Ancient writers who called someone black were usually pointing to one of three things: the color of a person’s skin, the region they came from, or their family line. Apply those three markers to the actual words of Scripture, and the question of which biblical figures were Black stops being a matter of hunches. A few figures pass on the plain wording of the text. More pass through one step of inference. Some rest on a name’s meaning, a scholar’s proposal or later tradition. Sorting figures into those tiers is the honest answer.
This study draws on chapter one of Jude 3 Project’s Unspoken curriculum, Black History Starts in the Bible. You can work through it alone in about an hour with a Bible and a sheet of paper, or use it with a group across one long session or two shorter ones. The goal is a short list you can defend line by line.
Where the three-part test comes from
The curriculum draws its standard from Who’s Black and Why?, a collection edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Andrew S. Curran. The lesson reports that, long before eighteenth-century writers theorized about the origins of blackness, a person was considered black based on pigmentation, geographic location and ancestry: dark skin, birth in a region heavily populated by dark-skinned people, or descent from people who fit either description.
The curriculum’s leader notes add that in antiquity “black” named an appearance, while today the word also carries a cultural meaning tied to experience in society. So asking whether Hagar was Black is an ancient question about appearance and origin, not a question about a modern American experience.
The three factors are also not equally direct. Skin described in the text is the closest thing to eyewitness evidence. Geography and ancestry are inferences: they tell you where someone came from or who their family was, and you then reason toward appearance. That difference shapes every verdict below.
Before you read on: write down five Bible figures you think were Black. Next to each, note whether you expect the text to say so directly, or whether you are relying on something you heard. Keep the list. You will check it at the end.
The cases the text states outright
Start with passages where Scripture describes skin or names a person as Cushite or Ethiopian. Read each one aloud before discussing it.
The woman in Song of Solomon (also called Song of Songs) speaks about her own skin. “I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon” (Song of Solomon 1:5). The next verse continues: “Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me” (Song of Solomon 1:6). Many other translations render the joining word in verse 5 as “and” rather than “but,” which shifts the tone from apology to celebration. Either way, this is a first-person statement about pigmentation, the strongest kind of evidence the test allows.
Cush appears in the Table of Nations: “And the sons of Ham; Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut, and Canaan” (Genesis 10:6). The KJV regularly renders the land and people of Cush as Ethiopia, meaning the region south of Egypt rather than the modern nation’s borders. Jeremiah assumes his readers know what an Ethiopian looks like: “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?” (Jeremiah 13:23). The prophet treats Cushite skin as fixed and recognizable.
That matters for two figures. The official in Acts is “a man of Ethiopia, an eunuch of great authority under Candace queen of the Ethiopians” (Acts 8:27). His case is about as direct as the record gets. Moses also married a Cushite: “And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman” (Numbers 12:1). Here, though, two questions remain open. Interpreters debate whether this woman is Zipporah, the Midianite wife from Exodus 2, or a second wife. And the word Cush may not always point to the land south of Egypt. Habakkuk 3:7 sets Cushan beside Midian, which leads some readers to think the name could also cover a people near Arabia. The verse does call her Cushite. What that label meant in this case is less certain than it first appears.
The cases that need one step of reasoning
The next group depends on a premise the text does not state. Some rest on a name; most rest on a homeland or a genealogy.
The prophet is introduced as “Zephaniah the son of Cushi” (Zephaniah 1:1). The curriculum treats the father’s name as describing dark skin, a reasonable reading of a name built on Cush. Among the Antioch teachers was “Simeon that was called Niger” (Acts 13:1), and the curriculum notes the nickname means black. Nicknames usually point at something people noticed, which makes Simeon a strong clue. Both cases still rest on what a name means, not on a description, so they belong a step below the Ethiopian official.
Hagar is “an handmaid, an Egyptian” (Genesis 16:1). Asenath, Joseph’s wife, was the daughter of an Egyptian priest, so the curriculum counts their sons Manasseh and Ephraim through ancestry (Genesis 41:50-52). Both cases depend on what Egyptians looked like.
Simon, who carried the cross, is “one Simon a Cyrenian” (Mark 15:21), and Lucius of Cyrene appears beside Simeon in Acts 13:1. The curriculum says there is some debate, and that most scholars believe these men were black because Cyrene was heavily populated by black people. The premise doing the work is the population of Cyrene.
Rahab is a Canaanite, and Canaan is listed as a son of Ham in Genesis 10:6. The curriculum concludes that this made her a woman of color. The argument runs through a genealogy, the most indirect of the three markers. The queen of Sheba (1 Kings 10:1-13) carries its own caution: the curriculum says there is some debate about where she was from.
Then the curriculum draws a line. After its list it says, “This is a very conservative list of black people in the Bible.” It adds, “there is a compelling argument for the following people,” and names Tamar, Bathsheba and Mark. On Tamar it is direct: “Though this is not plainly stated in Scripture,” some scholars think she was likely Canaanite, because Judah married a Canaanite and might have chosen one for his son. Bathsheba’s case rests on her name and on Sheba appearing in Ham’s family (Genesis 10:7). Mark’s rests on African church memory, as reported by Thomas C. Oden, placing his birth near Cyrene. The curriculum sorts these correctly as possibilities, not confirmations.
