‘Insisting Jesus Was White Is Bad History and Bad Theology'[
14th December 2013
Or so claims Jonathan Merritt, who is a journalist with no credentials as a theologian that I can find.
Setting aside the ridiculousness of creating rigidly racial depictions of a fictitious character that does not actually exist—sorry, kids—like Santa, Kelly has made a more serious error about Jesus. The scholarly consensus is actually that Jesus was, like most first-century Jews, probably a dark-skinned man. If he were taking the red-eye flight from San Francisco to New York today, Jesus might be profiled for additional security screening by TSA.
Of course, ‘white’ doesn’t mean ‘not dark skinned’ — ask George Zimmerman. Hell, ask Al Sharpton if Jews are ‘white’; I think we can count ol’ Al (and Jesse Jackson) in our corner on this one.
Just who is making the ‘serious error about Jesus’ here?