Biblical Blacks - "In The Beginning and From Then on, It Was Blacks in The Bible"

Genesis 10, Nimrod, son of Kush, became the Black founder of civilization in Mesopotamia.

Genesis 11 Abram was from Ur of the Chaldees, a land whose earliest inhabitants included Blacks. The people of the region where Abraham came from can be proven historically and archaeologically to have been intermixed racially. This could lead us to suppose that Abraham and those who came out of that area with him were also racially mixed.

Genesis 14 Abram’s experiences in Canaan and Egypt brought him and his family into areas inhabited by Black peoples. Both archaeological evidence and the account in I Chronicles 4 tell us that Canaan was inhabited by the descendants of Ham.

Further Black presence can be found in the accounts of Hagar, the Egyptian, Ishmael and his Egyptian wife, and Ishmael’s sons especially Kedar. The Kedarites are mentioned many times in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Nehemiah and the word itself is a word that means Blackness.

Genesis 41 further Black presence in the patriarchal period appears with Joseph’s experiences in Egypt. Joseph marries an Egyptian woman, Asenath, descended from Mizriam. If she were an Egyptian woman she was descended from Mizriam. If she were a descendant of Mizriam, she was Hamitic. If she were Hamitic, chances are she was Black. Do you follow me? She was the mother of Ephraim and Manasseh. So Joseph married an Egyptian woman, Asenath, by whom he had Ephraim and Manasseh.

In the enslavement in Egypt, the land of Ham becomes the Israelite home for a long time and intermarriage occurs. Exodus 2:5, I Chronicles 4:17, Leviticus 24:10-16, I Chronicles 2:34 all show that intermarriage occurred between the Israelite peoples and the people of the land.

Numbers 12 Moses marries a Kushite, an Ethiopian.

Exodus 2:19 Moses is identified as an Egyptian by Jethro’s daughters. He looked like an Egyptian. Was it the clothes he wore or was it the tint of his skin? We can’t say for sure. Moses’ family intermarried with Hamites. Some of his descendants were perceived to be Black.

The grandson of Aaron was named Phineas, which means, translated from the Egyptian through the Hebraic dialect, the Negro or the Nubian, depending upon which translator you use. Eli’s sons (Eli was a descendant of Aaron), were Hophni and Phineas. The Egyptian name, Phineas, means Black.

Exodus 12:38 tells us a mixed multitude came out of Egypt. Many slaves in Egypt were Egyptians. History tells us they were also Cushites, Hamites, people from Central Africa, and Israelites. When the slaves came out of Egypt they were indeed a mixed multitude of peoples. Numbers 11:4 tells us that along with intermarried Israelites many of the slaves who left Egypt with Moses were intermarried and they became the twelve tribes of Israel that inhabited the land.

They were a mixed racial people.

Can I prove that absolutely 100%? No. I don’t have a Polaroid. But what I’m arguing is that the weight of evidence, carefully compounded, and indicates this very strongly and the burden to resist this evidence is on those who would deny it. The weight of evidence is in this direction, in my opinion.

In 2 Samuel 18 we have Ha-Cushi, Hebrew for the Kushite. He’s the one who carried the news of Absalom’s death to David. David’s private army was composed partially of Philistines who were descendants of Ham. They’d come out from Crete. There were Blacks from Ethiopia. There were Egyptians. There were Cretans and others from early times. According to Brunson and his book, Black Jade, many of the soldiers that David hired as mercenaries were Black because it was very common for Black people to hire out as mercenaries.

You have to understand that in the early world, history tells us that in the earliest days of civilization most slaves were white and most rulers and dominant peoples were people of color. They hired themselves out to other nations as mercenaries. So Brunson argues that much of David’s military was composed of these mercenaries from Ethiopia and other places.

According to Josephus, Solomon had a wife from Egypt who was an Egyptian princess. There was also the Queen of Sheba, who reigned over lands from India to Ethiopia. Many early Christian writers considered Solomon’s Egyptian wife and the Queen of Sheba to be Black. Egyptians and Ethiopians are mentioned often in the prophets. For example, Jeremiah 13:23 “… can the Ethiopian change his skin?”

Zephaniah 1:1, Zephaniah is called a son of Kushie. Gene Rice in his book, African Roots, holds that Zephaniah was Black, at least on his mother’s side. He was related to King Hezekiah on his father’s side and Rice believes that because he was indeed named after one of his ancestors, and literally named, Rice argues that Zephaniah was Black.

For those who use the New Testament, in Matthew 1:3 we find Tamar was a Canaanite, of Hamitic ancestry. She was the mother of Pharaz and Zara, the tribes of rulership in Judah.

We have Luke 23:26 that talks about Simon a Cyrenian. The Cyrenians, geographically, are Black.

Acts 8 talks about the Ethiopian eunuch and people can argue what he was. Was he a Jew? Was he this? Was he that? He came from Ethiopia. Ethiopia is a Black region. Could he have been Black no proof absolutely, only an indication.

In Acts 13 we read of Simeon, called Niger. That’s the Latin term for Black. Again he was called Simeon the Black, the Black man. But why was he called the Black man? We don’t know for sure. He could have been Black in skin color. There is also Lucias of Cyrene and again Cyrene is a geographical location of Black people. So here even into the New Testament I would argue that there is some evidence for a Black presence.

My conclusion is this: On the basis of references to the Hamites and Elamites in the table of nations, in Hebrew tradition, and because the geographical location of these peoples who are called Black in the Bible are today and have historically been the locations of Black people, I argue that the references to the Hamites and Elamites in the Bible are references to Black people.

top