Cheesey is absolutely right. Jesus must have been black. Jews of the time were so dark, contemporary Roman historians (Pliny and the like) speculated that they must have come from Africa. Which they did, of course; they surely intermarried with Egyptians during their 400-year sojourn there. Actually, the Bible hints at just such a reality. In Revelation 1:13-15, Jesus' hair is described as resembling wool (nappy!) and his skin as burned bronze (deep black).
Actually, until the time of Michaelangelo, most paintings and sculptures of the Madonna and Child depicted them as black. (Search "Black Madonna" for more details.) Michaelangelo's career coincided with the development of an undercurrent of white supremacist sentiment of Europe, and it became fashionable to portray Jesus and his relatives as white. Napoleon hated the black depictions of the Madonnas and Jesus so much that he apparently ordered them destroyed across Europe. Many specimens still survive, however, particularly in Hungary and Poland.
Actually, the depictions of Jesus that make him resemble a skinny hippie in the latter stages of tuberculosis are illogical. According to the gospels, Jesus was a carpenter. (Actually, scholars believe the Greek word is better translated "stone carver," which makes sense, considering there were few trees in Palestine at that time.) He was a man who worked with his hands; so he must have been quite strong.
The fact that Jesus retained enough strength after his brutal flogging by the Roman soldiers is proof of his physical toughness; most prisoners were not flogged prior to crucifixion because so many people died under the whip (cat-o'-nine-tails tended to have pieces of lead fastened to the ends of the lashes). After the flogging, the skin of his back would have been hanging in ribbons, his bones probably would have been showing -- and to complete the indignity, the soldiers clad him in a scarlet robe (probably made of silk), which would have clung to the clotting wounds and torn off the skin as it was later removed. Still, he was able to carry the
patibulum (crossbeam), which probably weighed in excess of 200 lbs, to the hill on which he was crucified, and he still survived about nine hours on the cross.
Western art doesn't give Jesus enough credit in my opinion. He was one of the toughest men in history. In contrast to the nice Jesus we've grown accustomed to seeing, the guy was probably HUGE.
