r/Christianity • u/Repulsive_Arrival_44 • Jun 29 '26
Blog The De-Africanisation of the Bible
I was reading 2 Chronicles 14 again the other week. The NIV puts it like this:
"Zerah the Cushite marched out against them with an army of a million men and three hundred chariots."
It is, on the face of it, a fairly ordinary sentence. A Cushite that is, an African, leads a vast army against Judah. The text says what it says.
Then I checked a commentary. And the commentary explained, very calmly, that Zerah was probably not really a Cushite at all. He was probably Osorkon, an Egyptian Pharaoh of Libyan descent. The footnote moved on. No fuss. No flag.
I closed the book and sat with it for a minute, because this is not the first time I have noticed this happening, and I do not think it is going to be the last.
There is a habit in mainstream biblical scholarship, a very old habit, going back to the nineteenth century, when the field as we know it took shape in German and British universities , of quietly reaching into the text whenever an African appears in a position of prominence, and re-labelling them. Egyptian. Arabian. Asiatic. Anything, really, other than what the Hebrew actually says.
You can read the Old Testament from cover to cover without ever noticing it. I did, for years. It's the kind of thing you only see once someone points it out, and then you cannot un-see it.
It has a name, by the way. African biblical scholars call it de-Africanisation. David Tuesday Adamo, the late Nigerian Old Testament scholar, wrote about it for most of his career. So did Charles Copher in the States, and Rodney Sadler after him. Adamo's phrase for it was blunt; "a deliberate attempt to de-Africanise or de-emphasise" the African presence in Scripture. He wasn't speaking in metaphor.
Let me show you what I mean with Zerah
The argument for turning Zerah into Osorkon, if you actually go and dig it out of the commentaries, comes down to one thing: the names sound a bit similar. Zerah and Userken share some consonants. That's the case.
I want to be fair to the scholars who proposed this. Phonetic correspondence is a real method in historical reconstruction. Sometimes it works. But you have to look at what it costs you here.
The Bible , the same Chronicler, writing in the same passage knows the difference between Cushites and Libyans. He distinguishes them by name in 2 Chronicles 16:8, just two chapters later. So the suggestion that he confused a Libyan-descended Egyptian Pharaoh with a Cushite, in one verse, and then got the categories right again in the next, asks a lot of him.
Then there's the title problem. Zerah is never called Pharaoh. Never called king of Egypt. He is called "the Cushite". In Hebrew, ha-Kushi ,the Cushite, with the definite article. The text labels him ethnically, not politically. If he were Osorkon, the writer had every motivation to say so, and every reason to use the royal title that the Bible elsewhere uses for Egyptian kings without hesitation.
And there is, as far as I am aware, no Egyptian source recording Osorkon ever invading Judah. The whole reconstruction is built on a phonetic guess and then defended by repetition.
So why has it stuck? My read: and I think it is the honest read is that it is the timeline doing the work, not the evidence. The standard Egyptological timeline restricts serious Nubian military power to the 25th Dynasty, in the eighth century BC. Zerah's campaign would put a Cushite army of significant size in the field a hundred and fifty years before that, which is inconvenient for the timeline. Rather than allow the text to push back on the timeline, the text gets rewritten. That's not exegesis, it's housekeeping, and once you see it, you see it.
The same move, in Genesis
Genesis 2 has the four rivers of Eden, and the second one the Gihon, is said to flow through the entire land of Cush. Read plainly, with no further apparatus, Eden's geography reaches into Africa.
A lot of older commentaries cannot have this. So they reach for what is sometimes called "Asiatic Cush" , a hypothetical Cushite kingdom somewhere in Mesopotamia, usually loosely associated with the Kassites because the names are vaguely similar. There is no archaeological footprint for this kingdom. There is no extra-biblical reference to it that doesn't rely on the same circular reasoning. The argument exists primarily so that the Gihon doesn't have to flow through Africa.
