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A common argument for American slavery during its long life was biblical: Noah cursed his son Ham (Gen 9.18-27), who is the ancestor of the African peoples (Gen 10.6-20), and the curse included the statement that “a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren” (Gen 9.25). So, says the exegete, while I don’t like slavery any more than you do, and it’s really too bad, yet this is what God has determined for these people, and we can’t fight it. Blacks are going to be the slaves of whites.

Or something along that line.

I should add here that the abolitionist movement in both the US and Britain was also peopled—and in fact instigated and led—by Christians, who read and believed their Bibles, and who pointed out, as I’m about to, that the above argument is a textbook example of lousy hermeneutics and thus nonsense.

Let us count the ways.

To begin with, it’s true that Noah’s son Ham incurred his father’s wrath for something he did while his father was sleeping off an apparently unanticipated episode of drunkenness (Gen 9.21-22). We’re not told clearly what angered Noah; all the passage says is that Ham “told his brothers” that their father was naked in his tent. The fact that the subsequent curse seems to be quite an overreaction to that simple act has led to lots of speculation about what really happened; some have suggested that since the phrase to “uncover [someone’s] nakedness” is later used as a euphemism for sexual activity (Lev 18.6-19; 20.11, 17-21; Ezk 16.36; 23.18), perhaps Ham took sexual advantage of his father’s incapacity, thereby committing rape, incest, and homosexuality all at the same time, and then humiliating his father by bragging about it.

Maybe. Maybe not. We don’t know, and we should say we don’t know.

But from this point, pretty much everything about the pro-slavery argument goes badly off the rails.

First, we don’t know that Ham was the ancestor of Black Africans. He’s identified as the father of Cush, which is commonly understood to be modern Sudan; Mizraim, which is almost certainly Egypt; Put, which is likely Libya; and Canaan, which is, well, Canaan. None of those regions involve sub-Saharan Africa, and the North Africans are generally more Arab-looking than “African”-looking.

Second, the slavery apologists seem never to notice that Ham himself was not cursed; Noah turned the curse on Ham’s son Canaan (Gen 9.25). Now, that’s a bit of an interpretational puzzle; some commentators speculate that Noah really, really wanted to hurt Ham and so cursed his (youngest?) son. Others speculate, with equally absent evidence, that Canaan might have been somehow involved in his father’s act. In the end, we don’t know why Canaan got the curse. But it’s interesting to note that of the four sons, the ones who apparently populated at least part of the African continent are precisely the ones not cursed.

Third, we really don’t know for sure that God intended to carry out Noah’s wishes. All that my confident belief in inerrancy requires is that the Bible accurately records Noah’s words. No context, narrow or broad, places divine endorsement on the prophecy, and while Noah is initially said to have “found grace in the eyes of the Lord” (Gen 6.8), and to be a recipient of God’s deliverance from universal judgment (Gen 6.13ff), and to be a New Testament example of faith (Heb 11.7), his words here do seem inexplicable in the little context we have. Not to mention that he was coming out of a drunken stupor.

In any case, he cursed the Canaanites. And we find, sure enough, that the Canaanites eventually experience God’s wrath and decree of extermination—not because Noah cursed them, but because they were intensely evil idolaters, sacrificing their living infants in fire to their imagined gods. Interestingly, God, who characterizes himself as longsuffering, patiently endured centuries of their violent misbehavior, giving them time to come to their senses; he tells Abraham that he couldn’t possess the Promised Land in his lifetime, “for the iniquity of the Amorites [a Canaanite tribe] is not yet full” (Gen 15.16).

So were blacks biblically cursed with a fate as slaves?

That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.

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We’ve seen that there’s no evidence—of any merit—that the birthright lines of Ephraim and Manasseh (particularly Ephraim, Gen 48.14) migrated northwestward from the Assyrian captivity and became the genealogical forebears of the Anglo-Saxons. Anglo-Israelites add the claim that the kingly line of Judah (Gen 49.10), established in David (2Sam 7), is connected with the British royal house, embodied today in Queen Elizabeth II.