A witness inside the curriculum who complicates the list
Good investigation looks for counterevidence, and the lesson supplies some. A sidebar by Dr. Vince L. Bantu asks what skin color Africans had in antiquity. He reports that Nubians and Ethiopians were consistently described as black, by themselves and by others. Egyptians and North Africans were harder to classify. Bantu cites Herodotus calling Egyptians black-skinned, and Philostratus describing Egyptians as lighter than Ethiopians. He also points to Egyptian and North African Christians, including Origen and Augustine, who spoke of black people as a different group and sometimes disparaged blackness. Bantu concludes that Egyptians and North Africans were considered neither black nor white, and that the people the ancient world called black in Africa were Nubians and Ethiopians.
This does not cancel the list. It sharpens it. On Bantu’s evidence, the Ethiopian cases grow stronger, because those were the peoples ancient observers labeled black. The cases that depend on Egypt or Cyrene become less certain. Hagar, Asenath’s sons, Simon and Lucius may well have been dark-skinned, but the ancient testimony about Egyptians and North Africans is mixed, and an honest summary says so.
For a group leader: give this section time. Some participants will feel that a qualification weakens the whole case. Help them see that admitting where evidence is thinner is what makes the stronger claims believable.
Check the reference, not just the conclusion
The curriculum lists “the words of the Cushite” from Psalm 7 and describes the writer as a Cushite. Read the heading yourself. Above the first verse, the KJV calls the psalm a Shiggaion of David, which he sang to the LORD concerning the words of Cush the Benjamite. The heading credits the psalm to David and places Cush in an Israelite tribe. That makes Psalm 7 a weak case for the test.
The lesson also handles a text misused for centuries. Genesis 9 records Noah’s words after Ham saw him uncovered: “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren” (Genesis 9:25). The curriculum reads it carefully: “Noah issues the curse, not God,” and the curse falls on Canaan, not Ham. It cites Dr. Walter McCray’s point that God does not speak in the passage, and notes that God had blessed Noah and his sons earlier in the chapter (Genesis 9:1). That reading separates what the narrative describes from what God endorses, and it leaves no basis for the old claim that dark skin is a mark of sin.
Practice: build an evidence ledger
Allow about thirty minutes alone, or split a group into pairs.
- Draw four columns: Figure, What the text actually says, Which marker, and Strength.
- Pick at least six figures, including your five from the start of the study. Look up each passage in the KJV and copy only the words that bear on skin, homeland or ancestry.
- Name the marker each text supplies. Some supply more than one.
- Grade each figure. A: the text describes skin, or names the person as Cushite or Ethiopian. B: the text gives a name, homeland or descent, and you need an outside premise to reach appearance. C: the claim comes from a guess about a marriage, a disputed origin or later tradition.
- For every B or C, write the outside premise in one sentence. For Simon, it might be: Cyrene was heavily populated by dark-skinned people. Then ask what evidence would support or weaken it.
Groups should compare ledgers before discussing conclusions. Where pairs disagree, ask each to point to the exact words that drove their grade.
What the evidence lets you say
The text shows a woman who calls herself black, an Ethiopian court official who was among the earliest converts after Pentecost, and Moses married to a woman Scripture calls Cushite. It shows a prophet whose father bears a name tied to Cush and a church teacher nicknamed black. Beyond those, a longer list rests on reasonable inference about Egypt, Cyrene and Ham’s descendants.
The curriculum reports Dr. Eric Mason’s argument that it is white people, not people of color, who have to be found in the Bible. Treat that as his claim about where the burden of proof falls. Your ledger is how you test it.
The lesson is equally clear about limits. Its leader notes say the presence of black people in Scripture “is not knowledge that is to be used to dehumanize our white brothers and sisters.” The evidence corrects a false picture. It does not rank peoples. John’s vision ends with a multitude “of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues” standing before the throne (Revelation 7:9). The test restores accuracy to that crowd without changing who is in it.
Questions for discussion
- Compare your opening list of five with your ledger. Which assumptions held up, and which came from something you had only heard?
- Why is a first-person description like Song of Solomon 1:5-6 stronger evidence than a homeland? What could make a homeland argument stronger or weaker?
- Bantu’s evidence suggests ancient writers did not classify Egyptians the way they classified Ethiopians. How should that change the way you talk about Hagar or Simon of Cyrene?
- The heading of Psalm 7 did not say what the curriculum’s list implied. What habits would keep you from repeating a claim you have not checked?
- How does the careful reading of Genesis 9:25 change what that passage can and cannot be used to prove?
- If someone said this topic is about race rather than faith, what in Acts 8:26-40 or Revelation 7:9 would you point to?
- Where is the line between correcting a whitewashed picture and creating a new hierarchy? What would crossing it sound like?
Before your next conversation on this, choose one figure from your A column and read the whole story, not just the verse with the marker. Then choose one from your B column and write two sentences: what you can say with confidence, and what you would still want to know.