African American religious life and the story of Nimrod

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African American Religious Life and the Story of Nimrod

10.1057/9780230610507 - African American Religious Life and the Story of Nimrod, Edited by Anthony B. Pinn and Allen Dwight Callahan

Genesis 10:1–10

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth. Genesis 11:1–9



Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood. The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras. And the sons of Gomer; Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah. And the sons of Javan; Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim. By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations. And the sons of Ham; Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut, and Canaan. And the sons of Cush; Seba, and Havilah, and Sabtah, and Raamah, and Sabtecha: and the sons of Raamah; Sheba, and Dedan. And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.

Edited by

Anthony B. Pinn and

Allen Dwight Callahan



African American Religious Life and the Story of Nimrod

AFRICAN AMERICAN RELIGIOUS LIFE AND THE STORY OF NIMROD

Copyright © Anthony B. Pinn and Allen Dwight Callahan, 2008.

First published in 2008 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–1–4039–6827–2 ISBN-10: 1–4039–6827–6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: January 2008 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.



All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.



To the Ancestors who lived the legacy of Nimrod and to all their descendents who wrestle with the meaning of Nimrod



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Acknowledgments

ix

List of Contributors

xi

Introduction: “Figures of the True” Allen Dwight Callahan

1

Section One: Nimrod as Hero 1. The Hunter and the Game: Reappropriating the Legend of Nimrod from an African American Theological Perspective James H. Evans, Jr. 2. God of Restraint: An African American Humanist Interpretation of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel Anthony B. Pinn 3. “I Am Black and Beautiful, O Ye Daughters of Jerusalem . . .”: African American Virtue Ethics and a Womanist Hermeneutics of Redemption Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas 4. “Lest We Be Scattered Abroad”: Nimrod, Marcus Garvey, and Black Religious Humanism in Harlem Juan M. Floyd-Thomas 5. More than a Mighty Hunter: George Washington Williams, Nineteenth-Century Racialized Discourse and the Reclamation of Nimrod Abraham Smith 6. The Story of Nimrod: A Struggle with Otherness and the Search for Identity Arthur L. Pressley 7. Nimrod: Reading the Bible with South African Eyes Elelwani B. Farisani

15

27

35

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69

85 97



Conten t s

CONTENTS

8. Nimrod and Dead Prez: Walking Like a Warrior Ralph C. Watkins

111

9. Nimrod and the South African Context Dorothy M. Farisani

121

10. Who Is the Man . . .?: Nimrod, Afrocentricism, and the African American Dream Lee H. Butler, Jr.

133

Section Two: Nimrod as Infamous 11. The Strength of Collective Man: Nimrod and the Tower of Babel Allen Dwight Callahan 12. Nimrod: Paradigm of Future Oppressive Systems Jimmy Kirby 13. Beyond the Curse of Noah: African American Pastoral Theology as Political Edward P. Wimberly

147 163

179

Section Three: A Neutral Stance 14. A Tower of Pulpits Dale P. Andrews 15. Reorientation by Reference to “Wrong Way” Makers: Evaluating a Modern Signifying Mythicization of an Ancient Mythicization Theodore Walker, Jr.

193

215

Appendix Stephen C. Finley

221

Selected Bibliography Stephen C. Finley

257

Index

267



viii

The editors would like to express gratitude to Amanda Johnson Moon of Palgrave Macmillan for her support of this project. The editors would also like to thank Missy Daniel of Religion and Ethics Newsweekly for her helpful corrections and emendations of several chapters in this collection. In addition, the editors express gratitude to Stephen Finley, a PhD candidate in Religious Studies at Rice University, for preparation of the documents in the appendix, complete with the introductions for each, for compilation of the bibliography, and for preparation of the index. Both entailed a complex process to which he gave time with great cheer and enthusiasm. Stephen Finley received assistance with the former: Thank you to Dr. Rachel Vincent-Finley, A’Tousha Ricks, Jacquie Staton, and Kenya Tuttle for their assistance with formatting documents and tracking down authors. Allen Callahan would like to thank Peter Machinist for his astute and judicious comments and criticisms in his review of an earlier draft of Allen Callahan’s chapter on Nimrod and the Tower of Babel. Furthermore, Callahan wishes to express his appreciation to students in the Doctor of Ministry programs at United Theological Seminary and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary for their thoughtful engagement of some of the key ideas that inform his essay on Nimrod and the Tower of Babel presented in lectures he gave at both institutions earlier this year. Finally, Callahan would also like to thank Professors Vivian Johnson and Thomas Dozeman of United Theological Seminary for giving so generously of their time and expertise. Anthony Pinn would like to thank a host of friends—particularly Ramón Rentas, Robbie Seals, Benjamin Valentin, and Eli Valentin for their good humor. Pinn would also like to thank Stacey and Juan FloydThomas for arranging an opportunity to discuss Nimrod in general, and for the comments on an early draft of his chapter in particular. Pinn would also like to thank colleagues at Rice University—Alexander Bryd, Edward Cox, and especially Caroline F. Levander—for friendship and kind words. Finally, the editors express their gratitude to the contributors, whose various perspectives on Nimrod—both pro and con—serve as an initial effort in a hermeneutic of recovery, a process of archaeological investigation, by which renewed attention in Black Religious Studies is given to this hunter, builder, and descendent of Ham.



Ac knowl edg m en t s




Dale P. Andrews is Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Homiletics and Pastoral Theology at Boston University, School of Theology (Boston, MA). Lee H. Butler, Jr. is Professor of Theology at Chicago Theological Seminary (Chicago, II). Allen Dwight Callahan is a Professor of New Testament at Seminário Teológico Batista do Nordeste in Bahia (Salvador, Brasil). James H. Evans, Jr. is Robert K. Davies Professor of Systematic Theology at Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School (Rochester, NY). Dorothy M. Farisani is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Kwazulu-Natal, (Pietermaritzburg, South Africa). Elelwani B. Farisani is a Senior Lecturer in Biblical Studies at the University of Kwazulu-Natal, (Pietermaritzburg, South Africa). Juan M. Floyd-Thomas is Associate Professor of History at Texas Christian University (Fort Worth, TX). Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas is Associate Professor of Ethics and Black Church Studies at Brite Divinity School (Fort Worth, TX). Stephen C. Finley is a doctoral candidate in the Religious Studies Department at Rice University (Houston, TX). Jimmy Kirby is Professor of Ethics at Lexington Theological Seminary (Lexington, KY). Anthony B. Pinn is Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and Professor of Religious Studies at Rice University (Houston, TX). Arthur L. Pressley is Associate Professor of Psychology and Religion at Drew University Theological School (Madison, NJ). Abraham Smith is Associate Professor of New Testament at Southern Methodist University, Perkins School of Theology (Dallas, TX). Theodore Walker, Jr. is Associate Professor of Ethics and Society at Southern Methodist University, Perkins School of Theology (Dallas, TX).



L i s t of Con tr ibu tor s

xii

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Edward P. Wimberly is Vice President for Academic Affairs and Professor of Pastoral Care and Counseling at the Interdenominational Theological Center (Atlanta, GA).



Ralph C. Watkins is Assistant Dean for African American Church Studies and Associate Professor of Society, Religion and Africana Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary (Pasadena, CA).

Allen Dwight Callahan

Biblical images have brought grist to the mill of meaning-making for African Americans from the beginning of their troubled sojourn in North America. “African-American slaves, female and male,” explains womanist theologian Delores Williams, “created an oral text from a written text (the King James version of the Bible). They composed this oral text by extracting from the Bible or adding to biblical content those phrases, stories, biblical personalities, and moral prescriptions relevant to the character of their life-situation and pertinent to the aspirations of the slave community.”1 This “oral text” continues to be an African American habit of mind. Biblical images have mediated African American memory, identity, and practice. Harriet Tubman was “the Moses of her people.” Martin Luther King, Jr. was viewed in his lifetime as an avatar of Moses and, after his death, as an imitation of Christ. A long-time family friend of Robert Williams, radical NAACP organizer and advocate of armed resistance in the 1960s, asserted, “I believe it was God’s calling, that Rob Williams was sent here to save us. God sent somebody, just like he did in the Bible.”2 The Reverend Johnny Ray Youngblood’s Brooklyn reclamation project, Nehemiah Homes, is named after the man in the Bible who rebuilds the walls of Jerusalem. For centuries African Americans have fashioned their movements and their movers and shakers in the image and likeness of biblical figures. African Americans have been especially diligent and ingenious in recruiting biblical African images as reflections of themselves. Though African characters have but cameo roles in the literary traditions that comprise the Bible, African Americans have had a penchant for lifting them from the obscurity of their respective biblical contexts. In the marginal figure of Hagar, we may observe how African Americans might



Introduction: “Figures of the True”

ALLEN DWIGHT CALLAHAN

bring an African bit player of biblical drama to center stage. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament feature the patriarchal narrative of the repudiation of the Egyptian slave Hagar in the Book of Genesis. The story is a blended narrative: the tradition of the Yahwist gives us the first part in Genesis 16:1–16, the Elohist the concluding portion in Genesis 21:9–21. According J, Hagar is Abraham’s ìshshah, “wife,”3 as Randall Bailey has observed, “a bold, proud, resolute Egyptian woman.”4 E, however, knows her as a aamaah, a female slave. “The Elohist ending of the story nevertheless,” notes John Waters, “implies a resourceful Hagar which is in keeping with the portrait of the J tradition.”5 Hagar serves as the surrogate womb of Sarah, Abraham’s first wife. As reward for rendering this service and bearing Abraham an heir, Hagar is sent packing by Abraham at Sarah’s behest and is driven out into the wilderness with her son to perish. The Apostle Paul recapitulates Hagar’s repudiation in his Epistle to the Galatians. Paul gives an allegorical reading to the story of struggle for inheritance between Ishmael, the son of the slave Hagar, and Isaac, the son of Abraham’s wife Sarah. According to both accounts, Isaac is the beloved son of promise: For it is written that Abraham had two sons, the one by the bondmaid, the other by the freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise. Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth bondage, which is Agar [Hagar]. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. . . . Now we brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of the promise. But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now. Nevertheless what saith the scripture? CAST OUT THE BONDWOMAN AND HER SON; FOR THE SON OF THE BONDWOMAN SHALL NOT BE HEIR WITH THE SON OF THE FREE WOMAN. So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free. (Galatians 4:22–26, 28–31)

But Paul’s tortured typology leaves off precisely where the implicit, lapidary exegesis of nineteenth-century sculptor Edmonia Lewis begins in “Hagar of the Wilderness,” her most famous work. The figure of Hagar is strident, with upturned gaze, emboldened by the voice of God from heaven that tells her, “Do not be afraid” (Gen. 21:17b). The center of gravity in Lewis’s representation is in the concluding verses of Hagar’s story: Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in thine hand; for I will make him a great nation. And God opened her eyes, and she saw the well of water, and she went, and filled the bottle with water, and gave the lad drink.



2

INTRODUCTION

3

In one verse of scripture, Hagar moves from abandonment to agency: in verse 19 alone she is the subject of no less than four verbs. The slave woman Hagar receives a promise from God that bestows dignity on her posterity: her theophany is one of the few in the Hebrew Bible accorded to a woman.6 She reestablishes her Egyptian ancestry by selecting a wife for her son from her native land and secures her progeny. In other words, Hagar gains honor, family, and power denied her as a slave. Hagar emerges from her ordeal in the wilderness a free woman. Hagar is confident, “very plucky,” which is how the articulate, forthright Lewis herself was described. While a young art student at Oberlin College just before the Civil War, Lewis was involved in a scandal that resulted in her expulsion. Binding the wounds of her rejection and humiliation, she continued to pursue a career as a sculptor in Boston and Rome. The artist hacked her sculptures directly from marble, wore clothes with a manly cut, and spoke with intensity and directness. Lewis survived the 1867 cholera epidemic in Rome, she later claimed, with a Bible and a bottle of whiskey at her bedside so that if one gave out she could turn to the other. Which of the two was her first recourse, however, she left unclear. The denouement of Hagar’s drama, and Lewis’s representation of it in stone, has upended Paul’s allegory: Hagar has her freedom, and her issue has a divinely ordained heritage. The freedom and heritage that God grants Hagar are clearly affirmed in the plain sense of the text even as they are plainly denied in Paul’s exegesis. Lewis takes Paul’s text and implicitly denies the denial of his exegesis. Like Hagar, the rejected slave of the biblical story, the children of Africa were constrained to cry out to God for justice on their own behalf in a weary wilderness. Delores Williams, in her critical reading of the story of Hagar and Ishmael in Genesis, argues that it speaks of “the fabric of Hagar’s and African American women’s experience.”7 So construed, the ancient text, as a biblical representation of African American life, speaks with a contemporary urgency. Hagar’s and Ishmael’s life-situation was like that of black female slaves and their children. Like Hagar they experienced harsh treatment from slave mistresses . . . Like Hagar and Ishmael when they were finally freed from the house of bondage, African-American ex-slaves were faced with making a way out of no way. They were thrown out into the world with no economic resources. The issue for Hagar and Ishmael and for the newly freed African-American slaves was quality of life. The question was and still is today, how can oppressed people develop a



And God was with the lad; and he grew, and dwelt in the wilderness, and became an archer. And he dwelt in the wilderness of Paran, and his mother took him a wife out of the land of Egypt. (Gen. 21:19–21)

