Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a Jewish woman from Galilee, of the Israelite/Hebrew ethnic group, descended from King David, meaning she would have had Middle Eastern features, likely olive skin, dark hair, and eyes, rather than the fair complexion often depicted in Western art. Her identity as a Jew is central to Christian belief, as the Messiah was prophesied to come from the line of David, fulfilling Old Testament prophecies.
Mary (in English) or Miriam (in Hebrew) or Maryam (in Arabic) was born into the Jewish community around 20BC in Nazareth, Galilee.
And, of course, the dominant imagery that we have of Mary is white, despite the fact that she was most likely to have been a brown-skinned woman.
Reproductions have been made based on skulls from that period showing that Jesus probably looked very different from the conventional Western view we have of him as a long haired hippy type with beard and sandals preaching peace and love. Mary also probably had a Mediterranean olive complexion and dark hair.
The quintessential girl's name, Mary, is of Latin and Greek origins and means "drop of the sea," "bitterness," "beloved," and "wished for a child." The old-world name is the anglicized version of Maria, originating from the Hebrew Miriam or Mariam.
Answer: Mary is the Mother of God, the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ. Consequently, Jesus received his DNA from the Blessed Mother, Mary and, by extension, her direct ancestors. It is biologically correct that Mary could not have provided a Y chromosome for the conception of Jesus.
Of course, Jesus was a Jew. He was born of a Jewish mother, in Galilee, a Jewish part of the world. All of his friends, associates, colleagues, disciples, all of them were Jews. He regularly worshipped in Jewish communal worship, what we call synagogues.
THE VIRGIN'S PURITY
Its a no brainer when we see the Virgin Mary is depicted wearing white or surrounded by white lilies, white has been an almost universal symbol for purity and innocence for millennia and lilies are in reference to the Annunciation.
But the common consensus is that they would be brown, e.g. African or olive, e.g. Middle Eastern. We can be assured that they weren't pale in complexion, e.g. European, as that skin color came much later in human history.
And it's been observed that she often appears as if she were a member of the local culture. And that's not surprising because it's a way of communicating her closeness to the local culture and her love for the people of the local culture and her maternal care for the people of the local culture.
Influential Blacks in the Bible
It's so common that many Catholics take it for granted. The color blue has enough general associations that we can apply to Mary: it is the color of the sky/the heavens, and represents peace and tranquility. Tranquility befits Our Mother, who kept all the events of her Son's life in her heart (cf. Luke 2:19, 51).
Isaiah 52:14 New Century Version (NCV)
His appearance was so damaged he did not look like a man; his form was so changed they could barely tell he was human.
In colonial Latin America – called “New Spain” by European colonists – images of a white Jesus reinforced a caste system where white, Christian Europeans occupied the top tier, while those with darker skin from perceived intermixing with native populations ranked considerably lower.
Both of these books say quite clearly, several times, that the parents of Mary were Joachim and Anne. The Gospel of Mary says that she was of the family of David, and that her father was from Nazareth and her mother was from Bethlehem.
We also know that at that time people were generally shorter than the average human height today, This means that Mary could be anywhere from 145 to 155 cm (4.7 to 5 ft) tall.
Most of the people in the Bible were Jews of middle eastern origin. The few people in the Bible from the region we now call Europe may have had light-colored skin and would be considered white today, but they were not white in their day.
From the origin of hairlessness and exposure to UV-radiation to less than 100,000 years ago, archaic humans, including archaic Homo sapiens, were dark-skinned.
A likely candidate for the first person that the Bible seems to indicate that he was black-skinned is Cush. He was the son of Ham, the son of Noah. His descendants, the Cushites, are the inhabitants of Africa south of Egypt. Often this is equated with Ethiopia, but Nubia (north-Sudan) probably is more correct.
The very first verse of the New Testament establishes the ethnicity of Jesus as Jewish (Matt. 1:1). His mother Mary was Jewish and a direct descendant of David (Luke 3:31) and so Jesus descended from Judah (Heb. 7:14).
White is used throughout Scripture to depict God's holiness and the spiritual condition of those cleansed by Him. Revelation 19:8 speaks of the Bride of Christ clothed in “fine linen, bright and clean,” representing “the righteous deeds of the saints.” White isn't just clean; it's radiant with sanctity.
The biblical world was multi-ethnic, and numerous different ethnic groups, including Black Africans, were involved in God's unfolding plan of redemption. All people are created in the image of God, and therefore all races and ethnic groups have the same equal status and equal unique value.
The Book of Revelation (Rev 1:14-15) includes John's vision of the Son of Man: His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.
When he died, Jesus was around 33 years old. Most scholars estimate his age by analyzing Biblical and historical accounts of him. Most agree that He was born between 6 and 4 BCE, based on the Gospel of Matthew's mention of Herod the Great, who died in 4 BCE.