The Washington Post's habit of promoting Muslim author Reza Aslan and his lame book about how Jesus was a political messiah resurfaced on Thursday. On the Post's "WorldViews" blog, Max Fisher interviewed Aslan on the occasion of Megyn Kelly's statement on her Fox show that "Jesus was a white man, too. It's like we have, he's a historical figure. That's a verifiable fact, as is Santa."
Fisher declared "Kelly's insistence on a white Jesus has offended a number of people, who counter that Jesus's Middle Eastern ethnicity would likely have given him a darker complexion than that of, say, Kelly herself." Then Reza Aslan told Fisher that Jesus looked a lot like Reza Aslan:
MAX FISHER: What, as far as we know, did Jesus look like? What do we actually know about him?
REZA ASLAN: Well, what we know about him is that he was Galilean. As a Galilean, he would have been what is referred to as a Palestinian Jew. He would look the way that the average Palestinian would look today. So that would mean dark features, hairy, probably a longer nose, black hair. To put it in the simplest way possible, he would've looked like me. [Laughs]
FISHER: You're very modest.
ASLAN: But I want to make a larger point, which might be interesting to you or may not be interesting. What I just described is Jesus. What Megan Kelly described is the Christ. And they're different people! In other words, the Christ can be whatever you want him to be.
When you go to, for instance, the Church of the Annunciation at Nazareth. They have commissioned Christian communities from all over the world to paint a depiction of Jesus and his mother Mary. They've displayed all those paintings, and when you look at, for instance, the painting from the United States, what you see is a blonde and blue-eyed Jesus.
When you look at the painting from Guatemala, what you see are Jesus and Mary as migrant farm workers. I don't mean they look like migrant farm workers I mean they are migrant farm workers. When you look at the painting from China, Jesus and Mary are Chinese, literally Chinese. When you look at the painting from Thailand, Jesus and Mary are blue, as though they are Hindu gods.
So, it's a much more interesting issue that arises from her statement: Megyn Kelly is right. Her Christ is white.