• The kingly line was dethroned with the deportation to Babylon of Jehoiachin (2K 24.6-16) and his uncle Zedekiah (2K 24.17-25.11), the last two kings in the Davidic line. (Nebuchadnezzar’s puppet governor, Gedaliah [2K 25.22ff], was not Davidic.)
• But Jeremiah the prophet was left behind in Jerusalem when the exiles were taken to Babylon (Jer 40.1-6), along with certain members of the royal line (Jer 41.1), including some of the king’s daughters (Jer 41.10).
• After the assassination of Nebuchadnezzar’s puppet governor, Gedaliah (Jer 41.1-3), fearing retribution from Babylon, Judah’s ad hoc leadership decided to go down to Egypt to seek protection there (Jer 41.4-6, as implied in the succeeding passage).
• Though Jeremiah argued strongly against this decision (Jer 42.7-22), the leaders carried out their plan, forcibly taking Jeremiah himself with them (Jer 43.1-7).

The biblical account ends the story with this group of Jews in Egypt, hearing God’s judgment pronounced on them by Jeremiah (Jer 44.24-30). But Anglo-Israelites continue the story by drawing on various alleged ancient traditions.

• Jeremiah eventually left Egypt, taking with him one of King Zedekiah’s daughters, Tea-Tephi by name.
• They arrived in Ireland in 569 BC.
• She married the king of Ireland, whose line continued to Scotland and was eventually embodied in King James VI.
• James VI eventually became King James I of Great Britain, establishing there the House of Stuart. He was also, incidentally, the king who ordered the translation of the King James Version of the Bible.
• With some twists and turns, the line eventuated in Elizabeth II, the current Queen of Great Britain.
• The kings of this line (along with the occasional queen) have been coronated in Westminster Abbey on a throne that encases the Stone of Scone. This is the stone that Jacob used as a pillow  (Gen 28.11) when he dreamed of the staircase descending from heaven at Bethel, and where he received the Abrahamic covenant from God.

There are several indisputable points in this sequence. Most obviously, the former bulleted list is in the biblical account, and as a conservative, I would accept all of it. Jeremiah did indeed go to Egypt (Jer 43.8). The Jewish leadership brought a lot of people with them, including the king’s daughters (Jer 43.6).

Second, the accession of James VI of Scotland to the British throne in 1603 is a well-established historical fact. And Queen Elizabeth II is currently on the throne.

But the rest of it is sketchier. A lot sketchier.

Jeremiah visiting Ireland? No mention of it in any of Irish history, despite the repeated claim in Anglo-Israelite writings that the story comes from “the Annals of Ireland.” Time for these folks to produce an original source, rather than just quoting one another.

A daughter of Zedekiah marrying the king of Ireland? Same. No documentation of this either. None. Let’s have an original source.

As to the Stone of Scone, it’s sandstone, of which there is little to none in the region of Bethel, where Jacob found himself in need of a pillow—though it’s common on the Israeli coast and further south, in the Negev and over toward Petra on the Jordanian side. The predominant sedimentary geology around Bethel is limestone. Sandstone, however, is common in Scotland, which is where British tradition places the origin of the Stone of Scone.

As we found with the “evidence” for the northwestward migration of the ten Northern tribes, this evidence is just worthless. I’m happy to see evidence that’s serious, but so far absolutely nothing rises to that standard.

Next time, an idea from outside Anglo-Israelism proper: Noah’s curse on all the black folks. And a lesson in hermeneutics.

Part 8

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Is it possible that the descendants of the leaders of the ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom, exiled in Assyria, made their way northwestward across Europe, perhaps over multiple generations, eventually arriving in the British Isles?

There’s not much in the way of evidence from the period.

I say “not much” because there’s a teeeeeeny little bit, but it doesn’t get us very far. In the apocryphal book of 2 Esdras, a Jewish apocalyptic writing probably from around the time of Christ, there’s a brief account (13.40-47) of the exiles from Assyria determining to escape over the Euphrates into a land called “Arsareth.” But the name is mentioned nowhere else in ancient writing; and nobody knows where it was, or even if the name was intended to be a place name at all.

There’s another relevant reference in Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews,11.5.2, where Josephus observes off-handedly that “the ten tribes are beyond Euphrates till now, and are an immense multitude, and not to be estimated by numbers.” Josephus is writing in the first century AD.