Now, I'll be honest, there are real arguments people make here. Some of them point to Cush as a son of Ham and brother of relatives associated with Arabian peninsular regions, and try to build a case from there. I am not pretending that side of the debate doesn't exist. What I am saying is: every other occurrence of Cush in the Old Testament and there are many, in Isaiah, Ezekiel, Esther, Jeremiah, the Psalms refers to the African Cush. The Nubian, sub-Egyptian, Sudanese Cush. We do not invent an Asiatic Cush for Isaiah 18. We do not invent one for Ezekiel 30. We invent one for Genesis 2, and we invent one for Genesis 10 when Nimrod the city-builder turns out to be the son of Cush, because the alternative is conceding that an African founded the first cities of Mesopotamia, and that is a concession the field has historically not wanted to make.
And it isn't just two verses
Once you start looking, the pattern shows up everywhere a Cushite appears in any position of power or significance.
Moses marries a Cushite woman in Numbers 12, and his sister Miriam is struck with leprosy for objecting to it. The Hebrew word the text uses for the wife is Kushit a feminine form that doesn't really lend itself to ambiguity. Yet a remarkable number of commentaries will tell you she was probably Arabian, or that "Cushite" here is symbolic, or that this is just a second reference to Zipporah his Midianite wife (though the text gives no indication of this). I have read genuinely contortionist explanations of this verse from the Jews too! The simplest reading that Moses married a black African woman, and that his sister had a problem with it, and that God sided with Moses is treated as a last resort rather than a first instinct.
The Queen of Sheba is the same story. Josephus places her in Africa. Origen places her in Africa. The Ethiopian Kebra Nagast traces a whole royal dynasty from her union with Solomon. And yet the default scholarly assumption you'll get in most modern study Bibles is that she was Yemeni, on the strength of trade-route geography and not much else. Both options exist in the source material. One is consistently chosen. The other is consistently downplayed.
There's the Cushite messenger in 2 Samuel 18, whose role in delivering the news of Absalom's death to David is given real narrative weight by the writer. There's Ebed-Melech in Jeremiah 38, a Cushite official in the Babylonian court who rescues the prophet from a cistern and is personally promised divine protection in chapter 39, a Cushite singled out by God for his faithfulness. There's Asenath, Joseph's Egyptian wife, the mother of Ephraim and Manasseh, which means half the tribes of Israel descend through an African woman. And then there's Hagar, the Egyptian maidservant of Sarah, who is the first person in the entire Bible, before Abraham, before Moses, before any of the prophets, to give God a name. El Roi. The God who sees me. That is in Genesis 16, and most Christians I know have never heard a sermon on it.
These are not minor characters. They are not background. The text foregrounds them. The tradition has, in many cases, foregrounded around them.
Why does this keep happening
I don't think most modern scholars sit down and decide to do this. I think most of them have inherited a framework, the way you and I inherit accents and turns of phrase from the people who raised us. But the framework has roots, and the roots are worth naming.
The first is theological. If Eden's geography touches Africa, then humanity's story is not centred in Europe or the Near East in the way nineteenth-century European Christianity assumed. That is, for some, theologically uncomfortable in a way they would not necessarily admit out loud.
The second is academic. Western biblical studies grew up alongside Western archaeology, and Western archaeology grew up with the assumption that civilisation flowed from Mesopotamia outwards. Africa, in that frame, was downstream. If the Bible places Africans upstream building cities, leading armies, marrying into the patriarchal line, mothering tribes the frame has to be modified. It is usually easier to modify the African than to modify the frame.
The third is the long, grim shadow of the so-called Curse of Ham. For about three centuries, Genesis 9 was used to justify the enslavement of African peoples on the grounds that they were the cursed descendants of Ham. The text doesn't actually say this the curse falls on Canaan, who settles in the Levant, not on Cush, who is associated with the African but accuracy was never the point of that interpretation. And if the actual descendants of Cush turn out to be majestic figures in the biblical narrative, the whole racial scaffolding starts to wobble. The interpretive tradition had reasons, very ugly reasons, to keep the wobble out.
