According to
"Were Adam and Eve redheads",
Quote:
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Ruddy is the English word that is used to translate the original Hebrew word of the Old Testament, pronounced ad-mow-nee, which means red, or reddish. The most famous "redhead" of Bible History is King David, although he is most certainly not the first, perhaps going all the way back to the first humans. Adam is from the Hebrew word, pronounced aw-dawm, which although came to mean man, literally means reddish or blushed - Adam was created from the "red clay" of the earth, in Hebrew pronounced aw-dah-mah,
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ETA - if you try to search this on google, you run into a lot of racist sites that insist that "ruddy" is evidence that the early Israelites were white, and/or that Adam was a white man.
This makes me question whether "ruddy" was intended as literal red, or would cover earth tones, or if "ruddy" was a symbolic link to adam.
Judas' red hair
Quote:
There is nothing in the Christian Bible that indicates anything distinctive about the physical appearance of Judas. Yet at least as early as the ninth century, artists developed devices and motifs for pointing out the traitor. ... Red hair, red beard, ruddy skin (or all three), though less frequently employed, were also used to make Judas stand out from the crowd. ...
That red hair or beard would be thought fitting for Judas is borne out by the ancient and continuous aversion to red hair and ruddy skin. The age-old dislike of red hair is testified to as early as ancient Egypt, associated with the evil god Seth, known to the Greeks as Typhon. A disdain for red hair in the Greco-Roman world is displayed in the red-headedness and red wigs designated for the figure of the slave in the comedies.
The red hair and red beard theme is scattered profusely through the literature of many periods and places. ...
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01-02-2006, 08:30 PM
