White Mary, Mother of Jesus

[_beastie]

I don't think you know what Jews in 600 B.C. looked like. I am sure you are aware of the Diaspora.

Are you suggesting they did not have olive colored skin?

Because she was beautiful, pure, and white doesn't mean skin color.

So why wasn't this verse "corrected" to "pure"?

Non-whites outnumber whites about 4 to 1. Surely you wouldn't want to say that there is something so "superior" about whites that wherever we go all the non-whites automatically think we are better and they want to be like us even though they are much superior in numbers, have their own cultures, their own atittudes? That is down right racist!

Nice twist! I said *nothing* about superiority. I said something about *powerful* cultures. When the white european cultures *dominated* and exercised *power* over other regions of the world, and demonstrated a prejudicial bias for lighter skin, of course that attitude is going to affect the native populations.

If you're suggesting there is some universal human tendency, outside of responding to the biases of those in power, to prefer lighter skin, I'd like to see some darn good research backing that up.

[_beastie]

I'm sure most of us have seen this before, but I'll share it nonetheless. Using anthropological data, this is what Jesus probably looked like:

Starting with the assumption that Jesus resembled a typical peasant from 1st century CE Palestine, Richard Neave, a medical artist retired from the University of Manchester in England, and a team of researchers "started with an Israeli skull dating back to the 1st century. They then used computer programs, clay, simulated skin and their knowledge about the Jewish people of the time to determine the shape of the face, and color of eyes and skin." 2 Mike Fillon followed the research and wrote an article about the portrait in "Popular Mechanics" magazine. 3 He said during a CNN interview that: "There are very strong rabbinical laws in Israel that you cannot tamper with a skull or any bones, so they needed to reconstruct the skull. Using a cat scan, which is very common in hospitals, they were able to recreate the skull precisely and make a cast of it. Then they put small wooden pegs, based on anthropological data, to figure out what the muscle structure and the skin would look like, and so they layered that on using clay-like substances." 4

The result is shown in the left portrait above: a person with abroad peasant's face, dark olive skin, short curly hair and a prominent nose. His height would have been on the order of 5' 1"; he would have weighed about 110 pounds. Alison Galloway, professor of anthropology at the University of California in Santa Cruz , said that: "This [portrait] is probably a lot closer to the truth than the work of many great masters."

http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcfa.htm

[_truth dancer]

I don't think you know what Jews in 600 B.C. looked like.

Actually, a few years ago there was a story in either Scientific America or the National Geographic on what Christ would have looked like. If I recall correctly, genetics, anthropologists, historians, and others got together and came up with a picture that portrayed what a Jews from that area, during the time of Christ would have looked like, based on customs, skin color, average height, length of hair etc.

Obviously Christ lived several hundred years after Nephi, nevertheless the Jews of the time had quite dark skin.

~dancer~


Edit.. ahh Beastie posted the picture and research to which I refer. Missed it! :-)

[_Jersey Girl]

beastie to charity

If you're suggesting there is some universal human tendency, outside of responding to the biases of those in power, to prefer lighter skin, I'd like to see some darn good research backing that up.

I strongly suspect that there is an evolutionary tendency to "prefer" lighter skin but I have no access to research in order to prove or demonstrate that.

[_beastie]

I strongly suspect that there is an evolutionary tendency to "prefer" lighter skin but I have no access to research in order to prove or demonstrate that.

I can't even imagine a reason why this would be. Human beings have a tendency to be attracted by physical traits that signal stronger chances of reproductive success and survival. Absent a powerful entity - like a controlling country - that "rewarded" lighter skin, why would lighter skin be associated with stronger chances of reproductive success and survival? If people naturally preferred lighter skin just as a random mating frill (like a long peacock tail), then human beings would have evolved to have lighter skin everywhere. But that clearly is not the case. Darker skin is predominant in some parts of the world, so, in the past, the ancestor with the darker skin were preferred.

As you can see, I can't even make sense of this outside of solid research. It seems to me that research that would demonstrate this would have to focus on totally isolated native cultures, that had never been controlled by another entity with lighter skin. This would be difficult to do, but not impossible. Certainly just observing more accessible cultures is not going to give us that specific information, since almost all accessible cultures today have been affected by powerful (note, not superior, for charity) cultures that deliberately oppressed people with darker skins.

[_SatanWasSetUp]

I'm sure most of us have seen this before, but I'll share it nonetheless. Using anthropological data, this is what Jesus probably looked like:

Holy crap! He looks just like the crazy preacher guy I used to see on the street corner by the convenience store I worked at during college. Same crazy eyes, beard, etc. Could it be?

[_beastie]

Holy crap! He looks just like the crazy preacher guy I used to see on the street corner by the convenience store I worked at during college. Same crazy eyes, beard, etc. Could it be?

Crazy preacher? Sounds right to me. ;)

[_Mary]

When Olivia Hussey played Mary in the 1977 film, Jesus of Nazareth, I would call her beautiful and even fair (as in fair maiden), but I would never have called her white. Is there any evidence linguistically that the term 'white' has ever been used to indicate beauty from the Old Testament or anywhere?

That's a genuine question by the way? Anyone know?

Mary

[_charity]

I strongly suspect that there is an evolutionary tendency to "prefer" lighter skin but I have no access to research in order to prove or demonstrate that.

I can't even imagine a reason why this would be. Human beings have a tendency to be attracted by physical traits that signal stronger chances of reproductive success and survival. Absent a powerful entity - like a controlling country - that "rewarded" lighter skin, why would lighter skin be associated with stronger chances of reproductive success and survival? If people naturally preferred lighter skin just as a random mating frill (like a long peacock tail), then human beings would have evolved to have lighter skin everywhere. But that clearly is not the case. Darker skin is predominant in some parts of the world, so, in the past, the ancestor with the darker skin were preferred.

As you can see, I can't even make sense of this outside of solid research. It seems to me that research that would demonstrate this would have to focus on totally isolated native cultures, that had never been controlled by another entity with lighter skin. This would be difficult to do, but not impossible. Certainly just observing more accessible cultures is not going to give us that specific information, since almost all accessible cultures today have been affected by powerful (note, not superior, for charity) cultures that deliberately oppressed people with darker skins.

I just read a piece on finding the "color" gene. It is very very small insignificant little piece of the whole human genome, and the researcher questioned why the "white" gene should have been so successful, since, as you said, reproductive success is what proliferates genes in the population.

[_Scottie]

Maybe Mary was an albino?