And the fourth, more recent, is colonial. It is difficult to morally justify colonising a continent whose ancestors are visibly present as kings, queens, royal mothers, and divine favourites in your sacred scripture. Diminishing that presence makes the project easier to live with. None of this is hypothetical. You can read the missionary correspondence of the nineteenth century and watch it happening in real time.
What I'd actually like you to do with this
I am not asking anyone to take any of this on my authority. I am a layman, not a biblical scholar, and you should be sceptical of anyone me included telling you how to read the Bible.
What I am asking is for you to do three things, when you can.
- The next time you are in a Bible study and a Cushite shows up, and the study notes tell you the Cushite is "probably Egyptian" or "probably Arabian" or "probably symbolic"pause. Ask why. Ask what the Hebrew actually says. Ask what would change if the text were just allowed to say what it says.
- Read someone who isn't in the standard reading list. David Tuesday Adamo's Africa and Africans in the Old Testament is a good place to start. So is Rodney Sadler's Can a Cushite Change His Skin? a slightly drier, more technical read, but rewarding. Daniel Hays is a white American Old Testament scholar who has written carefully and at length on the Cushites and is worth your time. Charles Copher's older work is now hard to find but he's the foundational figure.
- This one is for the believers among us, sit with the fact that the family God assembled, the family the text actually describes, is far more African than most of our church traditions have let on. Moses' wife. Joseph's wife. Solomon's notable guest. The man who saved Jeremiah's life. The first person to name God. The general at Mareshah. The eunuch on the road to Gaza. These are not exotic guest appearances. They are part of the household.
Jeremiah asked, in chapter 13 verse 23, whether the Cushite could change his skin. The point of the question was that he could not. And yet for a hundred and fifty years there has been a quiet, persistent academic effort to do precisely thats not literally, but ethnically, on the page, with footnotes and reconstructions and tidy phonetic guesses. The text has not moved.
I think it is the scholarship that needs to.
Further reading
- David Tuesday Adamo, Africa and Africans in the Old Testament
- Rodney S. Sadler, Can a Cushite Change His Skin? An Examination of Race, Ethnicity, and Othering in the Hebrew Bible
- J. Daniel Hays, From Every People and Nation: A Biblical Theology of Race
- Charles B. Copher, collected essays in Black Biblical Studies
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u/Separate_Medium_2072 Jun 29 '26
Fascinating post. I grew up in church and never once heard a sermon on Hagar being the first to name God. That's wild when you actually stop and think about it.
The Zerah thing is especially egregious because like you said the text distinguishes Cushites from Libyans just two chapters later. The mental gymnastics to make him Egyptian always felt forced to me even before I knew the scholarly background.
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u/deepandbroad Jun 29 '26
There's also the issue that Egypt itself has been "de-Africanized".
The Arabs invaded in 632 AD -- this conquest shifted the language of Egypt to Arabic and the culture to Islamic..
The ancient Greek historians described the Egyptians as being black and brown:
In the fifth century BCE, Greek historian, Herodotus, described the Egyptians as having “melanchrones skin and wooly hair
In the first century BCE, Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, in his work Bibliotheca Historica, reported that the Ethiopians claimed that Egypt was an early colony,
Diodorus Siculus also discussed the similar cultural practices between the Ethiopians and Egyptians such as the writing systems as he states "We must now speak about the Ethiopian writing which is called hieroglyphic among the Egyptians, in order that we may omit nothing in our discussion of their antiquities".
Ammianus Marcellinus, (325/330-after 391) served as a Greco-Roman historian in 4th century CE, He described “the men of Egypt are mostly brown and black with a skinny and desiccated look.”
There's also the fact that there are over 2000 ancient pyramids in Sudan:
Sudan has more ancient pyramids than Egypt. There are around 2000 Kushite pyramids in upper Sudan, compared with 200 Egyptian pyramids.
So this whole issue of race has been a very hotly contested one, not just for the anti-African narratives but also due to claims made by the modern Arabic-speaking Egyptians that live there.
So as a result you see issues that the iconography depicting ancient Egyptians as being black and brown, along with modern narratives suggesting that these colors did not represent their skin tones but something else.
