For most Christian believer's when you close your eye's and think about the stories of the Bible you see depictions of white Europeans. Adam, Eve, Moses, Abraham and Jesus to just name a few. The
western American world through slavery has implanted in the mind of most believers not just blacks but whites as well that the history of the Christian faith was European. However, what if I were to tell you that this idea of the Christian religion being brought to Africans and blacks by Europeans was a false narrative, but that is was Africans, people of color who first took the message of the Bible to the corners of the early world.
The stories of the Bible are centered historically around Jerusalem, Egypt, Ethiopia and many other African countries. Mostly North Africa before the territory divide by map makers and the naming of continents. So with the understanding that the majority of the main characters came for North Africa we know that they were people of color. There are many archeological studies that will confirm this. Even the scriptures themselves give us and idea of what many of
the people of the Bible looked like. Song of Solomon in chapter one versus five tells us about Solomon's lover, "I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.". The son's of Noah were different shades of black. Even the great King David was a shade of black (lighter in skin color). The Hebrews chosen by God to carry His message of salvation to the world were all different shades of black, which would reason that the Jews of the new testament in the bible were also people of color, having many shades of the color black.
The idea of the historic character who were people of color becoming people of European decent is one of history. Rome and many of it's Euro
pean countries invaded the dark continent. Killed, raped and pillaged it's people and religious leadership. Once these areas became weak from war other religious factions moved in an took over overwhelming many of the initial Christian countries. Islam, Hinduism
and many other's took over in these regions, destroying the heritage and culture of early Christians that settled in those lands such as Egypt, Niger, Berber, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and many others.
Even the Trans-Atlantic slave trade pushed the idea that God, Christian and the Bible were white. While at the same time teach people of color that the white God created them only for service and not much good for anything else. This was ingrained in the black slave, and for hundreds of years repeated. Even when blacks became free that idea of whites being better or higher in Gods eyes and blacks are meant to struggle and be poor continued in black pulpits until today. But there is a new generation of black preachers and believers who have found their heritage in the scriptures and can identify themselves in the history of early believers. From Adam and Eve to Jesus and on to Origen, Augustine and Athanasius. Black men and women who carried the first messages of the Bible to the European world before many even had a language. Is Christianity the White man's religion? The answer is, there is a long history of black Christians. Many who transformed the face of known history and many who shaped it from the background.
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