From Susannah Heschel’s article about the Nazis and Christianity, on the “aryan-ization” of Jesus.:
Redefining Jesus as an Aryan began during the nineteenth century and intensified in the decades before and during the Third Reich. Jesus, theologians argued, was born in Galilee, an area populated, they claimed, by racial non-Jews, including Aryans from Iran; his message was welcomed by Galileans, in contrast to the Judean Jews who put him to death.
I wonder how folks on the far right today would react to the argument that Jesus was Iranian? How times change.
I know, I know, due to population shifts there’s no necessary relation between the folks who lived in a region during ancient times and folks there today (something I wish the racial motivated advocates of the Solutrean Hypothesis would figure out.)
Jesus was an Iranian, and Adam and Eve were Iraqis created at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates. We’re just missing North Korea here and we have the Axis of Evil covered.
Tying the Solutrean Hypothesis to racist ideologies is fantastically stupid. It’s a scientific proposition with a modicum of evidence. Some racists have latched on to it but that doesn’t invalidate the science. The only way to invalidate it is through science not through associating it with some morons.
I fully admit that I like the idea. I find it fascinating. If the science doesn’t bear it out or disproves it I’ll let it go. I’m not going to discount it because of a bad association.
Am I the only one who accidentally read that as the ‘Soultrain Hypothesis’?
Nope.
Nope
Archaeology Online has some good articles on these folks.
http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/aryan-invasions.html
What I recall, from my reading over a decade ago, is that when you try to pinpoint exactly who the Aryans were and what they did, you can’t come up with any firm answers. They seem to have been good with horses, but didn’t invent the chariot, writing, money, metalworking, or any of the other goodies of civilization.
Pingback: Life Can Change On a Dime « Earthpages.org