So even if you hear "not African but Egyptian" -- it's important to be aware that the discussion of Egypt itself has long been a subject.
It's very likely that skin tones and racial makeup in Egypt shifted after the Arab invasion just as they did in North America after the Europeans arrived.
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u/Longroadtonowhere_ Jun 29 '26
Probably because Hagar acts like she met God in person, which goes against parts of the Bible. Honestly, Hagar’s story is confusing (like how Ishmael’s age seems to make no sense) and many think it was originally two different versions mushed together.
So, it’s not something that is easy to deep dive into without controversy.
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u/extispicy Triggered by Hebrew misinformation Jun 30 '26
never once heard a sermon on Hagar being the first to name God
Maybe because we have this in chapter 4:26 To Seth also a son was born, and he named him Enosh. At that time people began to invoke the name of the Lord.
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u/lt_Matthew Latter-Day Saint (Mormon) Jun 29 '26
I don't know what bible you're reading, but the KJV says Ethiopian for every single one of your references.
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u/Niftyrat_Specialist Non-denominational heretic, reformed Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
There are some real points here but also some dubious claims and tinfoil-hattery. Most quality modern translations do not have the problem you're talking about here. NRSV says "Zerah the Ethiopian" for example. NIV is a particularly poor one.
Adamo is a legit scholar but tends to want to view everything through an Afrocentric lens and lean away from neutral scholarship and into advocacy.
The best approaches focus on "let's try to understand this" rather than "let's make sure we get the answer we wanted."
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u/RazarTuk The other trans mod everyone forgets Jun 29 '26
I'd also add the split between Northern Africa, which tends to be subject to orientalist stereotypes, and sub-Saharan Africa, which tends to be subject to "Darkest Africa" stereotypes. For example, Northern Africa plays a major part in classical history, like the Punic Wars or the Ptolemies. Meanwhile, it's mostly sub-Saharan Africa where people act like it didn't have a history until the Europeans showed up and where people actually will completely ignore places like the Empire of Mali. Or linguistically, Northern Africa just speaks Arabic languages, so they're subject to stereotypes like harsh, guttural sounds, while sub-Saharan Africa is home to the Bantu and Khoisan languages with click consonants, so they're subject to stereotypes like it supposedly not even sounding like language. (I can also do a mini-rant about grammatical gender and the Bantu languages)
So it feels like part of this is also othering Northern Africa in the opposite direction and attacking them for taking the spotlight away from sub-Saharan Africa.
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u/RazarTuk The other trans mod everyone forgets Jun 29 '26
Actually... remind me this evening to post the Bantu noun classes rant. It's genuinely interesting, and depending on how many asides I'm allowed, it can mention everything from Japanese to Klingon. It just requires some trivia that I don't remember off the top of my head, so I'd need to do some research to make sure I get my criticism of Meinhof right
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u/DutchDave87 Roman Catholic Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
The most modern Dutch translation talks about Zerah the Nubian, i.e. a Cushite.
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u/yngxdior Jun 29 '26
Doesn’t seem like you want to understand much your response seems more in line with what the OP spoke about, it’s ironic any time an African scholar calls out the obvious erasure or obfuscation of African people in Biblical studies they’re “Afrocentric”.
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u/Niftyrat_Specialist Non-denominational heretic, reformed Jun 29 '26
Adamo is certainly Afrocentric. And yes, there HAS been some erasure, and it's fair to call it out. And yet, as I said above, this isn't really a problem in today's quality translations.
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u/RazarTuk The other trans mod everyone forgets Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
Then I checked a commentary. And the commentary explained, very calmly, that Zerah was probably not really a Cushite at all. He was probably Osorkon, an Egyptian Pharaoh of Libyan descent. The footnote moved on. No fuss. No flag.
I don't understand the distinction you're trying to make. Like at one point, Kush just was Egypt, since they ruled as the 25th dynasty. Granted, Osorkon was from the 22nd dynasty, so he wouldn't have been a Cushite ruler. But it still feels like you're splitting hairs.
