21st March 2006, 4:17 PM
However, something that's interesting to note is that the middle east was much more racially diverse prior to the Arab wave of immigration in the 7th century. Arabs "semitized" a region that was, at the time, populated by a wide range of different peoples (anybody who's ever invaded anything usually ends up in the middle east) including a large number of Greek settlers that came first by boat, and then with Alexander's army. Something I recall reading is that redheads were common in places like Antioch (the capital of the Greek kingdom of Syria), where foreign settlement was most prominent. Now, Jesus assuredly wasn't one of those foreigners, but it's possible that imagining him as a lighter-skinned man wasn't that far-fetched in the early centuries of the church.
Stuff like that is pretty widespread around the Mediterranean - I myself had red hair when I was 2-3 years old, and my great-grandfather (from southern Italy, where most people are squat and olive-skinned) was a full-blown redhead.
Stuff like that is pretty widespread around the Mediterranean - I myself had red hair when I was 2-3 years old, and my great-grandfather (from southern Italy, where most people are squat and olive-skinned) was a full-blown redhead.