Emergence of racial theories

While the early descriptions of hair, skin and eye color clearly have implications for defining Jesus' "race", they are not explicit in their desire to ascribe a racial identity to him in the modern sense. By the 19th century, however, theological arguments were increasingly replaced by more secular biological ones, as attempts were made to envisage Jesus in the context of the people and culture of the Middle East.
While some writers stressed his Jewishness, the growth of anti-Semitic racial theory led others, such as Emile Burnouf and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, to argue that he was racially an "Aryan." This led to portrayals of Jesus as a blond Nordic individual, a concept that was taken up by the Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg and by Hitler. Hitler argued that Jesus was of Celtic ancestry, on the grounds that "Galilee was a colony where the Romans had probably installed Gallic legionaries, and it's certain that Jesus was not a Jew." A hypothetical reconstruction of someone from the same time and place of Jesus, created by forensic artist Richard Neave.
In more recent times the fact that the Middle East was a meeting point of cultures and races has led to suggestions that Jesus may have been African or Arabian. The ancient Near East was the primary means of access for traders and travelers seeking to access Africa via the adjoining Levant. Hence, the bordering Roman province Judea (Jesus' home region) witnessed multiple waves of immigrants passing through those primarily Semitic lands. As such, it is conceivable that Jesus' lineage could have borne traces of Arab, Aramean, Berber, Roman, Greek, Black African, Persian or Indian ancestry. The aggressive policy of territorial expansion and forced conversion to Judaism practiced by John Hyrcanus a century before Jesus' birth may also have affected the ethnic make-up of the local Jewish populations.
It is most commonly argued that Jesus was probably of Middle Eastern descent because of the geographic location of the events described in the Gospels, and, among some modern Christian scholars, the genealogy ascribed to him. For this reason, he has been portrayed as an olive-skinned individual typical of the Levant region. A team of forensic scientists recently attempted to recreate what Jesus may have looked like based on human remains from the area where and time period when Jesus is believed to have existed. However, this image does not reveal any specific details about what Jesus looked like; it is intended only to give a view of the typical person living in Jesus' time and place. In the December 2002 edition of Popular Mechanics, Jesus was shown as looking like a typical Galilean Semite. Among the points made was that the Bible records that Jesus' disciple Judas had to point him out to those arresting him. The implied argument being that if Jesus' physical appearance differed that markedly from his disciples, then he would have been relatively easy to इदेंतिफ्य.