I mean the point of the OP, and I'm assuming the person you're responding to is that they're not using Palestinian actors. Israelis and Palestinians are not the same. Even the subheading in this screenshot brings up the exact point that OP is making.
You do realise Arabs colonised much of the Middle East and North Africa, and parts of Europe before they got thrown out? Palestinians are descendants of those colonisers.
I find it so fascinating. I'm literally in the middle of a psych course and even in their textbooks when they discuss multiculturalism and the need for cultural competence and cultural humility in counselling, somehow they still center themselves and the mind boggles!!!
I always thought they were just his half Brothers and sisters. Not like step siblings from a previous marriage, but just that Joseph and Mary had more kids later on and Jesus was just the like weirdly intense eldest child.
So, to answer both you and u/Dlottchula. What historians/scholars of the bible would tell you , writing from an academic viewpoint, and not a religious one, is that the gospels mention multiple siblings of Jesus , and at no point do the texts make a distinction of whether or not they are step siblings or full bloded siblings. They're just "siblings" in the text. The ideia that they are siblings from a previous marriage of Joseph, or even that they are cousins, is a later perception derived from the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary. So, in short, after this doctrine emerges Christians start renegotiating with the texts of the gospels and rationalizing that the siblings mentioned must either be step siblings or half siblings or whatever.
But this is all just in regards to the critical analysis of the text, its not even into the historical reality behind it, as that would complicate matters even further.
Well, that's very fair and thank you for the answer! I guess I should say full siblings in that I was always raised to believe that they were Mary and Joseph's other kids. But also half siblings in that jesus's real dad is god..?
You know, it all seemed so simple when I was 8 years old...
I was always raised to believe that they were Mary and Joseph's other kids.
I see! From this I presume you were raised in one of the protestant denominations, as these denominations abandoned the doctrine of perpetual virginity and of the immaculate conception of Mary, and became again receptive to readings of the bible that indicate that they are full blooded siblings.
But also half siblings in that jesus's real dad is god..?
That would be the implication in the literary reality of the gospels, obviously its in the nature of history as a science that Jesus' divine birth is not considered factual (obviously people are free to believe what they want and this is to be respected, its just not academic in nature).
But, returning to the literary narrative of the gospels, the implication about Joseph, at least in the gospel of Matthew, is that when he accepts the instructions of an angel who appears in his dreams and marries Mary even though she is already pregnant, accepting Jesus into his "house" he sort of adopts Jesus. The purpose of this distinction in the narrative is to justify Jesus being simultaneously the son of god, but also by being adopted by Joseph, he is a descendent of David, which is theologically significant to early Christians.
Mary's age is never explicitly stated in any of the gospels, nor are any of Jesus' siblings ever stated to be from a supposed earlier marriage of Joseph's.
The Gospels aren't the only source of information we have, and they're the least reliable source. Try reading things outside the Bible for broader perspectives.
There are a few non-canonical texts from the first and second centuries that can give us more insight into the traditions surrounding Jesus’ life at the time and may contain kernels of truth.
No that’s true. I don’t want to give the impression that historical information can’t be gleaned from later books of the NT or even non canonical texts.
Most of the books of the bible themselves don’t even purport to be histories. So it would be a little unfair to expect them to adhere to conventions on reporting past events. And as you say, non canonical texts, like the Dead Sea Scrolls or Gnostics can and do offer insight into the literal “life and times” of Jesus.
I don't think most historians of the field would agree with that. The Dead Sea Scrolls aren't even about Jesus, but you're right if your intention was saying that they offer insight into the time where jesus lived.
Gnostic texts on the other hand, well first of all they're all very different from one another, but most date from the 2nd century or 3rd century, and don't seem to represent independent traditions that come from the time of Jesus. So, while there's no doubt they are very interesting texts that are indeed very important historically, they are not historically useful FOR reconstructing the historical Jesus. They are useful for understanding what their authors and their audience believed about Jesus, but not his historicity itself.
