Category:Aryan Jesus (subject)

Aryan Jesus refers to a series of pseudo-scientific (and largely antisemitic) speculations about the "non-Jewish" racial identity of Jesus of Nazareth.

Overview

The tendency of Christians of all centuries has been to portrait Jesus as "one of them." As Christianity was predominantly an European phenomenon, the image of Jesus as a "white male" became standard in Christian iconography. In the colonial context such an image was "exported," first in the Americas and then in Africa and Asia, to affirm European cultural and racial superiority.

The growth of antisemitic attitudes in late 19th century increased self consciousness in defining Jesus' racial identity. The more historical research pointed to recovering the Jewish, middle Eastern origins of Jesus, the more the blue-eyed, blond Jesus appeared as an indispensable barrier against racial contamination.

Nazism brought this reactionary trend to its more extreme consequences by idealizing a non-Jewish, "Aryan Jesus" as champion of white supremacy. On the other hand, Jewish authors offered the first conscious depictions of Jesus as a Jew.

In spite of the tragic outcome of the Holocaust and the formal rejection of racial discrimination by mainstream Christianity, many of the traditional stereotypes of "Aryan Jesus" have survived in the contemporary imaginary of Jesus. No longer a self-conscious icon of ideological propaganda, the Aryan Jesus is facing the challenge of alternative views--either cultural (see Black Jesus, Asian Jesus, etc.) or historical (see Jewish Jesus).

Gabriele Boccaccini, University of Michigan

External links

Select Bibliography (articles)

When Jesus was an Aryan: the Protestant Church and antisemitic propaganda / Susannah Heschel / In: Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust, ed. Robert P. Ericksen and Susannah Heschel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999) / In: In God's Name: Genocide and Religion in the Twentieth Century, ed. Omer Bartov and Phyllis Mack (New York, NY: Berghahn Books, 2001)