Here’s the thing. Neither of these sources is reliable. 2 Esdras is filled with bizarre visions and is at best deuterocanonical; the Orthodox tradition gives it that status, but the Roman Catholic church doesn’t. And Josephus tends to include unconfirmed historical accounts, especially if they portray the Jews, his people, in a good light.

So we have two accounts that may or may not agree, and we can’t trust either one of them. That’s not much of a basis for connecting my WASPy brethren to Joseph’s birthright.

A second line of evidence for the idea comes from biblical passages.

• Israel will be regathered from “the north and the west,” presumably with reference to the land of Israel (Is 49.12). But the same passage also refers to people coming “from the land of Sinim”; and while Anglo-Israelites suggest that the phrase literally means “the land of the South” and refers to Australia, the two standard Hebrew words for “south” are teman (e.g. Dt 3.27) and darom (e.g. Ezek 40.24), and the place name Sin is used elsewhere (Ezek 30.15) to refer to a location in Egypt, probably Syene (modern Aswan). The point of the passage, which I believe looks to a time yet future, is the gathering of peoples from all directions to worship Yahweh’s Servant. The use of similar passages, such as Isa 11.11, 24.14-15, and Hos 11.10-11, in support of the tribes in the west is similarly weak.
• Allegedly Zaraphath (Ob 1.20) is a reference to France. But the only other biblical reference to the place (1K 17.9-10) speaks of it as in the vicinity of Sidon (Lebanon).

A third line of evidence is from names that sound like biblical names or words.

• The word Saxons is allegedly from “Isaac’s sons.” Sounds cool, but it’s just simply not true. The fact that words sound alike—seem and seam, for example—is absolutely no evidence at all they are related to one another. In practice, they usually aren’t.
• It’s suggested that the Danites left their tribal name in place names all across Europe—the Danube, Don, Dneister, and Dneiper rivers; Denmark and Danzig; and even London. We can observe first that there are other origins for those names given in the standard reference works—you can Google them yourself. But further I note the following place names in Vietnam: Danang, Dien Bien Phu, Nam Dinh, and Don Duong. Seems as though those Danites really got around. Why do you suppose the name of Dan shows up so often, and not the name of, say, Naphtali, Zebulun, or Issachar? I think the question answers itself.
• The name America allegedly comes ultimately from hamachiri, “the Machirites” (Num 26.29), descendants of Manasseh’s son Machir. Unfortunately, though, no standard source derives the Italian name Amerigo, the immediate source of America, from Hebrew. Several sources are suggested—and you should be warned that the alleged meanings in those “baby names” books are highly unreliable—with the most popular being “house ruler” from Germanic.
• Yankee is allegedly a form of the name Jacob. While there’s again a lot of uncertainty, most place it from the Dutch janke, meaning “little John.” The Hebrew form of John is Yohanan (e.g. Jer 40.13); while the English form of the Hebrew Jacob is James. Even if Yankee were connected etymologically to the name Jacob, it would be exceedingly difficult to show that it was a reference to the biblical Jacob; there have been a lot of Jacobs over the years. The argument that “GI Joe” is a reference to Jacob’s son Joseph is similarly poorly founded.

All the evidence of a migration of the ten tribes northwestward to Europe—all of it—is poorly based and ephemeral and thus worthless. If the migration happened, we’re going to need better evidence before we believe it.

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Most of us learned in Sunday school the basics of Israel’s history—

• The call of Abraham (c. 2000 BC)
• The Exodus (c. 1500 BC)
• Establishment of the monarchy under David (c. 1000 BC)
• Civil War (c. 900 BC)
• Deportation of the Northern Kingdom of Israel by Assyria (722 BC)
• Deportation of the Southern Kingdom of Judah by Babylon (586 BC)
• Return from Babylon (536 BC)
• Dedication of the Second Temple (516 BC)

And likewise most of us know what’s missing: the Return from Assyria. Because there was none.

The two exiles are fundamentally different in that respect. Judah comes back. Israel doesn’t.

Judah is re-established as a country—though never as an independent, self-governing entity, at least in biblical times. It exists as a vassal state under Persia, then Greece, then the Ptolemies and Seleucids, and finally Rome, which eventually destroys it (AD 70) and scatters it to the nations, not to reassemble until modern times as the State of Israel (AD 1948, to be precise). Self-governing once again. At last.

