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“This is, apparently, what the actual Jesus of Nazareth looked like, according to an artist and an algorithm and actual, historical, data (as opposed to a story that white people tell each other).
I am an atheist. I do not believe in god, or the devil, or heaven, or hell. But I like and respect this guy. He was a rebel, he was an antiauthoritarian, he dedicated his life to helping the poor, the sick, the indigent, the people who were discarded and rejected by society. He hung out with sex workers and lepers, and gave comfort to the sick and suffering, and he loudly and relentlessly called out the hypocrisy of the church and its leaders. As I understand it, he was like, "Hey, you're a sinner. That's a bummer. Let me help you be a better person. No, I don't expect anything from you for that. I just want to be as loving as I can be." He was a really cool guy.
This guy, in this picture, is not the Jesus I was introduced to in parochial school. The Jesus I was introduced to was soooooo white, like super super super white, and he was keeping an eye on you so he could snitch on you to his dad, who was SUPER PISSED AT EVERYTHING YOU DID all the time for some reason. The Jesus I knew was, like, maybe going to be okay with you, as long as you knew what a giant fuck up you were. And he was absolutely not accepting of anyone who didn’t do exactly what the authority figures at school told us we had to do. And Reagan was essentially his avatar sent to Earth. If we didn't worship Reagan the same way we were supposed to worship white Jesus, we were going to have a REALLY bad time. Did I mention that I was, like, 8 when all of this was drilled into me?
I deeply resent the way that American “Evangelical” Christianity turned this guy in this picture, who was reportedly a cool, loving, gentle, dude, who was a legit rebel, into someone who hates all the same things they hate, and who LOVES authoritarians the same way they do. I despise the people who do all sorts of cruel, hurtful, hateful things in this guy's name. And they are EVERYWHERE in America.
I don’t know what it’s like in the rest of the world. What I do know is that, in America, this person has been perverted into a weapon, a cudgel, to be used against the same people the actual Jesus loved and stood up for. It's disgusting.
And, look, if someone professes to follow the teachings of this dude, whose WHOLE FUCKING THING was “love everyone. Period. No exceptions”, and they don’t, like, do that? They are as bad as the money changers in the temple. I know that this dude loves them, because that’s his whole thing, but I suspect that, if this dude exists, he is disappointed and maybe a little embarrassed by them.
As an afterthought: I can't stop thinking about how this dude was an immigrant, and poor. I keep thinking that, if he showed up in ... let's say Texas, today, how badly he would be treated by the very same people who use his name and pervert his teachings to exert control over the very same people Jesus spent his entire life looking after.
And, honestly, none of this would even matter if the American Christian extremists would keep their white Jesus out of our laws and government.

  • Will Wheaton, actor
MerlinZap 8 Oct 5
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21 comments

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5

He looks like Hassan, my Pakistani gas station owner who insists on pumping the gas for me. He calls me grandma and hands out peppermint candies to Lia, my granddaughter. He asks other customers if I am okay and sends his regards. We talk politics only when Lia is not with me. ( He says she is too young for those topics.
He is a Muslim. What a nice man!

4

Nah, that's a guy called Waleed Ali, a TV show presenter on one of the Commercial Channels here in Australia.

3

Actually, there is NO "historical data" about somebody named Jesus, or anybody doing anything remotely like what is reported in the Babble until about 300 years after his supposed death. Romans kept meticulous records,and there is not one single contemporary mention of any such person.
Your pic may be an historically accurate composite of what a person from that area, in that time frame, might have looked like, but nothing more.
Nor do I care for your attempt to make people think there was such a person.......

A little fact checking proves that Anne is exactly correct here. 🙂

The only historical evidence used is a quote from Flavius Joseph in an archive book. Flavius was born 5 years after Jesus death and the entry about Christianity has already proven to be a forgery. Even if not forged that would be similar to someone born in 2025 writing a book about how bad the Trumps second term in office was ( I know there was no second term).

@abyers1970 Trump's second term - yet! That bit scares me.