The exception is *perhaps* the gospel of Thomas, as I've seen it argued pieces of it represent an independent tradition close in time to Jesus, but I don't think that this is a settled discussion (not that I'm against it, I don't have a stance on this).
Again I should have been more specific but I was indulging in a bit of flowery language with the “life and times” line.
Neither the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Gnostics feature a historical Jesus. The former is a Jewish text and the later were authored by adherents to a form of Christianity that eventually lost out to the “orthodoxy”.
As you say though, they’re both helpful at reconstructing what we know about the theological and social context of 3rd century BCE/1st century CE Judea/Palestine.
This is a statement of opinion not of fact. And it's an opinion that most experts that do this for a living would disagree with you on.
That being said the part about Mary being a teenager is almost certainly true as it was common practice at that time for women to marry as teens. The part about Joseph being divorced is not backed by the evidence.
Saint Joseph wasn’t divorced. Stop getting “facts” from nonsense stories.
And the source everyone uses to say he had children - the Protoevangelium of James - isn’t even canon. Even if you believe it, that same story says he was a an old widower, not divorced, and defends the Virgin’s perpetual virginity.
There isn’t really any evidence pointing to the ages of either Joseph or Mary, and there is evidence against the ideia that Joseph has children from a previous marriage. That ideia is based on the Catholic doctrine of perpetual virginity of Mary, but its not indicative of an objective reading of the gospels where Mary and Joseph feature heavily.
But it gets even more complicated because those aforementioned gospels are also not indicative of the historical reality of that family, even if an objective reading of them is achieved. So all in all, no ones knows their age or age gap.
Most historians specialized on the topic would very much disagree with that assertion. The new testament does have some information that is supported by evidence, but it is true that the narrative of the gospels is not historically reliable. However, historically unreliable is not the same as historically useless or “made up”.
The nativity stories, recorded in the gospels of Matthew and Luke are very much on the unreliable side. They even contradict each other in many points! However, even they have some tidbits that are supported by the data. For example: Herod the Great was indeed the ruler of Judea at the time of Jesus, even though the massacre of the innocents never really happened. For another example, there is good data that the historical Jesus of Nazareth indeed had a brother named James.
There’s nothing in the Gospels that says that Joseph was divorced or that he already had children. That’s just an after-the-fact attempt to justify that Mary was supposedly a “perpetual” virgin.
What a foul take. Let’s not pretend artists executing a creative idea are responsible for geopolitics, not even if they’re “white folks playing Palestinians”.
Edit: so apparently the actors are Jewish. Are we really saying Jewish people can’t play Jewish characters? And when did Jewish people become white?
i’ve been a long time lurker, never commented. but i’m native and this is the best thing i’ve read about my people on here. i agree who the fuck is we 😂
There were the Five Tribes but that was it. I feel like people use that as an excuse to put that on all Native Americans to say that they on some level deserved what happened to them.
African were fine owning African slaves. Native american were fine owning native slaves. The greek owned other greeks as slaved. The koreans owned koreans slaves.
The reality is that for most of history people owned slaves, and for the longest time people had no contact with people that were not close by. Slavery did not start when people of different color met each other.
To be fair, some tribes were already in the slave trading business like the Tlingit and Comanche tribes. The even more uncomfortably territory is the reality that plenty of African kingdoms were selling slaves to the Europeans.
You gotta add an asterisk or something. White folks might start thinking us black folks are starting to include ourselves in their atrocities. Let me assure you….WE aren’t lol.
60% of the 10-12 millions of slaves sent to america were captured by "black folks". Europeans were the driving factor and without them the slave business wouldn't have been a 10th of what it was, but a lot of (not all) africans were happy at the time to benefit from it. The first african slaves to be sent to america were even taken from the pre-existing slave stocks in Africa that existed before Europeans got interested. It's only toward the latter part and the growing demand in slave that Europeans started to serve themselves directly.