4


In the New Testament, the Ethiopian eunuch baptized by Philip the Evangelist in the Book of Acts is another African who assumes a minor role in the biblical drama of the early Church and a major role in African American Christian self-understanding. From the twilight of New Testament times, Luke the Evangelist had understood the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch of Acts 8:26–38 as a sign of the fulfillment of the programmatic proclamation of the Gospel. The Gospel of Jesus Christ was to be preached first in Jerusalem, then in Judea, Samaria, and finally to the farthest regions of the earth. Ethiopia, at the southern extreme of the habitable world, was the farthest reach of civilization for the ancient Greeks and Romans. The account of the Ethiopian’s conversion, writes, C. Eric Lincoln, “symbolizes from the beginning the African involvement in the new faith that was to spread throughout the world.”9 For African Americans, it has served to “reestablish their connection with the faith at its origin.”10 In Luke’s programmatic rehearsal of the spread of the Gospel in the Book of Acts, the Ethiopian is “a recognizably black African official,”11 writes Clarice Martin, “a stereotyped figure notoriously cast as one . . . with a wide-ranging extent of power.”12 And as Abraham Smith has pointed out, Luke has chosen from among “foreigners who could conceivably have been listed in this missionary excursion . . . a black-skinned African from Ethiopia, one of the ends of the earth.”13 The clergyman and activist Henry Highland Garnet seized upon the figure of the Ethiopian eunuch as he reminded an audience in 1848 that sacred history bore witness to the glory of Africa. More important than the glorious past, however, was the glorious future: Ethiopia is one of the few nations whose destiny is spoken of in prophecy. This is done in language so plain that we are not driven to dubious inferences. It is said that “Princes shall come out of Egypt, and Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God.” It is thought by some that this divine declaration was fulfilled when Philip baptized the converted eunuch of the household of Candes, the Queen of the Ethiopians. In the transaction, a part of the prophecy may have been fulfilled, and only a part.14

After 1858, Garnet focused his aspirations on African American emigration to Africa when he became president of the African Civilization Society, founded in 1859 to promote such African American emigration. Garnet and other African Americans in the United States were turning to Africa as the place where they would work out the salvation of the race.



positive and productive quality of life in a situation where the resources for doing so are not visible?8

5

In an essay on the meaning and means of African evangelization, nineteenth-century pan-African theologian Edward Wilmot Blyden reads the figure of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:26–38 as a symbol of African self-determination in the light of the Christian Gospel. The story of the Ethiopian shows “the instruments and the methods of Africa’s evangelization. The method, the simple holding up of Jesus Christ; the instrument, the African himself.”15 Blyden lobbied among African Americans to realize their racial vocation as “the instruments of Africa’s evangelization.” After the outbreak of the Civil War, Blyden sought to persuade African Americans to emigrate from the United States to Liberia. In the figure of the Ethiopian eunuch, Blyden saw the destiny of people of African descent as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. On the grand stage of the biblical witness, the Egyptian Hagar and the Ethiopian Eunuch have minor roles and few lines. But African Americans have taken such marginal Africans in the Bible and brought them to center stage. What Anthony Pinn and I propose in effect is to do the same for the obscure African hero Nimrod. “What would be the ramifications,” Tony asks, “of a re-thinking of the Nimrod legend?”16 The chapters that comprise this volume have been written to answer this question. Nimrod is mentioned once in the book of Genesis: “And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth” (Gen. 10:8), a notice repeated almost verbatim in the genealogy that opens 1 Chronicles: “And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be mighty upon the earth” (1 Chronicles 1:10). The description of Nimrod in Genesis continues, “He was a mighty hunter before the LORD: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD” (Gen. 10:9). Genesis 10:8–12 is the Yahwist’s contribution to the Table of Nations: in this “passage on Cush . . . the writer is speaking . . . of an economic and political influence on Mesopotamia.”17 “According to J. Egypt, Cush, and Canaan hold major influence over various nations/city-states throughout Asia Minor, the Mediterranean, and on into Africa,” a view of ancient geopolitical verities that “fits Solomonic times when these are the major nations on the scene.”18 Nimrod’s name is mentioned only one other time in the Bible, a passing reference to Assyria as “the land of Nimrod” in Micah 5:6. The Cushitic Nimrod is held to be the founder of the Mesopotamian heartland that was to give birth to the Assyrian and Babylonian empires. “Whatever else may be said,” observes Charles Copher, “on the basis of the Nimrod story, an ancient Hebrew writer believed civilization in Mesopotamia to owe its origin to a son of Cush, the black one.”19 In the chapters that follow, thinkers rethink the Nimrod legend from different points of departure and arrive at different valuations. The editors have made no effort to homogenize, limit, or otherwise censor those



INTRODUCTION


different valuations. To the contrary, we have sought contrast, even controversy, over consensus: the image of Nimrod is to be illumined by the sparks of the dialectic thrown by these disparate scholarly opinions. As the coeditors of this volume, Anthony Pinn and I offer respectively the poles of that dialectic. In “ ‘The Strength of Collective Man’: Nimrod and the Tower of Babel,” I argue that Nimrod’s failed attempt to transcend human limitations shows the dangers of a hubris that is always attended with assaults on freedom, individuality, and diversity. I go on to assert, at the risk of some hubris myself, that the ancient biblical editor we discern in the Yahwist Tradition of the Pentateuch also saw the monumental project of the Tower of Babel as an arch instance of humanity overreaching itself at its own peril. The Yahwist tacitly condemns imperialism and urbanism but agrees with the Priestly Tradition that diversity has divine approbation. Confronted in the twenty-first century with unwieldy and increasingly nightmarish urbanism and a strangulating American empire, my concluding brief is that we would do well to heed these twin condemnations. On the other hand, in the chapter “God of Restraint: An African American Humanist Interpretation of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel,” Tony reads the figure of Nimrod as the quintessential humanist hero and poster child for human transcendence. The appeal to a biblical image might seem an unlikely turn for an atheistic humanist who disavows “supernatural explanations and claims” and understands “humanity as fully (and solely) accountable and responsible for the human condition and the correction of human plight.”20 But atheism and appeal to biblical principles are not incompatible in the African American intellectual tradition. Indeed, as Tony has constrained even unrepentantly theistic Christian thinkers such as myself to recognize, the humanistic atheism of African Americans begins in the slave quarters with a critique of Christianity that embraced its precepts as rigorously as it rejected its practice. And Tony himself has called attention to African Methodist Episcopal Daniel Alexander Payne’s lament in 1839 that due to the hypocrisy of their Christian masters, some slaves “scoff at religion itself—mock their masters, and distrust both the goodness and justice of God.” “I have known them,” Payne went on to say, “even to question his existence.” Asked by Payne if he were a Christian, a runaway slave, answered Payne, “No sir . . . white men treat us so bad in Mississippi that we can’t be Christians.”21 The slaves rejected the Christianity of the master class because of its profound ethical failure.22 At the outset, then, the orientation of African American humanism developed dialectically in critical engagement with biblical religion and without a wholesale rejection of its cultural and institutional articulations. “This initial phase of humanism,” Tony explains, “is primarily addressed on the level of the individual and in cultural manifestations such as work songs, the blues, and folklore.”23 These cultural manifestations occasionally



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INTRODUCTION

7

“Our Father, who art in Heaven!”— White man owe me eleven and pay me seven “Thy Kingdom come! Thy Will be done!”— And if I hadn’t took that, I wouldn’t get none.24

Tony has also discerned the stirrings of humanism in twentieth-century African American culture. “The literature of the Harlem Renaissance provides insights that not only inform theological reflection because of their concern with religious themes and imagery, but it also provides, when personal positions are considered, a much needed challenge to theological assumptions . . . within Black communities.” Zora Neale Hurston and James Baldwin are especially outstanding in this regard. Tony asks, “How does the agnosticism of a James Baldwin or the humanism of a Zora Neale Hurston affect their inclusion in theological reflection and religious studies in general?” Both “continued to understand the Christian church as an important cultural development, but without acceptance of its theological stance.”25 And both wrote fiction and nonfiction that not only recognized the biblical religion of African Americans but also traded in the beauty, dignity, and profundity of its expressions while disavowing a confessional affirmation of African American Christianity as such. Hurston and Baldwin, towering figures in African American literature, embraced the Bible of black religion while rejecting the black religion of the Bible. In and around the arc of this dialectic between Tony’s arguments and my own, those of our co-contributors spark brilliantly, generating their own heat and light. The variety of arguments and interpretations on offer here would suggest that, now and ever, the figure of Nimrod is patient of a range of critical African American readings. For some commentators, Nimrod is a hero of human possibility, the biblical analogue of Prometheus. And as a son of Cush, a child of Africa, he is the emblem of aspiration for people of African descent. For other interpreters in this volume, Nimrod is the sign of hubris and the ruin that is its due recompense. Nimrod’s fall and the pride that cometh before it, however, are not peculiar to African peoples; Nimrod’s arrogance is a universally human flaw that presents when overweening power joins an unbridled albeit transcendent vision. Still other contributors to this volume offer ambivalent assessments, neither celebrating nor repudiating Nimrod while recognizing the ethical possibilities that his legend suggests to people of African descent in our own time. In the essays that follow, thinkers rethink the Nimrod legend from different respective points of departure and arrive at different



turned scripture to irreverent purpose as, for example, the following work song parodying the Lord’s Prayer shows:


valuations. The editors have not required contributors to interpret the account of Nimrod in strict terms. There are “lose ends” to these various accounts that are meant to encourage readers to participate in the process, to fill in the “gaps” in ongoing conversation concerning this and other biblical accounts. Furthermore, we have made some effort to broaden the range of interventions beyond the United States by including two essays that discuss the figure of Nimrod in the South African context. We do not suggest that such a comparison should be limited to the United States and South Africa; nor that the number of pieces included leave little room for critique or conversation. Rather, we see this as a beginning, part of an ongoing exploration of biblical themes and imagery within the African and African diasporic theoreligious matrix. Furthermore, we are not the first to note and express in scholarly terms the similarities between the United States and South Africa. But, perhaps, this is the first volume to explore these similarities of racial friction theologically justified through focused attention on Nimrod. We commend to the reader the comparison of contemporary scholarly reflection on the Nimrod legend with that of an earlier age, represented in the documents reproduced in the appendix. Such a comparison would suggest that, then and now, the figure of Nimrod is patient of a range of critical African American readings. Some contributors interrogate and challenge prevailing interpretations of the Nimrod myth. In a reading informed by Reinhold Niebuhr’s understanding of sin, Jimmy Kirby’s essay, “Nimrod: Paradigm of Future Oppressive Systems,” views Nimrod as a mighty hunter who himself falls prey to the sin of pride and his own will-to-power in his attempt to transcend human finitude in his essay “Nimrod: Paradigm of Future Oppressive Systems.” In “Beyond the Curse of Noah: African American Pastoral Theology as a Political,” Edward Wimberley adduces the effective history of the Nimrod myth as an instance of how biblical interpretation has been used as an ideological instrument of exploitation. Dale P. Andrews, “A Tower of Pulpits,” rehearses the American interpretations of the figure of Nimrod that were used in biblical apologiae for slavery as well as the African American counterinterpretations that affirmed the humanity and dignity of African peoples. Charles Long’s distinctions of symbol, signal, and sign inform Theodore Walker Jr.’s discussion of “signification” in “Reorientation by Reference to ‘Wrong Way’ Makers: Evaluating a Modern Signifying Mythicization of an Ancient Mythicization,” in which Walker argues that traditional interpretations of the Nimrod myth have been used to signify African peoples and mislead readers of the Bible. In his essay, “Who is the Man . . .? Nimrod, Afro-centrism, and the African American Dream,” Lee Butler rehearses how the negative interpretations



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of Nimrod, Babylon, and Egypt were exploited in the rationale for the devaluation and mistreatment of people of African descent in America. The essay of Dorothy Farisani, “Nimrod and the South African Context,” recounts how the pejorative image of Nimrod served as a biblical pretext for the oppression of black South Africans under apartheid. Elelwani B. Farisani, “Reading the Bible with South African Eyes,” argues that the negative image of Nimrod is ultimately inconsistent with the biblical text itself, and that Nimrod has been demonized by a tendentious and perverse hermeneutic. Other contributors seek to recuperate the image of Nimrod. Stacy Floyd-Thomas, “I am Black and Beautiful, O Ye Daughters of Jerusalem . . .: African American Virtue Ethics and a Womanist Hermeneutics of Redemption,” argues that people of African descent would do well to interpret Nimrod and other biblical images using a redemptive hermeneutic of “virtue ethics” that promises to help them to rightly understand divine revelation. James Evans, “The Hunter and the Game: Reappropriating the Legend of Nimrod from an African American Theological Perspective,” revisits this legacy of pejorative interpretation and goes on to suggest that the biblical image of Nimrod may be construed positively to lionize Nimrod as a superlative man of state and great man of faith. J. M. Floyd-Thomas, “‘Lest We be Scattered Abroad’: Nimrod, Marcus Garvey, and Black Religious Humanism in Harlem,” makes a constructive theological construal of Nimrod as a biblical type for charismatic leadership that was fulfilled in Marcus Garvey. Arthur L. Pressley, “The Story of Nimrod: A Struggle with Otherness and the Search for Identity,” stresses that it is imperative that African peoples interpret the Nimrod myth for themselves in a way that counteracts the toxic effective history of biblical text. In “More than a ‘Mighty Hunter’: George Washington Williams, Nineteenth Century Racialized Discourse, and the Reclamation of Nimrod,” Abraham Smith recounts how clergyman, journalist, and historian George Washington Williams’s “vindicationist” treatment of the Nimrod myth was a refutation of racist pseudoscience that appealed to the pejorative reading of the myth. And Ralph Watkins’s creative essay, “Nimrod and Dead Prez: Walking Like a Warrior,” engages the story of Nimrod with reference to the positive and liberative features of rap music à la the rap group Dead Prez. The chapters of this book, in the words of the Epistle to the Hebrews, consider Nimrod and the Tower of Babel as “figures of the true,” signs pointing to the verities of the human condition. The contributors explore the various ways this biblical legend of Nimrod might signify the condition of African Americans in the postmodern world. With Hagar and the Ethiopian eunuch, the aggregate contribution of these chapters would offer Nimrod, an African in the Bible, as yet another biblical figure in



INTRODUCTION

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which African Americans might see—in ways marvelous or malign—their own image and their own likeness.

