Loading…

Can a Cushite Change His Skin? An Examination of Race, Ethnicity, and Othering in the Hebrew Bible is unavailable, but you can change that!

How did the authors of the Hebrew Bible perceive the Cushites? Sadler demonstrates that the answer to this question provides insights into the way differences that modern scholars would classify as “racial” were understood in ancient Israel/Judah. By examining explicit biblical references to Cush and Cushites, a nation and people most modern scholars would deem racially “black,” this book...

The introduction of a color-laden concept into Miriam’s punishment at the end of this pericope suggests another reason for the emphasis on the Cushite wife. There is a strange irony to the story of a woman who complains against a woman identified as Cushite, implicitly dark-skinned, whose skin is then transformed, as a result of YHWH’s punishment, to be void of color.74 The author of the Hebrew text exploited the obvious contrast between the Cushite woman’s skin and Miriam’s leprous skin. But instead
Page 39
Buy this book at Logos.com