@Sofabeast I picked Trumps second term because it was an imaginary event too

@abyers1970 I hope he does not get a second shot at POTUS after Biden. There appears to be a lot of support for him and his sort of politics, but that debate is for a different forum.
Democracy is too important to be in the hands of the people! (W.S. Churchill)

3

I always told my kids when they was little that Jesus looked like Snoop Dog, turns out I was pretty close on that one......😎

3

My Jesus is from Ecuador, and he mows my lawn every Tuesday. (Seriously.)

3

He DOES resemble Jesus who always brings the pizza late.

3
  1. This is what a person born in Bethlehem near the time of Jesus's birth MIGHT look like. The people there did not all look the same, so putting a particular face on Jesus is ridiculous.
  2. The photo is what he MIGHT look like from Mary's DNA. The other half of his DNA would have come from God, and nobody has ever sequenced God's DNA. He may have been green with purple polka dots for all we know.
BD66 Level 8 Oct 5, 2021

I think you are confusing god with Mr Blobby

Seriously, I think the other part of his DNA, came from Joseph.

@MyTVC15 I'm suspending disbelief for the sake of argument here.

2

They might just as well create an image of the 'real' Robin Hood based on 15th century stories, or on Errol Flynn. All so silly, but you can't tell believers that.

I will add that if there were a real non supernatural person at the centre of the Jesus story, he certainly looked more like Charlie Manson than Jeffry Hunter.

2

This guy in the sketch bears more than a passing resemblance to Yoshua the Goat Fucker, aka Yoshi the Chicken Fucker, cops are on the look out for this sexual predator.
Now if you examine the historic evidence that proves the existence of Jesus of Nazareth in any guise, you come up with a couple of vague accounts written by historians who were born after Jesus had already been crucified and nothing more until you get to the Holy Scriptures or Bibble for short. The Romans were very good at keeping records, especially tax records and if there was a biblical Jesus then he was either a tax evader or a vagrant who never paid a dime in taxes, owned a plot of land or showed up in a census.

2

I doubt any such figure ever really existed. Stories dating back before the time of Jesus have bits and pieces of the Jesus story. Someone just put their own spin on it and it stuck. (50 years later)

Tejas Level 8 Oct 5, 2021

it (joshua) was the most common male name then i guess, making Jesus of Nazareth possibly a great way to say “John Doe, from Nowhere”

Try approx. 275 years later at the First Council of Nicaea.

@Triphid Christians were around well before then, even the new testament was written 150 years before the first council of nicaea.

@Tejas The Religious Sect now known as Christianity ONLY became recognised as a Religion AFTER the Council of Nicaea, convened by Roman Emperor Constantine in 325 C.E
There it was also decided what so-called 'Holy Texts/Scriptures its followers would be required to adhere to, what would be found in those Holy Texts', that a story regarding the conception, birth and mission of a 'Holy Child who grows to manhood and allows himself to executed for the sake of all Humans MUST be created and included, that ALL women, girls and females shall be considered as being the chattels of men and totally subservient to men as well.
If you do NOT believe what I have written then I suggest you do some in-depth research for yourself.

@Triphid the story of Jesus was written in the new testament over a hundred years before the council you are referring. Christianity being a recognized religion doesn't really mean anything. The arbitrary birth of Christianity began long before it was officially recognized.

@Tejas No, the so-called Prophesy of Isaiah was in the Hebrew Torah long before the New Testament was composed.
It was the Prophesy of Isaiah that predicted that a Messiah would be born, etc, etc, and that is CONTAINED in the Old Testament and it begins on page 861 if memory serve correct.
Christianity first began as a sect/cult known as the Messianic Followers circa 37 C.E. POST the supposed death of the Messiah supposedly called Yeshua in 33 C.E.
The supposed Messiah, Yeshua, was never known nor called "the Christ" or "Kristo" in Greek UNTIL after the Messianic Cult spread into Greece circa 43-46 C.E.
The N.T. ( New Testament) as well as the O.T. (Old Testament) were composed by some 40+ Scribes living on the 3 separate Continents, as they were known back then, Africa, Asia Minor (the Middle East as we know it today) and Mediterranean Europe, Italy mostly and the decision taken to create the so-called Holy Bible was made after much debate at the First Council Of Nicaea in325 C.E. with all bar 3 of the self-proclaimed 'Bishops" in agreeance.

