You asked: Does the book of urantia have any hard facts on Joshua Joseph aka jesus being of reddish complexion?
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Thanks so much for your note about Jesus’ appearance.
The Urantia Book does not describe Jesus’ complexion. It does however, briefly provide hard facts about the physical and racial characteristics of his earth parents – Mary and Joseph:
122:1.1 Joseph, the human father of Jesus (Joshua ben Joseph), was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, albeit he carried many non-Jewish racial strains which had been added to his ancestral tree from time to time by the female lines of his progenitors. The ancestry of the father of Jesus went back to the days of Abraham and through this venerable patriarch to the earlier lines of inheritance leading to the Sumerians and Nodites and, through the southern tribes of the ancient blue man, to Andon and Fonta. David and Solomon were not in the direct line of Joseph’s ancestry, neither did Joseph’s lineage go directly back to Adam. Joseph’s immediate ancestors were mechanics—builders, carpenters, masons, and smiths. Joseph himself was a carpenter and later a contractor. His family belonged to a long and illustrious line of the nobility of the common people, accentuated ever and anon by the appearance of unusual individuals who had distinguished themselves in connection with the evolution of religion on Urantia.
Mary, the earth mother of Jesus, was a descendant of a long line of unique ancestors embracing many of the most remarkable women in the racial history of Urantia. Although Mary was an average woman of her day and generation, possessing a fairly normal temperament, she reckoned among her ancestors such well-known women as Annon, Tamar, Ruth, Bathsheba, Ansie, Cloa, Eve, Enta, and Ratta. No Jewish woman of that day had a more illustrious lineage of common progenitors or one extending back to more auspicious beginnings. Mary’s ancestry, like Joseph’s, was characterized by the predominance of strong but average individuals, relieved now and then by numerous outstanding personalities in the march of civilization and the progressive evolution of religion. Racially considered, it is hardly proper to regard Mary as a Jewess. In culture and belief she was a Jew, but in hereditary endowment she was more a composite of Syrian, Hittite, Phoenician, Greek, and Egyptian stocks, her racial inheritance being more general than that of Joseph.
122:5.5 “Joseph was a black-eyed brunet; Mary, a brown-eyed well-nigh blond type.”
So from this we might assume that Jesus probably had brown or black eyes, from his father’s and his mother’s side; and he might have had brown or black hair – or even blond hair like his mother.
He might have had a ruddy complexion like that of some modern-day dwellers in the region of Jerusalem – but then he might have had a lighter complexion as that seen in lighter-haired people, owing to his mother’s heritage. Since he lived so much in the out-of-doors, he likely developed a reddish, sun-bronzed appearance over time. But, it’s really just impossible to know for sure. But we do know he was a very manly man…physically rugged and strong as a result of his work as a fisherman, a carpenter, and a boatbuilder:
“…red-blooded, rugged Galilean fishermen called him Master.”
Over the centuries, artists have struggled to portray Jesus, although a lot of those attempts were not very good at all. The book tells us that
141:3.6 The pictures of Jesus have been most unfortunate. These paintings of the Christ have exerted a deleterious influence on youth; the temple merchants would hardly have fled before Jesus if he had been such a man as your artists usually have depicted. His was a dignified manhood; he was good, but natural. Jesus did not pose as a mild, sweet, gentle, and kindly mystic. His teaching was thrillingly dynamic. He not only meant well, but he went about actually doing good.
We have two new galleries of Jesus images on our site that you might like to see. Some of the paintings are older and more familiar, but most of these are new paintings, many commissioned for our recent book called “The Untold Story of Jesus: a Modern biography from The Urantia Book.”
See the galleries HERE (newly commissioned for the book), and HERE
When artists who love Jesus attempt to capture his essence in a painting, it says far more about them and their devotion to Jesus than it does about what Jesus really looked like. No one knows what Jesus really looked like. But I hope you might enjoy seeing how some of these modern artists interpret the Master.
Thanks again for writing.