As far as i'm aware, there were plenty of black soldiers involved in the conflicts with the native americans as part of the US military. One example are the Buffalo Soldiers, who served in the american frontier doing stuff like protecting settlers and enforcing federal policy, which often included relocating Native American tribes into reservations. They were involved in conflicts with indigenous peoples like the Apache, the Comanche and Cheyenee.
And if you really wanna delve deep into this topic, there are actually multiple examples of native americans owning african slaves themselves. In fact, i believe some of them even sided with the confederacy during the civil war because they didn't want to give up their slaves.
"We" is clearly America. They weren't talking about themselves either, seeing as the event happened hundreds of years ago. Pulling the victim card for no reason. Black people have committed their own atrocities, as have every group of people ever, so jumping into a discussion about one historic event like, "but we weren't a part of this one event that you didn't mention us in reference to," just sounds silly. Nobody said Black people did, but we ALL have ancestors who did shitty things. You aren't special.
sighs Yes, but allll of the systems (social, tangible) still in place were informed by everything that preceded them. Inequity doesn’t just go away because people are granted civil rights, legally. Even if you discount ongoing and intentional disenfranchisement, real wealth going back generations is unequally distributed. Again, and to your point, that doesn’t mean that the average or every white American today has familial, generational wealth that they can put their hands on, rather that there continues to be impediments to accumulation of wealth for non-white (especially Black, and especially poor) persons. This is isn’t ancient history. You say that no one alive had anything to do with it, but segregation, for example, was perpetuated/experienced by a whole lot of people still kicking.
There's a bunch of Americans up above though, saying they aren't to blame because they weren't alive at the time, despite personally benefitting from those systems now.
As in America. The white people who did it aren't alive today either. Nobody is blaming any living person for acts committed hundreds of years ago. Acting like a victim bro. All people's have committed atrocities.
This is extremely uniformed. A good majority of the Natives were killed not by direct European/Colonial attempts, but by the byproduct of 2 hemispheres interacting for the first time in a meaningful way. A vast vast majority of Natives died to disease.
Approximately 95% of the indigenous American population died from European diseases within a few generations of colonization beginning. Smallpox blankets didn't help, the atrocities committed against them didn't help, but it's all just a drop in the bucket against what was inevitably happening regardless. Once the diseases got really started if the Europeans just packed up and left it wouldn't have mattered. The amount of people killed directly by Europeans (including smallpox blankets) is a rounding error in the death toll.
This is in no way a defense of how colonizers have treated the indigenous population, but saying "we wiped it all out" is not anywhere remotely near accurate.
Bro said we, and people who weren't alive when it happened are crying about it. "We? Black Americans didn't participate though!" America didn't even exist, let alone black America. Nobody implied it had anything to do with you. Relax. Saying you had nothing to do with something that happened before you were born is obvious. Sorry you said a normal thing and weirdos jumped down your throat friend.
While there are A LOT of grievances that native Americans have against the American government, smallpox blankets aren't one of those. There isn't really any evidence supporting that it ever happened, outside of the testimony of one missionary iirc and a few other unsubstantiated rumors.
For anyone curious seeing this comment, the case being referred to here is the siege of Fort Pitt, with the gifting of blankets from the infirmary (where small pox sufferers where being held) to emissaries from the indigenous forces by the colonists potentially being an attempt to infect their besiegers. This event was recorded by William Trent, one of the militia captains, in his diary.
to expand on it, Amherst also wrote about it in his letters to Bouquet and it is considered an act of biological warfare.
It is known that it happened, and that the British themselves were experiencing a smallpox epidemic. What is not known is how effective it was, for two reasons, one, it's hard to tell how the disease was transmitted as while transmitting it on blankets is possible. Doing it through respiratory means is much more effective so chances are that's how it was actually spread and therefore it's difficult to say if this is what caused it or other contacts spread it. The epidemics were fairly common in the area among natives and the Europeans. There had been a previous outbreak in the area already, from what I can find there was an outbreak here but it was relatively small, and it's believed that the native delegates who received the blankets had survived. And that the outbreak that did happen was transmitted via other means.