1. Delores Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993), 188. 2. Cited in Timothy B. Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 81. 3. Randall C. Bailey, “Beyond Identification: The Use of Africans in Old Testament Poetry and Narratives,” in Stony the Road We Trod, ed. Cain Hope Felder (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1991), 170, note 22. 4. Ibid., 170, 171. 5. Charles B. Copher, “The Black Presence in the Old Testament,” in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991), 154. 6. John Waters, “Who Was Hagar?” in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1991), 194. 7. Ibid., 190. 8. Ibid., 192. 9. Ibid., 190. 10. Williams, Sisters, 143. 11. Ibid., 193. 12. C. Eric Lincoln, Race, Religion, and the Continuing American Dilemma (New York: Hill and Wang, 1984), 24. 13. Ibid., 24. 14. Clarice Martin, “A Chamberlain’s Journey and the Challenge of Interpretation for Liberation,” in Semeia 47: Interpretation for Liberation, guest ed. Katie Geneva Cannon, ed. Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1989), 114. 15. Abraham Smith, “‘Do You Understand What You Are Reading?’: A Literary Critical Reading of Acts 8:26–40,” Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center 22 (1994): 69. 16. Ibid., 63–64. 17. Henry Highland Garnet, The Past and the Present Condition, and the Destiny of the Colored Race (Miami, FL: Mnemosyne, 1969), 6–12. 18. Edward Wilmot Blyden, “The Ethiopian Eunuch,” in Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race (London: W. B. Whittingham and Company, 1887; reprinted Chesapeake, VA, and New York: ECA Associates, 1990), 162. 19. Anthony B. Pinn, African American Humanist Principles: Living and Thinking Like the Children of Nimrod (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 5. 20. Ibid., 7. 21. http://www.huumanists.org/rh/pinn.html. 22. The very ethics of Christianity was an irresistible argument for the atheism of the slave. Thomas J. J. Altizer, arguing for “the problem of the necessity of a contemporary Christian atheism,” propounded a love-hate relationship between Christianity and atheism in modern thought (Thomas J. J. Altizer, The Gospel of Christian Atheism [Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1966], 23). If even a violently hostile passion is a measure of attachment, then who can doubt that a Blake, a Hegel, a Marx, a Dostoevsky, and a Nietzsche were deeply bound to Christianity? Again, each of these prophets was



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motivated by a profound moral passion . . . which, although it assumed an antinomian form, must surely have had its roots in the prophetic traditions of Christianity and the Bible. (Altizer, Gospel, 21) “Christianity as dogma was devoured by its own morality,” the German philosopher Nietzsche declared: “what . . . really triumphed over the Christian god was Christian morality itself ” (Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale [New York: Random House, 1976], 161; Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann [New York: Random House, 1974], 297, § 343). “It cannot be accidental,” writes Altizer, “that so many of the more creative theologians of our century have implicitly if unconsciously shared much of Nietzsche’s vision” (Altizer, Gospel, 23–24). Atheistic American slaves, “the more creative theologians” of an earlier century, were Nietzscheans before Nietzsche. 23. http://www.huumanists.org/rh/pinn.html. 24. Quoted in Sterling Brown, “Negro Folk Expression: Spirituals, Seculars, Ballads and Work Songs,” Phylon 14 (Winter 1953): 45–61. 25. http://www.huumanists.org/rh/pinn.html.



INTRODUCTION




ONE

Nimrod as Hero



S ECT ION




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The Hunter and the Game: Reappropriating the Legend of Nimrod from an African American Theological Perspective James H. Evans, Jr.

One of the most neglected, distorted, and misunderstood characters in the biblical tradition is that of Nimrod. Certainly, one of the main reasons for this is the scant textual references to Nimrod in the Bible. The mere handful of verses that mention this figure might seem to justify the general lack of attention to him. Nimrod is mentioned principally in Genesis 10:8–9 and I Chronicles 1:10. However, the exploration of the hermeneutical potential of this figure and the attendant legends that have grown up around him is critical for the African American religious community. The historic identification of Nimrod as a black man or an African has shaped his history in religious discourse. Early Christian sources such as Eusebius and Epiphanius argue the validity of this identification. One of the earliest extrabiblical references to Nimrod comes from the Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria. Philo asserts not only that Nimrod was Ethiopian, but also that the very name of Nimrod should be seen as a synonym for “Ethiopian” or “the black one.”1 In this way, Philo contributes to the development of a distinctive interpretive tradition. That is, “because Nimrod is a son of Cush, Philo calls him an Ethiopian, a black man. This characterization helped to blacken Nimrod in the development of the tradition, whereas the biblical text itself does not do anything of the sort.”2 One of the central assumptions of this chapter is the problem that the figure of Nimrod did not neatly fit within the nascent, emerging interpretive



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framework of ancient Israel, the early church, or established Christendom. Yet, in an era of unprecedented retrieval of biblical resources for understanding African American religious expression, the figure of Nimrod remains essentially unexplored. In contrast, the figure of Hagar has been the focus of a growing body of biblical and theological research. Hagar not only is an important character in the biblical patriarchal drama, but also becomes an interpretive paradigm in the New Testament as well. Scholars such as Diana L. Hayes and Delores S. Williams, among others, have begun to unearth and reconstruct the deeper significance of this character for womanist research. The figure of Nimrod has not only been neglected in much scholarly research, it has also been distorted and, therefore, misunderstood. Although there are several positive images to be found in the literature, Nimrod has been negatively stereotyped in most Western biblical, extrabiblical, historical, and literary sources. The figure of Nimrod continues to appear in a negative light in the writings of ancient rabbis, Reformation theology, and medieval literature. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the possibility of retrieving this biblical figure, cutting through accumulated layers of hermeneutical sediment, as a resource for understanding black religious experience in the New World. This examination will focus on the image of Nimrod as rebel, statesman, and religious leader. What are the central elements of this legendary material and how does it fit within the matrix of African American cultural resources? What does the emergence of these fundamental images of Nimrod contribute to the critical retrieval and reconstruction of meaning in African American religious experience? We will conclude with some preliminary proposals for applying the retrieved and reconstructed meaning of this biblical figure to contemporary African American religious experience.

Rebellion, God, and Patriarchy The story of Nimrod has been shaped and influenced by powerful hermeneutical forces. Early and late interpreters and commentators on this legend have focused on the identity of this character. The Genesis text identifies Nimrod as a warrior and a mighty hunter before the Lord (Gen. 10:9). The genealogy in which this reference is located is uncharacteristically interrupted with this fuller mention of Nimrod, a kind of textual marker of his importance in the biblical story. However, the tradition of interpretation has tended to focus, not on his prowess as a warrior or hunter, but on his position vis-à-vis God. That is, the hermeneutical issue seems to be what does the text mean when it says that Nimrod was a mighty hunter “before the Lord”? Van der Toorn and Van der Horst note that “Philo exploits the fact that the LXX version of



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Gen. 10:9 calls him a mighty hunter emanation the Lord. This word, used by the LXX translators as equivalent of lipne, could also have the meaning of ‘against’; so Nimrod’s activities must have been directed against the Lord.”3 Other ancient texts connect Nimrod’s valor as a warrior and hunter with sin against God. “Targum. Neofiti on Gen 10:9 calls Nimrod ‘a hero in sin before the Lord.’ And the Fragment Targum has ad loc: ‘He was very mighty at the hunt and mighty in sin before the Lord.”4 This association of Nimrod with sin required not only a dubious interpretive leap, but also the silencing of other texts that portrayed Nimrod in a more positive light. The solidification of the presumed enmity between God and Nimrod came through the pen of St. Augustine as he comments on the meaning of the phrase that Nimrod was a great hunter before the Lord. Some interpreters have misunderstood this phrase, being deceived by an ambiguity in the Greek and consequently translating it as “before the Lord” instead of “against the Lord.” It is true that the Greek emanation means “before” as well as “against” . . . It is in the latter sense that we must take it in the description of Nimrod . . . for the word “hunter” can only suggest a deceiver, oppressor and destroyer of earth-born creatures.5

The association of Nimrod with sin paved the way for subsequent associations of Nimrod with archetypal adversary of God. Nimrod is, afterward, referred to as one of the “giants” of Genesis 6 who stood in opposition to God, and as Satan himself. Scholars have suggested that the name Nimrod means “to revolt, to desert, or to rebel.” This naming of Nimrod as the ultimate rebel is the key to the development of the interpretive tradition connected to him. There are two major aspects to this notion of Nimrod as rebel that deserve mention at this point. The first aspect is found in the question of whether Nimrod is rebelling against God or against the patriarchal dimensions of Israelite religion. The grand patriarch of Israelite religion is Abraham. Although, historically Nimrod appears on the scene before Abraham, subsequent development of the religion of Israel seemed to require that the legend of Nimrod be replaced by the legend of Abraham. Stephen Gero suggests that the development of patriarchal Israelite religion necessitated the elimination of earlier forms of Israelite religion that had Nimrod as one of its heroes. While the other heroes of this earlier form of Israelite religion were rhetorically dispatched, “Nimrod, a biblical figure who could not be liquidated in such a high-handed fashion, was rather denigrated as a senseless tyrant and an idolater and worsted by the indestructible Abraham of midrashic legend.”6 The center of this textual rivalry between Nimrod and Abraham is found in Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities. In this pseudoepigraphical



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narrative, we find a story of conflict—subjugation and dominance— between Nimrod and Abraham.7 This source tells a story of Nimrod as one who has called people together to build a tower that would reach unto heaven. (We will address the meaning of this tower in fuller detail in the next section.) When Nimrod calls together the other tribal leaders to cooperate with him in his plan, there are twelve men, including Abram, who refuse to participate in the plan. After being interrogated by Nimrod, he orders that they be thrown into a fiery furnace. One of Nimrod’s lieutenants intervenes and convinces Nimrod to give the men seven days to reconsider their response. In the meantime, this lieutenant devises a scheme for their escape. Eleven of the captives avail themselves of this opportunity. Abram refuses to flee. Nimrod then casts Abram into the fiery furnace, but God intervenes causing the flames to leap forth from the furnace and kill 83,500 people. However, Abram is unharmed and the furnace collapses as he emerges from it. Abram makes his way to the mountains where the other eleven tribal leaders have hidden themselves. He tells them of the miracle that God has wrought. “And they came down from the mountain, rejoicing in the name of the Lord. And no one who met them frightened them that day.”8 This story demonstrates how the rabbinical midrashic tradition vilified Nimrod and valorized Abram. This story establishes Abram as the obedient one and confirms Nimrod as the rebellious one. Given the fact that this story is contained in sources that are extracanonical, a question remains: “Why has the negative depiction of Nimrod been taken as normative in traditional interpretations of Genesis?” The second aspect of Nimrod as rebel is found in the extension and development of the Hamitic curse through Nimrod. Both canonical and extracanonical sources affirm that Nimrod is descended from Noah. These genealogies are generally consistent in naming Ham as one of the sons of Noah, and Cush as one of the sons of Ham. Genesis 10:8 states, “And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth” (King James version). Pseudo-Philo says that “Cush became the father of Nimrod. He began to be arrogant before the Lord.”9 This negative assessment of Nimrod in extracanonical texts has contributed to the development of the well-documented idea of the Hamitic curse. According to this interpretive tradition, Ham and his descendants were destined to be servants. This tradition was used to justify the enslavement of Africans among many European Christians. The negative assessment of Nimrod is an extension of this interpretive tradition. Nimrod is heir to the Hamitic curse. Ham and his descendents who were destined to be “hewers of wood and drawers of water” have now given way to Nimrod as the ultimate rebel and enemy of God. That is, the hermeneutical as applied to people of African descent moves from “slave” to “rebel.”



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Historical figures such as Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, and Nat Turner who mounted their insurrections against the system of slavery might be more adequately understood in light of this subtle and not so subtle shift or development in the dominant biblical hermeneutical paradigm as applied to people of African descent. Their opposition to an institution of slavery that was, in many instances, apparently supported by patriarchal biblical texts could be ideologically related to Nimrod’s opposition to the patriarchal system of Abraham. Like Nimrod, they rejected the role of slave and embraced the role of rebel. They would not have found Nimrod to be an enemy of God, but a rebel against a patriarchal system that seemed to thrive on human subjugation.

