Jesus Christ has been an object of veneration and worship for nearly 2,000 years. As the central figure in Christianity, images of him fill churches, homes, and museums around the world. But why is Jesus white in most of these depictions?
As Jesus’ following spread out of the Middle East starting in the first century C.E. — sometimes via devoted missionary work and sometimes by more aggressive methods — people across western Europe started casting Christ in their image and white Jesus depictions began to proliferate.
Doing so was relatively easy because the Bible contains only a few (contradictory) words on what Jesus’s race was and what he looked like. However, scholars have a better idea of what people, in general, looked like in the Middle East around the first century — and they weren’t light-skinned.
Yet, a white Jesus remains the standard in most modern depictions. Why?
Though the Bible tells the story of Jesus Christ — whose real name was actually Yeshua — it says little about his appearance. In the Old Testament, the prophet Isaiah describes Jesus as having “no beauty or majesty.” But the Book of Psalms directly contradicts this, calling Jesus “fairer [more beautiful] than the children of men.”
Other descriptions of Jesus Christ in the Bible offer few other clues. In the Book of Revelation, Jesus is described as having hair like “white wool,” eyes like “flames of fire,” and feet “like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace.”
Despite this lack of concrete descriptions, depictions of Jesus Christ began to emerge in the first century.
Known depictions of Jesus Christ with a more positive slant date back to the third century. Since Jesus Christ is alleged to have said, “I am the good shepherd… the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” in the Gospel of John, many early depictions show him with a lamb. The Callisto catacomb in Rome, for example, contains a famous third-century image of Jesus Christ — the “Good Shepherd” — with a lamb over his shoulder. Significantly, he is depicted here without a beard. Though this was a common look among Romans of the age, most Judean men had beards. In this image, one of the oldest known attempts to depict him, Jesus appears Roman or Greek. And as Christianity began to spread in the centuries after Jesus’ crucifixion at Golgotha, images like this began to appear throughout Europe.
Though early Christians worshiped in secret — passing along clandestine images like ichthys to share their faith — Christianity began gaining prominence in the fourth century. Then, the Roman emperor Constantine converted to Christianity — and depictions of Jesus Christ began to proliferate.
In the fourth-century fresco above, many elements of traditional Christian iconography make an appearance. Jesus has a halo, he’s in the top-center of the composition, his fingers are held in a benediction, and he’s clearly European. He — and Peter and Paul — wear European-style clothing.
Significantly, Jesus also has the wavy, flowing hair and beard seen in many modern-day depictions.
This depiction grew so popular that it ricocheted back into the Middle East, where Christianity has its roots. That’s because white Christians were moving aggressively across the globe — colonizing and converting as they went — and they brought images of a white Jesus with them.
For colonizers, white Jesus had a dual purpose. Not only did he represent Christianity — which colonizers hoped to spread — but his fair skin put the colonizers themselves on the side of God. His race helped enforce caste systems in South America and suppression of indigenous people in North America and everywhere else the white colonizers went to.
As the centuries passed, depictions of white Jesus became enshrined in popular culture. Since early artists wanted their audiences to recognize Jesus — and feared accusations of heresy — similar images of Jesus Christ were reproduced across the centuries.
In 1940, the idea of a white Jesus got a special boost from American artist Warner E. Sallman, who painted Jesus Christ as white-skinned, blonde-haired, and blue-eyed. Sallman’s original image, meant for a youth magazine called Covenant Companion, swiftly gained in popularity, appearing in churches, schools, courtrooms, and even on bookmarks and clocks. His “Head of Christ,” noted New York Times journalist William Grimes, “achieved a mass popularity that makes Warhol’s soup can seem positively obscure.”