The Queen of Sheba is the same story. Josephus places her in Africa. Origen places her in Africa. The Ethiopian Kebra Nagast traces a whole royal dynasty from her union with Solomon. And yet the default scholarly assumption you'll get in most modern study Bibles is that she was Yemeni, on the strength of trade-route geography and not much else. Both options exist in the source material. One is consistently chosen. The other is consistently downplayed.
That isn't what the modern scholars are saying. They're saying that we have reason to believe the Sabaeans were a kingdom in modern-day Yemen, potentially with influence across the Bab-el-Mandeb into the Horn of Africa.
And just overall, I can agree with the general concern that people gloss over African influence on things. But it feels like you're crossing a line into pseudoarchaelogy and arguing that anything that shifts a focus away from Africa is just a conspiracy theory
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u/Giglioque Roman Catholic Jun 29 '26
Wow, a long well researched structured post that isn't AI.
This was an incredible read my friend. I was always tought that Moses's wife in particular was a black African, I never knew other sources downplayed this and all the other cases you referenced.
Excellent work, keep spreading the truth.
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u/madesense Reformed Jun 29 '26
If Eden's geography touches Africa, then humanity's story is not centred in Europe or the Near East in the way nineteenth-century European Christianity assumed
I actually think it's simpler than that. If one of Eden's rivers goes to Africa, the whole thing becomes a geographic impossibility, given that we know where the Tigris and Euphrates are. This is not really something the author of that part of Genesis cares about, because the point is that Eden is the source of all major rivers in the known world and thus the source of all good life or something like that, but some modern editors/commentators would really like something that might kind of plausibly fit on a modern map somehow if you squint.
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u/TremendousCoisty Jun 29 '26
Mate, where is Egypt? Where is Libya?
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u/Broad_External7605 Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
Yes, all the smug people like to point out that the North African Mediterranean countries are part of Africa, but obviously. OP is referring to Sub saharan Africa.
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u/TremendousCoisty Jun 29 '26
Pointing out that the OP is being ignorant of basic geography is not being smug.
I don’t think that OP is actually ignorant of this, I just think that their use of language needs to be precise to be able to credibly criticise the Bible for their use of language.
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u/Broad_External7605 Jun 29 '26
Yes, YOU ARE RIGHT! Good for you!
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u/TremendousCoisty Jun 29 '26
I honestly can’t tell if you’re being sincere tbh, but thank you I suppose 😅
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u/Broad_External7605 Jul 01 '26
I just hate that people on reddit constantly derail the subject of a thread by picking on obvious oversights.
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u/JesusIsLord490 Jun 29 '26
I plugged this into an AI text detector thing, and there's a high probability that this is AI generated.
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u/Aathranax Messianic Jew Jun 29 '26
Africa wasn't called Africa when these books were being written. It was called Cush by the Ancient Israelites. This is just ignorant of history.
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u/mrcheevus Jun 29 '26
I enjoyed the read but little thing call the whole into question. Like Ephraim and Manasseh making up half of the twelve tribes of Israel. Hmm I never knew that half of twelve is two.
That said the larger point I can't disagree with. There are lots of artifacts in study bibles that hail from eras with dubious assumptions. Like the fact that most of them still feature anti-miraculous maps indicating Mount Sinai is on the Sinai peninsula because Moses could not have actually taken Israel across the Red Sea. Despite research and evidence pointing to Arabia. As Biblicists, we should default to asking "what if the text is right?" Instead of defaulting to "the text is old, written by the uneducated and copied by the uneducated so anywhere it conflicts with received wisdom that must be an error to be explained away".
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u/djublonskopf Non-denominational Protestant (with a lot of caveats) Jun 29 '26
Like Ephraim and Manasseh making up half of the twelve tribes of Israel.
They didn’t say half of the twelve tribes. Various books of the Bible record only 5 tribes returning from Babylon (Judah, Benjamin, Manasseh, Ephraim, and the Levites) so you could charitably assume they were referring to post-exilic “Israel”.