The Politics of Nationalism and Communalism In addition to his identity as “a mighty hunter before the Lord,” Nimrod’s designation as a leader has been a key to the body of interpretation that has grown up around him. The Genesis account of Nimrod asserts not only that Nimrod was “the first on earth to be a mighty man” but also that he became the archetype for this kind of man. “Therefore it is said, ‘Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the Lord.’” Because Nimrod is credited with the founding of the city of Babel, among others, biblical interpreters have inferred that Nimrod was the principal architect of the plan to construct the city and Tower of Babel. This inference is supported by Pseudo-Philo who describes Nimrod as one whose leadership abilities are obvious to others. “Then the sons of Ham came and made Nimrod their leader . . . and Nimrod, himself a son of Ham, had all the sons of Ham pass in review . . . And the total of the camps of the sons of Ham, all men of might and equipped with battle gear before their leaders, were 244,900, apart from women and children.”10 Not only does the dominant interpretive tradition posit Nimrod as a leader, but in various places he is described also as a king. What is clear in both the biblical and extrabiblical literature is that Nimrod had significant leadership abilities. The problem, of course, is whether those leadership abilities are cast in a complimentary light. Although there are instances where Nimrod is described in positive terms,11 the tradition is dominated by a view that denigrates his leadership. According to this view, Nimrod is guilty of substituting human agency for divine power. In the King James version of Genesis 11:3–5, the personal plural pronouns “us” or “we” dominate the narrative. Traditional interpretation has suggested that this supports at least the conclusion that one of Nimrod’s failings was his desire to usurp the place of God and that the building of the tower was symbolic of this quest. The




JAMES H. EVANS, JR.

command to “make a name for ourselves” suggests an invasion of a patriarchal system in which one is named by God and not through human initiative. There are instances within traditional interpretations of Nimrod that suggest his ultimate aim was to make a world. This negative assessment of Nimrod as leader is based not only on his presumed desire to replace God, but also on the assertion that Nimrod was a tyrant. The Jewish historian Josephus states that Nimrod’s followers were incited to this insolent contempt of God by Nimrod, grandson of Ham the son of Noah, an audacious man of doughty vigour. He persuaded them to attribute their prosperity not to God but to their own valour, and little by little transformed the state of affairs into a tyranny, holding that the only way to detach men from the fear of God was by making them continuously dependent upon his own power. He threatened to have his revenge on God if he wished to inundate the earth again, for he would build a tower higher than the water could reach and avenge the destruction of their forefathers.12

What is obscured by the view of Josephus is the latent strand of tradition that describes Nimrod as a “statesman.” Stephen Gero discusses extrabiblical texts that tell the story of a fourth son of Noah conceived and born after the Flood. In this story, the fourth son of Noah, Yonton, is Nimrod’s teacher. A significant aspect of the wisdom that Yonton shares with his protégé is “his superior knowledge of statecraft.”13 In summary, traditional interpretation has cast a negative pall over Nimrod and his image as a leader by construing his initiative as an affront to God and a direct challenge to divine power, as well as by depicting him personally as a tyrant who does not have the virtue of character necessary to lead people in a positive direction. However, there may be more subtle and important forces at work here. It is possible that Nimrod had to be depicted in this manner to discredit any form of nationalism, unity, and collective identity other than that which is affirmed through the Abrahamic convenantal tradition. That is, one could not have Nimrod successfully making a name and a world and still maintain the hegemony of the patriarchal covenant with God. A positive assessment of Nimrod was problematic with reference not only to the first covenant with Israel, but also to the later covenant demonstrated in the life of the church. In extrabiblical sources, Nimrod is not only disparaged as a leader but is also described as the Anti-Christ. Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost advances a complex and theologically flawed interpretation of Nimrod. Within this poem is a narrative of Nimrod that identifies him not only with Satan but also with “the basic pattern of evil as has been presented in the poem.”14 Gero notes that “the correlation of Nimrod and Babel is not biblical . . . Yet, Milton was enabled to develop



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the full parallel of Satan and Nimrod.”15 Throughout Milton’s picturesque portrayal of Satan in Paradise Lost, Nimrod serves as the counterpoint, an example of the present face of evil in the world. In this way, “the tradition of Nimrod as the foiled empire-builder which was clearly established in St. Gregory’s commentary on Genesis in On The Trinity and its Works and in Dante’s Purgatory”16 is canonized. One of Milton’s signal contributions to Christian literature was the creative reshaping and expansion of the imagistic reserves of the Christian tradition. He was able to firmly root the Christian drama in the popular imagination and did so with power and conviction. His description of the epic battle between Good and Evil, between God and Satan, becomes foundational for the church’s own understanding of its historical and spiritual conflicts. These conflicts are framed as the present and future confrontation between Christ and Anti-Christ within and at the end of history. Gero notes that “with this transferal of the Christ–Anti-Christ conflict within history, the episode of Nimrod assumes architectonic importance.”17 It is within this understanding of history that the church is established. In a sense, the church is established on the victory of Christ over evil through the resurrection and, by implication, on the victory of God over Nimrod. This is one way to understand the importance of the biblical juxtaposition of the story of the Tower of Babel with the story of Pentecost. The Tower of Babel in traditional interpretation symbolizes human initiative, national solidarity achieved through extraordinary political leadership, and a common language or voice. The story of Pentecost symbolizes divine initiative as the disciples wait on the Holy Spirit, a communal solidarity achieved through extraordinary rhetorical leadership as each person hears Peter’s sermon in his/her own language. Given the prior assertion that Nimrod was black, the question that this aspect of traditional interpretation raises is whether there is any relationship between this understanding of Nimrod and the demonization of black Nationalist leadership, especially within the culture of the United States. Although a more thorough and comprehensive analysis of dominant and subversive interpretations of the legend of Nimrod is needed to fully tap the cultural potential of this material, we can say that the influence of Nimrod is much more pervasive than is immediately apparent.

Religion: Popular, Prophetic, and Priestly The body of interpretation that has grown up around the character Nimrod has not only dealt with the notion that he was a rebel and a political leader, but it has also had to wrestle with the suggestion that he was the center of an alternative religious worldview. This alternative religious




JAMES H. EVANS, JR.

worldview comes into focus as we take the clues that have attended the legend of Nimrod and contrast them with elements of ancient Israelite religion as described within the biblical texts. There are several dimensions in which this distinction is visible. First, the literature repeatedly suggests that part of the negative assessment of Nimrod in traditional biblical texts was due, in part, to the assumption that the tower that he is credited with constructing was, in actuality, a place of worship. This tower, which was presumably constructed to reach into the heavens and to allow humankind to ascend to the level of deity, stands in contrast with the tabernacle-based religion of ancient Israel. This contrast between the tower and the tabernacle would later morph into a contrast between the temple and the tabernacle within Israelite religion. In this case, however, the tower as a religious monument stands in opposition to a religion based on moveable tents. The tower also carried with it the association with Nimrod’s refusal to disperse the people over the face of the earth, while the tabernacle is associated with Abraham’s obedience to the command to leave his home for a place that he did not know. Thus, Nimrod becomes associated with a kind of popular protonationalism where people are bound to a place out of religious devotion and the tower becomes the symbol of that ingathering. In contrast, the religion of ancient Israel becomes associated with a nomadic existence where people are bound only to the God whose symbol, the Ark, they carry with them, and that Ark becomes the symbol of their dispersion. The second religious dimension in which the distinctiveness of Nimrod as a religious leader becomes apparent is the idea of the divine. The religion of ancient Israel is centered on the worship of a personal God. This theism is evident in the biblical witness of a God who communicates with humanity through personal address, who reveals Himself in anthropological terms, who demands a personal response of righteousness, and who promises to be with His people wherever they might go. The religion with which Nimrod is associated is astrology based. Van der Toorn and Van der Horst assert, we know from other sources that Nimrod was sometimes identified with Zoroaster who was regarded as the one who introduced the worship of fire. In these same sources we also see that Nimrod-Zoroaster is viewed as the originator of astrology and magic . . . Although testimonies about Nimrod as the originator of fire worship and star worship are found in Christian sources . . . there can be little doubt that the identification of Nimrod and Zoroaster had a Jewish origin . . . it is clear that the image of Nimrod as arch rebel against God lent itself easily to identification with a person who in a certain religio-historical constellation could be regarded as the founder of paganism par excellence, in this case the influential Zoroaster.18



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This astrology based religion focused on divine symbols in the heavens, the stars and the planets, rather than on the divine presence in the desert. The religion of ancient Israel was ethically based. That is, it focused on right relationships and doing justice. This focus became the basis of its prophetic traditions. The religion of Nimrod was hermeneutically focused. That is, it focused on understanding the movement of the stars and planets as the key to understanding the divine. This focus is the basis of its prophetic aspects. Given the now generally accepted theory of the permeability and adaptability of ancient Israelite religion to its environment, it is not surprising that the conflict between the religion of ancient Israel and astrology based religions of the region, including that associated with Nimrod, would eventually be internalized. The stories of Joshua’s victory at Jericho and Hezekiah’s demand for a confirming sign of his healing, for example, include elements where the God of the Israelites exercises powers such as dominance over the movements of the sun. On the other hand, the story of the Magi and their role in the annunciation of the coming of the Christ demonstrate God’s use of, and not disdain for, such religions as important to the divine purpose and design. The third dimension of this contrast between the religion of ancient Israel and that of Nimrod is centered on their constitutive practices. The ethical basis of the religion of ancient Israel was preserved in the law. Observance of the law evolved into a set of defined legal practices. At the center of these legal practices was the sacrifice, specifically the sacrifice of animals on the holy altar. This legalism, over time, became perhaps the single most important identifying feature of ancient Israelite religion. It was the task of the priestly class to safeguard these practices from corruption and neglect. The hermeneutical basis of the religion of Nimrod was preserved nature. The engagement with nature evolved into a set of defined natural practices. At the center of these natural practices was the hunt. This naturalism, symbolized by the bacchanal revelry that attended the hunt, over time, became perhaps the most important identifying feature of the religion of Nimrod. Even today, the name of Nimrod is associated with hunting songs. An example of this association is the collection of hunting songs Nimrod’s Songs of the Chace, published by William Holland in London in 1788. The hunter became the guardian of a set of natural practices aimed at keeping humankind connected with the divine. Both nature and the cosmos are a part of the divine realm. Thus, the hunt was not simply a practice aimed at supporting human survival but also reflected a cosmic reality, as symbolized by Orion, the hunter of mythic and astrological lore. In sum, the religion of Nimrod displayed a popular nationalism, a prophetic understanding that required a right relationship between humanity and the created order, and a priestly practice that sought to




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keep humankind connected with nature and the cosmos. The religion of Nimrod, as understood here, represented a counterpoint to the religion of ancient Israel. While traditional interpretation has attempted to distinguish them and to project the religion of ancient Israel as the only viable alternative, traces of the religion of Nimrod remain, even in the canon as we know it. The question is whether these traces can become keys to unearthing heretofore hidden resources within the Bible, and whether or not these resources can be utilized in the articulation of a broader African American religious understanding.

Implications of the Legend of Nimrod in Contemporary African American Experience The prevalent assessment of the figure of Nimrod in extrabiblical textual sources has been negative. Nimrod has become an antitype of Abraham and has been blamed in Western literary tradition for the confusion at Babel and for the closing of the gates of Paradise. In spite of this assessment, it may be that only through a critical recovery of the legend of Nimrod that we are able to expand our imaginative grasp of what was and what can be. Specifically speaking, the legend of Nimrod has the potential to provide a paradigm for describing an alternative religious approach, one that would be particularly responsive to the spiritual needs and requirements of the African American community.19 Nimrod is described as a rebel. We have noted that the object of Nimrod’s rebellion is not God, but a particular patriarchal system to which divine sanction had been ascribed. African American religion must support African American men and women and encourage them to challenge the destructive dimensions of patriarchy. Systems that concentrate power in the hands of the few and require and maintain the dependency of the many should be the targets of holy rebellion. Nimrod is also described as a political leader; in this sense, Nimrod could become a model for African American men. This suggests that African American men, along with African American women, must be at the center of the creation and maintenance of “rugged” social structures, which protect, defend, and advance the welfare of the African American community. Finally, Nimrod is credited with being the founder of an alternative popular religion. This suggests that the African American community must preserve the flexibility to accommodate forms of religious expression that are “popular.” The recovery of the legend of Nimrod within the framework of African American Christian practice is possible because the Bible does not denigrate Nimrod. Therefore, we are free to explore, within this context, its



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interpretive and liberating potential. The recovery of the legend of Nimrod in this context is necessary because biblical images, ideas, and concepts continue to affect the lives of African Americans. The legend of Nimrod may cast a positive light on the divinely inspired human potential within African American life, culture, and religion. The story of Nimrod may also shed some fresh light on the Back to Africa motif as it applies to the Bible. Slavery entailed the massive dislocation of millions of African souls. One cannot overestimate the impact of this history on the ability of the people of the African Diaspora to understand the forces that continue to shape their view of the world. The enslavement of Africans was buttressed by a hermeneutics of displacement. The biblical story of Nimrod and the interpretive struggle associated with it provides an example of the hermeneutics of displacement. Figures such as Hagar, the Shulamite maiden, the Ethiopian eunuch, and Simon of Cyrene are often valorized as confirmation of the presence of black people in the Bible. But even here, the black presence in the Bible is often debated and contested. There is a deeper issue involved in the hermeneutics of displacement as it relates to Nimrod. Nimrod is overshadowed by that other hated hunter of the Bible, Esau. The important aspect here is that Esau is bested by Jacob, “the supplanter.” In a more subtle fashion, Nimrod is displaced in traditional biblical interpretation by Abraham, David, and Moses. We have already mentioned the powerful relationship between Nimrod and Abraham. Nimrod, the rebel, is contrasted to Abraham, the faithful one. As the builder of a great city and as a political leader, Nimrod is displaced by David the monarch of the united Israelite Kingdom. As the focal point of religious renewal, Nimrod is displaced by Moses. The Back to Africa motif is based on a hermeneutic of replacement. That is, those who have been historically dislocated are relocated. The social and historical Back to Africa movements in the United States and beyond were at heart the attempt of black people to replace themselves in their native cultural matrix. The story of Nimrod has survived the attempts to displace it in the biblical narrative, and its retrieval may hold a key to the efforts of people of African descent to reclaim their place in the economy of contemporary life.