But the Northern Kingdom? It disappears.

Whatever happened to those 10 tribes?

Well, to begin with, we need to talk about the numbers. Jacob (named “Israel” by God [Gen 32.28]) had 12 sons—the 12 tribes of Israel—one of whom was Joseph. Jacob gave Joseph, in effect, the birthright, which included a double portion of the inheritance—which Jacob indicated by granting both of Joseph’s two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, full standing as tribes.

So now there were 13 tribes—not counting Joseph as distinct from his sons.

After the Israelites conquered Canaan under Joshua, the land was apportioned among all the tribes (Josh 13-19)—except Levi (Josh 13.14, 33), which received no land inheritance but was given property within the apportionments of each of the other 12 tribes, so that they could serve as teachers of the Law throughout the Land (Josh 21.1ff).

To complicate matters, several tribes—Reuben, Gad, and half the tribe of Manasseh—requested land allotments east of the Jordan (Num 32.1-5), a request Moses granted (Num 32.33). So now we’re back to 13 allotments again, with a West and East Manasseh.

And further, Simeon’s land is placed inside Judah’s, as an enclave (Josh 19.9).

So how many tribes are there in the North? How many in the South? Three (Judah, Ephraim, Simeon)? Or four (Judah, Ephraim, Simeon, Levi)? out of 12, or 13? or 14, counting Manasseh twice?

I have no idea. :-)

Well, however many tribes there were in the North, the Assyrians invade in 722 BC and take the leaders of the Northern Kingdom into exile, but not everybody. How do we know that?

• That was the normal practice; you distribute the exiled leadership across the empire, and move in people from across the empire, so that they’ll intermarry with those not exiled and lessen the likelihood that the nationalist / tribal spirit will endure, thereby lowering the likelihood of future rebellions. That’s what Nebuchadnezzar did a little more than a century later (2K 25.12).
• Sargon, the Assyrian king, claimed that he took 27,290 Israelites into exile. This is not likely to have been the entire Northern population, given that 70 years before the exile Judah’s King Amaziah had hired 100,000 Israelite troops as mercenaries to help him fight against Edom (2Chr 25.6). If the Northern army could spare 100,000 soldiers, their entire population must have been quite a bit larger than that.
• There’s evidence that at least some Israelites migrated to the South before the exile, either for religious reasons—for easier access to the Temple in Jerusalem—or to escape the impending Assyrian invasion. There’s a debate between a couple of well-known modern Israeli archaeologists as to how extensive that migration was, but nobody says that no members of the Northern tribes came South.
  • Some from Ephraim and Manasseh had moved south during Asa’s reign, 150 years before the exile (2Chr 15.9).
  • Ephraim, Manasseh, and “all the remnant of Israel” donated to the renovation of the Temple under Josiah in 621 BC (2Chr 34.9), a century after the exile.
  • All 12 tribes were (apparently?) represented at the dedication of the Second Temple in 516 BC (Ezra 6.17, 8.35).
• Several passages in the New Testament speak of the existence of the “exiled” tribes—
  • Anna, the prophetess who welcomes the baby Jesus at the Temple, is of the tribe of Asher (Lk 2.36).
  • In his speech to Agrippa, Paul seems to think of all 12 tribes as still in existence (Ac 26.7).
  • James writes his epistle “to the twelve tribes that are in the Dispersion” (Jam 1.1).

What does all this mean? It means that there are no “ten lost tribes of Israel.” The tribes never left and thus were never lost.

But it’s clear that some from the ten tribes were exiled. Could they have traveled, over several generations, to Britain? We’ll take a look at that next time.

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Anglo-Israelism, the view that Anglo-Saxons are especially blessed by God and the people of his covenant, is based in the idea of “the lost 10 tribes of Israel.” It begins with the historical fact that the Northern Kingdom of Israel broke away from the Kingdom of Judah shorty after Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, ascended to the throne (1K 11.41-12.24). These two kingdoms lived side by side, sometimes in relative peace but often at war, for about two centuries, until 722 BC, when the Assyrian army invaded the North and exiled its people (2K 17.1-41). After that event, the Northern Kingdom was never re-established; it disappeared as an entity from the pages of history.

