The Swiss anti-fascist theologian Karl Barth is well-known for advising people to read Scripture with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. If he lived today, would he have advised the same when using our smartphones and scrolling through social media feeds?
That’s what I was doing when I came across one of the popular images of 2020: a White woman at a Black Lives Matter demonstration with a placard that read “There are no White people in the Bible (take all of the time you need with this).” That seemed like something worth taking time over.
White Christianity has often depicted characters in biblical scenes as pale-skinned. Given the people’s origins and location, this is unlikely. Christianity in its origins was a movement consisting principally of colonized people who suffered under military occupation in the Middle East and Africa. The opening lines of Matthew even give us a family tree that shows Joseph, a many-times grandchild of Abraham and Sarah, as the descendent of migrants from what is now Iraq.
The early part of the Acts of the Apostles gives us a taste of the diversity of the early Christian movement: it mentions people from the places now called Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Egypt, Libya, Syria, and the occupied Palestinian territories. The first non-Jewish person to join the movement was a eunuch from Ethiopia who worked in what is now Sudan. (As I list these countries, I can’t ignore that many of them were on Donald Trump’s 2017 travel ban.)
Does that mean though that there are no White people in the Bible? Race isn’t only about color; it is a social system about power. In this respect, the Bible shows systems of inequality that are all too familiar. Although it’s true that the Roman army was much more ethnically diverse than White history often chooses to remember, it’s likely that at least some of the Roman occupiers would have been—what we now call—of European descent.
I think there is one person in the Jesus movement who we can be pretty sure was White by something close to our current definition of the term. His name was Cornelius, a Roman soldier of the “Italian regiment,” who to everyone’s surprise asked to join the movement: the second Gentile to do so. No one seemed to have worried when the first non-Jew joined (the Ethiopian eunuch working for the Kingdom of Kush). That is perhaps because that kingdom did not oppress the Hebrew people, and was a historic opponent of Roman imperialism. In contrast, the prospect of an oppressor joining leads to an almighty row, which in different forms continues through the Book of Acts, as Paul takes the movement through the Greco-Roman world. One might imagine the debate in today’s context if a lot of White police officers started joining Black Lives Matter groups.
The controversy in Acts is finally resolved when Peter and James agree that the Greco-Roman gentiles Paul is converting do have a place under certain conditions; afterall, the Spirit had been poured out on all people at Pentecost. But White readers would do well to read this passage with humility. Christianity’s beginnings are in what we’d now call a Black, Indigenous, and People of Color-led movement to which people of European descent were only a later addition. As some must have feared from the start, White Christianity has often acted much more like the Roman Empire than it has like the Kingdom of Heaven. In 2018, the U.S. attorney general even quoted Paul’s letter to the Romans to justify separating migrant children from their families.
Reading about Paul side by side with a book like Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility or Layla Saad’s Me and White Supremacy is enlightening. In stark contrast to Peter, James, and John in Jerusalem, Paul is a citizen of the Roman Empire, a form of unearned power and privilege that saves his life several times; provides him better treatment in custody; and, on one occasion, even prompts an apology from the authorities. Reading his letters—to the Galatians for example—we may well interpret some of his less-sensitive comments as flowing from the fragility and injured pride of the privileged.
© Andrew Winkler/Unsplash
As someone who tries to navigate the challenges of simultaneously living in and trying to transform a system that is imbued with injustice, I recognize similar challenges faced by Paul. In his final letter, he admits he is a “slave to sin.” This prompts uncomfortable questions for me. It is likely that despite my efforts, as a White person, I too perpetuate the structural sins I benefit from: are there times when I too am insensitive or unaware of negative consequences of my actions? Even in this, I find some comfort: incomplete as Paul’s perspective inevitably was, he did what he could. Even in his imperfection, God had a purpose for him.
Objectively, it’s true that there are no White people in the Bible. As Katharine Gerbner explained in “Slavery in the Quaker World” in the September 2019 issue of Friends Journal, the system of categorizing people according to race is only a few hundred years old. But Gerbner also explained that the system of White supremacy, as we know it today, was rooted in and aided and abetted by White Christianity. To uproot White supremacy from our faith, we need to go deeper to its origins, and see what our foundational texts say to us.
