Thanks to Matt Page for catching the fact that Color of the Cross, the “black Jesus” movie I mentioned here last month, now has a website and a trailer, and is scheduled to be released some time in October (as per the poster) or November (as per the trailer).
Matt has already made just about every comment that I would be inclined to make, so go read his post; but in the meantime, I will add just a couple of supplementary points.
First, while the website claims that “the Bible describes Jesus’ hair as ‘wooly’ in texture”, the versions of Revelation 1:14 that I have read emphasize the colour of his hair there, not the texture.
Second, there is no reason to assume Jesus was black because his family hid in Egypt for a while; that region was full of Jews and Gentiles, and indeed the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures, was created in the Egyptian city of Alexandria.
Third, if “Basheeba” is another name for David’s wife Bathsheba — and I have no idea who else it could be referring to — then I have no idea where they get the claim that she was African. II Samuel 11:3 says she was the daughter of Eliam, and the only other reference to an Eliam in the Bible is a reference to “Eliam son of Ahithophel the Gilonite” in II Samuel 23‘s list of David’s top warriors. And, hmmm, note that Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah the Hittite, was also one of those top warriors — and that Ahithophel the Gilonite was one of the conspirators against David during Absalom’s attempted coup d’etat in II Samuel 15-17. One might surmise that Ahithophel turned against David precisely because of the way David had treated his granddaughter and her husband. But I digress. The point is, I see no basis in any of this to believe that Bathsheba or her relatives were not Middle Eastern.
Like Matt says, I think it can be great to see the life and teachings of Jesus re-imagined and re-contextualized in new settings — modern, black, whatever — hence I am rather looking forward to the South African film Son of Man. But once artists become ploddingly literalistic about their re-imaginings, and once they make a point of basing their films on extremely dubious historical claims, they hinder whatever merits their films might have.
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