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Jude 3 Project
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Premium · Race, Faith & Identity

Why Is Jesus Pictured as White? 4 Scholars

Reviewed by Jude 3 Project·2 min read· Members

The claim has force because the picture works as evidence. In the Jude 3 Project documentary Unspoken, Chris Broussard lists it among the objections he hears again and again: “You look at the paintings and the pictures of all the biblical characters being white.” The reasoning is simple. If the faith’s own art shows whom God favors, why trust the faith? A correction about ancient Galilee won’t settle that. A person can know that Jesus was a Middle Eastern Jew and still feel the image’s weight, because it arrived alongside slavery, colonial rule and churches that kept Black worshipers at arm’s length.

So the image is best read as a cultural artifact, something people made for reasons and then put to use. That reading has four layers:

  1. Where the white Jesus came from.
  2. What it carried into Black experience of Christianity.
  3. What an older African Christianity shows by contrast.
  4. Where the biblical text draws the line between Christ and his interpreters.

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