TruthVid's 100 Proofs that the Israelites were White, Part 5: 14, Jesus was White; 15, Inhabitants of Middle East Were Once White

TruthVid's 100 Proofs that the Israelites were White, Part 5

Here we discuss the next two points in TruthVids’ 100 Proofs that the ancient Israelites were White, which concern descriptions of Christ and His apostles in Scripture, ancient history, art and archaeology, and recent genetic studies which prove the same was true of the general population of the Levant in ancient times. Notes prepared by William Finck are found below, but once again, there are many extemporaneous digressions in the podcast which are not found in the notes.

14) Jesus was White

• Descriptions of Christ in Revelation

In Revelation chapter 1 there is a two-verse description of Christ, which in the King James Version reads: “14 His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; 15 And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.”

There is a common feature of Hebrew language, employed throughout the Bible, called parallelism. This describes a repetitive reference to or description of the same phenomenon in different ways. So where we read that “His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow”, “white like wool” and “white as snow” are such a parallelism, by which we have a greater understanding of what is being described. So it cannot be taken to mean that His hair had the texture of wool, or otherwise it would also have to had the texture of snow, and in the sun He would have had no hair at all. Rather, it only means to describe the whiteness of His hair in different ways, and makes no comment on the texture.

We have this also in Isaiah chapter 1 where we read of the sins of Israel a promise which was fulfilled in Christ: “though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” Here we have another such parallelism, and scarlet is red like crimson, while something as white as snow would also appear “as wool”, meaning as white as wool.

Here, in a conversation concerning “eyes as a flame of fire” I cited a chapter from a work titled Greek Color Theory and the Four Elements, written by J.L. Benson and available in the archives of the University of Massachusetts. (I will also archive a copy at Christogenea.)

In addition to the citation, which shows that the allegory of the eye as a lamp existed not only in the New Testament but also among Greek philosophers, and that ancient Greeks believed the eye to contain a sort of perpetual fire, I discussed Greek perceptions of eye color from my own studies.

Race in The Shepherd of Hermas:

There is a Christian work of the second century which was considered as canon by at least several of the earliest Christian writers, those who are called the “Church Fathers”. The work is titled The Shepherd of Hermas. Its dating to at least as early as the first half of the second century is historically indisputable, and it may have been written even earlier.

The following is from the edition of The Pastor of Hermas which is found in The Ante-Nicene Fathers by Roberts and Donaldson, which are volumes of the surviving works of early Christian writers. This is from the Third Book — Similitudes, from the Ninth Similitude, titled The Great Mysteries in the Building of the Militant and Triumphant Church, Chapter XIX:

“From the first mountain, which was black, they that believed are the following: apostates and blasphemers against the Lord, and betrayers of the servants of God. To these repentance is not open; but death lies before them, and on this account also are they black, for their race is a lawless one. And from the second mountain, which was bare, they who believed are the following: hypocrites, and teachers of wickedness. And these, accordingly, are like the former, not having any fruits of righteousness; for as their mountain was destitute of fruit, so also such men have a name indeed, but are empty of faith, and there is no fruit of truth in them. They indeed have repentance in their power, if they repent quickly; but if they are slow in so doing, they shall die along with the former.”

So here it is seen that one who is black was perceived as not having any ability or hope of repentance. They were also seen as being completely lawless. Just as we discussed earlier in this series of presentations, in Solomon’s times it was considered a disgrace to be black or swarthy, as we saw in the opening chapter of his Song of Songs. So it is clear from this alone that early Christians could not even have conceived of the thought of a black Christ or black apostles, or even of black Christians.

In Hebrew, the word arab as a verb means to grow dark. But referring to people, where it cannot lose its meaning as a verb, it came to mean mixed. When White people mix with other races, the result is never white, but rather, it is something darker than white. The first place in Scripture where it appears in reference to people is to the mixed multitude that followed the Israelites out of Egypt, in Exodus chapter 12 (12:38). The word arab does not mean to make lighter, as the verb was used of the evening sky as the sun went down. So the existence of this term, its use in this manner, describing people, and its clear meaning in other uses proves that the Israelites were originally White, or they would never even have had this term in their vocabulary.

Ultimately, the term began to be used to describe the land which we still know as Arabia, along with its inhabitants. But it does not appear in Scripture until 1 Kings chapter 10, which is the time of the reign of Solomon. Before that, the individual regions of Arabia were referred to according to the names of the distinct tribes which dwelt there. But with the time of Solomon it becomes apparent that those tribes had in some degree become so mixed with one another that the peoples became hard to distinguish individually, ceased to be identified distinctly in Scripture, and the name Arabia came to be used. That may be conjectural, but it is fully manifested in the historic record. But even with that, most arabs had an appearance that was more or less white, as their own art also reveals, until the Islamic conquests and the introduction of black African slaves into Arabia in large numbers.

