Chinese intellectuals claimed Jesus was an oriental like the Chinese

Evidence

Gérôme’s Flight from Egypt pictures an angel leading Joseph and Mary, dressed like Bedouin, in the desert. In his Entry of Christ to Jerusalem (1890), a blond Jesus approaches on a white donkey, accompanied by another blond male and a white donkey colt. The welcoming party is led by Magdalene, the ex-prostitute, a richly adorned character prefiguring the artist’s Woman of Cairo (1897). Behind Magdalene, a little hard to discern in the shade of the oscuro part of the painting, several male Jews prostrate themselves to the Son of God in the Muslim fashion. What clearer image could there be of the overlap between Christian conversion and European expansion? The white man Jesus has here risen above his swarthy Jewish-oriental surroundings. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 208 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Orientalist painting rendered Jesus as European and Jews as oriental — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 208; Incognito messiahs were painted oriental to mark them as not-yet-Christian — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 216; Jesuits sought a Chinese Jewish Bible as polemical evidence against rabbinic Judaism (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Orientalist painting rendered Jesus as European and Jews as oriental #complicates (0.78) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 208