Of all the idiotic..... PaleoJudaica reports that there is a new movie about "Jesus" that opens this weekend. Color of the Cross (I won't do it the honor of a link to its website) stars a black man as "Jesus". While this is not surprising to me, it is very frustrating. The goals of this film are, in reality, no different than those of many people who would like to turn Yeshua into a blond-haired, blue-eyed white guy. Both sides strip Yeshua of his Jewishness and turn him into a symbol of their own ideals. This reminds me of a book that we published earlier this year at work called "When Black Men Stretch Their Hands to G-d." The author of that work, George McCalep, a black pastor, says "... I am implying that Jesus was of African descent and a man of color." He then goes on to talk about how certain people in Yeshua's lineage were actually black, and ends up with this bit of interesting scriptural interpretation:

When we think of Solomon, we think of the wisest and richest man ever. He did not ask for riches. Solomon asked for wisdom and God gave him both wisdom and riches. This is the Solomon who wrote at least two books in the Bible, and the one who said, “I am ruddy and handsome.” Ruddy means “black.” He was saying that he was black and handsome. Solomon was what we would call a hunk today. He was good-looking, smart and rich, but he had a problem. He had too many wives and concubines. Yet, his name and his mother’s name are in the genealogy of Jesus Christ. Mary had a little lamb and His flesh was not as white as snow. [bold emphasis mine]

Funny..... I thought ruddy means "red". At least according to every dictionary out there it does. Well, then if that is the case, I guess we need to teach that Solomon was a Native American.

Yeshua was not white. He was not black. Yeshua was a Jew. He was probably more Arab-looking than anything else. It is this constant re-writing of Yeshua by parties with their own biases that makes it so hard for us to really understand him. If we would just look at him in is real environment and stop trying to make him into our own image, we might really grasp his message and the impact that he came to make on this world.

As a side note, has anyone else noticed the headcovering that one of the women in the film is wearing? It looks to me like a "Palestinian" kefiyah.

Labels: Messianic Judaism