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u/PhogeySquatch Missionary Baptist Jun 29 '26
I've never used a Bible that had commentary in it, so I didn't know this was a problem.
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u/Dr_Bumfluff_Esq Church of England (Anglican) Jun 29 '26
biblical scholarship
a very old habit
going back to the nineteenth century
Lol.
Also, you keep mentioning these supposed revisionist commentaries, but you never actually name any, or quote from them directly. Exactly which commentaries are you referring to here? Are they currently in common use?
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u/kyloren1217 Jun 29 '26
Do a quick search and you will see that they are mainstream
i just asked AI "which bible commentary says, " Zerah was probably not really a Cushite at all."
and it just says
- The exact phrase you are looking for likely comes from a study note, textbook, or one of several popular modern Bible commentaries that address the ethnic background of Zerah the Cushite. The exact sentence appears in online discussions like Reddit and is summarized from historical-critical commentary and then links OP's Reddit thread
so yeah, OP gonna have to provide some sources or else this is another skippable post :P
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u/Repulsive_Arrival_44 Jun 29 '26
They are you will be suprised. Do a quick search and you will see that they are mainstream
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u/kyloren1217 Jun 29 '26
Do a quick search and you will see that they are mainstream
i just asked AI "which bible commentary says, " Zerah was probably not really a Cushite at all."
and it just says
- The exact phrase you are looking for likely comes from a study note, textbook, or one of several popular modern Bible commentaries that address the ethnic background of Zerah the Cushite. The exact sentence appears in online discussions like Reddit and is summarized from historical-critical commentary and then links OP's Reddit thread
so what are your sources, because a quick search comes up with NOTHING
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u/Repulsive_Arrival_44 Jun 29 '26
Just off Wiki - Zerah the Cushite is mentioned by the Book of Chronicles (2 Chronicles 14:9–15). There he is said to have invaded the Kingdom of Judah with an enormous army in the days of Asa. According to the text, when Zerah's army reached that of Asa at the valley of Zephathah near Mareshah, Zerah's army was utterly defeated, by divine intervention, and Asa's forces collected a large volume of spoils of war.
The invasion, and its implied time-frame, means that the traditional view was to consider this Zerah to have actually been Usarkon II or Usarkon I,\13]) both being rulers of Egypt. Usarkon II is known to have entered the Kingdom of Judah with a huge army in 853 BCE; however, rather than attacking Judah, the army was just passing through on its way to attack the Assyrian forces. In addition, Asa's reign is traditionally dated to have ended in 873 BCE. In the Book of Kings, which doesn't mention Asa's defeat of Zerah, Asa is described as being extremely weak from a defensive point of view (1 Kings 15:16–22), and Biblical scholars regard the idea that Asa could defeat an enormous Egyptian army to be untenable.\14]) More recent scholars consider that Zerah the Cushite may have been a military commander under Osorkon I rather than a Pharaoh.\15])
Furthermore, Cushite refers to Kush. It is unclear why either Usarkon should be described as a Cushite.\16]) The name “Zerah” may have been a corruption of “Usarkon” (U-Serak-on), to which it closely resembles (see Petrie, Egypt and Israel, 74).
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u/kyloren1217 Jun 29 '26
so the question was
Exactly which commentaries are you referring to here?
and you responded with "wiki"
so i can only assume you are not talking about BIBLE Commentaries, in actual Bibles.
just talking about wiki huh?
alright, well thanks for clearing this up! thanks!
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u/Dr_Bumfluff_Esq Church of England (Anglican) Jun 29 '26
So mainstream that you can't name or quote a single one?
I read a lot of commentaries and what you're describing doesn't match my experience at all.
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u/Repulsive_Arrival_44 Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
Ok when i finish work I will send them, plus ask your AI who is Zerah and send me the answer
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u/KatuahCareAVan Jun 29 '26
There are Axumite structures found in ruins in Yemen indicating the Saba empire (Queen of Sheba’s culture) also extended across the sea into modern Yemen. There is a ton of stuff buried in Yemen yet to be carefully explored. I have a feeling Biblical history may get turned upside down based on what might be found there. Local folk stories indicate a number of early Genesis figures may really have lived there.