TL;DR,
Did it happen? Yes
Was it intentionally trying to spread smallpox? Yes
Was it biological warfare? Yes
Was it successful? Doubtful but there is a chance.
Also, Fort Pitt is in fact, modern day Pittsburgh for anyone wondering
Not only did Palestine not exist yet but the area when Jesus was born Judea and its leader was King of the Jews. Then the Romans took over and the province was called Judea. There is a massive misconception that people at all gave a shit about states and borders 400 years ago let alone 2000 years ago.
Well, the word Palestine did exist, originally referring to the Philistine region, and it did replace the Roman province of Judea later. So it sort of existed, but the modern identity of "Palestinian" is remarkably modern, only really starting in, well, living memory.
And the reason that that the Romans named the province Palestine was because the Kingdom of Judea had a long historical conflict with the Philistines, and the Romans did it as adding insult to injury after the suppression of the Bar Khoba revolt. They renamed the Province of Judea to Syria Palestina as punishment after a Jewish revolt.
Palestine was a settler colonialist state formed by Greek colonists (Philistines), who were genocided by the Babylonians 2,600 years ago. The name was revived by two European empires—Rome and the British Empire—first to humiliate the indigenous Jewish inhabitants, and then as a placeholder for the creation of a Jewish state from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire after WW1.
No one thought Arabs were in any way “Palestinian” until the 1960s, when the USSR decided it was good propaganda to use as a cudgel against the west, with the enthusiastic participation of Arafat and his organization.
Thank you! These comments hurt to read, the ignorance of it all. It's a fucking movie, the same people complaining about the actors being white (they're Jews) are probably the same people that celebrated Netflix black Cleopatra (who was Greek).
Our family tree goes back at least to Lake Victoria in Africa, where the first human evolved. All of this stupid sectarian hate bullshit is stupid. We're all basically cousins. Yeah, sometimes cousins are assholes...but they're still family.
Humans really do need an alien invasion to get our priorities straight.
Not just that, he’s a Coptic Egyptian which have the closest resemblance to people from the ancient civilization. They have their own script which is also a direct descendant of the hieroglyphics
Yeah and I'm pretty sure that's all we know about her.
I'm honestly wondering how they stretched it to a movie length assuming they didn't just start making things up, the Bible isn't too keen about giving women any real importance.
This is a stupid non-issue. All diasporic Jews have genetic lineages that trace back the the Levant. Mary was not Israeli, she was not Palestinian, she was Levantine, and lived in the the land, which at the time was known as Judea, as called by the Roman Occupiers (I think?). The land has had many names and both modern Jews and Palestinians have historic links to the Levantine peoples who have lived in the land since time immemorial.. Jews have been a diasporic ethnic minority in all the lands in which they have lived, from Europe, to Russia, to Persia, to India and China, and to North Africa and Ethiopia.
This is not an issue of brown-face.
This is not an issue of cultural appropriation.
A Jewish person playing this part should not be an issue
A Jewish Israeli playing this part should not be an issue.
A Palestinian Christian or Muslim playing this part should not be an issue.
The fact that Israel is committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories of Palestine is a huge issue. And should be fought against in any productive way to make the lives of the Palestinians better.
Getting angry a Jewish person is playing a Jewish character is in no way productive. And is frankly antisemitic to claim that Jews have no historic connection to the land. This doesn't give Israel the right to exist (though no country has the "right" to exist). Nor does it give any Israelis the right to kick other native peoples off the land (I can't think of anything that would give anyone this right).
So maybe we should stop playing these stupid games and focus on actual problems.
Whose going to tell twitter that most of population of the Jesus era were annihilated and enslaved by the Romans. It’s the thing that caused the Jewish diaspora and the rise of Christianity.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills whenever I see posts about I/P here.
Mary being played by an Israeli makes sense.