• All ancient art of Christ and Apostles

First there are the sphinxes, or cherubs, that have been found throughout Europe by archaeologists. The great Sphinx of Egypt clearly resembles the Phoenician form of Cherub, which is closest to the actual Hebrew. But Cherubs are found among the artifacts of Assyria, Arabia, and especially in Egypt, and cherubs have been discovered by archaeologists in Spain, or Iberia, as well as other places in southern Europe.

The following is from a page at Christogenea titled Cherubs are Sphinxes:

A cherub is, basically, a sphinx. Or, more exactly, a sphinx is a variation on a cherub. While the sphinx is a watered-down version, the cherub was a sphinx-like creature with the head of a man, the wings of an eagle, the fore-body of a lion and the rear-body of a bull. These are the same four symbols described as being a part of the throne of Yahweh, in both the Revelation and the opening chapters of Ezekiel. They are also the same four symbols of the standards of the leading tribes situated around the Tabernacle in the Wilderness.

So these symbols were prominent in Israelite culture, which includes the Phoenicians, and also in ancient Egypt and Assyria. Unlike the Hebrews, however, the Egyptians used only the body of a lion, while the Assyrians only that of a bull. They were also figures of Greek art, myth and legend, although the Greeks made a woman out of them. But they are not found among other races. (See other examples of ancient cherubs from a page reproduced from a 1906 edition of the Jewish Encyclopedia.)
 

Aside from cherubs, which were featured prominently atop the ark of the covenant and in the temple of Solomon, ancient Israelites were forbidden from making graven images, so they did not leave much art.

But Jews of the late classical or early medieval periods broke that commandment, and there the next most significant pieces of art we have are found in the the synagogue mosaics of ancient Syria and Galilee.

One famous mosaic is from Hukkok, an ancient city of Naphtali in Galilee which is twice mentioned in the Bible. There was striking mosaic was discovered as a feature of a floor in an ancient synagogue, so it certainly was not a Christian creation. It is said to depict an event of the 4th century BC, recorded by Josephus, when the Judaean High Priest met with Alexander the Great outside the gates of Jerusalem, whereupon Alexander was escorted into the city. Other interpretations date the event depicted to a somewhat later time, when the Maccabees were confronting the Seleucid kings of Syria in the 2nd century BC. In any case, the mosaic was created for a synagogue of Jews of the 4th century AD and it depicts Israelites with their high priest standing against a group of Greek soldiers behind their own general or ruler, and the Israelites depicted therein are so white, that they appear to be whiter than the Greeks, and with light brown or blond hair. The hair and beard of the high priest was as white as wool, and he looked like any elderly White gentleman that may be found in Northern Europe today.

Another notable mosaic is often referred to as the Mona Lisa of the Galilee. This was discovered in Sepphoris, another city of Galilee but which is not mentioned by that name in Scripture. The mosaic was found on the floor of a Roman-style villa believed to date to the 3rd century AD. It features depictions of pagan Greek idols such as Pan and Heracles, and several of Dionysius, as well as naked young men, presumably cupids. But it also features a large depiction of a very fair White woman who has been dubbed the “Mona Lisa of the Galilee” for her striking appearance. While it cannot be said who the woman was, or who owned the villa, Sepphoris, just a few miles north of ancient Nazareth, was not really a Roman city, but a Judaean one. According to some historical sources, it was one of the towns to where the religious leaders of the Jews had relocated after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. Another important mosaic discovered at Sepphoris is from the floor of a fifth-century synagogue and features a depiction from an account in the Bible called the Binding of Isaac. It features two fair-haired, fair-skinned White men representing the patriarch Isaac and his father Abraham.

So these three mosaics, which depict the most ancient Israelites and their patriarchs as being entirely White and European-looking, are important because they were found in Jewish settings, and at least two of them were most likely made by and for Jews. Being as late as the 4th century AD, but before the Jews began to be ostracized from the Byzantine Empire, they are some of the best estimations of how the Jews of late antiquity saw themselves. Just as Flavius Josephus had written in his Antiquities, that except for the circumcision they would appear to be Greeks (12:241). it is clear in these mosaics that they did indeed appear in that manner, indistinguishable from Greek or Romans.

Next in importance are the paintings found in 3rd through 5th century Roman catacombs.