It was common in ancient empires to exile people you conquered. The reasoning was simple: a conquered people is always inclined to rise up in rebellion against its conqueror, because nationalism never dies. So what do you do? You pack up the people and scatter them to other locations around your empire. Over time they intermarry with other ethnicities, and they lose their sense of tribal identity. Nebuchadnezzar did the same thing more than a century later, when he conquered the Southern Kingdom of Judah (2K 25.11-12), and the practice is confirmed in archaeological records across the Ancient Near East.

The story told by Anglo-Israelites posits an unexpected outcome of this event:

• When Jacob blessed his sons, the future 12 tribes of Israel, he gave the birthright to Joseph’s sons, Ephraim and Manasseh (Gen 48.1-22).
• These tribes were exiled in the Assyrian invasion.
• Modern Jews are descended from Judah (as the name demonstrates), who does not hold the birthright. They’re the custodians of the royal line, but not chosen as inheritors of the birthright.
• The Northern Kingdom was taken to Mesopotamia in exile. Eventually escaping, the ten tribes left evidence of their generational path northwestward, eventually to the British Isles.
• The kingly line of Judah arrived in the British Isles as well after the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon in 586 BC, when Jeremiah the prophet secretly escaped with a daughter of King Zedekiah. She established the royal line in Ireland when she married Ireland’s king. That line became the royal line of the UK when James VI of Scotland became James I of Great Britain. Thus the royal line of Judah and the birthright line of Ephraim are united in Britain.
• Many Anglo-Israelites also maintain that Manasseh, the older brother of Ephraim but placed second by Jacob’s decision (Gen 48.14-20), is the ancestor of white Americans, making the US part of Israel as well.

This is quite a claim—or concatenation of claims. There’s a lot to consider here.

Next time we’ll begin to work through these assertions.

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There are those who claim to believe the Bible but who allege that only whites are descended from Adam and Eve; other races allegedly descend from other sources. (This is the view that distinguishes Christian Identity proponents from Anglo-Israelites.) There are many suggested sources—

• They’re an earlier stage of evolution, and therefore less well developed.
• They’re the spawn of Satan or of demons, a situation perhaps alluded to in Genesis 6.1-4.
• They’re “the beasts of the field” mentioned in Gen 1.24 and often elsewhere.

Of course there are problems with each of these suggestions. The first, as evolutionary, I would rule out simply on that basis. It’s been suggested that at least the early incarnations of Darwinism might have encouraged this kind of thinking.

As to the second view, there’s a whole industry of bizarre thinking that springs from the Genesis 6 passage. There’s a lot of interest currently in “the Nephilim,” allegedly giants who were produced from sexual relationships between fallen angels and human females. I don’t buy it, and I’ll observe generally that obscure passages make an exceedingly weak foundation for entire worldviews. If there are aliens among us, it’s odd that God hasn’t given us any means of identifying them, or even warnings about the situation in general.

I’d like to spend a little more time on the third view, which is fairly popular among adherents to Christian Identity. There are two primary problems with positing that the Bible teaches this—

• The term “beasts of the field” is used in Scripture in contexts that cannot refer to humans or humanoids.
  • 1Sam 17.44: David says that he’ll give Goliath’s flesh to the beasts of the field. But he clearly cannot have meant that Africans, Asians, or Pacific Islanders, for example, would eat Goliath’s body.
  • 2Sam 21.10: Rizpah protected something from birds by day and the beasts of the field by night. No Africans, Asians, or Pacific Islanders in sight.
  • Ezek 39.4: God speaks of dead soldiers as being devoured by the beasts of the field. Never in recorded history have conquering armies, or even human(oid) scavengers, feasted on the bodies of the slain.
  • The term is often paralleled with “the fowls of the air,” an association that speaks more obviously of animals than of human(oid)s (Gen 2.19-20; 1Sam 17.44; Ezek 29.5; 31.6, 13; 38.20; 39.17; et al).
• The Bible frequently speaks of non-Israelite peoples as within the sphere of humanity and God’s plan of salvation.
  • Ps 22.27: All the nations will worship before God.
  • Ps 67.4: The nations will rejoice before the Lord.
  • Ps 72.17: All nations will call the Lord blessed.
  • Ps 86.9: All nations will worship the Lord.
  • Ps 117.1: All nations are called to worship God.
  • Isa 2.2-4: “All nations” shall flow into the Lord’s house.
  • Isa 55.5: Many nations will run to Israel because of the Lord.
  • Isa 66.18-20: All nations will come to Jerusalem to see God’s glory.
  • Rev 7.9-17: Believers from “every kingdom, tongue, tribe, and nation” will worship the Lamb before his throne.

