A
mural of depicting Jesus is displayed outside a home near the village
of Mondesore, in eastern India. (By Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images)
Fox News host
Megyn Kelly caused some controversy when she
declared,
on her Wednesday evening show: "Jesus was a white man, too. It's like
we have, he's a historical figure. That's a verifiable fact, as is
Santa. I just want kids to know that."
Santa comments aside, Kelly's insistence on a white Jesus has
offended a number of people, who counter that Jesus's Middle Eastern
ethnicity would likely have given him a darker complexion than that of,
say, Kelly herself.
But the question of Jesus's ethnicity turns out to be far more
complicated than simply identifying his ethnic background. It gets into
issues of history, religion and the particular metaphysics of
Christianity. I discussed the issue with Reza Aslan, a scholar of
religions and author of the recent bestseller "
Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth." His answers surprised me. A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.
WorldViews: What, as far as we know, did Jesus look like? What do we actually know about him?
Reza Aslan: Well, what we know about him is that he was
Galilean. As a Galilean, he would have been what is referred to as a
Palestinian Jew. He would look the way that the average Palestinian
would look today. So that would mean dark features, hairy, probably a
longer nose, black hair. To put it in the simplest way possible, he
would've looked like me. [Laughs]
You're very modest.
But I want to make a larger point, which might be interesting to you
or may not be interesting. What I just described is Jesus. What Megan
Kelly described is the Christ. And they're different people! In other
words, the Christ can be whatever you want him to be.
When you go to, for instance, the Church of the Annunciation at
Nazareth. They have commissioned Christian communities from all over the
world to paint a depiction of Jesus and his mother Mary. They've
displayed all those paintings, and when you look at, for instance, the
painting from the United States, what you see is a blonde and blue-eyed
Jesus.
When you look at the painting from Guatemala, what you see are Jesus
and Mary as migrant farm workers. I don't mean they look like migrant
farm workers I mean they are migrant farm workers. When you look at the
painting from China, Jesus and Mary are Chinese, literally Chinese. When
you look at the painting from Thailand, Jesus and Mary are blue, as
though they are Hindu gods.
So, it's a much more interesting issue that arises from her statement: Megyn Kelly is right. Her Christ is white.
What is it about Christ, historically or religiously, that leads people to want to convey him in their own images?
That is the entire point of the Christ.
The reason that Christianity spread so rapidly in the first two or
three hundred years before the Roman adoption of Christianity is
precisely because it was an infinitely malleable idea. As everybody
knows, before Roman Orthodoxy, there were a thousand different kinds of
Christianity. It could mean whatever you wanted it to mean. And that is
precisely why it is now the largest religion in the world, because it
has the ability to be whatever a worshipful community wants it to be.
Let me put in in a little bit more of a metaphysical way, but I think
it will make more sense. The foundational metaphor for God in
Christianity is man. What is God? Christianity tells you God is man, and
so man is the metaphor for what God is in Christianity, because God
became a man in the form of Jesus. How do you know, how do you define
God? Think of the perfect man. God is infinitely good, infinitely
caring, infinitely compassionate. God is all the greatest human
attributes that you can imagine. That's what God is. It's a sort of a
central metaphor.
What that does, however, is that by saying that God is man, God is a
man, it allows you to then define what man is. If you're Chinese, then
God is a Chinese man. If you're Middle Eastern, then God is a Middle
Eastern man. If you're a blond, blue-eyed, white suburbanite woman, then
God is a blond, blue-eyed suburbanite.
This is precisely why Christianity is the largest religion in the
world. Because that central metaphor allows you to then thoroughly
absorb this conception of Jesus as God into whatever your own particular
understanding of humanity is.
This is, by the way, why the fastest-growing Protestant movement in
the United States is the Prosperity Gospel, this notion that Jesus wants
you to be materially wealthy. Which, of course, goes against everything
Jesus ever said or did, but is nevertheless enormously successful
because, if you are a white, middle-class suburbanite, then so is your
Jesus.
But doesn't that risk burying or ignoring the historical Jesus, who had a specific ethnicity, as distinct from the Christ?
They are distinct. I think that might be uncomfortable for some
Christians to admit, and it may be weird for people to think about. But
the Christ of faith and the Jesus of history are two different
characters. And that's okay!
They are two different characters, and that's sort of the principle
argument of my book, that Jesus of history was a Jew preaching Judaism
to other Jews. That's the Jesus of history.
The Christ of faith can be anything, anything that you want him to
be, and has been whatever you want him to be throughout the last 2,000
years of Christian history. He is a rebel against the state, he is the
state, he's both of those things.
But it seems like that distinction between the historical
Jesus and the metaphysical Christ can create a lot of arguments because
people will confuse the one for the other. And they want the historical
Jesus to be like the Christ, or to be like their Christ. But he might
not be.
Right, exactly. I know they want that, and that's why people like me,
who write books like "Zealot," get in trouble. It's precisely because
of that notion.
But I think there's this larger sort of fundamental misunderstanding
that is at the root of what you're talking about, and that is this:
There is a misperception that prophets create religions. Jesus did not
create Christianity; his followers created Christianity. Jesus was a Jew
preaching Judaism. The prophet Mohammad did not create Islam; his
followers created Islam. Prophet Muhammad was reforming the
Judeo-Christian traditions of the Arab region. The Buddha did not create
Buddhism. The Buddha was a Hindu; he was reforming Hinduism. His
followers created Buddhism.
Religions are man-made – literally – man-made institutions that are
built long after the death of the prophet for which they are named. So
the reason that I, as a scholar, don't have a problem with that
differentiation between Jesus and Christ – these are two different
things, and you can go back and forth between them – is based precisely
on that one fundamental fact. Which is that Jesus didn't create
Christianity -- his followers created Christianity. And so, of course,
Christ of Christianity is different from the Jesus of history. And
that's okay.
To celebrate the 500th anniversary of the composition of The Prince, this exhibit explores the essential role Niccolò Machiavelli has played in the history of modern political thought, his influence on generations of politicians and intellectuals as well as on popular culture. Organized by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Embassy of Italy in Washington DC, with the support of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Activities and Tourism. This exhibition is conceived as a journey both in time and space. It starts in the Renaissance —placing Machiavelli and his work in their historical context — then reaches the modern day —illustrating the different ways the writer and his masterwork have been seen up to today. It does not intend to offer a definitive or "correct" interpretation of The Prince and its author; rather, it allows visitors to linger on the fascinating facts behind and around this short treaty and to have a glimpse of its persisting presence in our own time. The exhibition is divided into four sections: Machiavelli and his historical context
