Did Jesus Have Blue Eyes and Blond Hair?

One common narrative that is pushed by Christian Identitarians, as well as other Christians, is the idea that Jesus was described as White in various verses and historical documents. Are these at all accurate or reliable though? Today we will examine these claims and their sources.

One of the most common arguments you will see is the idea that Jesus is accurately described as a White Man in Revelation 1, wherein John is said to have had a vision of Jesus Christ. The section in question goes something like this; "10 On the Lord’s Day I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet, 11 which said: “Write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea.” 12 I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, 13 and among the lampstands was someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. 14 The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. 15 His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. 16 In his right hand he held seven stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance." -Revelation 1:10-16

Now most folks who take this as a description of Jesus' physical characteristics will go on to state that because his hair was "white as wool" that he somehow had blond hair, even though the verse clearly says "white". Also, the description of having "eyes like flames" is often taken as meaning that Jesus had blue eyes, because flames, afterall, are blue right?

Blue flames are almost exclusively a modern phenomena and would have been very rare in the time of Christ. Blue flames are almost exclusively produced by burning gases and not the flames produced by various firewoods, coals, or charcoal. There were no such gas flames in the time of Christ save, for perhaps oil lamps. But even this isn't the normality, and it certainly leaves the verse vague and ambiguous as to what aspects of a flame are being described. Clearly, the verse just says "like blazing flames", it doesn't say "blue like fire from [insert a very specific source that might produce blue flames]", it simply say "like blazing fire", which may or may not even mean that they looked like flames specifically, they could have just been intensely bright and orange like flames.

Another part of this vision describes how his feet were like "polished bronze", but what exactly would that look like? Bronze is a blend of copper and tin, as well as other metals on occasion, which produces a light golden-copper look.

We can see here that polished bronze doesn't look like the skin of a White Man's feet, nor does it really look like any other color of skin from any other race. If it were describing the color of his skin, and if he was a White man, why not use something that is white? Why not say that his feet were white like wool, an analogy shared earlier in Revelation 1, perhaps refined salt, milk, snow, or any other naturally occurring white item?

Another explanation is that some have come to interpret the word used to describe "bronze" in Revelation 1:15, Strong's 5474 "chalkolibanon", as possibly meaning "White Bronze" or "White Brass". This comes from the idea that the word "chalkolibanon" seems to be a combination of two other words, "chalkos", meaning "brass" or "bronze", as well as "libanos", which comes from the Hebrew "laban", meaning "White". It is worth noting that this word has been subject of much interpretation and the exact meaning is not known, as it is only found twice in the Bible. But assuming this is an accurate interpretation of the word "chalkolibanon", let's look further into what this means.

When you use a website called "Biblehub", you can pull up explanations, concordances, as well as commentary of verses from the Bible, and when further researching this term we find the following explanation;

"And his feet like unto fine brass - Compare Daniel 10:6, "And his arms and his feet like in color to polished brass." See also Ezekiel 1:7, "and they" (the feet of the living creatures) "sparkled like the color of burnished brass." The word used here - χαλκολιβάνω chalkolibanō - occurs in the New Testament only here and in Revelation 2:18. It is not found in the Septuagint. The word properly means "white brass" (probably compounded of χαλκός chalkos, brass, and λίβανος libanos, whiteness, from the Hebrew לבן laban, white). Others regard it as from χαλκός chalkos, brass, and λιπαρόν liparon, clear. The metal referred to was undoubtedly a species of brass distinguished for its clearness or whiteness. Brass is a compound metal, composed of copper and zinc. The color varies much according to the different proportions of the various ingredients. The Vulgate here renders the word "aurichalcum," a mixture of gold and of brass - perhaps the same as the ἠλεκτρον ēlektron - the electrum of the ancients, composed of gold and of silver, usually in the proportion of four parts gold and one part silver, and distinguished for its brilliancy. See Robinson, Lexicon, and Wetstein, in loco. The kind of metal here referred to, however, would seem to be some compound of brass - of a whitish and brilliant color. The exact proportion of the ingredients in the metal here referred to cannot now be determined. As if they burned in a furnace - That is, his feet were so bright that they seemed to be like a beautiful metal glowing intensely in the midst of a furnace. Anyone who has looked upon the dazzling and almost insupportable brilliancy of metal in a furnace, can form an idea of the image here presented."

This explanation offers two possible interpretations. One, that his feet were glowing brightly like molten brass or bronze, or that his feet were silver, like a sort of highly polished white metal, which would only mean that hos feet had a mirror shine to them, like polished chrome or a similar white metal.

