I doubt Jesus looked like the standard depictions of him. For the first five hundred years of Christianity, Jesus (in art) was depicted as beardless.

That's why I always found the Shroud of Turin arguments pointless. We have no clue what Jesus looked like, so why assume he looked like the traditional portraits of him?

In fact, who knows what many of the early Christian leaders looked like?

St. Augustine was in all likelihood a black man. He was born in Carthage along the coast of North Africa, in the days before the Arab conquest of that region.

As for Black Jesus, I will have to see what the message is.

If it's like Randy suggested, that Jesus was persecuted by the Romans because of his skin color, that would be completely bogus. If it's done matter-of-factly, where the message is that it shouldn't matter what Jesus looked like, that the story of Jesus and his disciples is a universal human story, then I'm all for it.

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"The Gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us." - King Lear

I'm disappointed that the options didn't include "swarthy" in the poll. I think Jesus was probably swarthy.