White Jesus

Christian proselytizers have been canny about representations of Jeebus. For Africans, they have shown a black madonna and child, and not just black because of the aging of the paint and varnish as is the case with ikons. For east Asians, they have shown a "Chinese-looking" Jeebus--that's just good marketing.

Dalarna, a part of Sweden had an old tradition of painting people in the Biblical stories with the national costums from that area.

This painting shows the wedding in Kaana. Of course Jesus here is blond, but most paintings I have seen Jesus is not blond, but darkhaired, if not black hair at least dark brown.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_O8enYbLWvdI/SzIuh-XByYI/AAAAAAAAANE/WKteW6NTiOI/s640/julbonad3

er.... try again.

Ah, good catch. It is 28. Thank you for the correction.
Point being, his bloodline is clearly Semitic.

If the boy ever actually existed . . . and the geneologies are hilarious . . .

Not exactly, but you're getting closer. Matthew took a bit of literary license with the genealogies of the Torah. But don't let a little thing like the bible as historical reference stop you.

Ah. Well we could argue the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth, but for this, it's beside the point.

We are referring to the Jesus in the bible, right? Christ Jesus, on whom Christianity is based? I mean the question is in reference to Jesus as found in the Bible, so why should the bible not be an accurate source of information on Jesus Christ?

You're the one dropping numbers from Matthew as "fact", which you're misrepresenting, without checking on the accuracy of Matthew's supposed genealogy against his source. You've got two problems. One, you're adding 14 and 13 and coming up with 28. Two, Matthew left out a few generations in his attempt to manipulate his genealogy to match his desired number 14 = David. No matter how you count it (even if you take the names that Matthew used that don't occur anywhere else in scripture as valid), it's not 28.

Setanta, do you believe Homer wrote the Iliad?
Do you believe Tiberius Caesar was a Roman Emperor?

Well the belief in these is based on manuscripts of them copied from the original.
From these manuscripts, we can make an accurate picture of the Iliad and Tiberius's reign, simply by observing what all the manuscripts have in common.

There are 643 manuscripts used to compile the Iliad. Also, the earliest of these is dated to 500 years after Homer supposedly wrote it.
There are nearly 15000 manuscripts used to compile the New Testament. The earliest of these(that is undisputed as to the date) is within 25 years of when it was supposedly first written.

There are 9 non-Christian ancient writers that mention Tiberius Caesar within 150 years of Jesus's "supposed" life.
There are 10 non-Christian ancient writers that mention Jesus Christ within 150 years of his life.
If we include the Christian authors, then the numbers just get that much more stacked in favor of Christianity.

In either case, there is more evidence that the New Testament is accurate.
Yet you doubt this and accept the Iliad as being Homer's work and Tiberius as having existed. Even if you now tell me Homer did not write it, what of Tiberius?

Ah, so you concede that Jesus is from David's bloodline!
Point still being... Jesus is clearly Semitic.

What?

I concede that the authors of both Matthew and Luke make that claim. I don't concede either of them are representing a verifiable "fact".

but you realize the Jesus we are talking about is the one prophesied about, written about, quoted time and again IN the Bible, right?
I believe you probably don't believe Jesus is God. So you probably don't believe the Bible to be valid historical fact. However, this is a matter of the biblical Jesus, and therefore the Bible is an authority on the subject.

I'll give you all a nice little giggle.
We know The Lord of the Rings is not a historical document. If there were a discussion of whether Gandalf was actually black, we would use the Lord of the Rings books to figure this out.
While I believe the Bible to be historically accurate, many on here do not. Therefore, this analogy is for them, simply to make a point.

Go do your homework. Check Matthew's list against the Torah (his source for the first 14 generations) and come back to me with your assessment of the bible as historical accuracy.

Don't get me wrong... I love the bible as mythology. Just don't go throwing around "facts" of the bible that are contradicted within the same book and expect to not be challenged on your "facts".

not sure what he looks like, but he sounds a lot like Charlie Heston...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzTh46Id9Bs

nearly 5700 hand-written Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, more than 9000 in other languages of the time(such as coptic, arabic, and latin). Many of these are just fragments, many are full epistles or even the complete New Testament.
In fact, even if we didn't have these, the early church leaders were so often quoting the bible(36,289 times to be exact) that we could reconstruct ALL of the New Testament except for 7 verses from these quotes alone.
These statistics are not made up on the spot, so please don't accuse me of that. They are quoted from "The First New Testament", "A History of The Christian Church", "General Introduction To The Bible", and the "Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics." I can provide more sources if that's really an issue.

Dude, you said that over 15,000 manuscripts were used to compile the New Testament. Now you're saying that there are over 15,000 copies and fragments available today. Which is it?



There you go spewing "facts" again. It seems you like to read. I've got a great book recommendation for you that's written by a "believer". You'll learn a few things about oral history and early Christianity

This is ripped from http://forum.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=364348, written by Juliamajor. Sorry for the typos.

"Lukan geneology-There are more differences then similarities between Luke and Matt.Similarities-Jesus' lineage traced through Joseph: same lineage between David andAmminadab;same names in lineage between Herzon and Abraham. Differences- no explicit reference to women;Luke traces Jesis' lineage back to"Adam-son of God"Matthew has the descending order of beginning with abraham and descending to Jesus.Luke has the geneology after Jesus' baptism while Matthew has it in the beginning of the Gospel.Luke's Davidic ancestry source is different then Matthew's. Luke has a source of 36 names unknown to Matthew and the OT and uses the sacred number 7 in it's theology. From Joseph to God there is seven times eleven names-77.Jesus is the culmination of what God has started at creation. their are many uses of numbers but let's cut to the chase.As with many geneologies to sho the quality of the ancestors was to show the quality of the descendant.Luke's geneology proves Jesus indentity as Davidic and how this fits with God's plan,which is traceable to God's creation of humanityThese point to the nature of Luke's geneology: it's not an archive nor is it a true family record but it to preach who Jesus is and what He means for the salvation of all people."

The point being made is that one was trying to be historically accurate while the other was making an abstract depiction of the genealogy to illustrate the perfection of Jesus.

" that over 15,000 manuscripts were used to compile the New Testament. Now you're saying that there are over 15,000 copies and fragments available today. Which is it?"

Yes. These manuscripts are obviously OLD. There are parts missing from some as they have decayed. They are still manuscripts, whether complete or not. I never claimed there were "over 15000 COMPLETE manuscripts" available. If there were, we wouldn't need to compile the NT, we'd have 15000 complete copies of it already!

As for 'oral history', well that's irrelevant. If you read much of the new testament, you would know that it is largely a series of letters WRITTEN to people. As such, the oral aspect is not an issue. People would copy the original written "manuscript" and make new "manuscripts" so they could send them or keep a copy.

You're making **** up as you go along. First you spit out some non-factual facts and then you post someone else comparing Matthew (as "trying" to be historically accurate, which he wasn't) and the other being abstract. You also spit out some non-factual facts in an attempt to say that the bible is historically factual.

If you read ALL of the new testament, you would know that it comes from Paul, or post-dates Paul and his influence, in its entirety.

I need to make a correction to one of my previous posts. David=7 in Hebrew, not 14. Matthew was apparently attempting to show that Jesus was twice David.