultural models, the existence of which is not disputed. It's just a pointless distraction which confuses the reader with a statement that does not say anything meaningful. In order to make it meaningful you would have to explain it, which would involve going on a long digression that would not really tell us anything relevant to this article, since it is essentially about physical appearence as modeled by socially defined racial categories existing in different periods. Paul B (talk) 10:55, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
[edit] The concept of "race"
What I'm claiming here - that there IS a severe controversy about the applicability of the concept of "race" to human beings - is common knowledge (if this does not apply to any given individual, it can be easily read up on the article race (classification of human beings). Thus, an article that is talking about nothing but race has to mention this controversy right in the introduction. Removing this remark can be considered not much else but pushing the POV that humans are without any doubt classifiable in races, and that there is no considerable controversy about that. -- 790 (talk) 08:07, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
- It is very very tedious to be accused of POV pushing when the issue is relevance. There is debate about whether there is a useful scientific concept of race in humans comparable to the biological term, but there is no debate about whether there is a de facto concept of race that determines a whole range of social programmes: for example in census definitions and other government statistics. This is an undisputed fact of life is inscribed in legal and goivernmental discourse (eg census records)). Adding an irrelevant comment about the dispute about scientific models misses the whole point that this article is about historical models and social/cultural models, the existence of which is not disputed. It's just a pointless distraction which confuses the reader with a statement that does not say anything meaningful. In order to make it meaningful you would have to explain it, which would involve going on a long digression that would not really tell us anything relevant to this article, since it is essentially about physical appearence as modeled by socially defined racial categories existing in different periods. Paul B (talk) 10:55, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
- Maybe you and me have some kind of intercultural problem here, as I can say for sure that (nowadays!) in Germany, where I come from, this "governental discourse" does not exist in this way! No government statistic will group people by "race", and little do by "ethnicity"; crime statistics, e.g., may group suspects or convicts by "german" and "foreign", but that's it. Also, in everyday use it's rather uncommon to speak of "race", and while there sure are people that do, it's not existent in the media. To my understanding, this is rather different in the US (don't know about other english speaking countries), where (is this true, anyway?) you may be asked in certain government forms to name your "race", where you are expected to write something like e.g. "white" or "caucasian" - something that would be strongly frowend upon in Europe! So you have to believe me that this is rather not about personaly attacking you, but rather about seeing a concept used here that is very uncommon to me.
- Furthermore, the article itself states that it is basically not about the "race of jesus", but rather the "physical appearance of Jesus", and that, while the latter has always been of interest for christians, the former only became interesting with the rise of racial ideologies in the 19th century. So the name of the article does actually describe only a subset of its overall topic! This seems unsatisfying to me, and I think there are two ways out of this. One would be to rename the whole article to "physical appearence of Jesus", but I can imagine that would give quite a stir. The other way, which I tried, is to elaborate the already given remark that the concept of human races had a point on history where it gained cultural importance, by adding a simple reference to the fact that there are signs that the common acceptance of the concept is on the decline. -- 790 (talk) 11:50, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
- The article is about how debate about physical appearence is defined by racial categories. All the stuff about curly hair and brass in the the book of Revelation is totally defined by modern American preoccupations with race. It is only of interest in this context because it is articulated by models of racial differrence, otherwise it would be a matter of supreme indifference. The curly-hair-brass-skin 'meme' only circulates because it is an issue of race. As well as modern American race obsessions (which are defined by a black/white axis of difference) there are the late 19th century ones, which are more typically defined by an Aryan/Semitic opposition. Again this was specifically labelled as an issue of race. This is the terminology that is used by the relevant writers - Ernest Renan, Emile Burnouf and the later Nordicists like Rosenberg. It's not simply a matter of physical appearence, since physical appearence is only one index of 'race' for these writers, and in some cases - as with Renan - is not a central concept at all. Again, race is the central concept. As for governmental discourse, this is certainly the case in the modern US, in which affirmative action programmes, statistics on crime, and a whole range of other issues include data-collection in terms of models of race. Census forms in the UK also include data in which race categories are used. In the UK job-appication forms also have such sections (though they are removed before the applications are considered and are kept for statistics). Paul B (talk) 10:11, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Proposing this be moved to "Ethnicity of Jesus"
I cannot think of why anyone would object, but I'm going to wait and make sure. Peter Deer (talk) 03:50, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
- Ethnicity does not necessarily have anything to do with physical features, which this article seems to be about. But the name "physical appearance of Jesus" which was proposed above could be a good alternative. FunkMonk (talk) 04:23, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
- But the problem is that this article is specifically about race. It is organised in terms of various racial categories and it is defined by modern US debates about race (mainly on the black/white axis) and by theories prevalent in the "high period" of racial discourse in Europe (c1880-1940) when Jesus's racial identity was a significant concern of various ideologues and artists. This issues comes up regularly on the Talk:Jesus page. I've don't remember anyone ever asking about his appearance in a way that was not defined by the specific idea of race. No one asks about the colour of his hair unless they are making a point about race. The last time this was mentioned on the Jesus talk page was...today! (Talk:Jesus#Black_Jesus). If you look back in the archives you will see it has cropped up over and over. Paul B (talk) 10:22, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
OK so there seems to be a lack of consensus about the topic of this article. I and obviously others thought that this article was primarily about theories of the physical appearence of Jesus, linking them to a disputed theorie of human races. Now, by the explanation of Paul Barlow, which makes good sense to me, this article is all about images of Jesus, which are inherently related to and actually stem from race models of their time. Maybe it would be good to rework the introduction to make this more clear from the start on? -- 790 (talk) 12:28, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