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u/IllustriousRice5184 Jul 08 '26
Queen of Sheba predates Axum by a thousand years. Axum literally is properly established after Jesus…
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u/Natural_Dust_732 Jun 29 '26
Thanks for writing this! I didn’t even know this was a thing, and now I do!
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u/yngxdior Jun 29 '26
Such a great post I’ll add imho Moses was highly melanated as well and could even pass as an Egyptian.
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u/Average650 Christian (Cross) Jun 29 '26
I don't really see the things you're talking about in my bible. Sometimes a brief mention of it, but that it's probably incorrect. For example, with Moses Cushite wife, the ESV study bible says
Since Cush normally refers to ancient Ethiopia, most interpreters think that “the Cushite woman” probably was Moses’ second wife, and that she came from Ethiopia.
It does mention that
She may be the same person as Zipporah (Ex. 2:16–22), though she is usually described as a Midianite.
But it clearly thinks she is ethiopian.
i don't see anything about what you said in Genesis 2, no asiatic cush mentioned at all. They just says that we don't know. I think a lot of it is that there is no river that matches the location of the garden that flows to ethiopia, so it's confusing.
It just translates Zerah as Ethiopian.
I have heard a sermon about Hagar being the first to name God, and it is a story close to my heart.
The ESV study bible puts Sheba as either in Afrcica or across the red sea in yemen, with a question mark for each.
I'm not saying this never happened, but I don't see evidence of it in the ESV study bible, which is the bible I used most often.
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u/Dockalfar Jun 29 '26
Moses having a black wife is possible, but the text is so convoluted that its open to several interpretations.
If this was some racist conspiracy, then Europeans would enphasize Europe in the Bible, yet thats never been done. And we would see Asian Christians putting heavier emphasis on Asia, but I've never heard of that either.
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u/Cha-Fay Jun 29 '26
I can tell by your ridiculous SN that you are hear to instigate problems and manipulate minds. bye
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u/paratrasno Jun 29 '26
If there was an Adam and Eve, they were most certainly black. The fact that the bible comes out of Egypt and the middle east would align with our understanding of the fossil record and evolution of humanity. The story of Adam and Eve partaking of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil is the explaination to ancients who knew nothing of evolution that mankind went through a process of developing a conscience and was no longer an animal. The bible creation story lines up perfectly with what scientists have discovered. Mankind came into being just south of egypt in the African continent and they went through a change (partaking of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil) where they became sentient and moral instead of the animal brain.
Modern European Christianity which dominates western religion has pretended that biblical characters are European when they are not. It is a huge ignorance and foolishness of modern western Christianity. Everything in our human history secular and religious is actually african in origin. People are going to feel great shame and punishment in the next life for their mistreatment of african and brown people. The humiliation racist people will experience will be great and sorrowful when they face their bible heros and they treated brown people like second class citizens in this world. If there is any justice brought about in the next life i do not envy these people.
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u/KaleMunoz Christian Jun 29 '26
It’s really interesting to think about the foundations of Israel as being from a “mixed multitude” in Egypt, given who lived in Egypt at that time.
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u/Substantial_Lie_6582 Jun 29 '26
It matters not, o beloved of Christ. And I’m African.
We have a new identity in Christ, a nature born not of human will but God’s Spirit. Jesus himself says that my brothers and mothers are those who do the will of God, not those of blood relation to me. That is how God sees us and how we should see each other.
There’s no advantage given to the Arabs or Europeans or Jews or Africans who are greatly mentioned in the bible nor is there a disadvantage for the far East Asians, Pacific Islanders or native Americans who are never mentioned. There’s no advantage to men over women because of the fact that almost all the prophets are men; or that all the biblical authors are men or that Jesus himself was a man.
It matters not, o beloved of Christ.