A 4th or 5th century image of Christ and His apostles from a burial chamber in the catacombs of St. Domitilla in Italy. The scene depicts Christ sitting with six men on each side, all of whom are depicted as fair-skinned and White, mostly with light brown or blondish hair cut in a traditional Roman style, only some of them wearing short beards. But believed to be older than this are the images in a branch of the catacombs of St Tecla near St Paul’s Basilica, just outside the walls of ancient Rome, which were evidently painted at the end of the 4th century or the start of the 5th century. These include depictions of the apostles Peter, Andrew, and John and Paul, and all of them, along with some portraits of others which are unidentified, depict White men with Roman-style haircuts, some of them having short, trimmed beards.

In my opinion, all these catacomb paintings must predate the 5th century, as the catacombs were only necessary during times of Christian persecution, when Christians had no license to bury their dead in proper cemeteries.

All of this, and all of the later art, and all of the Byzantine depictions in art either of themselves or of Christ and His apostles, were depictions of White men. But just as significant is the artwork of the earliest surviving Ethiopian churches, such as Maryam Quiat, which also depict Christ and His apostles as being White, although some are depicted as having an Arabic appearance, which may be expected for 6th century Ethiopia.

• Letters describing Christ

The letters describing Christ I do not give as much credit as the catacomb art or the mosaics of Galilee. That is because their provenance is impossible to prove, and they very likely date to the early centuries of Roman Christianity, perhaps the 4th or the 5th. They do, however, indicate how Christians of the time would have expected Christ to have looked.

• Christ of the race of Israel-Judah.

We have already explained how David was ruddy, and how Solomon was White, according to his own words and descriptions in the Song of Solomon. So if Flavius Josephus informs us that Judaeans were White, and if the imagery of 4th century Judaeans in Galilee also inform us that both the and their patriarchs were White, how can we imagine any differently?

15) Middle East used to be white

Historically it is quite clear that the entire Middle East was White, and the darkening process which began to take place in the days of King Solomon, when the word Arabia first appeared, had progressed slowly until the Islamic conquest, upon which it was greatly accelerated.

As for genetics, you will not see modern science trace Europeans back to the Middle East with any remarkable certainty, although sometimes the roots of Europeans in eastern Anatolia or the Near East is identified. But the first problem is that scientists judge what is Middle Eastern according to who lives there today: tribes of Seljuk Turks and Canaanite bastards all jumbled together with one or more of several other races.

However there are genetic studies which reveal that the Middle East used to be White like Europe. The following is from an article from Christogenea, which was titled Dumbing Down on David Duke:

There is an article titled Genome-Wide Diversity in the Levant Reveals Recent Structuring by Culture from the Genetics section of the Public Library of Science, or plosgenetics.org. The article is credited to M. Haber, D. Gauguier, S. Youhanna, N. Patterson, P. Moorjani, et al. And it was published in 2013. (We have also stored a copy here at Christogenea.)

While we do not require articles such as this to prove our position at Christogenea on the history of the Levant or the Middle and Near East, this particular article does help to show that our thesis has academic support even in the field of genetics. David Duke likes to claim a knowledge of genetics as the basis for his refutation of Christian Identity, and we are in the midst of showing that he is wrong in every aspect of his claims.

We are not going to read the highly technical article, however we will read the authors’ own summary of the article, which is found in the published report, as it describes our interest and demonstrates our case. So the authors themselves have written that:

Population stratification caused by nonrandom mating between groups of the same species is often due to geographical distances leading to physical separation followed by genetic drift of allele frequencies in each group. In humans, population structures are also often driven by geographical barriers or distances; however, humans might also be structured by abstract factors such as culture, a consequence of their reasoning and self-awareness. Religion in particular, is one of the unusual conceptual factors that can drive human population structures. This study explores the Levant, a region flanked by the Middle East and Europe, where individual and population relationships are still strongly influenced by religion. We show that religious affiliation had a strong impact on the genomes of the Levantines. In particular, conversion of the region’s populations to Islam appears to have introduced major rearrangements in populations’ relations through admixture with culturally similar but geographically remote populations, leading to genetic similarities between remarkably distant populations like Jordanians, Moroccans, and Yemenis. Conversely, other populations, like Christians and Druze, became genetically isolated in the new cultural environment. We reconstructed the genetic structure of the Levantines and found that a pre-Islamic expansion Levant was more genetically similar to Europeans than to Middle Easterners.

This being said, even the Jewish newspaper Haaretz recently published news of another new study under the title Jews and Arabs Share Genetic Link to Ancient Canaanites, Study Finds. But Identity Christians have always known that Jews were actually descended from the accursed Canaanites, and we have the historical citations to prove it, so we really do not need that study, either.