The woman in the Song of Songs was “black and beautiful” (Song 1:5). She is often thought of only as the Shulamite today (6:13), and many scholars assume her to be fictional. However, from the time of Origen, readers have speculated that Solomon wrote about his actual first wife, an Egyptian, says scholar Alice Ogden …
They Were Not White, Part 3: Solomon’s Bride Read More »
In Part 2 of the series They Were Not White, I would like to help us re-envision Hagar, the Egyptian woman who served Sarah, was Abram’s concubine/second wife, and who gave birth to Ishmael (Gen. 16). Let’s start with ethnicity. Scholar Peter T. Nash writes that for most of the twentieth century Biblical researchers presumed …
They Were Not White, Part 2: Hagar Read More »
The people of the Bible are the ancestors of people of color. No one in the Bible looked like the white people who live in North America, Canada, Britain, Europe, Australia, New Zealand or anywhere else. (And here’s an argument that Jewish people are not white). I’d like to take a closer look at dark-skinned …
They Were Not White, Part 1: Zipporah and Moses Read More »
