Black Jesus

      A Roman necropolis stood on Vatican Hill in pagan times. When a great fire leveled much of Rome in A.D. 64, Emperor Nero, seeking to shift blame from himself, accused the Christians of starting the blaze. Thus began a long period of persecution for the Christians.   Nero executed them by burning them at the stake, tearing them apart with wild beasts and crucifying them. Among those crucified was St. Peter—disciple of Jesus Christ, leader of the Apostles and the first bishop of Rome—who was supposedly buried in a shallow grave on Vatican Hill. 
    
     Constantine defeated Emperor Licinius in 323 AD; he ended the persecutions against the Christian church.  In 325 AD the now Roman Emperor Constantine commissioned the first Nicaea Council, a group of Christian Bishops convened in Nicaea in Bithynia, and whose job was to attain consensus on how they would teach the religion.  They decided issues like the settlement of the Trinitarian issue of the nature of The Son and his relationship to God the Father, the construction of the first part of the Creed of Nicaea, setting the calculation of the date of Easter and promulgation of early canon law. 

    The first church was built in Vatican City during 326 A.D. However, the Vatican palace was not constructed until 498 to 514 A.D. under the reign of Pope Symmachus.  Emperor Constantine began construction of the original basilica atop the ancient burial ground with what was believed to be the tomb of St. Peter at its center. The present basilica, built starting in the 1500s, sits over a maze of catacombs and St. Peter’s suspected grave.

     Next, the printing press was invented in the Holy Roman Empire by the German Johannes Gutenberg around 1440, based on existing screw presses.  This press would have a far reaching impact and revolutionize the civilized world.  Can you imagine it, now biblical manuscripts can be mass produced?  Up until this point in history most biblical writings where in the hands of and controlled by the church.  As to the masses of the poor people, if they needed spiritual guidance, or wanted to know what the bible said, they had to go to a church, were the priest, who was a direct representative of the church and thereby God himself, could interpret these manuscripts called bible for them.  Of course if you went against the priest or did not agree with his views then you were obviously a heretic and would be dealt with accordingly.

     At a Nicaea Council gathering in the late 1400s or early 1500s, I’m not sure of the exact date, it was decided that it was offensive to the Caucasian population of Europe, and their Hellenistic ideal, to bow down and worship an image of a black Jesus.  They therefore decided to make him over as an attractive, tall, blond haired, blue eyed Caucasian with a full beard.  This was all done by the Church of Rome in an effort to retain influence and control over the people of Europe.

     During that time the famed Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer, Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art, was commissioned by the church to do many paintings and sculptors of Jesus, Mary and David all as Caucasians.  He used family members and friends to pose for his works.  Since that time all images of Jesus, Mary and Joseph have been done depicting them as Caucasian, but both historians who knew Jesus and those who lived during his time, and the Bible, all confirm that he was a black man.  Hair like lamb’s wool and feet the color of brass that had been burned in an oven.

     Furthermore the Middle-East is nothing more than the northeast corner of the continent of Africa.  It was separated from the mainland by a man made ditch that was completed in 1869 and is referred to as the Suez Canal.  The continent of Africa used to extend all the way to the Euphrates encompassing a large portion of what we now call the Middle-East.  Feel free to check out everything I have written, it’s all historical fact.  You see if Jesus was not born in Africa then it’s a lot easier to believe that he was not black. 

     Jesus was a Hebrew of the tribe of Judah and born in the city of Bethlehem.  Now you have to keep in mind that the people who currently inhabit that region today don’t look anything like the people who would have lived there during the time when Jesus walked the earth.  Since the time of Jesus, that city has changed hands many times.  Bethlehem is a Palestinian city located in the central West Bank, and approximately 8 kilometers south of Jerusalem.

     The city was sacked by the Samaritans in 529, but rebuilt by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I. Justinian even commissioned a coin with his likeness on one side and a likeness of Jesus on the other, but that’s another discussion, back to the point.  Bethlehem was conquered by the Arab Caliphate of 'Umar ibn al-Khattāb in 637, who guaranteed safety for the city's religious shrines. In 1099, Crusaders captured and fortified Bethlehem and replaced its Greek Orthodox clergy with a Latin one. The Latin clergy were expelled after the city was captured by Saladin, the sultan of Egypt and Syria. With the coming of the Mamluks in 1250, the city's walls were demolished, and were subsequently rebuilt during the rule of the Ottoman Empire.

     The British wrested control of the city from the Ottomans during World War I and it was to be included in an international zone under the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. Jordan annexed the city in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It was occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. Since 1995, Bethlehem has been governed by the Palestinian National Authority.

     So, what’s the point of the history lesson on Bethlehem?  Since the time of Jesus that land has been concurred again and again and many races have mixed and co-mingled there to produce the light browned skinned people who now inhabit the area.  Look at the United States for instance.  The people who lived here 700 and 800 years ago were all North American Indians, dark skinned people with fine black hair.  Now let us move to present day North America, you can find members of every race and ethnicity on the planet here.  Even the North American Indians of today don’t look like the Indians who would have lived here 800 years ago. 

     While many people have a fixed mental image of Jesus, drawn from his artistic depictions, of the middle ages and modern time, these images often conform to stereotypes which are not grounded in any serious research on the historical Jesus, but are based on second or third hand interpretations of spurious sources.  He probably would have looked more like the man depicted in the picture below if his skin was a little darker.  He’s known as the beach stabber, a label he picked up after stabbing a couple women in Florida.

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     People will say that we don’t know what color he was or what does it matter.  If we don’t know what color he was, and if it does not matter, then why it is, that Jesus must always be represented as a person of Arian origin, when we know for certain that he was not.  History does not substantiate it and the bible does not substantiate it.  You cannot find one serious reputable historian of any era who will or has ever indicated that Jesus was a man of Arian origin. 

     This image above has nothing to do with Jesus and nothing to do with God.  This is an image created by men to mislead and deceive the masses.  As a young man my mind was closed to the image of Jesus as a black man because I had never seen him depicted as a black man.  Believe it or not, my eyes were opened when I made my first trip to the Citta Del Vaticano in Rome.  While I was there I saw images of Jesus as a black man.  Being somewhat perplexed by this I asked a priest why there were images of Jesus as a black man in the Vatican.  The priest replied, “Because he was a black man.  What did you expect an African to look like?”

Dane E Gilkey