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    Black Africans in the Bible: Is the Bible for White People Only?
    Black Africans in the Bible: Is the Bible for White People Only?
    Black Africans in the Bible: Is the Bible for White People Only?
    Ebook96 pages1 hour

    Black Africans in the Bible: Is the Bible for White People Only?

    By Dan Rogers

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    About this ebook

    Some scholars have assumed that all the people mentioned in the Bible are Caucasian. But the evidence from Scripture, corroborated by drawings in Egyptian tombs, shows that Black Africans are mentioned - often in a favorable way.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGrace Communion International
    Release dateOct 4, 2012
    ISBN9781301890682
    Black Africans in the Bible: Is the Bible for White People Only?
    Author

    Dan Rogers

    Dan Rogers was born in Cherry Point, NC and now resides in Biloxi, MS. He spent two and half years as a Marine Corps Reservist and another fifteen on active duty in the U.S. Army. He earned an associate’s degree in Liberal Arts from the University of South Carolina and a Bachelor’s Degree in Multidisciplinary Studies from Grantham University and currently is pursuing a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from Grantham University as well. He enjoys writing about the phenomena of life and reaches out to readers of all ages.

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    Book preview

    Black Africans in the Bible - Dan Rogers

    Black Africans in the Bible

    Is the Bible for White People Only?

    By Dan Rogers and Grace Communion International

    Copyright 2012 Grace Communion International

    Published by Grace Communion International

    Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

    Table of Contents

    Evidence of Black Africans in the Bible

    Bibliography

    When Africa Helped Jerusalem

    Part 2: The African-American Church and Reconciliation

    Black History Month

    Racial Reconciliation

    Meeting a Living Legend

    A Sorry State of Affairs – Understanding the Power of an Apology

    Modern Slavery – The Unheard Cries

    The Audacity to Hope

    The African-American Church in America

    The Life and Times of Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

    William Wilberforce: Christian Abolitionist, Reformer, Statesman

    Book Review: Divided by Faith

    Reconciliation in Montana

    About the authors

    About the publisher

    Grace Communion Seminary

    Ambassador College of Christian Ministry

    ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

    Evidence of Black Africans in the Bible

    In 1992, I took a class at Emory University in Atlanta called Introduction to the Old Testament. As I read the various required textbooks for the course, I saw something I had not noticed before. Many Old Testament scholars, particularly European scholars of the 18th, 19th and early 20th century, had written their books and commentaries on the Old Testament from the perspective that there were no people of color mentioned in the Scriptures.

    Different peoples depicted in tomb of Ramses III: Libyan, Nubian, Syrian, Bedouin, Hittite

    -

    Puzzled, I began to look into the topic more deeply. I studied intensively for about a year, attending lectures and interviewing scholars. I began to realize that this was a particularly difficult and controversial subject, and it has caused much hurt. Thankfully, times have changed, but some of the wounds remain. So let’s look at it, and put to rest once and for all this biased and unfair distortion of the Bible.

    Let me apologize in advance for some of the terms that I will need to use as we discuss this topic. They are not the terms we would prefer today, but they are terms that historians, ethnologists and Bible commentators of past centuries, and even the 20th century, have employed to explain their ideas about the origin of blacks. These ideas, steeped in racial prejudice, were alleged to provide a biblical justification for black slavery and the subjugation of black peoples.

    When I first read about these concepts, they brought tears to my eyes. As a white person in a predominantly white country, I also began to gain a better understanding of and a greater appreciation for the black experience in the United States.

    Is the Bible a book by a white God for white people? Of course not. God is spirit and does not have color in our human and earthly sense. There is nothing in the Scriptures to indicate that people are excluded from God’s saving grace on the basis of ethnic origin or skin color. God is not wanting anyone to perish (2 Peter 3:9). Jesus is the Savior of all peoples. Nevertheless, it is a fact that the majority of European artists and Bible commentators painted and described all biblical characters, including God, as white. This had the effect of excluding blacks from being a part of Scripture and has led some people of color to question the Bible’s relevance to them.

    Exclusion was only one side of the problem. Where the presence of blacks in the Bible was admitted, primarily among uneducated whites, outrageous myths and fables abounded. This was especially true among white Christians living in the southeastern United States prior to the Civil War. These denigrating tales were believed to support the racist (and unbiblical) notion that the Bible supported a white subjugation of black people.

    What do we mean by black?

    There are several difficulties surrounding any discussion of this sensitive topic. Some are obvious; others are less so. Not least is the question, what do we mean by black people? In America today, we mean African-Americans — those with African ancestry and dark skin color. But is that how the people who lived when the books of the Bible were written would have thought?

    There are differences between ancient and modern concepts of what black means when it is applied to people. For example, in the table of nations in Genesis 10, the word used to describe the people descended from Ham in the ancient Hebrew, Akkadian and Sumerian languages is related to the color black. But what does this mean? Our traditional understanding of the Old Testament is influenced by the ancient rabbinic method of interpretation known as Midrash. These interpretations sometimes take precedence over the literal meaning of the text being interpreted. They also belong to another time with other socio-economic conditions and concerns. When ancient rabbinic literature mentions black people, does it mean ethnically Negro or just people of generally darker skin?

    Let me give you a modern example. In a congregation I once pastored were two families with the surnames Black and White. The Whites were black and the Blacks were white. Mr. Black, who was white, used to talk about his lovely white grandchildren who were Blacks. And Mr. White talked about his lovely black grandchildren who were Whites. Imagine what someone a thousand years from now would think if they read that.

    Just because some people are called by a term meaning black does not necessarily prove they were what we now call black. Of course, it does not mean that they were not people of color either. In ancient times, just as folks did in the old frontier societies of our country, people often were given names that reflected their personality, where they were from or their appearance. But names like Slim, Tex, Kid, Smitty or Buffalo tell you nothing of a person’s ancestry.

    Some ancient writers say that the Egyptians and Ethiopians were black. But what do they mean? How black were they? Were

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