Let’s get one thing straight. If Jesus were the darkest hue of black pigmentation I would love him no less.
But anyone who studies antiquity knows that ancient Israelite and northern Africans were caucasians, or minimally speaking, of lighter skin pigmentation.
If they weren’t such, the Roman and Greek historians documenting the time period would have told us. They didn’t.
1 : of or relating to the Caucasus or its inhabitants were forced to leave their Caucasian homeland
2 : of or relating to a group of people having European ancestry, classified according to physical traits (such as light skin pigmentation), and formerly considered to constitute a race (see race entry 1 sense 1a) of humans
How did the Persians document them? They fought WITH Persia and against Rome and Greece.
" First introduced in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen school of history,[b] the term denoted one of three purported major races of humankind (those three being Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid).[12] In biological anthropology, Caucasoid has been used as an umbrella term for phenotypically similar groups from these different regions, with a focus on skeletal anatomy, and especially cranial morphology, without regard to skin tone.[13] Ancient and modern “Caucasoid” populations were thus not exclusively “white”, but ranged in complexion from white-skinned to dark brown.[14]
Since the second half of the 20th century, physical anthropologists have moved away from a typological understanding of human biological diversity towards a genomic and population-based perspective, and have tended to understand race as a social classification of humans based on phenotype and ancestry as well as cultural factors, as the concept is also understood in the social sciences.[15]
Ah, the proverbial conservative response of “nuh-uh.” Despite your vast study into antiquities, as with many subjects, reality doesn’t agree with you. Once you used “Caucasian” you lost. You just didn’t know it.
We all have our passion projects and interests. Mine, for 30 years, has been the evolution of the Bible…not so much Old Testament. As you can imagine, one can spend several lifetimes on even a minuscule range on this topic and just scratch the surface. But, you do pick up anecdotes at that are easy to recall, like ancient Israelites being nothing but Canaanites who thought themselves special. Also, Israelis are modern citizens of Israel (which can be of any ethnicity) while Israelites refer to what the Hebrew Bible lists as descendants of Jacob.
The notion that Israelites looked more like Tom Brady than Osama is absolutely ridiculous