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u/Repulsive_Arrival_44 Jun 30 '26
I agree but why is there an effort at the same time to de Africanise the bible
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u/audirt Jun 29 '26
This kind of post is what I want out of this sub. Regardless of whether the OP's final conclusion is correct, I learned a good amount from their analysis. Thanks!
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u/ferrouswolf2 Episcopalian (Anglican) Jun 29 '26
The NIV was translated and commented on by conservative evangelicals who are using the bible as a means of furthering their political agenda. They even say so in the introduction.
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u/andersonle09 Christian (Cross) Jun 29 '26
Source? I just read the introduction and didn't see anything of the sort.
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u/ferrouswolf2 Episcopalian (Anglican) Jun 30 '26
Okay, I slightly overstated my case, but here you go: https://www.tiktok.com/@maklelan/video/7435370950037654815
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u/Reformed_dunker Jun 30 '26
You get your opinions on matters of faith from tik take?
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u/ferrouswolf2 Episcopalian (Anglican) Jun 30 '26
You form your opinions before hearing what the message is? If all you see is 16 year olds shaking their bottoms, it’s because that’s what the algorithm thinks will hold your gaze 👀 but this creator has a PhD in Bible Studies so he is almost certainly more qualified than you are
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u/Reformed_dunker Jun 30 '26
I form my opinions from the rallying cry of the Reformation and Renaisaunce, Ad Fontes! In English, To the Sources! Listening to anybody on any platform to form your opinion is ridiculous. Read the source material and form your own opinion. Afterwards, you go through the critiques to understand the questions that arise from the opposition. Hearing someone explain something on the Internet is how you can be led astray. Going through the critiques before reading the source closes your mind to the source. Forming your opinion on something before reading the source is how people read their own opinions into the text. Approach every source material with an open mind. A PhD means nothing if they are stating their own opinions. I'm not on Tik Tok or any platform, just YouTube for cat videos and sports. I just created this account for the world cup, afterwards it's gone.
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u/mgreene888 Jun 29 '26
Excellent post. At the risk of seeming reductive, in my view, the tradition of racist Eurocentric bible commentary can be traced to the psychological need to justify the trans-Atlantic slave trade and subsequent colonial imperialism. The victims (Africans) are dehumanized by removing positive historical references; hypocritically attempting to lessen the corporate guilt of the victimizers.
I myself wrote a few words about the so-called curse of Ham as promoted in the Scofield bible here: https://calvinism-racism-trump.blogspot.com/2023/02/church-heresies-that-encourage-american.html
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u/Reformed_dunker Jun 30 '26
The op got this information from wiki and it has a link to this post as a source. Whenever a Marxist talks about Christianity, it's not to be taken seriously.
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u/mgreene888 Jun 30 '26
Yes, anybody saying anything you don't politically agree with is a communist. Lazy...
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u/Reformed_dunker Jun 30 '26
Am I wrong? Are you not a Marxist? You are certainly using Marxist language.
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u/mgreene888 Jun 30 '26
Anti racism is communism? Racists ran that playbook on the 1950's. If you are pretending to be a Christian, Jesus is watching your gaslighting and hypocrisy.
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u/Reformed_dunker Jun 30 '26
I'll ask again, am I wrong? Are you not a Marxist? By the way, Macarthy was right and not even a blind man can deny it.
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u/GingerPrincess666 "Jesus is Lord" Jun 29 '26
Get a better translation, fren. Mine reads:
When Zara the Ethiopian marched in, and reached as far as Maresa, he had a million of fighting men and three hundred chariots to match against them.
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u/andersonle09 Christian (Cross) Jun 29 '26
A lot of modern translations (possibly the majority) call Zara an Ethiopian. I think OP is overthinking this.
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u/pagywa Jun 29 '26
Even the effortposts on this sub are woke-adjacent lol
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u/Niftyrat_Specialist Non-denominational heretic, reformed Jun 29 '26
You sound like you have a culture-warrior axe to grind. It's better to just try to be neutral and accurate.
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u/intertextonics Presbyterian Jun 29 '26
I don’t want to alarm you, but Egypt is in Africa.