It is also worth noting that "White metal" does not mean the metal is White like a blank piece of paper, and it certainly does not mean that the color is akin to that of an Aryan man's flesh. The term "White metal" denotes any metal that is silver in color, such as tin, lead, zinc, silver, etc. This is not the color of a White Man's skin.

The story continues on to describe him as having a "double edged sword protruding from his mouth", as well as having said that his voice was like "rushing waters". Are these any sort of realistic descriptions of anybody who possesses normal physical features? No. That's because this vision John had is not describing such things. It is describing a god-man who had proceeded to heaven. It is a fantastical and unearthly description that John had in a vision. If it were a realistic description then what does the large, double edged sword represent? That he had a huge blade-like tongue? And what of the voice like rushing waters? Did he just sound like a river when he opened his mouth?

So what of other sources that describe Jesus as White? We have other letters that are often cited by Christians that would otherwise prove that Jesus was White. We have the famed "Letter from Pontius Pilate to Tiberius Caesar", which describes Jesus as having European features. But this letter is the product of a forgery. The letter in question is said to be held in the Library of Congress, however, they do not have such a letter and they even issued an announcement due to many requests for this letter, which reads; "The Library of Congress has received a number of inquiries over the years about a purported letter from Pontius Pilate to Tiberius Caesar concerning Jesus Christ. The Library does not have such a letter in its collections".

The letter in question is initially mentioned in William Dennes Mahan's "The Archko Volume: The Archeological Writings of the Sanhedrin and Talmuds of the Jews" (which itself also contains many subjects of "evidence" that are dragged out by Christian Identitarians and the like). The main issue with this is that the author was a huckster who made many false claims. A Wikipedia entry describes the fallacious nature of his works as follows; "The Archko Volume included an expanded version of "Pilate's Court" plus a series of other texts that he claimed to have obtained himself in a visit to Rome and Constantinople and translated with the aid of Dr. M. McIntosh of Scotland and Dr. Twyman of England, also otherwise unheard of. These texts include interviews with the shepherds, Gamaliel's interview with Joseph and Mary, Caiaphas's reports to the Sanhedrin, Eli's story of the Magi, Herod Antipater's defense before the Senate for the Massacre of the Innocents, and Herod Antipas's defense before the Senate—all with the claim that they were copied from ancient manuscripts and translated into English.

The texts are otherwise unknown to scholarship, and the volume contains various inconsistencies. It quotes an unknown Greek philosopher, "Meeleesen", and includes references to Josephus that do not exist. It mistakenly asserts that Philo spoke often of Jesus and that "the scribes of those days were most all Rabbis." There are inaccurate descriptions of the library of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, the making of papyrus, and an inaccurate chronology for both Philo and Tacitus. Contemporaries raised the question of whether Mahan could have possibly made the trip to Rome and Constantinople in less than two months. Most tellingly, large portions of "Eli and the Story of the Magi" were copied verbatim from the 1880 novel Ben-Hur. At one point, a strange word reveals that a single line of the printed text of Ben-Hur was accidentally omitted during copying."

The page for William Dennes Mahan continues to a section that describes his exposure as a fraud and the resulting trial.

" In Rome, Curtis investigated Mahan's claims and declared the manuscript spurious and the alleged translation a forgery.

Mahan denied all the charges against him and asserted the truth of what he had written. He was summoned before church authorities in September 1885 on charges of falsehood and plagiarism, and a church trial was held. The New Lebanon Presbytery, of which he was a member, tried the case at length.

Evidence was introduced to show that Mahan had never been to Rome, but that he had spent the time he was absent from Boonville on a farm in Illinois. The editor of the Boonville Advertiser showed that the letters that paper had printed were postmarked from a small town in Illinois. Mahan rebutted the evidence by saying that they had been sent there to be re-mailed. Additional evidence that Mahan had not traveled to Rome included a letter from Father Ehrie, prefect of the Vatican Library. Ehrie stated that Mahan was entirely unknown there and that no person connected with the library had ever seen or heard of the "Acta Pilati" or any such manuscript."

So there you have it. The Letter from Pontius Pilate was a forgery that never existed, and "The Archko Volume" is a book of disgusting lies and perverse fabrications of historical accounts.

So what of similar letters that are brought up?

Well, there's a letter from Publius Lentullus that is often cited, wherein Jesus is described as a European man, but this too is a forgery that was written sometime between the 11th and 15th century, and was written in a dialect of Latin not used during the times of Jesus' supposed life. This letter was widely known to be a forgery prior to the American Civil War, but later got passed around as truth, which many Christians fall for to this day. It too is a blatant forgery.

Whenever a Christian presents such "historical documents" as evidence for Jesus' appearance, always look into the legitimacy of these sources. I have yet to find one that is actually genuine. Yet Christians continue to drag out these forgeries and present them to the world.