On "White Jesus"
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“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
- L.P. Hartley, The Go Between
Earlier this month racial justice activist Shaun King, stated that statues of "white Jesus” should be torn down, alluding to the concept of Jesus depicted as a European being orchestrated to uphold white supremacy.
One of the most famous (and my favourite) depictions of Jesus is the Christ Pantacrator from the St. Catherine’s Monastery, located at the base of Mt. Sinai. This encaustic painting dates to the sixth century making it one of (if not the) oldest depictions of Jesus still surviving and one of the most important and well known examples of Byzantine art. In it Jesus’ face is split down the middle with two different expressions, an attempt to portray the dual natures of his divine side and human side. St. Catherine’s was established by the Emperor Justinian I, between 548 and 565 AD. This depiction of Jesus is thought to have been done in Constantinople and included as one of the many imperial gifts placed in the monastery during its founding. In it Christ is depicted as a Greco-Roman, a European.
Christ Pantocrator, Courtesy of St Catherine’s Monastery
There is no doubt that the Christian church forgot its Jewish roots far too quickly and that portrayals of Jesus as a fair skinned European became more commonplace than not. As a historian I understand the need and clarity for pursuing accuracy in the information that we communicate regarding those of the past. Likewise, as someone who has lived in countries where I have been both a racial minority and at other times a racial majority, I understand how important and validating the topic of representation can be.
A piece like St Catherine’s Christ Pantocrator sits in among a long tradition of artists stretching well into the Middle Ages who depict Christ as a white European. The caveat to this discussion is of course that Jesus, being a first century itinerant Jewish rabbi, would have been like that of any other Middle Eastern Mediterranean man of his day. No one is arguing that the portrayal of Jesus as a 20th century individual with blue eyes and fair skin is a perfectly historically accurate representation. However, I believe it to also be a stretch to assert that the tradition starting at the mosaics and paintings of antiquity and following into the frescos of the Middle Ages up to our own day of Jesus as white is somehow motivated by white supremacy.
Many paintings throughout history have been depictions of what we know. When the gospel entered into Europe through the evangelistic means of missionaries the subsequent depictions of biblical stories and paintings became efforts of self representation. Biblical characters throughout Europe were portrayed as people knew and understood the world around them. This is also true of many depictions of Jesus throughout the rest of the world. The Ethiopian church can be traced as early as the fourth century and there are countless icons stretching before the first millennium portraying Jesus, Mary, John the Baptist, and the apostles as black. Chinese artist Tang Yin, inspired by Franciscan missionaries in the early sixteenth century portrayed Madonna and Child as Asian in a famous scroll painting now housed in the Chicago Field Museum. In the more recent past depictions of Jesus as Chinese by artist Lu Hongnian, show beautifully painted biblical scenes in traditional Chinese style. Do we cry foul at the anachronism of artistic rendering? If we do I think it would surely be out of misguided intent.
Lu Hongnian’s “Jesus calms the storm,”
A cursory glance at Medieval and Renaissance art would likewise confirm that a good deal of the depictions of biblical characters as European-esqu was nothing more than the reality that a lot of artists were trying to depict people and things they had never seen before. A key example of this would be that many English depictions of exotic animals and how strange and unsettling they seem. The reason for this is that very few, if anybody, throughout the Middle Ages had ever seen these creatures. Lions, for example, end up looking like large awkward cats, overgrown snub-nosed badgers, or something else entirely mythical. Artists drew from the world that they knew coupled with previous artists’ rendering and description and then did their best to render what they believed these creatures could very well have looked like.
Spanish Mosaic of a Lion, 11th century via the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Lion by Aelbrecht Bouts, 14th century
In a similar vain we know there were Jewish populations residing in England and throughout Europe in the Middle Ages, however, these Jews were products of their geographical location and at this point in time more European than they were Middle Eastern. This then carries over into depictions of the biblical characters who are described within Scripture themselves as Jews. There are even frescoes of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in places like Norwich, England, depicting the evangelists like one would see a European Jew at the time sitting at a desk complete with spectacles and pen.
This is a matter of cultural identification and expression. Unlike many other religious worldviews such as Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism who have very distinct and close ethnic and cultural ties, the gospel message is not bound to any one particular culture. It started as a Middle Eastern and Mediterranean movement and then very quickly became the religion of North Africa, remaining so until the sweep of Islam in the seventh century. The British isles, Europe, and western Asia too had large populations and communities of Christians due to the endeavours of missionary evangelists. Following the Council of Jerusalem in the middle of the first century it was decided that gentiles who believed in Jesus as the Messiah did not need to first become Jews in order to become Christians. The recounting of this decision in Acts 15 effectively made Christianity a trans-ethnic worldview. Not limited to one culture, ethnicity, or tradition.
I raise no more objection to portraying Jesus as white as I do for depictions of him as black, Asian, Polynesian, or Indigenous. Very few if any of these portrayals can be linked to nefarious anachronistic attempts to dismiss and camouflage Jesus’ true identity as an ethnic first century Jew. Instead, the beauty of portraying Christ as one who looks like us, who looks like you, communicates the truth of a saviour who transcends cultural boundaries and speaks to our state of affairs, our predicament, a saviour who is Emmanuel - God with us.
If you’re interested in exploring Jesus’ Jewish roots I would reccammend Dr. Michael Brown’s The Real Kosher Jesus: Revealing the Mysteries of the Jewish Messiah.