Notes 1. K. van der Toorn and P. W. van der Horst, “Nimrod before and after the Bible,” Harvard Theological Review 83.1 (January 1990): 18. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid., 23. 5. St. Augustine, City of God (New York: Modern Library, 1950), 527. 6. Stephen Gero, “The Legend of the Fourth Son of Noah,” Harvard Theological Review 73 (January–April 1980): 329.




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7. Pseudo-Philo, in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Vol. 2, ed. James H. Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 297–377. 8. Ibid., 312. 9. Ibid., 308. 10. Ibid., 309–310. 11. See Toorn and Horst, “Nimrod before and after the Bible,” 22–23. While traces of this positive evaluation of Nimrod are present in the literature, it tends to be overwhelmed by the more influential assessments of commentators such as Josephus. 12. Quoted in Toorn and Horst, “Nimrod before and after the Bible,” 20–21. 13. Gero, “The Legend,” 326. The two most significant documents that Gero examines are the Syriac texts The Book of the Cave of Treasures and The Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius. 14. Larry S. Champion, “The Conclusion of Paradise Lost—A Reconsideration,” College English 27.5 (February 1966): 389. 15. Ibid., 393. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid., 392. 18. Toorn and Horst, “Nimrod before and after the Bible,” 26–28. 19. Although not addressed in this chapter, the interpretation of Nimrod within Islamic circles remains an untapped source for understanding how this figure has been perceived from age to age, and from culture to culture.



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God of Restraint: An African American Humanist Interpretation of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel Anthony B. Pinn

In an effort to develop a framework by which to center African American humanist sensibilities, I turned my attention to Nimrod—the great hunter who is famous (or infamous) for the construction of the Tower of Babel.1 Elsewhere, I have suggested that Prometheus has long served as a symbol of human potential and optimism, but those of African descent were not associated with this positive tradition. Rather, their humanity was questioned; their merit denied. The history of African American praxis points to a push against this dehumanization, and this push has often involved a signifying of white arrogance and assumed superiority. Yet, this praxis has seldom involved an effort to rethink biblical figures such as Ham and Nimrod, who have been used as markers of divinely sanctioned discrimination. But must traditional and dehumanizing interpretations of these figures stand unchallenged? In this chapter, I answer this question with a strong “no” and I offer evidence for this through an interpretation of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel that draws from the African American Humanist tradition and the five principles that suggest its fundamental shape: 1. understanding of humanity as fully (and solely) accountable and responsible for the human condition and the correction of humanity’s plight;



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2. suspicion toward or rejection of supernatural explanation and claims, combined with an understanding of humanity as an evolving part of the natural environment as opposed to being a created being. This can involve disbelief in God(s); 3. an appreciation for African American cultural production and a perception of traditional forms of black religiosity as having cultural importance as opposed to having any type of “cosmic” authority; 4. a commitment to individual and societal transformation; 5. a controlled optimism that recognizes both human potential and human destructive activities. My purpose in applying this humanistic hermeneutic to this scriptural story of Nimrod is to provide alternate readings of “sacred” stories in ways that promote human welfare. In a sense, it also involves an effort to think through the possible sources of an African American humanist canon—including materials that might be omitted normally. Finally, this reading of Nimrod is meant to also problematize traditional African American Christian self-understandings drawn from a rather uncritical read of certain scriptural stories.

Thinking about Nimrod African American Christian discussions of these despised figures—Ham, Canaan, Nimrod—have implied softened versions of the traditional legends. Yet a humanist read allows for new possibilities, ones that promote “a reconstitution of a forgotten tradition of human integrity, a type of ‘subjugated knowledge,’” suggesting as it does, “the possibility of nurturing creativity and potential in transforming ways.”2 While similar work could be done regarding the story of Ham, I will limit my comments to Nimrod. Although he is typically discussed as a theological problem, as a descendent of Ham, and as one whose efforts damaged the relationship between God and humanity, resulting in the dispersal of humanity and the confusion of language, I argue that his actions celebrate human ingenuity and creativity. Nimrod unifies a community around a common objective, a common goal—whereas God’s activities in this story are questionable. Black religious life and thought have been dominated by assumptions concerning the proper posture toward the universe (or God), premised in part on subtle reference to the “crime” of human self-importance and growth chronicled in the Book of Genesis: the Garden of Eden, the alleged curse on Canaan, and the story of Nimrod. God set up selfassertion in the Garden of Eden as the problem that must be punished, the impetus for actions that should not be taken. And this action in the



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And the Lord God said, Behold the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever; therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man . . .3 And he [Noah] said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a Tower, whose top may reach unto heaven: and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.5

In all three of the above episodes, the relayed behavior of the divine is premised on a felt impingement on a freedom that threatens the epistemological and ontological distinction between divine and human that the concept of God is meant to safeguard. Addressing this involves at least two possibilities: (1) a reformulation of the God idea in ways that provide space for a positive autonomy as the mark of humanity; (2) a negative conception of humanity that renders problematic the exercise of autonomy or independence. The latter is chosen. Hence, tied to the above stories is a negative theological anthropology, one that renders problematic human ingenuity. There, however, is an alternate reading of Nimrod, one premised on African American humanist sensibilities.

God as Restraint Exposed This story is not solely about Nimrod—about the movements of humans in time and space. Rather it is an indictment of metaphysics—a placing of metaphysics on trial, within the courtroom of human selfrealization. This story of Nimrod tells a great deal about the conception of God. I am not interested in whether or not there is a being we rightly



case of the Garden of Eden serves as the theoethical rationale, a form of determinism, for the stories of Canaan and Nimrod. The following scriptural passages provide a sense of this problematizing of human action:

ANTHONY B. PINN

call God; rather, my focus is on the impact of this concept, the language of God, regardless of whether or not this concept points to a substantive cosmic reality. Whether “real” or “mythic,” this conception of God, as a matter of language, focuses attention, defines epistemological and ethical boundaries, and shapes life. It is this function that I am interested in exploring through a theological humanism interpretation of Nimrod. The ramifications of this alternate read are significant in that, for example, the Genesis discussion of human free will might entail an act of bad faith, a deception on the part of God. There is a battle between the logic and workings of the conception of God and the human desire for fullness of being. God serves to stifle this push for a greater sense of being.6 Again I point to divine anxiety: And the Lord God said, Behold the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever; therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man . . .7

The rest of salvation history—the story of God’s effort to connect with humanity—involves an effort to maintain this bad faith and its connotation. Here I suggest that God is the metasymbol of restraint: Restraint is God.8 Some might argue the Nimrod account promotes the proper and favorable view of God entailing divinity as a necessary restriction on human activity. If nothing else, others might suggest, it points to the very nature of religious devotion. What Frank Brown says in his discussion of the relationship between aesthetics and religion bears on this notion of Restraint as foundational within religion. He says, “as has often been observed, whatever is religious naturally serves as an agent of closure, shutting off human investigation, criticism, and effort in deference to the authority of the more-than-human, the supernatural, the other-worldly.”9 Christians have traditionally understood this limitation on human creativity and imagination as a fundamental good—a way of protecting us from ourselves. But is this a necessary, or even the most appropriate, theological interpretation of Restraint? It appears to me that the concept of Restraint as God does not exercise this type of authority for the good of humanity. Nimrod’s move strikes me as a wrestling with the assumption of inevitable wrong-ness, misdeed, due to an assumed original sin that blueprints humans for improper activity if left to their own devices. It is a strike against an external force that controls human destiny, and the establishment of human ingenuity and creativity in its place.



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Through a traditional reading of the text, we are to believe that Nimrod’s action is an attempt to be god—to assume the shape and posture of the biblical god—and to promote a form of imperialism. Yet a humanist read (influenced by black existentialism viewed through the lens of constructive theology) does not revolve around an assumed effort on the part of Nimrod to assert his will as “god” over against those around him—to live without regard to the welfare of others. Nimrod does not view himself as alone in the world. The angst belongs to Restraint as God, not to Nimrod: Human creativity requires destruction, and in this case the destruction involves a blow against Restraint as God’s supremacy—its ability to define the perimeters of human movement. One can argue that, through the building of the tower, Nimrod rebels against a certain type of metaphysically imposed limitation on human creativity and action. Restraint as God had been the source of fear, beginning with Adam and Eve’s encounter with God in the Garden of Eden, and dread in that the pervasiveness of Restraint as God meant that humanity could not escape a sense of burden, of something pressing on them, restricting them, determining them, owning them. Nimrod rebels, not through words but through the exercise of will. Nimrod’s is not a radical freedom, the type that supports amorality. Rather, Nimrod, based on the implications of the construction of the tower, is mindful of the consequences of his actions for community. His is not best described as a freedom from, but a freedom to—a freedom to develop meaning within the context of community. It is a freedom in responsibility as opposed to a freedom from responsibility. Nimrod’s actions suggest a sense of interdependence, of mutuality— but one that allows humans to build their world, however compromised and fragile those structures may be. But this posture works against Restraint as God. Is it not for this reason that the dispersal—the confusing of language takes place, according to the story? The creation account in Genesis points to the power of language in that God is said to speak things into existence. By destroying a unified language, Restraint as God seeks to accomplish the demise of human creativity as a communal endeavor. Restraint as God, not human freedom, imposes isolation, loneliness. The following is God’s response to Nimrod’s project: And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they



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Nimrod’s exercise of human ingenuity and creativity is projected as an offence, but it is an offence only against the status quo, against Restraint as God. Restraint as God is concerned with the unified assertion of collective will—the effort of humans to expand themselves within the context of community and in this way to achieve what one alone cannot.

God’s Great Fear Restraint as God is able to address self-will because it can be approached through force, a power that limits the individual. Hence, self-will poses no hard threat to divine integrity. However, this community-based act of freedom that moves beyond self-will is more difficult for Restraint as God in that it poses a threat to the very need for the divine as a unifying principle. Human maturation, as presented by Nimrod, entails the absorption of restraint, the recognition that restraint must issue from the inner self and be promoted by and for the self in relationship to community, and that it does not rightly issue from some external force. It is an act of bad faith— the belief that determinations should be surrendered to some external force. The story of Restraint as God has involved an attempt to cover this through acts of aggression and denouncement, talk of a divine and overarching will controling human interactions. Nimrod epistemologically and existentially breaks this open. Damage is done to the metaphysical groundings of Restraint. Existentially and epistemologically speaking, Restraint as God imposes limits on humanity—freedom and responsibility inscribed in a world that is monitored ultimately by divinely imposed parameters of life. Yet, Nimrod’s activities entail the saturation of life, of human-being, with freedom, responsibility, and accountability in a world in which human creativity and ingenuity trump the divine. With Nimrod’s action a new epistemology is introduced, one that does not recognize Restraint as God as necessary: God is not the ultimate response to the question of meaning, the question of being, the question of existence. The tower symbolizes the effort to make meaning, to confront existence. Nimrod does not deny the existence of God, rather the tower demonstrates an effort, as critics have rightly noted but not appreciated, to replace God with human possibility and to address the consequences of this replacement—the effort to create a new paradigm of human existence. Perhaps the destruction of the tower and the spreading of humanity points not only to the ultimate accountability of humans for



may not understand one another’s speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of the earth . . .10

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their life, but also to the brittle and fragile nature of the outcomes of this accountability when exercised. Nimrod’s efforts, although ultimately resulting in failure, point out the illusionary nature of Restraint as God’s control over humans. Free will has caught God—and Nimrod points to the scope of this freedom that God seeks to limit. Nimrod’s action points to the act of bad faith perpetrated by Restraint as God in the Garden of Eden: Restraint as God does not want true fellowship. The possibility that those in fellowship will think differently, will challenge, and perhaps threaten the cosmic structure, the theologically contrived status-quo—“They will become as us . . .”—creates discord with Restraint as God. This conceptualization of God was never the same after the events in the first eleven chapters of Genesis. First beginning to lose its grip on humanity in the Garden of Eden, Nimrod compromises it further, raising a question of ontological and epistemological import: Is it possible to live without Restraint as God, without an externally erected sense of communal responsibility and cooperation?

Learning from Nimrod Nimrod encourages humans to be themselves, to live with the consequences—pleasant and unpleasant though they may be. Nimrod offers replacement of Restraint as God with human creativity and ingenuity. But this is not a vulgar appeal to human freedom that means do as you please. Rather, as the building of the tower suggests, this freedom, this dethroning of restraint in cosmic garb involves a responsibility for productive movement—for a fellowship of sorts that takes into consider the “whole” when acting. The radical individualism associated with figures such as Richard Wright’s Cross Damon poses no deep threat to God as Restraint in that Damon’s effort to be-alone ultimately brings into focus the utility of this particular God idea. However, Nimrod’s is a different narrative, a more troubling possibility from the perspective of Restraint as God: Nimrod’s freedom is intermingled with attention to others. Such a freedom destroys the integrity of Restraint as God, rather than pointing to a defect in humanity. And it does so by questioning metaphysically imposed limitations on human development, and by an implied critique of determinism generated by a theology of original sin. Nimrod exposes the nature of Restraint as God: a fragile and unnecessary concept. Nimrod’s act is the first significant act of human creation. Adam and Eve name what Restraint as God is said to have created—but this is not the same, although the application of language is a certain type of creation. Yet the building of the tower is another creation, one that does not confirm the idea of Restraint as God but rather brings it into question— punching holes in its supremacy.



