White actors always played Jesus, hypocritical?
Now the ''anti-woke'' brigade are crying into their Trump manuals because it's happening in reverse (which I find annoying anyway, btw). Lol
shareJesus was Jewish, many Jews have light skin and can pass for white. More recent portrayals have shown Jesus with tanned skin and nobody complained, not even the "anti-woke brigade".
Cleopatra was not sub-saharan African, and therefore not even remotely black. At best she might have had tanned skin, but it's not a stretch for her to have light skin, or wearing make-up that gave her a light-skinned appearance.
I doubt many Middle Eastern, Sephardic Jews of the time could pass for white.
shareI don't doubt at all that many could. Look at Danny Thomas, the entertainer and founder of Saint Jude's Children's Research Hospital. He was born Amos Muzyad Yaqoob Kairouz. He was born in Deerfield, Michigan, but both his parents were immigrants from Lebanon. They were Maronite Catholics, not Jewish, but Thomas looked very much like Christians, Jews, and Muslims from that part of the Middle East, and the population has not changed that much genetically since ancient times.
Thomas had light olive skin, black hair, and facial features common to Middle Easterners, but still, he fit right in in 1950s America, when close to 90% of the country was still white. He didn't look like a WASP, but his appearance wasn't that different either.
I think a lot of people, if they had to guess, would have thought -- because of the lightness of his skin -- that he was Ashkenazi Jewish. Or, perhaps, like Mike Conners, the fellow who played Mannix, Armenian. Danny Thomas looked "exotic," but you couldn't really nail him down. Sort of like Judge Jeanine, if my spellchecker has that right.
I'd always had the impression that Sephardic Jews were darker. Not black, but more café au lait. I could be wrong.