Saturday, April 1, 2017

and, once again: jesus did not speak arabic or hebrew but aramaic (syrian) and greek and would have looked like a modern syrian, kurd or iranian.

...if he wasn't a fictional character, that is.

jesus existed around the year 0.

the substantial arab migration into palestine began around the year 650, although the genetics suggest that palestinians (who exist in a gradient - many are very light-skinned) are largely not arabs at all but descended from jews. yes, blow your mind: the palestinians are jews. what they are is jews that converted to islam - because the jews were not scattered like some fairy tale, but conquered and assimilated like everybody else. notwithstanding some diaspora, of course. excluding these endogamous diasporas, most populations take in some diversity over time, so pointing out that the palestinians are the descendants of the indigenous hebrews doesn't imply there wasn't arab inflow, or that it hasn't affected phenotypes.

jesus would not have looked like a british person either, but demanding that jesus look like an arab is like demanding that pocahontas be white: you're applying the characteristics of a colonizing force to the group that lived in the region before hand, and it is just plain out historically wrong.