Jesus was of Ethnically Mixed Heritage

The Old Testament has two perspectives on marriage between people of different ethnicities. Books like Deuteronomy, Ezra, and Judges emphasize the problems that can arise from such marriages, for marrying outside the covenant often results in Jews following foreign gods. On the other hand, books like Ruth and Esther show how marriages across ethnic and national boundaries can be used by God to deliver His people or can serve as illustrations of virtue. During Jesus’ time, certain Jewish groups emphasized the former perspective in an extreme manner. Separatist groups like the Essenes tried to avoid virtually all contact with Gentiles, and some Jewish groups denied that books like Esther which showed a positive view of inter-ethnic marriages should be in the canon. Contrast this with the New Testament genealogies of Christ. There are many women who play a notable role in the Old Testament, either good or bad, from Abraham’s wife Sarah, to David’s wife Bathsheba. In the New Testament genealogies, we repeatedly see marriages between Jewish men and non-Jewish women, from Ruth the Moabite and Boaz to Rahab the Canaanite (Matthew 1:5), while prominent Jewish women are not mentioned. That Jesus emphasized his lineage this way, as did his follower, is extremely important to later Christian ethics, which in the early church sought to overcome ethnic division (even if in more recent times Christians have fallen short of this ideal). This emphasis caused Jesus’s followers like Paul lots of trouble, and it would have caused many to question Jesus himself as the messiah, perhaps to the point of marginlization.

Jesus was of ethnically-mixed heritage. He was also God in the flesh, Lord, and Savior.