White Jesus conundrum

[Rev. Rye]

But would it really be so strange that a white baby/ man gets born in the Middle East at that time considering that there were lots of Roman soldiers in the Palestine at that time? They obviously had sex with local women, so I guess it wasn't that uncommon for white babies to pop out here and there.

My Christian friend in college was upset at his liberal religious studies professor for suggesting that Mary really got raped by a Roman soldier.

To be fair, this isn't an unprecedented idea; both the Talmud and Celsus claim that he was the product of an adulterous relationship between Mary and a Roman soldier named Pantera. Then again, given that Celsus was anti-Christian and, by the time the Talmud was finally written down, relations between Judaism and Christianity had gone down the toilet, and that there's no real corroborating evidence for this claim, it's likely not true, though, that said, it's as plausible an explanation as any.