When we take the Scriptures as a whole from beginning to end, we see that God takes the side of the outsider and the oppressed. As a pioneer of Black liberation theology, James H. Cone explains: “God did not become a universal human being but an oppressed Jew, thereby disclosing to us that both human nature and divine nature are inseparable from oppression and liberation.”
Cone didn’t live to see the global reaction to the killing of George Floyd, but his words have gained a new life among Christians concerned about racism:
Until we can see the cross and the lynching tree together, until we can identify Christ with a “re-crucified” black body hanging from a lynching tree, there can be no genuine understanding of Christian identity in America, and no deliverance from the brutal legacy of slavery and white supremacy.
• “Homosexuality: A Plea to Read the Bible Together,” by Douglas C. Bennett
It is the issue that most threatens to create new schisms in the world of Quakers.
• “Being Honest about the Bible in Religious Education,” by Donald W. McCormick
If we believe a Bible story didn’t happen, shouldn’t we say so?
• “How Quakers Read the Bible,” by Jon Watts
A QuakerSpeak video interview with Quaker theologian Paul Buckley.
More from Friends Journal on Antiracism
• “A Quaker Antiracist Reading List,” by Friends Journal staff
It’s not enough to say the United States is haunted by its racist past.
• “Greater Racial Diversity Requires Greater Theological Diversity,” by Adria Gulizia
The early Friends have much in common with today’s Black Americans.
• “Recognizing Racism, Seeking Truth,” by Inga Erickson
Making amends, not excuses, for unintended racism.
Two points:
In Ethiopia, the first Christian kingdom, everyone including Jesus and God are pictured as black.
According to the US Census, people from the Middle East, such as Iraqi, Syrians, etc. are considered white.
The first christian kingdom was acutally Armenia, 301 A.D. Ethiopia adopted Christianity in 330 AD from coptic missionaries.
Since she did or does the US Census have the authority to deem people who are obviously brown or black to be white? Oh that’s right I forgot that is it continues to feed the great lie and gives white people a sense of false Christian superiority then they can continue to believe that all the people in the Bible are white. That is of course until the country is ready to invade and kill the people of Syria, Iran and almost all African countries. The internet has allowed the cat out of the bag. White racism must now resort to drastic means to stay in power.
A parallel article showing the ways in which white intellectuals have used the Bible to justify racism and slavery ~ designating African descendants as “The Sons of Ham,” for instance, or twisting biblical quotes to suit their purposes ~ would be useful to the discussion as well; they’re part of our heritage, whether we remember such allusions and/or approve of them, or not.
Cornelius an Italian was the first gentile to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit not the Ethiopian eunuchs.
Who by all indications was Jewish. Genesis 10:5 clearly identifies the sons of Japheth as Gentiles. The sons of Japheth are Europeans. The sons of Ham and Shem are not defined as Gentiles by the Bible. The decedents of Ham And Shem intermarried. Abraham, and Moses married Hamite or Kushite women as well as King David. Solomon had an affair with a Kushite woman, the Queen of Sheba. These Biblical characters would not have married Gentiles. There wasn’t a Middle East during biblical times per Josephus and other early historians there was a East Ethiopia and west Ethiopia. East Ethiopia would have included the Biblical lands and most of what’s now called the Middle East. The Bible also identifies Arabs and Arabs did not play a large part in the Biblical narrative. Cushites and Shemites who physically were indistinguishable per scripture are the people of Biblical. Black and Brown people like African Americans.
The issue falls right smack in the middle of the crux of white lies and black truths. The Hamitic myth and heritage of the “discovery doctrine” are the props and supporting pillars of delusional and manic, xenophobic, white bias and it’s correlative:western bigotry. The religious rulership of Anglophile Christiandom (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant tradition and Roman Church (western American Catholic establishment), thru mis-education, dis-information, indoctrination, and (false) propaganda spread anthropologic and theologic untruths from the pulpit by disguising the “Scriptures” and mis-interpreting historical paintings / sacraments. The Quaker body is, as well, responsible for the mis-representation of illustrations, icons and images of old, original, orthodox apostolic communities. Both missionary and monk must be literally defunct
Not a part of the “Jesus movement,” but in the Bible: Does Pontius Pilate qualify?
