Black Jesus Flick Aims to Heal Black/Jewish Rift
“Black God rules!” — Bart Simpson
PR Newswire reports,
“Color of the Cross” […] stands to be the most controversial depiction of Jesus to date. In this gripping, two-hour epic, Jesus is portrayed as a black Jew. This retelling of the biblical story from a black perspective seeks to repair the anti-Semitism that has been associated with the story of Christ.
[…] According to the film’s director, Jean Claude LaMarre, “To watch a black man on screen, being referred to as rabbi, or to see him partaking in a Seder meal and observing Passover really blurs the lines that divide blacks and Jews in this country. We are part of the same history.” “Color of the Cross” seeks to stimulate and awaken peace and unity between all races of people.
Careful, remember you can be jewish and black. Your statement implies that one cannot be both.
I am looking forward to hearing controversy that this film will bring.
it’s not my statement, it’s the director’s… the press release is entitled “First Black Jesus Movie Aims to Unite Blacks and Jews”
Thank you for clarifying 🙂
So I wonder if the Christian public who so embraced Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ” movie would have done so if he’d made everyone black. I do have to say it’s compelling. Coming from a Catholic background, we got to see all different versions of Jesus, including black and asian.
INTERESTING! I can only make reference to the Ethiopian Jews. However, it was only a matter of time for these and other things to happen. The Rastafarians see themselves as Israelites in this time. Where is Israel’s King? Is His line existent? These are matters that need to be researched and presented,so that the truth be revealed. Again,please keep the information flowing.bless.Nice article.
there are two or three Orthodox Black synagogues that have been around since?????? and have large, viable and doable congregations.
Check out Ayecha.org.
and realize that Jews look like Indians from India, Slavs from central eastern europe, chinese, filipinos, etc.
the message being that the world looks like us and we look like the world.
All else is ridiculous conjecture about blacks and Jews.
Sorry, Kyle’s mom, that’s simply not true. Ashkenazi Jews are generally phenotypically distinguishable from Europeans.
The whole idea of Jesus being black is ridiculous. The simple truth is that he wasn’t the messiah, as we already know, and that he was, in fact, of the Caucasian persuasion.
Ugh. Why do certain people feel the need to usurp other people’s cultures?
Anyway, how is a movie about the Christian messiah going to fix black-Jewish relations? As if any of us are going to watch it.
Man, Why is it that when people think of ancient Jews they think of some white guy named Rossenbaum?! Ancient Jews where not caucasian, Caucasian Jews are the result of mixture with Europeans and Conversion(the Quazar empire) Ancient Jews where Middle eastern not caucasian, like us persian jews,Yemenites etc go to israel and see what we used to look like. it certainly was not Jim Caviziel or larry king.
If you believe the bible than you know that the patriarchs and the kings of Israel had wives of several nationalities including egyptians, many of whom are black and nubians. Think Solomon. Also if you go to the middle east today you will see many African looking Arabs, and but for religion, the Hebrews were ethnically indistinct from Arabs.. To say it is impossible for Jesus to be black ignores the existence of Africans in that region today and historically. If you don’t think they were in the middle east in ancient times explain the African features on the sphinx.
dude african looking arabs are the result of slave trade, real arabs call them abid.
Yes, Solomon had one black wife out of a thousand. So what? Biblical sources mention nothing about him procreating with her.
As far as “African-looking” Arabs go, there has been a degree of cultural and genetic exchange between Arabians and sub-Saharan Africans. So yeah, black Arabs exist; look at Sudan. We’re talking about Jews, though.
Jews have always been relatively distinct from Arabs. For starters, Arabs are descended from people indigenous to the Arabian Peninsula, whereas Jews are descended from people indigenous to the northern Fertile Crescent (modern-day Syria/Turkey). Secondly, Islam preaches equality. All Muslims are supposedly equal under Islam. Thus, many blacks were assimilated into the Arab gene pool. Since Jews don’t proselytize, large numbers of converts were never abosrbed into the Jewish gene pool.
Regarding black presence in the Middle East, there are also blacks in “Palestine” and Iraq. They’re Muslims, originally from Chad and Niger, who traveled and decided to stay in those regions several hundred years ago. They’re fairly recent arrivals.
Egyptian culture isn’t exactly my area of expertise, but as I understand it, the nose of the Sphinx is heavily weathered. I’m not sure classifying it is even possible at this point in time. It’s kind of irrlevant to the conversation, anyway. We’re talking about the Middle East.
Uhm are syrians not considerd Arab today? Also dna evidence shows that the orginal Jewish population is closely related to Palestinians. The biblical account speaks of many converts, and the dna shows most European Jews are maternally European, which means that Jews fanned into Europe through the male line and converted their wives. While I don’t believe kazars are all european. I believe they had a lot of jews in their society to have converted to judaism, they do establish a precedent of a Jewish culture that proslytized. The bible also speaks of the Edomites having converted to Judaism. And by the way the bible says Solomon had sex with the Queen of Sheba. Did that not cause children 4000 years ago? Solomon himself was the product of a relationship with a hittite women and his father David’s grandmother was a midianite. So was one of Moses’s wives. There are also instances recorded where various tribes lost there wives and married foreign women. I don’t base my view that the sphinx appears African on the nose.
I never denied the relatedness of Jews and Arabs, but to say there was no difference between the two in biblical times is an exaggeration. Besides, there are many ethnic groups Jews are more closely related to than Palestinian Arabs.
Y-haplogroup J2, which originated in northern Iraq, is dominant among Jews. Arabs generally belong J1, which has a southern (Arabian) origin. Not to mention, nearly all Jews lack the Galilee Modal Haplotype (GMH), which is considered indicative of Arabian ancestry. Thus, Jews cluster more closely with Kurds, Armenians, Anatolian Turks and Assyrians in DNA analyses.
As for Syria, it is an Arab nation today, but it wasn’t always. It was Arabized during the Islamic conquest some 1400 years ago.
Anyway, before there was a Jewish ethnicity, there were many converts. I’m not disputing that. However, these converts were of two varieties – SW Asians (i.e., Middle Easterners) and Mediterranean “sea faring” peoples. The Jews who made it to the Rhineland from Rome were mostly men, so there was a shortage of Jewish women. They ended up converting local women, which explains why Jewish MtDNA is generally European. Austomal DNA tests show that the average Ashkenazi Jew is essentially slightly more than half-Near Eastern, and slightly less than half-European.
As to the genetic impact of the Khazars, well, it’s insignificant at best.
And, again, I don’t see why the Sphinx is relevant to our discussion. Even if its weathered-nose didn’t totally obstruct the view of its face, I doubt that any attempt to racially classify it would be meaningful.
From what I have read on research about ashkenazi Mtdna it’s not quite clear cut yet. So, it could go either way, slighty more than half middleastern/ to european or slightly more than half european to middleeastern. Too early to say I would guess.