People of Color in the Bible

Each Sunday in February, Senior Pastor Adrian D. Ware of The Church Triumphant will be teaching on people of color in the Bible. This is something I am looking forward to because this is a topic that is not discussed frequently enough in the church world. Pastor Ware mentioned that one of the people he will be discussing is Cush, the son of Ham:

Josephus gives an account of the nation of Cush, son of Ham and grandson of Noah: "For of the four sons of Ham, time has not at all hurt the name of Cush; for the Ethiopians, over whom he reigned, are even at this day, both by themselves and by all men in Asia, called Cushites." (Antiquities of the Jews 1.6).

The existence of the historical Kingdom of Kush in what is now northern Sudan cannot be reasonably questioned, although the term may later have been employed with some latitude. In addition, the modern Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by various populations in the Horn of Africa, is named after the Biblical Cush.[1] The Cushitic-speaking peoples today comprise the Somali, Afar, Oromo and several other tribes, and are considered offspring of Cush in Masudi's Meadows of Gold from 947 AD[2]. The Beja people, who also speak a Cushitic language, have specific genealogical traditions of descent from Cush[3][4].

Explorer James Bruce, who visited the Ethiopia highlands c. 1770, wrote of "a tradition among the Abyssinians, which they say they have had since time immemorial", that in the days after the Deluge, Cush, the son of Ham, travelled with his family up the Nile until they reached the Atbara plain, then still uninhabited, from where they could see the Ethiopian table-land. There they ascended and built Axum, and sometime later returned to the lowland, building Meroe. He also states that European scholars of his own day had summarily rejected this account on grounds of their established theory, that Cush must have arrived in Africa via Arabia and the Bab el Mandab.[5]. Further, the great obelisk of Axum was said to have been erected by Cush in order to mark his allotted territory, and his son Ityopp'is was said to have been buried there, according to the Book of Aksum, which Bruce asserts was revered throughout Abyssinia equally with the Kebre Negest.

If you want to find our more about Cush and other people of color in the Bible, please attend services at The Church Triumphant throughout the month of February. Tell them Latasha sent you. :)

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