- We have no idea from the Gospels what Christ looked like, although the Shroud of Turin indicates an image close to how Jesus is usually portrayed in Art.
- The term Middle East goes back to the 1850s and was coined by the British India Office. Christ was a Jew who lived in Galilee.
- Christ throughout his whole life would have paid taxes. He was anything but undocumented.
- Christ was not an immigrant. He spent almost all of his life in Nazareth where his parents were native. Christ never went to anyplace that was not under the rule of Rome, either directly or indirectly
Asked and Answered
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 41 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
A friend works as a bouncer who cards people for alcohol consumption.
Daily he’s called a “racist” by young people who he describes as slightly dark, certainly not as dark as a true African.
Sick of it, he has an excellent statement he returns with: “The only racist I see is you-” Never a truer word spoken to this endemic calumny.
Of course Jesus was/Is darker than a person from the English Isles.
“The only racist I see is you-“
Jesus. I think he is an alien.???
think about it… those huge dark eyes. Rupnik knows .. right.
He’s an alien fur sur.
Oddly enough, Mary and Joseph were compelled to return to Bethlehem by the Roman Governor for a census to enable the Holy Family to be taxed more efficiently. In the Roman world being a subject meant paying taxes.
sorry… that sarcasm was for Emma. Antifa member extraordinare.
My other favorite idiotic comment is that the Holy Family were homeless.
By the standards of Nazareth the Holy Family were likely middle class.
Wasn’t the whole point of Caesar’s decree to document everyone?
Assuming the skin color of someone in the ancient world based solely on his region and ethnicity is fraught with peril. The Greeks had been intermingled in the “Middle East” for centuries, as well as the Romans, not to mention all the other people groups (both east and west) whose skin tones varied fairly widely even within the same “race.” There were then centuries and millennia of people groups intermingling, killing each other, leaving, returning, natural variation and change due to climatic changes, etc., so that trying to judge people of the past by what (some of) their descendants look like today in more than the most vague manner possible requires a crazy amount of anachronism.
As fake as the term “undocumented” is, it wouldn’t even apply here. The entire purpose of the holy family going to Bethlehem was to be registered for taxation which involves, oh, what’s the word, documentation?
Fleeing from a political rival isn’t immigration. That the whole thing isn’t immigration is clear from the fact that as soon as the immediate threat is gone (Herod dead) they return, but even then end up in Nazareth since it wasn’t as “hot” a location as Bethlehem, as Herod’s son might still search for the future son of David in David’s city. (There’s also the whole having been “documented” there, but let’s not let details get in the way of a good narrative…) At any rate whether in Judea or in Egypt they would have used the same imperial money and the same imperial roads, and thus were not immigrating from one country to another. It seems to me it would be far more like running afoul of a criminal organization in New Jersey and moving to Ohio for awhile until things cool down, and then finally settling in Pennsylvania because some of the organization is still in place back home.
When they went to Bethlehem the Holy Family couldn’t find a room at the inn. I wonder if people traveling because of the census were straining the travel resources of Bethlehem? Kind of like the current NYC hotel situation.
Middle Eastern and brown skinned…hmm…rubbish. Besides what does the colour of his skin have anything to do with anything? They tell you the colour of one’s skin does not matter except when they tell you it matters.
He was also not a member of a violent jihadist false religion that allows invasion and the slaughter of “infidels” and lying to cover up the intentions thereto.