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Ultimately the tower fails not because it represents an unreasonable assertion of human will, one that must be checked through divine intervention. Nimrod’s action does damage to Restraint as God that prevents it from having the authority over human will that it once enjoyed. Rather, it fails, I argue, because Nimrod’s exercise of human will involves the tragic, a push for human betterment that celebrates achievement while recognizing its shortcomings. The tower, as an act of will, contains both a promise and a pitfall: it reflects human creativity and human limitation. Its construction is a morally and ethically responsible act of will, yet this expression of will does not get us all we want. Will and creativity are what we have, but they accomplish only so much. Nonetheless, it is not a problem that Nimrod’s project fails, it is simply recognition through metaphor that humans are prone to difficulties—moments of failure—often culminating in some sort of demise, in this case the demise of a dream. The tower project comes to an end, but what could not be stopped by Restraint as God is humanity’s questioning of metaphysically sanctioned limits and the human push for the exercise of freedom within the context of responsible membership in community. While human efforts to this end are usually frustrated, the building project continues.

Notes 1. See Anthony B. Pinn, African American Humanist Principles: Living and Thinking Like the Children of Nimrod (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). 2. Anthony B. Pinn, African American Humanist Principles: Living and Thinking Like the Children of Nimrod (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 6. 3. Genesis 3:22–24 (King James Version). I would not argue that the serpent who plays a role in “original sin” was good. No, whereas God as restraint seeks to prevent human freedom to safeguard certain relationships we assume good, the serpent seeks to open them for their problematic possibilities: radical good vs. radical evil. Neither is beneficial. 4. Genesis 9:25 (King James Version). 5. Genesis 11:4–6 (King James Version). 6. A similar argument is made in “The Hypostasis of the Archons,” found in the Nag Hammadi Library. In this account, an effort is made to keep “Adam” in ignorance. The “rulers” are presented as acting against the interest of humans by attempting to restrict knowledge. I am grateful to Allen Callahan, my co-editor, for bringing this account to my attention. 7. Genesis 3:22–24 (King James Version). 8. For an interesting interpretation of the story of Babel that takes up this question of God’s intent but offers an alternate, one that justifies God’s actions, see: Leon R. Kass, “What’s Wrong With Babel?” in The New Religious Humanists: A Reader, ed. Georgy Wolfe, (New York: The Free Press, 1997), 60–83. 9. Frank Burch Brown, Religious Aesthetics: A Theological Study of Making and Meaning (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 131–132. 10. Genesis 11:6–8 (King James Version).



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“I Am Black and Beautiful, O Ye Daughters of Jerusalem . . .”: African American Virtue Ethics and a Womanist Hermeneutics of Redemption Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas

It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question. The master had said, “You are ugly people.” They had looked about themselves and saw nothing to contradict the statement; saw, in fact, support for it leaning at them from every billboard, every movie, every glance. “Yes,” they had said. “You are right.” And they took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it. Dealing with it each according to his way. —Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye. I am so black; but [you are] lovely and pleasant [the ladies assured her]. O you daughters of Jerusalem . . . —Song of Solomon 1:5.

Commentators on American life and culture—from W. E. B. DuBois, in his work The Souls of Black Folk, to contemporary writings on critical race theory, from Derrick Bell to bell hooks—have borne witness to the



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premise that to be black is to be looked upon with contempt and pity by the Western world. This gaze of contempt has been not only the “veil” through which black people are viewed by others, but tragically also the mirror in which many black people have seen themselves. As with many unpleasant social realities, the most poignant yet best place to look for the operation of this mirror is in the play of the children––the children on an urban city sidewalk or in the red dust bowls of the rural south—can’t you see them even now? Somehow, as it always does in the life of children, the moment of dispute arises and one child always tries to out hurt the other, if only for a moment. They hurl ugly insults that escalate from being called stupid to playing the dozens in full. Soon the tension and rivalry intensifies—like the summer sun on a hot sidewalk—and even as children their intentions long to hurt (maybe badly), to maim (if only for a moment), because it is hot outside and everyone wants to quit and go home. But not without winning. And so, they stop. Think. Think of the worst insult they can muster. So they look at themselves. And someone hollers, “BLACK, darkie, nigger, nappy-headed, big-lipped, Black!” The words of ultimate truth are spoken, the penetrating gaze of the divine eye searches and reveals, and the carefully crafted facade of these children being the beloved of God crumbles. They all go home, the walking wounded—jacks in hand and head bowed, understanding all too well what it means to be black and begrimed. It is always in those seemingly innocent, negligible moments that a mere word takes on poignant meaning. The authoritative and premeditated use of the word “black” conveys judgment—experienced by shock and shame by the one receiving it with a force that is only equaled by the knowledge that everyone else recognized its meaning. At an early age, I developed an interest in the complex relationship between thinking, being, and doing—particularly the effect that this ethical continuum has on one’s sense of self-worth and virtue. Although I had neither the axiological framework for doing hermeneutics nor the scholarly language of ethics necessary to structure my observations at that time, I was always intrigued to find that black people could see themselves as products of God’s good creation, children of God, and yet see being black as something despicable—something lacking virtue. And I would wonder, How could that be? How does one, every one learn that lesson? Who is the teacher that taught it? Where is the classroom in which everyone is a student and everyone has learned so well the exact lesson? As a child, I had learned the lesson that “Jesus loves all the little children of the world—red, yellow, black, and white, they are precious in his sight.” From this I reasoned that my blackness could not be an insult nor could it be something with which I was cursed. Rather, there was actually something GOOD and God-like within it. Yet, in the scores of walking wounded, it amazed me to discover that Jesus—if the songs of my youth were my guide—did not in fact love all



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the little children of the world, despite what I had been taught in word and song. Either I had missed a class in which sense was made of these two conflicting views of being black, or I had been given the wrong textbook. As a child, I wondered how could this be as we all read from the same book. Herein lay the fallacy of my moral reasoning at that time—I had assumed, as a child would, that thoughts dictated action. And it was that theoethical wrestling that marked the beginning of my quest to seek the answer to the ethical queries “Why do people do what they do? And how ought we discern the content of one’s character through their actions rather than what they profess?” In spite of the precepts inculcated in song, based on what I saw on city sidewalks or heard from church pews, I realized that, surely, if the experience of being black conveyed anything to my childhood eyes, it was that to be black was to be despised by all of humanity. These institutions (namely church and playground) that could engender healthy socialization, cultivate and affirm one’s full humanity were instead significant vectors for indoctrinating a sense and status of inferiority.

Misappropriations of Scripture and the Colonization of Black Bodies and Minds This chapter begins with the assertion that a historical array of racialized readings, anchored in Eurocentric perspectives, has led to misappropriations of scripture that foster negative understandings of and associations with the representation of black people in biblical narrative. These readings have rendered blackness, in terms of an idea that attaches ritual impurity and with respect to human persons as beings, antithetical to all things good and pleasing to God. Conversely, whiteness has been construed to represent the epitome of ritual purity not only in its ideal conception but also in the very embodiment of people who are culturally identified as white. So pervasive have such readings been that Christianity in its entirety is often conceived as an exclusively white religion, with black forms of Christianity viewed as inherently aberrant, if acknowledged at all. Adding insult to injury is the reality that this racialized imagination has not only colonized the bodies of black people, but has also indoctrinated their minds, in that many black people have succumbed to the selfreferential demonizing advocated by specific racialized readings of the Bible. This acceptance has contributed much to making the indoctrinated inferiority immutable. Unlike the exemplary qualities or veneration ascribed to Isis, the Goddess of Africa or Solomon’s black and beautiful beloved Sheba in the Songs of Songs, black people’s understandings of themselves in light of



“I AM BLACK AND BEAUTIFUL”


scripture heard, interpreted, and received (as the Word of God in particular) illustrate an “indoctrinated immutable inferiority.” In other words, scripture has been used to enslave, to oppress, to justify the marginalization of blacks, and to reinforce notions of inferiority as fixed and immutable. Many black biblical scholars, liberation theologians, and womanist ethicists have written to debunk and to dismantle these readings and the ideologies of immutable inferiority that have been shaped by them.1 A salient example of this acculturated comfortable evil can be found in Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye. Here Cholly the confused boy-child, appreciating the one good time he had at a church picnic and the anticipation in seeing a black father prepare to break open a watermelon to feed his family and friends—finds himself feeling loved, nurtured, wanting more and ends up disavowing a god whom he has been forced to accept. Watching this huge black fatherly figure, tall, head forward, eyes fastened on a rock, his arms higher than the pines, his hands holding a melon bigger than the sun . . . Cholly felt goose pimples . . . He wondered if God looked like that. No. God was a nice old white man, with long white hair, flowing white beard, and little blue eyes that looked sad when people died and mean when they were bad. It must be the devil who looks like that—holding the world in his hands, ready to dash it to the ground and spill the red guts so niggers could eat the sweet, warm insides. If the devil did look like that, Cholly preferred him. He never felt anything thinking about God, but just the idea of the devil excited him. And now the strong, black devil was blotting out the sun and getting ready to split open the world.2

The world of difference that exists between Cholly and his perception of a Eurocentric, anthropomorphic, and racist image of God is made all the more injurious not only because he is found to be alien in nature and alienating by disposition but more importantly also because that which is familiar and affirming is regarded as sinister and evil—the Devil without question. And we might safely assume how and why this alien and alienating God as well as familiar and resonant Devil came into his consciousness to forever separate him from a self-affirming salvation. This god that he, and later his offspring, Pecola (who prayed to God for “the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment”), came to know was likely manifested through an oppressive racist theology created by and for the benefit of white people and the racial self-loathing projected in the preaching from the pulpits of black men who open the black book painting a good white God that says we are not gifted with our blackness—but cursed with it. From these pulpits, sermons are delivered about black people as “the cursed children of Ham,” always “exposing the ugly nakedness of



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people”—“Nimrod’s niggers”—building towers of Babel with the mortar of rap and hip hop, “wicked daughters of Black sheba”—“hoochie mamas whose greatest talent and most promise are found at the meeting of their thighs.” So the sermon ends—and we are to blame, seemingly cursed by God and surely hated by humankind. Or, as Renita Weems puts it, we fall ill-defended through the hard work of black scholars who stand vigilantly silent in the face of the death-dealing social oppression caused by the misreading of Scripture.3 Within Morrison’s poignant depiction of this “indoctrinated immutable inferiority,” not only does Cholly mistake affirmation for evil and Pecola seek to blot out her own vision for that of a white girl’s, but there is also a moment when another character, Soaphead Church, was able to articulate his experience of cognitive dissonance regarding his professional relationship with God; during the course of this intimate disclosure, Soaphead professes the abundant faith that blackeyed black people always demonstrated, the miserable return that has met their spiritual investment, and his newfound resolve to put the problem where it belonged, at the foot of the Originator of Life. He believed that since decay, vice, filth, and disorder were pervasive, they must be in the Nature of Things. Evil existed because God had created it . . . God had done a poor job, and Soaphead suspected that he himself could have done better. It was in fact a pity that the Maker had not sought his counsel.4

This is a well-known but never uttered thought—the moral wisdom and the spiritual angst of those who have been rendered silent and invisible by the lack of an appropriate hermeneutic to discern the difference between a “sad, mean, little blue-eyed white man” and a God who can, in fact, see the world through the black eyes of black people. One of the sole vehicles through which many black people have come to imagine God and the permanence of their exigent circumstances is through the manipulation of scripture.

Classical Racialized Biblical Narratives Many modern-day Christians read biblical texts as authoritative, assuming that the text is either the voice of God or the product of divine inspiration. When texts are bestowed with divine authority, they are understood separately from their historical, literary and cultural context, and the intent and function of the narrator are generally ignored. Oftentimes, little to no attention is paid to the fact that these biblical narratives seek to describe, explain, legitimate, and provide theological warrants for interpreting or ordering the world as it was experienced at the time of writing.





