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Who can forget when the former Fox News host Megyn Kelly declared in 2013 that Jesus, like Santa Claus, “was a White man, too,” and “that’s a verifiable fact,” a remark she later said was meant in jest.
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First, while the classic Nordic Jesus remains a popular image today in some churches, a movement to replace the White Jesus has long taken root in America. In many Christian circles — progressive mainline churches, churches of color shaped by “liberation theology,” and among Biblical scholars — conspicuous displays of the White Jesus are considered outdated, and to some, offensive. In a rapidly diversifying multicultural America, more Christians want to see a Jesus that looks like them.
But in some parts of the country, the White Jesus never left. The spread of White Christian nationalism has flooded social media feeds with images of the traditional White Jesus, sometimes adorned with a red MAGA hat. Former President Trump is selling a “God Bless the USA Bible” with passages from the Constitution and Bill of Rights — a linking of patriotism with Christianity that reinforces a White image of Jesus that is central to Christian nationalism.
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Blum says the image of a White Jesus has been used to justify slavery, lynching, laws against interracial marriage and hostility toward immigrants deemed not White enough. When Congress passed a law in the early 20th century to restrict immigration from Asia, Southern and Eastern Europe, White politicians evoked the White Jesus, he says.
“One of the arguments was, ‘Well, Jesus was White,’ ‘’ Blum says. “So the theme was, we want America to be profoundly Christian or at least Jesus based, so we should only allow White people in this country.”
The MAGA movement uses the image of a White Jesus to weaponize political battles, he says, pointing to signs at the January 6 insurrection displaying a White Jesus, sometimes wearing a red MAGA hat. To Blum, some Christian conservatives see a White MAGA Jesus as “an anti-woke symbol.”
While it's true that all versions of Jesus can't all be historical, that's a very different matter from the claim that all versions are made up.
In fact, it would be one of the only cases I'm aware of in all of history where a made up person had bitter schisms leading to the majority of surviving writings within the first century of making up those stories dedicated to trying to silence the different versions.
But that pattern of behavior is extremely common among sects and cults focused around a real person who then dies or is imprisoned, where the groups fracture and claim different stories or interpretations of the historical figure quickly after they are out of the picture.
If Jesus was made up, we should probably expect one official story of him, similar to Mithrism which emerged around the same time, which had none of the Christian bitter schisms.
Basically, what Paul writes here only twenty years after Jesus's alleged execution is extremely unusual if Jesus as a figure was entirely made up:
You basically have an official cannonized version of Jesus that's dedicated to claiming the women around Jesus "totally saw the empty tomb but didn't tell anyone" or that women should stay silent (1 Clement) and that women shouldn't teach (1 Cor), and then a heretical group discussing Jesus's teachings to female disciples to whom he basically says the men disciples are idiots and claim their female teacher had said Jesus's sower and mustard seed parables were talking about Lucretius's "seeds of things" (writing in Latin 50 years before Jesus was born he used the word 'seed' in place of the Greek atomos in discussing how randomly scattered atoms were the cause of life where where survived to reproduce is what multiplied).
A parable that btw is also the only one provided a "secret explanation" in the earliest cannonical versions.
I don't see that level of nuance occurring if the entire thing is made up from scratch only decades earlier.
Corinthians 10 through 13 are widely considered to be written later than the first half of the letter, all Christian documents are heavily edited to try and prove their faith which is one of many reasons to acknowledge they could easily have rewritten early history of spiritual belief to apply to a fictional person.
plus he even sounds like he's talking about a spiritual Jesus from heaven not a born son - receiving the spirit is how you meet spiritual Jesus, the only Jesus Paul knows - isn't it weird he doesn't say 'other people talking about Jesus are liars, we have living people who knew him in person'.. but actualy, where are those people? Why don't the apostles establish the religion? Peter might have existed maybe for a bit but really in actual history there's no sign of any affect from any of them - Paul is the first significant figure we can really see and feel in history nut he never met him - all the churches and gospels come from his actions.
We know why there are 12 apostles, no one actually believes Jesus met the magic number of guys and they followed him instantly, they're not real people and they don't act real either - but surely Jesus would have had followers so why don't they run the religion instead of someone who doesn't even pretend to have met a physical Jesus?
Paul went far far away from anyone that would know the truth and told his story, Christianity developed from these places, highly educated Greek scholars write the books of the Bible from Paul's teaching - a man who never met Jesus, who only claims to have met James (inconsequential meeting) and Peter though mysteriously doesn't even mention Peter when writing his letter to the Roman's...
The bits of the early church we have historic evidence for all come from Paul, if Peter existed the biblical version of him certainly isn't true and there's no roman record of him until it's invented much later and sites are 'found' for his resting place - again even the Vatica scholars n accept this.
When you really look at it there's no room for a historical Jesus but a perfect pathway for a man we know invented his part of the story for personal gain (maybe he had an episode that put the idea of Jesus in his head but it wasn't based on physical reality)