If you sample the historical artwork in Europe and the Americas one can quickly notice that the Jesus character has a tendency to be depicted with the same skin tones, facial features and hair as the locals in which the art work was made.

It's a bit absurd to say that man is created in God's image when God doesn't in fact have an image.

This ignores those passages in the bible where God's backside is seen, for which I'm told that the appropriate response is simply to double down on God's invisibility.

(March 12, 2021 at 5:47 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Not sure why a skin-colour qualifier is needed in the title. 'Belief in Jesus linked to racism' seems sufficient.

Boru

To be fair, belief in jeebus is linked to a lot of bigotry, not just racism.

(March 13, 2021 at 1:52 pm)Seax Wrote: Most psychology is like this. Look up successful replication rates of psychological studies.

Science has a replication problem—psychology is just the only one looking. Perhaps this is unsurprising given that psychologists study human behavior and cognition. They are more aware of issues like hindsight bias which tampers with predictability. The Center for Open Science was born out of psychology; and rest assured the crisis is coming to a field near you lol.

In commemoration of my suddenly stumbling upon this thread and deciding to check whether or not I could find any clips of that Boondocks episode where Ruckus creates an entire church devoted to White Jesus that didn’t feature the N-word and actually finding one, I figured I’ll leave this here:

And the scene of Ruckus meeting Ronald Reagan in White Heaven missed out by one N-bomb. Oh, well, at least there’s one clip that doesn’t violate the rules. And it’s a pretty apt depiction of the intersection between white depictions of Jesus and racism, even if it is a clear satire with one of the most brain-breakingly absurd depictions of a white supremacist in fiction.

(March 19, 2021 at 1:02 am)Ferrocyanide Wrote: So if someone says "This bit of information is not important and starts painting something inaccurate", I'm going to have to question the entire thing.

They modernized the appearance because the information they want to convey is very important. 

You have to decide what the message is and what meaning you want to get across. Is the historical accuracy of the clothing and hairstyles important to the message, or is the role of the characters in the moral story? Is Mary's hairstyle important, or her narrative role as a poor but worthy young woman?

As a non-religious example, think of the Tale of Genji. The author of that book makes it clear that Genji is the best-looking man of his generation. He's irresistible to women. But we know from documentary evidence that tastes have changed, and Genji probably looked a lot like Kim Jong Un. That is, he would not be attractive in the least to modern Japanese women. 

So if you're making a movie, you have to decide what message is important. Do you go with historical accuracy, and show Genji as a round little grotesque? Do you show the beautiful ladies of court with plucked-out eyebrows and big artificial ones painted high on their foreheads, so that they look ridiculous to modern audiences? (I think a modern audience would react by wondering "who in their right mind would fall for him?") Or do you get the best-looking actor you can, so that modern people react to him in the way that 11th century people reacted to Genji? If you're making a work of art with an emotional message, I think the latter is better. 

The devotio moderna movement thought that the important part was what role the characters played in their society, and that historically accurate visuals would not convey that emotionally to contemporary people. 

I think there are cases where modernization doesn't work. Recently Stephen Fry did a Picture of Dorian Gray set in our own time, with Dorian as an Instagram star. In my opinion this doesn't make Wilde's meaning more accessible to modern people, but less. The Dorian Gray of the novel was not a self-publicist, so I think Fry has completely changed the story's message. Giving Jesus a jet fighter would obviously change the meaning, as well.