While this is true, I feel like this is more a jab at how jesus is so whitewashed he'd make wainscoting blush, given that we have a pretty good idea that he would in fact, not be SO light skinned.

To add a bit to that: Greeks and Turks are pretty much physically identical, but one is seen as "whiter" than the other (guess which). The eastern end of the Mediterranean saw all sorts of people from northern Africa and southern Europe because of the ease of sailing across the coast, even with the relative low technology of ships from 3,000+ years ago.

If the jews of today, especially the ones that never left the Levant, are a faithful picture of their ancestors of ~2000 years ago, then it's not too much of a stretch to assume Jesus could've been white, or "white".

Side note: gotta love (/s) how much importance is still given to skin color. I'd love to see people throwing hex codes around instead of color names. "We don't like fceadc here!"

There's literally a Dead Sea Scroll talking about how Noah was a redhead, 2 Kings 5:27 is about how the descendants of someone among them are all "white as snow," and the only sample of ancient Jewish hair from 1st century Judea was reddish brown.

The whole "there weren't white people in the middle east when Jesus was around" is one of the most misinformed popular "confidently incorrect" phrases to be thrown out these days.

There's a decent chance he was olive skinned and dark haired based on the demographics, but there was a much wider array of appearances in the region than most people realize.

Edit:

but tanned obviously

Well, I wouldn't be too sure about that either.

Take for example Lamentations 4:7

Her nazirites were purer than snow, whiter than milk; their bodies were more ruddy than coral, their form cut like sapphire.

Considering this in light of things like Strong Founder Effect in Israeli Oculocutaneous Albinism Type I (OCAI) Populations, along with the modern consideration of Biblical leprosy as melanoma something that occurs at a 1,000x rate of the non-albino population in Africa (redheads develop it at a 10 to 100x rate), and there may well have been pale people in the time and place who just looked sunburned most of the time (until inevitably developing skin diseases).

The reddish brown haired fellow from the 1st century had been exposed to lepers, and the 2 Kings 5:27 reference also referred to the descendants with skin as white as snow as being lepers.

So even the assumption of having a tan may be out of touch with the historical reality.

Easiest counter example are the Scythians

Never heard of them. Can you elaborate?

I don't completely disagree with you about not everyone being brown, but comparing a photo of modern people to those 2000+ years ago is disingenuous. A lot has happened to the gene pool since, not to mention living conditions and skin protection have improved dramatically.

People just don't realize the actual history when they comment on stuff like this.

Like most people tend to disbelieve when they see redhead and fair skinned Lybian Bernbers that they represent an indigenous African population from pre-history (though technically there's evidence they came down from Europe during the tail end of the ice age).

In fact, Ramses II's forensic report from when they shipped his body to France for examination reported he had red hair and fair skin like a Lybian Berber (which is particularly interesting given the Greek story of Danaus, Lybian brother to the Pharoh who had 50 sons, given Ramses II also had 48-50 recorded sons).

The Mediterranean was much more of a giant melting pot than most people realize. Heck, it was more of a melting pot than most scholars realized given some of the surprises just in the past two years regarding genetic export from North Africa across much of the Mediterranean as opposed to the previous view of mostly import to North Africa from the Phonecians.

I'd recommend most people set aside their preconceptions, because relying on them will almost certainly lead to misinformed positions.

Idk man I see something else in this picture entirely

thatsthejoke.jpeg