This is a truly crucial point. What I’ve listed here is just a sampling of passages from 3 biblical books; there are scores of others, and the concept is pervasive across the biblical canon. The Revelation 7 passage is the climax of the biblical story and of cosmic history; it’s literally the whole point of the Bible. God is gathering to himself a people from every kingdom, tribe, tongue, and nation. He is bringing together people who by every human measure should be enemies, and making them all his sons and daughters, seated at his table, united perfectly by a power and grace that can be explained only by the existence of a good and great God (Eph 2.11-22; 3.10). The unity of the church is a testimony, even when silent, to the fact of God’s existence, his power, and his remarkable kindness to those whose only desire was to be his enemies. Making any of this about “race” is simply to miss the whole point.

So the foundational belief of Christian Identity is unbiblical—in fact it goes directly contrary to the whole point of biblical revelation. It’s false teaching.

Next time, we’ll begin looking at the evidence for the claim that white Europeans are “the lost 10 tribes of Israel.”

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It seems to me that before we can think through arguments about race, we need to define our key term. What is “race,” anyway?

And immediately we run into deep, deep trouble.

There’s an old classic delineation of races as Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid. Whites, Asians, Blacks. But is that accurate?

What are Indians? Latinos? Pacific Islanders?

You can see the indecisiveness all over the census form.

This lack of any meaningful definition for race has resulted in all kinds of confusion when we try to implement race-based policies. In South Africa, post-apartheid, the culture recognizes 3 racial groups: White, Black (or “African”), and “Coloured”—which is anybody who isn’t either White or Black. But that means that Indians, of whom there are many in South Africa, are lumped in with those of mixed race—what Americans used to call “mulattos”—who are culturally completely different from Indians. How does that make sense?

And speaking of “mixed race,” how do you define that? Back when Americans cared about such things, “mulatto” meant someone with a white parent and a black parent; “quadroon” meant someone who had 1 black grandparent; then there was “octaroon” and “hexadecaroon” and so on. At what point is the person just “white” or “black”? It just gets ridiculous; according to the “one-drop rule,” pretty much everyone in the USA is black. And I suppose that means we all ought to get along just fine.

Raced-based policy is simply unworkable and thus nonsensical. Or vice versa.

Does the Bible bring us any help?

Well, it begins by saying that all humans have 2 common ancestors, Adam and Eve (and, several generations later, Noah and Mrs. Noah). It doesn’t speak of “race” at all. We’re all “one blood” (Ac 17.26).

I highly recommend a book by my friend Ken Ham on this topic: One Race One Blood. It’s clear, understandable, and solidly biblical.

The New Testament does use the Greek word ethnos for “nation,” speaking of what today we would call “ethnicities” or “people groups.” I’m inclined to think that we’re more easily categorized by culture than melanin level, though history has demonstrated that cultural identities often arise from people’s general preference for others of their own ethnicity.

So where did the races, or ethnicities, or whatever, come from? Why are we all so different in appearance?

Nobody knows.

Really.

If the Bible teaches that we all have common descent (and for what it’s worth, my understanding is that many secular evolutionists would agree to a common human ancestry as well), then we have to conclude that all the variations we see today were contained in the original genetic code and manifested over time. How and when did they manifest?

Dunno.

We know that Noah had 3 sons, whose descendants populated the earth:

• Shem’s people appear to have populated the Middle East (Gen 10.21-31).
• Ham’s people appear to have populated the Middle East and North Africa (Gen 10.6-20).
• Japheth’s people appear to have populated generally north and west of the Middle East (Gen 10.2-5).

So where did the Chinese come from? Sub-saharan Africans? Native Americans, north and south?

Don’t know. It doesn’t say. Better reserve judgment.

