and why would an Italian have such lovely blue eyes? well *gasp* he didn't. they, and you apparently, are wrong
This very strange idea seems to have originally come from a claim by Alexandre Dumas, but has been picked up and spread by Afrocentrics, with the argument being that originally Jesus was depicted as non-European because he was Jewish (somehow Afrocentrics equate ancient Semitic people with “African” and therefore “black”), so Pope Alexander VI commissioned new paintings of Jesus using his illegitimate son Cesare Borgia as their model. He then allegedly “ordered the destruction of all art depicting a Semitic Jesus”, so we have a white Jesus as our popular image of Jesus today. This claim is often made online (see
The Holy Prepuce for one example) and is usually accompanied by these two images as “proof”:
It has also been propagated by Wu-Tang Clan affiliate, Killah Priest in "B.I.B.L.E.”, which includes the lyrics:
“I even learned Caucasians were really the Tribe of Edam
The white image of Christ is really Cesare Borgia
so, yeah, false