Mick Hartley

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As Christmas approaches, I'm seeing a lot of posts about how "Jesus was Palestinian" – even from friends I would otherwise consider academics. I'm also seeing pics of nativities where baby Jesus is wrapped in a Keffiyeh (I have feelings about that). So, I'm taking the rare step of chiming in because this actually is my wheelhouse (my two degrees being in Religious Studies and Genealogy).

First, let me say the (hopefully) most obvious part out loud: Jesus was a Jew. This is actually not up for debate. The real, historical Jesus (actual name: Yeshua ben Yosef) was a Jew born in the Roman province of Judea (translate: "Land of the Jews") to a Judean Mizrahi Jewish father (Yosef) and a Galileean Mizrahi Jewish mother (Miriam). We know that he wore the tzitzit and was well-versed in Torah – enough so that his followers called him "Rabbi". We also have an extensive genealogy that traces his lineage to King David of the Tribe of Judah (we cannot prove this to current genealogical standards, but even without the genealogy we can solidly say Jesus was a Judean Jew).

I get it. Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, lies in what is NOW the Palestinian West Bank. That does not make him magically, retroactively, a Palestinian. Actually, the words "Palestine" and "Palestinian" would have been meaningless to Jesus and his contemporaries, as the moniker "Syria-Palestina" was not placed on the region until approximately 100 years after Jesus' death – and it was only done by the Roman Empire as an insult to the Jews and in an attempt to alienate them from their homeland. Furthermore, the term "Palestinian" used to refer to a cohesive ethnic identity didn't occur until the 1960's. Just to be clear, that's about 1,930 years after Jesus' death.

Let me put it this way: saying "Jesus was Palestinian" is like saying "Pocahontas was a citizen of the United States of America". It's not only historically inaccurate, it's also pretty offensive.