A standalone study on how Scripture uplifts Black people, and how Rome later distorted it.
The big question
If Christianity has been used to demean Black people, did that come from the Bible itself, or from somewhere else? Dr. Vince Bantu, a scholar of African Christianity, makes a careful case: Scripture actually goes out of its way to honor Black people, while the anti-blackness many associate with the faith crept in later through Roman theologians. This study reads the affirming texts and traces where the distortion came from.
Key takeaways
- Song of Songs calls dark skin beautiful in a world that despised it.
- In Numbers 12, God judges Miriam’s opposition to Moses’s Cushite wife.
- Black figures fill the Bible as godly and powerful: Ebed-Melech, Tirhakah, the Cushites, the Ethiopian official.
- Anti-blackness entered through Roman theologians like Jerome, not through Scripture.
- The empire’s prejudice is not the Bible’s value.
Scripture to sit with
Song of Songs 1:5. I am dark and lovely. Beauty affirmed where the world denied it.
Numbers 12:1-15. Miriam opposes the Cushite wife and is judged. God defends the marginalized.
Jeremiah 38:7-13. Ebed-Melech the Cushite rescues the prophet. A Black man as the hero of the chapter.
Acts 8:26-39. The Ethiopian official hungers for God and is baptized. Africa in the heart of Acts.
Quotes worth discussing
Bantu cites Song of Songs: “I am black and beautiful. Do not despise me because I am black.”
On Numbers 12, Bantu says, “God punishes Miriam for her racism and her anti-blackness.”
On the roster, Bantu says, “Black people show up all throughout the Bible as godly people… and also as powerful people.”
Discussion questions
- Were you taught that the Bible was used against Black people, that it affirms them, or both?
- Read Numbers 12. What do you make of the form Miriam’s judgment took?
- Which of the Black figures Bantu names did you not know about?
- How does it change things to learn the anti-blackness came from Rome, not Scripture?
- Where do you still need to separate the empire’s values from the Bible’s?
Go deeper
This study comes from the Jude 3 Project’s Early African Christianity course with Dr. Vince Bantu. For a related conversation, see the Jude 3 work on where Black people are in the Bible.
A closing reflection
Read Song of Songs 1:5 and Jeremiah 38 this week. Let it settle in that the God of the Bible called dark skin beautiful and made a Black man the rescuer of his prophet, long before any empire tried to say otherwise. Then ask where you still carry a prejudice that came from the world rather than the Word.