2

I don't know if J. Christ existed or not but, if he did, definitely was a desert man and looked very closely to the image you shared.

That is what I would say. Actually, I doubt he, individually did exist, more likely, as stated above, many similar and older tales. But, if he was around, he was brown.

2

"Shut up, Wesley".

2

We honestly don't know what jesus looked like.

imo its like trying to determine His birthday; irrelevant crap that believers (including atheists) just seem to be obsessed with

1

That is just so going to annoy the white evangelicals of the United $tates of Absurdity.

1

That's clearly Naveen Andrews, aka Sayid Jarrah from LOST.

1

So many people believe this crap. I do not care how they came to think this image would be true if you assume Jesus really existed. I look at this image and the guy does remind me of Bennie, a man I used to work with. 🙂

To be fair, If you were to suffer some of the gruesome torture that Catholic Church inflicted then you would agree to anything they said

1

If you look at any culture they all have stories from the past about people that were better than we were, some were also flawed like us to show us we could also be better. I am thinking of the Arthurian legends, the legends out of Italy and Greece of heroes who were also half gods who rose up against their trials of life and became "like unto the Gods of old" The Australian Aboriginals have their dream time myths to teach ways to behave and to explain how things are like they are.

I think it is in human nature to create stories to explain the unknown the problem is when a central character gets used all of the time "because people know the character" and so stories from over centuries are all compressed into the life of one person.

But he is right that the jesus these people say they are following would be disgusted with them.
I still laugh at the thought some woman is praying to Ewan McGregor.
They whitewash the image because the real image does not sit well with them.

1

The church people have a different Jesus.....not like the real Jesus whom they despise.

0

This is a very good synopsis of what has happened to “religion” in general, at least in the U.S. and likely elsewhere.

The people who understand it the least, and practice it most poorly, have given it a reputation for being the exact opposite of what its deepest and most original essence was and still is.

The sad irony is that its innate purpose is to help correct that very tendency to pervert and destroy every redeeming influence on human nature.

Sadder and more ironic still, is that atheists - the folks who pride themselves on superior reasoning powers - are working right alongside these perverters of redemption, to help tear down any hope of salvation from the cruel hand that nature dealt Homo sapiens.

skado Level 9 Oct 10, 2021
0

A generic middle eastern man.

No more an 'image of Jesus Christ' than a generic Englishman would be an 'image of Isambard Kingdom Brunel'.

Any evidence for the existence of Christ is, at best, dubious. The Romans were excellent record keepers, but they don't mention him until after the event, and only then as second hand reports of what early christian believers were stating.

Posting a picture of a 'real Jesus Christ' is like posting a picture of a 'real Lord Voldemort'.

Sure, the white, blue eyed, bearded, long haired Jesus so popular in the westen (particularly American) branches of christianity are bullshit - but that doesn't make this proposed image any less bullshit itself.

0

To be fair, you go to a church in Japan, Jesus looks oriental. Also, would not say he was an immigrant. He was born and died within the borders of the Roman Empire. Also, Jesus Christ himself was not perfect lovey dovey guy. He cursed his apostles, chased a moneychanger out with a whip even though he was earning an honest living, when Judas asked Jesus if they could sell the spikenard and give the money to the poor, Jesus essentially said “fuck the poor,” etc. Also, what’s wrong with enforcing our borders? The US is not the world’s dumping ground. Most of all, not even sure if Jesus actually existed.

Right, we're the envy and the savior of the rest of the world, which is why everyone wants to be here. At least, we were until the Trump administration made us the laughingstock of the world.

@Paul4747 nah. Biden is making us look like a woman ready to be mounted. Trump enforced the borders and slowed illegal immigration down to a crawl. We are the envy of the world. The West is the best when it comes to human rights and individualism

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