Off memory he was 1 of the following Jewish, Roman or Greek; brown brothers. I’m here because in my prayer time Jesus asked me…..where are the white people in the Bible…my jaw literally dropped BOOM
White identity and thinking are al the way through the Bible. Christianity’s earthly non-white origins do not justify Christian support for the Black Lives Matter organization. That organization is counterfeit. You can spot a counterfeit if the organization violates Scripture and BLM does.
White identity and thinking are NOT at all in the Bible. NO WHERE! With God of course Black lives matter. With God ALL lives matter and everyone is the same!! The largest group of counterfeit people I see are those calling themselves evangelicals who do not have any of the traits the Bible says a Christian should have and they have chosen to idolize a leader who has all of the attributes of an antichrist and none of those traits the Bible says are the fruit of an indwelling Holy Spirit.
“White identity and thinking are al the way through the Bible.”??? WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT… Please please pount out the white identity and thinking that is in the Bible Old and New testament.. PLEASE!!! 🥸🤡🤦🏻🤷🏻
I have read two articles explaining whiteness. Both of the writers as others
cling to the ABNORMAL person of a JESUS, the bible text states that a spirit`
overshadowed the body of a flesh and blood human female and she became
pregnant with a baby jesus who alledgely died on a cross for the alledged SINS
of humans.. these sories are way out. women passed child baring having a childetc.
get with it.
A woman had a child at 70 another at 66, how old do u think mary
was anyways?
What does it matter, Who had what skin color? We are all apart of the human race. We are all loved the same. Why does it matter?
This article is completely american-centric. If by “white” you mean Northern-European white, than sure, Judeans were not white. But Judeans were levantines; like current Palestinians and Lebanese, not black. Those people are caucasians, and not that different phenotypically from other Mediterranean populations like southern Italians or Greeks.
Heitor, maybe you should read the writings of white Roman historians such as Tacticus who compared the Jews to
the Ethiopians in appearance. This was based on his observations. There are several other ancient historians, early Christian leaders, Arab historians, etc. with similar descriptions. Not to mention, the Bible describes Israelites as black skinned and numerous writers over the years. I wonder how the inhabitants of Brazil would have been described 700 years ago. I am pretty sure, not like you. I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, just pointing to the reality that populations can change drastically in a short time. The Americas, Australia, etc., had totally different ethnic groups than what you see now, same as the supposed
“Middle East”. Read the history of the last 2000 years and you will know where the modern populations originated. We all have been lied to and deceived into believing false narratives.
Have you even read that passage in Tacitus? He is talking about many of the claims made in the Hellenestic world about the origin of the Jews, one of them being that they were of Ethiopian origin, others being that they were of Assyrian, Egyptian or Cypriot origin. The Bible does not describe the “racial” appearence of Israelites, but based on genetic and iconographic evidence (such as from the Synagogue at Dura Europos, and from portrayal of semitic nomads from Ancient Egypt) we can know they looked just like current Middle Easterners. Also remember the myth connecting the “curse of Ham” to the dark skin of his son Cush first appeared in the Talmud written by Jews in Babylon around 200 AD. You can also find studies about papyri in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt meant for legal identifcation (by I. F. Fichman for example) that show that in average Jews were lighter skinned than native Egyptians.
The idea that because in Australia and North America (in Central and South America many regions retain their native populations) large scale populational desplacement happened, that it was a norm through out history is false. That happened in those regions because they were much more sparseley populated and native Americans and Australians had no resistence to European diseases. Their was some population change in the last 5000 years in the Middle East (for example through Arab Expansion). But ethnoreligious groups like Maronites and Mandeans been endogamous for almost two millenia.
Also remember lighter skin appeared in the Middle East and arrived in Europe with Neolithic Middle Eastern Farmers.
No one was White or Black or any race until 1607. Europeans in the Bible weren’t White and Africans weren’t Black. Race didn’t exist. If the question is were there people in the Bible who live in places where they would be considered White now, then the answer is yes. Jews count as White, except when they are Black, or Asian. Remember Noah’s three sons? Japhet is the ancestor of Europeans/Caucasians/white people, Ham of Africans, and Shem of Semites (which would also mean Asians in the 3 great races theory).
Race is socially constructed. White is whatever White people say is White, but so was black because Europeans invented white and black so they could own people. Ask John Punch and Elizabeth Key.
Oppression creates difference, not the other way around.
Race was invented in Portugal in the 16th century and codified in a French play in 1607.
https://www.sceneonradio.org/episode-32-how-race-was-made-seeing-white-part-2/
You are mistaken. There were concepts of “race” long before 1607. The historian Geraldine Heng, of the Univ. of Texas, and other scholars are currently revising the mistaken notion that ideas of race and blood purity originated on the Iberian peninsula. She traces the earliest indications of these ideas to medieval Europe, particularly in Britain. And who were the evil “others” in that setting? The Jews. Of course. It’s easy to ignore the history if you’re blinded by nonsense. “Race” is not only about skin color; colorism is only one type of racism. Nazism and other manifestations of racism ignore color, as such, when they classify racial groups. Ask any American white nationalist, and they’ll tell you: regardless of skin color, or any other physical characteristic, Jews are not “White.” So, indeed, race is a social construct; but that construct varies from place to place, and from time to time. Jews have only been “White” in the US since WWII. Some were labeled as “White” on earlier census records, because census takers went by looks, often. But just as frequently, Jews in the US were labeled as “Hebrew” or similar. And btw, citing Noah’s sons as evidence of anything is like saying the Moon is made of green cheese because somebody used to think so.
This was a highly, HIGHLY politicized article. A very biased, and oftentimes suggestive to sway the reader to take up an issue with white people. I think you missed the scope of your own topic.
Great thought provoking article!! Unfortunately, racism will never go away until evil does. History has been white washed, yes and names and places have been changed in the New Testament to reflect whiteness, so as not to show people of color in any seat of power. After reading SOME of the comments. I still see the bigger point is always going to be missed. REAL TALK; God is not a respecter of persons. He looks on the spirit/character of man/woman! How we treat one another. The example that Jesus is showing us is how we are to love each other and love God first and foremost, the sign of the cross. He clearly stated in Matthew, For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. The parables He gave, those are to open our eyes and hearts and see the humanity in each other. There is no reference to Him saying only do that to certain types of people. Seek the Holy Spirit to open your hearts. You never know when you will encounter angels unawares or be tested in a situations to reveal whats really in your heart. Your words and thoughts are heard even when you think no one is listening. Actions. Love is a verb that is seen and felt. Love your neighbor, regardless of what shade of skin they are in. If they can not accept you, pray for them and move on. Now if you don’t believe and think you came to be from stardust, or evolved from a monkey, denying the Creator and can’t fathom that the WHOLE OF HUMANITY was born out of people of color, continue in darkness and reject this truth, and continue to be distracted and argue doctrine. For those that do accept the truth, continue to pray for the heart of man to be enlightened toward all of humanity to love each other. Enter in through the gate and discover who Jesus/ Yeshua, Melekh Mashiach is. The mystery can only be fully and truly revealed with a changed heart.
Jesus gave us, as His followers the command to love one another to show the world that we are His followers. Looks like we are not doing a very good job. We have to do better. People are dying lost because of our pride and arguing about things that have nothing to do with our mission. You know, like about trivial matters which Paul even mentioned ; one of them being disputes over genealogies . And I stay out of politics on FB because if I didn’t, half the people would be alienated
before I post a single word! So I just post devotionals and the Word of God. I have been having my own difficulties. Next to Jesus, we are all vile, and capable the most wicked things imaginable. I know myself too well to claim otherwise. Pray for the saints and for the peace of Jerusalem.
We can’t ignore our past and continue to live and believe lies. The entire Bible story toke place in Africa and what is called the Middle East today. But the Bible is filled with Caucasians and European names. Israel was in captivity for 400 years in Africa but only one Ethiopian is mentioned in the Bible. God made black man but only revealed Himself to Caucasians and instructed them to slave another race. They placed only what they felt was to be canonized in the Bible , leaving out other biblical texts. The Bible says,’ My people perish for the lack of knowledge.’
It’s common to come across inaccurate information in articles like this one. For example, I noticed in this article that it claimed the Ethiopian Eunuch was a non-Jew, which is incorrect. In reality, he was a Jew, and Ethiopia had a Jewish heritage for about 1000 years before Christ. While Armenia is often recognized as the first Christian nation, Ethiopia was already anticipating the arrival of the Messiah a millennium before other nations. They had a longstanding Jewish history.