I doubt that Mongoloids came from Shem, and Negroids from Ham, and Caucasoids from Japheth . It’s clearly not that simple. Apparently those genetic characteristics manifested themselves over time, and certain features, melanin among them, tended to cluster in specific geographic areas (Africa, East Asia, and so on) largely because people weren’t moving around as easily as we do today.

Upshot?

Well.

Between the fact that there’s a lot we don’t know about ethnicity, and the fact that what we do know leads us to minimize rather than emphasize the distinctions, ethnicity is a really lousy basis for theological and doctrinal decisions. Particularly in the body of Christ, it ought to pretty much disappear as a factor (1Co 1.24; Gal 3.28; Col 3.11) .

But the fact remains that still today, in spite of all those billions of years of evolution (?), we’re still focused obsessively and passionately on the topic; and even within Christendom—broadly defined—people are making significant decisions based entirely on racial considerations. That fact suggests that there are serious needs to be addressed.

Hence the series.

Next time: some variations on the “common human ancestor” dogma.

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Nearly 40 years ago now, I wrote, and BJU published, a brief monograph refuting the alleged biblical evidence that white people—specifically Anglo-Saxons—are God’s chosen people. After a brief shelf life, it went out of print, for the sole reason that hardly anybody bought it. (That’s kind of how publishing works. ?)

I wrote on the topic because I had a relative who espoused the view. But eventually I lost interest and moved on to other things. The recent talk about “white nationalism,” however, has gotten me thinking about the topic, and it has occurred to me that it’s worthwhile to address it again, both because of recent emphases in the news and because we can all see that racism lives on in the human heart.

I’m a fan of listening to people who know what they’re talking about—and its corollary, ignoring, or at least devaluing, the opinions of people who are just shooting their mouths off—of which the percentage seems to be growing every day. As one of my daughters commented just recently, “People who say stuff often don’t know stuff.”

Which means that I should stick to areas where I have expertise. So let’s start by defining some issues, so I can safely set aside those where I’m ignorant and should consequently keep my thoughts to myself.

The dominant term today, the one I’ve used to title this series, is “white nationalism.” That’s technically the view that whites should preserve majorities and control in one or more nations. Hence resistance to immigration (legal or illegal) by nonwhites. Usually aligned with that is the idea that white culture is superior to other cultures, and therefore white culture should be preferred as better for the future of the planet. That view we call “white supremacism,” which of course is just one form of racism. It’s a modern descendant of the American practice of slavery before the Civil War and segregation in the years that followed.

A quick side note: My experience leads me to believe that the primary reason for disdain of other cultures is unfamiliarity: you think a practice of some other culture is “stupid” because you don’t understand what’s going on behind the practice. I note that cross-cultural ignorance tends to be a particular feature of Americans because we have oceans—big ones—on both sides. Lots of Americans have never left their country, and I think this is the primary reason for the overseas stereotype of “the ugly American,” who thinks people are stupid because they don’t speak English—and who thinks that they’ll understand if he just speaks more slowly and loudly. All the “ugly American” does is proclaim his own ignorance to everyone around him. Travel more, people. And listen.

Back to my main point. Though a great many racists, including white supremacists, are secular in their thinking, some integrate religious arguments or themes into their position. It’s at this point that my ears perk up, because while I have no professional expertise in anthropology or sociology or psychology or politics, I do know something about religion, particularly Christianity, and I have some facility in tools for research and thinking in that area.

So I’d like to spend a few posts addressing some of the religious arguments for white racism, specifically the ones allegedly based in biblical exegesis. While these posts won’t apply to all “white nationalists,” I’d like to think that they might direct well-intentioned Christians away from distortions of the biblical material, mainly by demonstrating the perversion inherent in the alleged biblical interpretation.

The bulk of these posts will address the arguments of “British Israelism” or “Anglo-Israelism,” which teaches that the Anglo-Saxons are the “lost ten tribes of Israel.” A more recent popular form of British Israelism is the Christian Identity movement, which holds additionally that other white Europeans are descended from the biblical Southern Kingdom of Judah. While the former group would recognize modern Jews as descended from Judah and therefore included in God’s covenant with Abraham, the latter group holds that all modern Jews are impostors and so is aggressively antisemitic. I hope to say some things about that view as well.

See you next time.

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Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash