I stumbled across this site when searching for Bible toys: Train Up A Child.
This little site is a gem, not only because it has kitschy Bible action figures, but because you can buy light or dark skinned versions of each character. Being a white boy myself, I was looking at the light skinned characters, and settled on my favorite: David, the shepherd. Obviously, they're all, mistakenly, white, but apparently, the man after God's own heart was Aryan. Sorry that the quality's not better. The site didn't provide a very large image. I wonder why.
Heil David.
10 comments:
HAHAHA! Gregory, this is great.
I thought Dark-Skinned Goliath was a *&^%#$&^ robot when I first saw him. Sort of a cross between Bender, a Sentinel, and Short Circuit.
Awesome stuff.
If David is Aryan, then Moses is positively albino!
I love the idea of Job as an action figure. He really is a hero of faith, but I can't imagine many kids wanting to play Job.
On the other hand, Adam & Eve? Let's see, what are they remembered for? I know you can't have them naked for kids' toys, of course, but don't the leaf outfits capture them in their darkest hours, sinners ashamed & hiding? Then again, the company claims that they want kids to be able to identify with the people in the Bible.
And isn't the white Jesus just creepy?
And the "dark-skinned" Eve baffles me. She seems to be several shades lighter than all the other characters in the set.
Yes he is, Allen. I think most portrayals of a white Jesus are creepy.
In fact, here's another white Jesus with more white middle-easterners. Is it just me or does this painting and others like it portray a kind of pride and possibly racism amongst white Christians?
The Introduction
I don't know if it's racism or even racial pride so much as artistic philosophy expressed at the "Train up a Child" site. In a desire for people to identify with the Bible characters, we make them look like "us," rather than striving for historical accuracy. Europeans have been doing it in religious art for ages, which is why there's a bunch of white guys at DaVinci's Last Supper or pretty much any other classic work of religious art. God made us in his image, and we are returning the favor in a rather idolatrous fashion.
I would hope that I could identify with Jesus and other Biblical figures based on something other than racial similarity!
And why is Jesus wearing clothes in that vomitous (I'm just not a romantic, I guess) Adam & Eve picture? When Adam & Eve walked with God in the cool of the day, is this the way they saw him? "Um, Lord, why are you wrapped in white stuff like that?"
Besides, we all know God looks like this: http://shipoffools.com/Cargo/Features01/Features/Graphics/God2.jpg
God must drink really good beer.
Where are dark skin Solomon's eyes? Caucasian Solomon has eyes. Dark skin Solomon looks like a precursor to Star Trek's Lieutenant Geordi La Forge.
You know Solomon: boldly going and all that jazz.
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