02 January 2014
By Saeed Qureshi To claim or believe that Jesus of
Nazareth had a white pigment is factually and
fundamentally untrue. Jesus was born in Bethlehem of
Judea in the days of King Herod. According to Saint
Luke, one of the gospel writers, Joseph the future
adoptive father of Jesus went up from Galilee out of
the city Nazareth into Judea. Joseph was engaged with
the mother of Jesus Mary and would visit here from
time to time. But to believe that Jesus was a
white person born in a frigid or cold climate or
region is totally devoid of truth. The land of
Palestine including Jerusalem, the Galilee, the Judea,
the Bethlehem have Mediterranean climate which is warm
or moderate than being cold most of the year. So the
portrayal of Jesus born in snow clad climate is
factually incorrect. The birth date of Jesus being
December 25 is as controversial and obscure as several
other events related to his life. Some writers
projected his birth in the month of June which is hot
and humid. He was also a Jew and at the same time
ethnically an Arab for having been born in the Middle
East. The people living in the Middle East
and even in the upper reaches of the Arabian Peninsula
touching peripheral towns along the Mediterranean
coast have fair to brown skin. As such for the
Christian believers it is sheer passion or fantasy
that they try to paint the life of Jesus as if he was
born in the winter and in extremely cold part of the
year which could be only in Europe or North America. The display of sleighs descending
from the heaven with Santa and the with flakes of
heavy snow falling around carries the depiction of
regions closer to the North pole or at best of these
areas that are covered with snow during the winter.
Then the roaming of the deer and antelopes in woods
with pine trees in a sort of blissful aura all around,
is entirely romantic and far from reality. It
demonstrates a kind of propensity to show Jesus as the
dweller of the cold region and that his birth took
place in the snowy and freezing part of the year. At the age of 30 Jesus was baptized
by his cousin John in the river Jordan to be formally
proclaimed as a Jew. His preaching or ministry lasted
for three years from his age of 30 CE to 33CE. In 33
CE he was sentenced to death by a Roman governor
Pontius Pilate, against trumped charges of blasphemy,
calling him the Son of God and not paying taxes,
leveled against him by Jewish priests and Pharisees. Jesus is a redeemer, Messiah and
anointed son of God for Christians, He is a promised
Messiah also for Muslims and a prophet but not son of
God. Muslims venerate him specially for being the
prophet with a book (bible) with three other prophets
namely Moses, David, and Muhammad. However for Jews he
was an apostate, a blasphemer to the Jewish religion
and not the real promised Messiah. All the dates from the birth of
Jesus Christ to his hanging at the stake on the order
of the Roman governor Pilate, his entombment for three
days and his ascension and reappearance all lack
credibility and factuality. The reason for fallacious
dates and not credible chronology is understandable as
there were no foolproof methods during those primitive
times for recording events in with authenticity.
Especially the gospels or four accounts of New
Testament or Greek bible were written by their
respective authors many years after the death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ. The journeying of his mother and his
perceived father Joseph to Bethlehem was out of fear
due to severe penalty from the fanatic Jews, Pharisees
or rabbis who would take the birth of a child from a
virgin mother, only betrothed to a man but still not
married as sin. According to the New Testament, Mary
was found to be pregnant, although she had not lived
with Joseph, to whom she was engaged and that he did
not have marital relations with her before the child
was born. According to the Jewish tradition of those
times, the girls were betrothed around the age of
twelve or twelve and a half. During the betrothal period, which
would last about a year, the marriage was not
finalized and the bride remained in her parent's
house. Perhaps it was during this period that the
pregnancy took place which we learn from gospels that
it was due to the divine design through the Holy
Spirit. But this contention is subject to contest as
pointed out by Stephen L Harris, who proposed that the
accounts of Matthew and Luke were written to answer
Jewish slanders about Jesus' illegitimate birth. St
Paul a prominent protagonist of Jesus and successor of
Paul was also silent on the virginity as implying that
he knew of no account of the virgin birth of Jesus. It can be argued that a young woman
who was still not properly married and was not
religiously authorized to have sexual relations with
her betrothed husband could have no other reason
except to interpret the birth of Jesus as miraculous
and through the Holy Spirit. It could be the only
plausible way to deflect the fierce and unforgiving
reaction and corresponding punishment from the Jewish
religious authorities. In those rigid religious Jewish
codes, the only explanation that could be offered was
that the child was conceived in the womb of the mother
by God through the Holy Spirit. That answer or explanation might
have pacified the Jewish priests and they kept silent
almost for 30 years. But the people around Jesus and
his parents must be having apprehensions and rather
the family might have remained under a stigma attached
with the pre-marital birth of Jesus. Yet for all these
30 years we do not read any account or story that
pertains to the shame or ignominy associated with such
grave social digression till Jesus started his
ministry and publicly declared him as the Son of God. It was only after Jesus began
challenging the Jewish social misconduct, religious
traditions and deviation from Torah that the Jewish
religious zealots turned against him. It was at a much
later stage that the question of Jesus being born Son
of God was trumped up. But the history is silent on
this highly sensitive issue as the Jewish rabbis took
a stand against Jesus not for being an illegitimate
child but for other two reasons. One was that he
called himself a king and refused to pay taxes. The
second charge was that he was calling himself the son
of God. Quite some time after the birth of
Jesus, Joseph along with his wife Mary and son (later
Jesus) flees to Egypt where he stays till the death of
Herod. Thereafter, he returns to Nazareth where the
family settles down. It was perhaps their absence from
Nazareth and Jerusalem for a long time that we don't
find any detailed mention about the family. The Greek scripture or the New
Testament that is the story of the Jesus Christ and
formation of Christianity was not written during the
life time of Jesus but in later periods by many
writers including the four early apostles, namely
Matthew, Luke, John and Mark. But these gospels differ
in many ways in contents and chronology from each
other. The time difference between Mark the first
writer and John the last of the four main writers, is
between 50 t0 70 years. The later writers copied
heavily from Mark by adding some more details of the
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