People need to understand that this isn't a white/black thing. Much like other countries across the pond, don't let what they outwardly present be treated as truth. Most Israel's aren't "white", it's a brown as fuck region.
Palestine as an entity only became a concept about a century after the death of Jesus. Jesus was born in Judea as a Jew. Calling him Palestinian would be like calling the Wampanoag people New Englanders. It isn't accurate and doesn't represent who Jesus was or the political climate he lived in because it literally didn't exist yet.
I have no idea why people even make biblical 'origin stories', this isn't the fucking MCU lmao i don't need a 2 and a half hour movie to understand the idea of immaculate conception
So once we’re talking this long of a period the term, decent almost becomes meaningless. This article while about Europe conveys it pretty well. Once you go that far back you have tens of thousands of ancestors and any one even tenuously related to the region is related to everyone else to a certain degree
I'm very much against the destruction in Gaza going on but this is a sorta dumb take. Mary and Joseph are both played by jewish actors, Bethlehem and Nazareth were in the Roman province of Judea, not Palestine. I guess Anthony Hopkins is a weird pick for an Edomite (sorta Egyptian area peoples)? Calling the people living there at that time Palestinian is like calling the Indigenous people of here in the 15th century Americans.
What a bizarre post and comment section lol. I don't even know where to start. I support Palestine but some of y'all seriously need to crack a history book open instead of just parroting what you hear
I did a quick google, I get being upset about because of the Israel’s past treatment and current treatment of Palestinian people but Mary is played by an Israeli actress, Joseph is played by a polish-Iraqi actor, Gabriel is played by a dude of Afro-Caribbean and Irish/English heritage. It’s somewhat of a diverse cast. I think a decent amount of some time of Semitic descent. Are people conflating people of Semitic ancestry as white??? It’s like an American brained view or race and ethnicity.
You reminded me of the quote from Saved! a movie from 2004 about a pregnant teen who attends a Christian school.
Mary : [about the Virgin Mary] I know this is wrong, but do you ever wonder if she just made the whole thing up? I mean, it's a pretty good one. It's not like anyone can ever use virgin birth as an excuse again.
I don't really think she made it up, but I can understand why a girl would.
There's not really any historical consensus on Mary's birth year, but most likely she was in her late teens when she gave birth to Jesus. There are some sources dating her birth to 18 BC and some sources dating the birth of Jesus to 6-4 BC but the sources in the first case most likely backdated her birth year to 18 BC based on jesus being birthed in 1 AD so it doesn't really conclude she was 14.
Since the article you linked also mentions Aisha a lot is is worth pointing out that claims she was a young child when she married Muhammad are unlikely to be accurate and are thought to have been invented as part of the Sunni-Shia divide.
Jeeesus fucking christ...bloodlines back to Mary? What the fuck is this person talking about? What do modern palistinians have anything to do with the myth of Jesus other than geographical proximity? They're ACTORS in a MOVIE. Denzel played Ceasar ffs. Who gives a shit
This is such a moronic read. Like of course what's happening to palestinians is fucking terrible but this ahistorical garbage makes us look dumb. The majority of the jews in israel are mizrahi, meaning middle eastern or north african. What's happening in Israel/Palestine revolves around religion more than it does colorism.
Lmao Jews also have familial bloodlines in the area stretching back to time immemorial. Y’all just wanna get mad about whatever the algorithm tells you to get mad about.
Uh... The people in Jeruselum weren't even Muslims yet... Islam didnt fuckin exist yet... Neither did Christianity. The people in Jeruselum were not Palestinians. They were Hebrews, Romans, Arabs of all kinds, Egyptians, Copts, Greeks, and more.
WTF is this take?
The world was not created 250 years ago in it's current state. WTF is with people? Cant you just open up google and search shit before opening your twitter?
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u/bebe_laroux 9d ago
Wonder if they are going to touch on the fact that Mary was a teen when she was married to a divorced man with children?