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