The disengagement of these texts from their historical situation has often led to certain tropes or particular metanarratives being adopted and appropriated for oppressive purposes. Texts that were constructed to provide theological mandates or to establish a particular worldview have been misused by subsequent generations, faith communities, and nations as divine mandates for their own systems of oppression, marginalization, genocide, chattel slavery, and segregation. The Hamitic myth is an example par excellence of racialized biblical hermeneutical methods, of proof-texting or building complex and far-reaching interpretive theories on the basis of sparse biblical narrative or miniscule blocks of biblical information. In the narrative upon which the Hamitic myth is grounded (Gen. 9:18–27), Ham, as the father to Canaan (v. 18), saw his father (Noah) naked in his tent after passing out in a drunken stupor. Upon seeing this, Ham immediately exits the tent in order to inform his brothers, Shem and Japheth, who then “covered” their father’s nakedness while turning their faces in such a way so as to avoid seeing his nakedness for themselves (v. 22–23). Upon awakening, Noah learns about what Ham did and utters the most damning pronouncement: “Cursed be Canaan, the lowest of slaves shall he be to his brothers.” (v. 24–25). Because, (or so the argument goes) Canaan (like Cush) is one of those biblical terms indicating blackness or black people, or nations, Noah, recovering from his drunken stupor, acted as God’s mouthpiece to pronounce a curse, not on Canaan, Noah’s grandson, but on blackness in general. Interestingly, in the narrative, Ham, himself is not cursed by the recently intoxicated Noah, nor are his other descendants Cush, Egypt, and Put (Gen. 10:6). A further point of interest that some racialized readings have taken for granted is how Noah’s progeny reflects all the racial diversity found within humankind. This story is then read as the first explicit engagement of blackness in the Bible, with all the preceding narratives presumptively read as being about white people. It creates the overall lens through which blackness has come to be viewed in the predominance of the Western theological tradition and shaped the worldview of those peoples and cultures that would later take as gainsay the denigration blackness. It is important to note that this reading of the tale of Ham gained cultural currency only after the widespread enslavement of central and western Africans by the colonial powers of western Europe.5 The next tale in the Hamitic myth is the story of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11: 1–10). This part of the mythic cycle is concerned with Nimrod, the grandson of Ham (Gen. 10:11) and the paramount sin associated with his leadership: not knowing one’s place and thereby causing confusion and disorder.6 This sin is made evident by God’s judgment seen in response to the construction of the Tower of Babel. As recounted in Gen. 11:1–9, the tower was built in the land of



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Shinar, part of the kingdom of Nimrod (Gen. 10:8–11). Everyone on earth, speaking the same language, endeavored to build a city with a tower, in order to “make a name” for themselves “lest they be scattered all over the world” (Gen. 11:4). Upon realizing the future potential of their endeavor, God confounds their speech and scatters them nonetheless, thus thwarting their efforts. The racialized readings of this story recognize Nimrod as a black figure and, through the lens of “the Hamitic curse,” interpret his life and work from the perspective of the eternal drama that connects sin and blackness. Read this way, the story is about black people seeking to make a name for themselves at the expense of God’s honor, much as Ham had shown little “respect” for the honor of Noah. God’s malediction is, therefore, on a black people seeking to rise above the place prescribed for them in the story of Noah and Ham.7 Let us observe that to render Nimrod or his putative black descendents culpable in this incident requires an exegetical leap to bridge the biblical gap between Genesis 10:10 where Nimrod is alluded to as the leader of Shinar and Genesis 11:1–9 where the tower is built with no reference whatsoever to Nimrod. Only through a racialized interpretative inference can Nimrod be rendered directly culpable for this putative sin. I would suggest that the racialized interpretive lens created in the Ham narrative has traditionally been refocused upon the Tower of Babel narrative (in Gen. 11) so as to include within its oppressive range of vision the culpability of the black biblical character of Nimrod (in Gen. 10:10). This refocusing is exemplified in Martin Luther’s assessment of Ham— “just as Ham despised Noah’s religion and doctrine by mocking his father and establishing a new government and new religion, so Nimrod sinned against both the government and the church.”8 From Luther’s perspective, both Ham and Nimrod are characters that have transgressed and are, therefore, outside the norm of acceptable conduct (which Luther’s audience can interpret from the perspective of both the government and the church). The notion that both Ham and Nimrod represent unacceptable biblical examples makes it easy for a racialized reading that interprets them as black figures that are outside the norm. When Ham and Nimrod are associated with infamy, a racialized reading associates blacks with infamy and stereotypes them as without value, morals, or honor. This mindset has had horrendous consequences for blacks whose enslavers and colonizers categorized them as uncivilized and heathen people.

The Task of “E-racing” the Demon of Normative Racialized Readings How do we then endeavor to rectify the colonizing effects of Eurocentric racialized biblical interpretation? In my opinion, the initial generation of black biblicists and theologians have proffered reactive or quantitative





methods of rectification that, although meritorious in many respects, are not empowering enough to “e-race” the demonizing of normative racialized readings.9 For example, early generations of black biblicists have endeavored, in a variety of ways, to amplify the presence of blackness in the Bible as if to suggest that more and louder necessarily means good and better.10 Scholars such as Charles Copher used evidence from archaeological works, written records, paintings, geography, personal names and adjectives, and ancient Greek and Roman writings to broaden their study and to contribute toward the recovery of black presence in the Bible. For example, one could appreciate that names of persons/places such as Canaan, Put, Egypt, and Cush were associated with blackness.11 A hermeneutic of recovery such as this, however, still fails to generate a liberating totality of biblical experience within which a black person, like Cholly, Pecola, or Soaphead Church, could feel black and beautiful—as witnessed by the fact that they all lived in worlds of strong and virtuous black people but failed to be influenced by this reality in their view of themselves and other black people. The understanding that biblical texts assume the presence of black bodies, black characters, and black communities is not particularly empowering if those characters and communities are imbued with negative attributes, curses, or infamy. The Bible must be seen also as a liberative text that does not convey an immutable inferiority imposed by divine whim or wisdom. Black readers want to see themselves in the story and the ultimate aim of their sacred scriptures. A black humanist theologian such as Anthony Pinn, however, might advocate a different approach. Pinn supports a hermeneutic of human integrity wherein biblical language is rendered devoid of divine inspiration, thus rendering it impotent of divine curse and divine blessing. In other words, without a divine presence there can be no divine critique. According to Pinn, “In short, [African American] humanism responds to moral evil and its ramifications by an appeal to the essential worth and responsibility of humanity for the quality of life.”12 My critique of this approach, however, is that for most black people who read the Bible as sacred text this “essential worth” of humanity reflects divine creative work and presence. For such readers, the life of faith is important and cannot be separated from the meaning attributed to divine words and activity in the biblical text. While the hermeneutic of human integrity proposed by Pinn unites black people in humanity, it does so by marginalizing those things that are of ultimate concern and existential meaning, their relation to the sacred, and connection to mystery, in many ways the very stuff that makes up the subjectivity of black people. What is needed here is a new hermeneutic that can subvert the demonizing and oppressive character of texts and so allow the readers to recover their own essential worth. A radical subjective approach that interrogates the oppression will begin with the observation that this



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“essential worth” cannot be violated by making the ravings of a recently intoxicated biblical figure the blessings and curse of a divine being. From this perspective, the language of curse or blessing is rendered impotent. It serves no fruitful purpose to read the text without asking how is God at work (or not at work) present (or not present) in this text. The text is examined to see if the rendering of divine presence is liberative or oppressive, helpful or hurtful, faithful to reason or based on whim, acceptable to all humankind or culturally specific and culturally bound. So, how does one seek to undo the consequences of history and do so without asking people to abandon their faith, the sacred texts, and notions of divine presence and activity in their lives? Pinn’s appeal to essential worth conveys an imperative that points our attention in the direction of ethics, more particularly a formulation of an answer through the lens of virtue ethics.

Defining Virtue Ethics According to Aristotelian ethics and modern moral philosophy, virtue is defined as whatever characteristic or personal quality that manifests within an observer a sense of satisfaction and liking toward a particular trait of an individual. Vice is its antithesis. In normative terms, people who are discerned as virtuous are those whose traits are perceived as useful. One’s desirable character (value) is linked to and renders a desired practical end (use). Portrayed as such, normative ethics portends a dominant perspective that assumes that both the observer and observed are self-directing agents possessing freedom and a wide range of choices therein. Normative ethics and its patriarchal paradigms of theological and moral virtue have dismissed and/or devalued black people’s experience, humanity, and character. Such moral discourse extends these domains only to those who enjoy white and/or male privilege. Due to the interlocking systems of race, class, and gendered oppression, black women in particular are denied the right to appear as good or virtuous. A womanist analysis of virtue corrects such limiting definitions that disfigure black people’s character as essentially lacking in virtue. As Cannon states in reference to the histories of enslavement, colonization, and Jim and Jane crow segregation, virtue “is the moral wisdom that [people] of African ancestry live out in their existential context which does not appeal to the fixed rules or absolute principles of the whiteoriented, male-structured society.”13 Such a womanist analysis must formulate particular tenets and propose strategies that are foundational to the task of dismantling racialized and patriarchal paradigms while taking seriously the redemption of virtue, essential worth, and the souls of black folk. In what follows, I propose the formulation of a hermeneutic of redemption that seeks to undo what history has done through negative




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The Tenets of Womanist Virtue Ethics in Cultivating a Hermeneutic of Redemption From the perspective of a hermeneutic of redemption, the notion of blackness is not a negation of virtue or beauty of black people. Rather, blackness is critical to a person’s moral character and essential for the flourishing of his/her moral agency. This hermeneutic entails what I have referred to as the four virtues or tenets of womanist ethics:14

Radical Subjectivity—Mapping the Process of Black People’s Agency The first task of a hermeneutic of redemption is to trace the process of radical subjectivity as identity formation and self-reflexivity through the articulation of embodied action, the re-membering of disremembered memories/contexts, the interrogation of oppression, the demystification of double consciousness, the demythologizing of normative ideologies, and the remythologizing of one’s own life story. Taken together, this process maps how black people in their identity development come to understand moral agency as the ability to defy a forced subjugation in an effort to influence the choices made in their life and how black conscientization can incite resistance against marginality through the audacious act of naming and claiming voice, space, and knowledge.

Traditional Communalism—Conceptualizing and Making Visible the Ways in Which Black People Act as Moral Conveyors for Their Communities The second task of a hermeneutic of redemption is to demonstrate the ways in which black people cultivate what womanists term the cultural values of the black community, namely, that of “traditional universalism” and “traditional capability.” These values are the moral fibers inherent within the fabric of black experiences, ones that transcend the boundaries of time and space. Traditional communalism highlights black identity and culture that is not informed by narrow cultural norms that mask continued fascination with the power of the white hegemonic other. Instead, traditional communalism, through its exploration of universality and capability of black people, refuses to accept assimilation, imitation, or notions of black exceptionalism as viable options for those who are committed to the black liberation struggle. Traditional communalism



readings of biblical narratives, such as those that deal with Nimrod, and move ultimately to notions of blackness and the humanity of black people.

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highlights the ability to create, re-member, nurture, protect, sustain, and liberate communities that are marked and measured not by those outside of one’s own community but by the acts of inclusivity, mutuality, reciprocity, and self-care practiced within it. Highlighted are the moral principles and practices of black people living in solidarity with and in support of those with whom they share a common heritage and contextual language. Having a preferential option for black culture, especially their constructive criticism, “tragicomic hope,” “in/visible dignity,” and “un/shouted courage” furthers the survival and liberation of all black women and their communities.15

Redemptive Love—Ascertaining the Particularities of Black People’s Aesthetics and Moral Character The third task of a hermeneutic of redemption seeks to demystify static notions, racial stereotypes, and monolithic assumptions of black identity in order to transform their sense of who they can be while still being black. This identity politics is built upon a self-affirming foundation rather than on one that rests upon a white supremacist definition of what it means to be black. Redemptive love is the assertion of the humanity, customs, and aesthetic value of blackness in contradistinction to the commonly held stereotypes characteristic of white solipsism. It is the admiration and celebration of the distinctive and identifiable beauty of black people that is a reaffirmation of blackness in all of its full creation, and the essence and freedom of the cultural, physical, spiritual expression of thinking, doing, and being black.

Critical Engagement—Forging an Articulation of a Different Perspective The fourth task of a hermeneutic of redemption articulates a perspective that privileges not only black people’s value systems and heritage, but also their racial-ethnic embodiment and culture. It also highlights the epistemological privilege that is born out of the experiences of suffering caused by living under oppressive conditions of racialized readings of scripture— narratives that were often spun in order to obfuscate the real presence, contribution, and standards of virtue set forth by black biblical people. It is an unequivocal belief that Black people hold the standard and normative measure for their own true liberation, the capacity of black people to view things in their true relations or relative importance; although expected to be among the chief arbiters of accountability, advocacy, and authenticity, they must be faithful also to the task of expanding their discourse, knowledge, and skills to find the truth that will set them free.




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A hermeneutic of redemption calls for, among other things, an interrogation of oppression and a demythologizing of normative ideologies. The first tenet of a hermeneutic of redemption radical subjectivity applied to the story of Noah takes seriously his humanity as a man of the soil (Gen. 9:20). The reference conveys echoes of the creation story in which the first being is from the dust of the ground (Gen. 2:7). This first being finds himself in a garden that the Lord God had planted in Eden (Gen. 2:8). After the Flood, human civilization recommences with Noah and he plants his own garden. Noah needs to be resourceful and, as a man of the soil, works toward survival. In his humanity, Noah draws on his survival instinct and his creative genius to plant a vineyard and to develop the craft of wine production. However, humankind must also cultivate the soul, the conscience, and the values that highlight our essential worth. In interrogating this narrative, we can readily recognize that Noah embraced an ethic of survival and abandoned an ethic of virtue. Noah, riding high on the crest of his own achievement, fails to provide adequate checks and balances on his conduct, transgresses cultural norms of decency, disgraces himself, and loses all sense of propriety. At the very least, Noah is guilty of not exercising the virtue of self-control. In the first instance, he loses control and becomes intoxicated with his own product, the fruit of his labor. Secondly, he loses control and in anger pronounces a curse on his own flesh, the fruit of his loins. One small step in the task of demythologizing the racialized ideology requires that Noah’s humanity is fully recognized, giving him praise for his skills of survival and creativity while, at the same time, holding him to an ethic of responsible conduct.

