Random Reasons Why Jesus Is Depicted As Being White (15 items)

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  (#9) Artists Had Numerous Incentives To Portray Jesus As White

  While Popes weren't the ones painting the pictures, artists during this time could've faced some dark consequences for going against the Church and its accepted depiction of Jesus. For most starving artists, compromising in their rendering of Christ certainly beat out getting burned for heresy.

  In addition, artists would want to actually sell their artwork, which would have been difficult if they strayed from the popular and mainstream image of White Jesus. Having one agreed-upon image of the savior helped to unify the religion and worked as proof against the nay-sayers.
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  (#8) Romans Associated Non-Whites With Non-Believers

  By the Middle Ages, the Roman Empire had been replaced with papal authority, and the time period was marked by Crusades (AKA Holy Wars) against Muslim forces in and around the the Holy Land (AKA Jerusalem). The continual religious fighting during this time was between European Christians and Middle Eastern Muslims. Therefore, from the perspective of the Christian forces, the non-believers and the enemy were non-white. Despite the fact that Jesus probably looked more like these people than Europeans, his image as a white man was crucial to the Crusades and their mission. They certainly wouldn't have painted him to look like the enemy.
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  (#14) Historians Can't Prove His Race Beyond A Shadow Of A Doubt

  While historians can nearly definitively say that Jesus was not white, the answer of what exactly he looked like will always be an educated guess. Examining without bias a man, who has been so revered, discussed, and depicted as God is probably impossible at this point. Any evidence existing from his lifetime is tainted, in a sense, by theological bias. 

  When there is room for doubt, people will unfortunately continue to adhere to the belief that Jesus was a white man. Why? As written by Jamelle Bouie for The Daily Beast, "[at] best, the assertion of Jesus’s whiteness reflects ignorance. At worst, it’s a sign of racial prejudice."
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  (#6) Documents Of Questionable Origin Began Describing His Appearance In The Middle Ages

  As Christianity became acceptable, and then even popular, people realized they didn't have any true physical renderings of their savior, Jesus Christ. So they did what people do best and started making stuff up.

  A forged letter from one Publius Lentulus (circa 14-37 CE) to the Roman senate claims to give a physical description of Jesus, saying he is tall, wavy-haired, rosey-cheeked, and blue-eyed. The only problem is that there's pretty much no way this letter was written at the time it claimed to be, as there was no such Lentulus during this time period, and it includes many phrases and references that place its creation sometime around the 13th century.

  Several other supposed ancient descriptions of Jesus arose during this time, but, like the Lentulus letter, they have been dated to the Middle Ages, when artistic depictions of Jesus would have already become commonplace and influential. 
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  (#1) The Few Descriptions Of Jesus In The Bible Contradict Each Other

  In general, the New Testament gives little description of the appearance of Jesus or anyone else for that matter. The few descriptors that do exist are hardly foolproof evidence, as they describe Jesus in some crazy, not-of-this-world terms.

  In John's vision of Jesus in the Book of Revelation: "The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire... His feet were like burnished bronze... His face was like the sun shining at its brightest" (1:14-16). Obviously, this depiction speaks to Jesus less as a human being and more as God, and it doesn't really state his racial make-up other than as a bronzed-footed, white-haired shiny man with fire eyes.

  Old Testament descriptions speak of the coming Messiah (which Christians believe to be Jesus) and describe him as "fairer than the children of men" (Psalms 45:2). And a verse in Lamentations believed to refer to Jesus states, "Her Nazarites were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk, they were more swarthy in body than rubies, their polishing was of sapphire: Their visage is blacker than coal" (4:7-8). So, while purer than snow, the Nazarites' visages (AKA their faces) were black; does this give you a clearer picture?

  This imagery is most likely meant in a figurative sense, but it gives cause for misinterpretation of the literal image of Jesus. And these descriptions even change depending on the version of the Bible you read.
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  (#13) New Attempts To Describe Jesus' Race Remain Vague

  In 2001, BBC claimed to unveil the "real" face of Jesus after analyzing excavated skulls of 1st century CE Jews with computer imaging. Biblical evidence suggests that Jesus didn't look especially different from others in the region. For instance, in the New Testament the infamous kiss of Judas is used to betray Jesus by identifying him to his captors. Were his looks notably distinct, this identification would not have been necessary.

  The new likeness of Jesus BBC created was unsurprisingly darker-skinned than the mainstream white Jesus depictions. But still, his image was appraised simply as "olive-skinned" and "swarthy," vague terms that leave his race ambiguous and allow those devoutly on Team White Jesus to still claim he was just tan and not Arab.

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