Ham as Consciousness-Raising and Politics of Respectability Traditional communalism, the second tenet of a hermeneutic of redemption, questions the moral values that are conveyed within the community in terms of their capacity to sustain and liberate. In the story, Ham is victimized by his father’s unvirtuous conduct. Through no guile or malice on his part, Ham encounters his father in a compromising situation. Noah has disgraced himself through his reckless use of wine. Ham has the option of living with this image of his father’s disgrace for the rest of his life and decides not to spend the rest of his life entrapped by the demonic power of secrecy. The genie is out of the bottle. Noah’s youngest son is traumatized by his father’s indiscretion. However, Ham’s conversation with his brothers allows them to act so that his father is again clothed with a measure of honor and dignity. However, Noah’s response is not remorse



Redemptive Readings of Ham and Nimrod

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or repentance or gratitude to his sons. He does not take responsibility for his own reckless behavior. Instead, his response is anger that is directed at the son who saw his naked body. Noah’s response reflects a kind of selfloathing that may be associated with shame, or a failure to accept the gifts and endowments of his own physical body, or a negative appropriation of his own sexuality. His response to this issue, which involves his naked body and by extension his sexual organs, is to curse the product of his son’s body and his son’s sexual organs. Whereas Ham chose not to keep secret his father’s indiscretion, Noah’s response is an act of silencing that effectively allows the body and human sexuality to become scapegoats for reckless behavior. A hermeneutic of redemption enables black communities to appreciate how their bodies and sexuality are tied to the politics of racialized readings. In other words, on the one hand, black bodies are associated with negative traits, ugliness, and laziness, and on the other hand, blackness and sexual deviancy are linked. A hermeneutic of redemption speaks to the beauty of black bodies and sexuality and uncovers the stereotypes and sources that indoctrinate inferiority. The community’s acts of self-care will require a celebration of black bodies, and an ethic of responsible approaches to black sexuality. The engagement of this narrative in the context of community allows us to read Ham as the trigger for raising consciousness and introducing us to the politics of respectability. Ham’s observation of his father’s nakedness has more to do with the disgrace that Noah embodied, and not Ham. A community’s act of self-care will affirm people who are penalized for challenging the status quo, or those who raise consciousness. From this perspective, Noah is held responsible for his own disgraceful conduct. If we but look at the Civil Rights movement as one example, we will observe that it has been the moral tradition of black people to be the keeper of conscience—making oppressive forces of society to be more mindful of its horror and nakedness—not mocking it for amusement sake but to lend their eyes as a mirror to poignantly reflect how the world perceives itself as opposed to its reality. Yet, at the same time, black people were demonized for disturbing the equilibrium of the status quo, for not keeping silent and accepting the stereotypical portrayals of black aspirations, and for daring to speak of the horrors of a disgraceful system.

Nimrod as Self-Help and Social Mobility The text does not present us with any reason to trace a negative history to the nations of black people. Indeed, of all the genealogies presented in the text, only Nimrod, son of Cush, is singled out as a person of distinction. The narrative celebrates the achievement and renown of Nimrod. Nimrod is celebrated and his name is mentioned with veneration and awe: “Therefore it is said, ‘Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the Lord’”





(Gen. 10: 9). The narrative expounds the virtues and celebrates the greatness of Nimrod. Here is a text that exemplifies the third tenet, redemptive love. It is affirming and speaks in tones of admiration and in celebration of the distinctive qualities of Nimrod, son of Cush. Nimrod is the only person in the entire genealogical review whose legacy is described as a kingdom (Gen. 10:10). A hermeneutic of redemption that espouses redemptive love will find in Nimrod, an exemplar of community organizing, a leader with concern for human flourishing, a civil engineer in designing wonders, monuments, and an infrastructure that warrant the description of “the great city” (Gen. 10:12; cf. Jonah 1:1; 3:1; 4:11). Nimrod, the great builder of nations serves as a touchstone to the creativity, civilization building, and community formation that is indicative of black people’s moral agency. It has been the innovation and genius of black people, inventors, sharecroppers, and activists who have cultivated the means by which life was brought to the lifeless or treasures were made out of trash. The moral agency of black leaders and activists such as Nimrod has been great human strides of unity that others have called and turned into babble. Finally, a hermeneutic of redemption will read the Genesis narrative through the lens of critical engagement, the final tenet in Womanist virtue ethics. This approach to the text requires an appreciation of not just the literary features of the text but also the ideological dimensions that rest behind the text. This is done by attending to the narrational dimension and the intent of the text. Why would the narrator be interested in relating a story about a curse on the people of Canaan? Whose perspective would such a curse represent, and whose interests are served? What literary features are employed to reflect the underlying ideology? For example, why does the narrator intermingle wine, human sexuality, disgrace, and curses in speaking of the origin of certain nations? That particular agenda is clearly at work as the narrator describes the incestuous relationship between Lot and his daughters as they utilize wine to repeatedly look upon their father’s nakedness and eventually carry in their wombs the ancestors of the Moabites, and Ammonites (Gen. 19: 30–38). Redemptive readings rescue not only black people from bigotry, but all people who are victimized by narratives of prejudice, marginalization, and dehumanization. The famous line associated with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King finds resonance here—none are free until all are free. Through critical engagement, oppressed peoples are called to that place of epistemological privilege where they can experience the presence of God with them in spite of the persuasiveness and pervasiveness of other narratives. These ways of knowing need to be cultivated and given expression as they witness to a God whose redemptive activity cannot be subverted by the narratives of shame, guilt, and disgrace. Noah’s loss of virtue and control cannot be translated into divine activity. Finally, awakened from a drunken stupor with the smell of wine on his breath and words of imprecation on



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his lips, Noah’s voice cannot be identified as the divine voice but must be interpreted as the voice of a human who had strengths as well as weaknesses. Critical engagement calls for the divine voice to be heard, and divine activity recognized in other places in the text. Departing, as it does, from a more particularized framework for understanding virtue, a womanist virtue ethical method as outlined in the four tenets of radical subjectivity, traditional communalism, redemptive self-love, and critical engagement entails an analysis of the contexts of oppression within biblical scripture because it supposedly pertains to black people among whom their moral character development is birthed and nurtured. To develop character and to wrest one’s agency from the annihilating forces of oppression is to cultivate a peculiar wisdom that does not resonate with Eurocentric, patriarchal, or elitist sensibilities and systemic structures. The task herein is to chart within the biblical scripture the genealogy of black moral wisdom of surviving and thriving in the face of oppression and the coping strategies that emerge out of their struggle for a politics of respectability/ public decorum, social mobility, self-realization, and civilized progress. Scripture can now be used to depict the contours of the moral sphere of black people’s virtue by illustrating the multivalent survival mechanisms used and developed by the blackest people of the Bible in order to redeem as virtuous what has been considered vice. Herein, scriptures that were used to silence and subjugate black people can, through a redemptive hermeneutic of virtue ethics, instead provide a rich resource and a cohesive commentary that brings into sharp focus the black community’s central values, which in turn frees black folk from the often deadly grasp of these parochial stereotypes and colonizing readings of scripture. We had defended ourselves since memory against everything and everybody, considered all speech a code to be broken by us, and all gestures subject to careful analysis; we had become headstrong, devious and arrogant. Nobody paid us any attention, so we paid very good attention to ourselves. Our limitations were not known to us . . . So it was with confidence, strengthened by pity and pride, that we decided to change the course of events and alter [black] human life.16 And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth. . . .” And the Lord said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them” (Gen. 11:4, 6, KJV) “I am Black and beautiful, O ye daughters of Jerusalem . . .” (Song of Solomon 1:5, NRSV)




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1. See Vincent L. Wimbush, African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures (New York: Continuum, 2000); Vincent L. Wimbush, Yet with a Steady Beat: Contemporary U.S. Afrocentric Biblical Interpretation, ed. Randall C. Bailey, Semia Studies No. 42 (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003); Randall C. Bailey, “Beyond Identification: The Use of Africans in Old Testament Poetry and Narratives,” in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation, ed. Cain H. Felder (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991), 165–184; Gay L. Byron, Symbolic Blackness and Ethnic Difference in Early Christian Literature (New York: Routledge, 2002); R. S. Sugirtharajah, Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1997). 2. Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye (New York: Washington Square, 1970\Plum 2000). 3. Renita Weems, “Running the Race for Future Generations: Can You Handle the Faith without the Fulfillment?” in Blow the Trumpet in Zion: Global Vision and Action for the 21st Century Black Church, ed. Iva E. Carruthers, Frederick D. Haynes III, and Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2005), 109–115. 4. Morrison, Bluest Eye, 173. 5. Stephen Haynes, Noah’s Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 7. 6. Ibid., Chapter 6. 7. A similarly racialized reading tries to associate the narrative of the Tower of Babel with a black biblical character, namely Nimrod, and to blackness, no matter how illusive that undertaking might be to the Tower of Babel. Whereas, in the instance of Ham, the association between the incident and curse is invariably linked to a black biblical character, in the Tower of Babel narrative, a direct association is illusive at best. The incident, the construction of the tower in the city, is clear; the resulting punitive measure is also clearly referenced, God scatters all peoples and confounds their language. Let us first observe that the Tower of Babel narrative seems to be out of sequence as the reality of nations and their languages is already named and highlighted three times in the previous chapter. The standard formula is this: “These are the descendants of _______ in their lands, with their own language, by their families, in their nations” (Japheth— Gen. 10:5; Ham—Gen. 10:20; Shem—Gen. 10:31). 8. Stephen R. Noah’s Curse—The Biblical Justification of American Slavery (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 51. According to Haynes, in his view of Ham’s activities following this episode with Noah, Luther seems to have been influenced by several of the church fathers. For instance, he alludes to the patristic notion that Ham, “later on filled the world with idolatry,” claims that after being cursed Ham went to Babylon where he “engage[d] in building a city and a tower . . . establish[d] himself as lord of all Asia” and developed “a new government and a new religion” and even adopts Augustine’s suggestion that Ham’s name means “hot” (Ibid). Also, see Martin Luther, “Lectures on Genesis,” in Luther’s Works, 55 vols., ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St. Louis: Concordia, 1955), ch. IX. 9. The term “e-race” is equined by Stephen Ray as a play on the words erase and race as a prescription for removing racialized readings from our normative



Notes

10.

11. 12. 13. 14.

15.

16.

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theories. Stephen G. Ray Jr. “E-Racing the Faith: Toward the Beloved Community.” A paper delivered at Rhodes College, February 23, 2004. Eminent in this scholarship is the work of Charles B. Copher: “The Black Man in the Biblical World,” Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center 1.2 (1974): 7–16; “Three Thousand Years of Biblical Interpretation with Reference to Black Peoples,” Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center 13.2 (1986): 225–246. Gay L. Byron, Symbolic Blackness and Ethnic Difference in Early Christian Literature (New York: Routledge, 2002). Anthony B. Pinn, African American Humanist Principles: Living and Thinking Like the Children of Nimrod (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 2. Katie Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1988), 4. For further exemplification of these tenets see Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas, Mining the Motherlode: Methods in Womanist Ethics (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim, 2006) and Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas, Deeper Shades of Purple: Womanism, Religion, and Society (New York: New York University Press, 2006). See Cornel West, Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight against Imperialism (New York: Penguin, 2004) and Katie Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1988). Morrison, Bluest Eye, 191.







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“Lest We Be Scattered Abroad”: Nimrod, Marcus Garvey, and Black Religious Humanism in Harlem Juan M. Floyd-Thomas

When we think of the story of Nimrod within the larger biblical narrative, it is most centrally linked to the Tower of Babel. As a unifying leader of the postdiluvian tribal nations, Nimrod was portrayed as a great warrior, a mighty hunter, and a generally compelling leader who, as a direct descendent of Ham and Cush, was definitively black. The allegory of the Tower of Babel has a paradoxical significance attached to it: Nimrod’s efforts to build the tower served as both a monument of human ingenuity as well as a testament to human misery. From my earliest days of childhood, I wondered what these people had done to allegedly bring such divine wrath upon themselves and have its effects last until the present generation. Although I do not hold a literalist’s regard for this passage of scripture, I am intrigued by its functional power in the lived experiences of black people worldwide. For instance, as the biblical text asserts, God is thoroughly dismayed and angered not merely by the construction of the legendary tower but rather also with the fundamental premise of this infamous act—that human beings who were black and deemed lowly could unify themselves and subsequently dare to reach the literal/figurative heights of heaven. Now, whereas any discussion of theology or biblical exegesis is beyond the scope or intention of this chapter, the story of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel piques my interest as a historian insofar as it resonates deeply with the modern African American experience, especially in terms of the



CH AP TER

JUAN M. FLOYD-THOMAS

existential queries: “Why have a people who have been so gifted and creative also been so hated and despised?” “How have black people survived thus far?” and “Why do black people continue to go on?” Although I do not claim to have the answers to those questions, I would like to explore the core issues that they allude to through the lens of the black radical humanist tradition—a canon of philosophy, history, and belief by, for, and about the exigencies of people of African descent with the ultimate goal of achieving social justice for all people.

Nimrod’s Offspring: The “Nimrod Factor” as Paradigm of Black Religious Humanism Whether focused on sacred or secular principles and practices, the black religious humanism invariably has one penultimate goal: the redemption and liberation of black people, and thereby of all humanity.1 The story of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel not only marks the grand summation of the creation saga in the first eleven chapters of Genesis but also offers a depiction of humanity’s troubled relationship with God. Several commentators have viewed the Tower of Babel story pejoratively as a penultimate statement on human rebelliousness toward God, the manifestation of pride and arrogance as mortal sins, and as divine punishment in response to humanity’s waywardness. Based on such an interpretation, the effort by Nimrod and his followers to build “a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth” (Gen. 11:4) represents a gross violation of the relationship between humans and the divine. As seen in the ten preceding chapters of Genesis, there seems to be an escalating pattern of fear, hostility, and punitive action evident in Yahweh’s interaction with humanity. From Adam and Eve’s eating of the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3: 1–24) to Yahweh’s decision to blot out humankind by the means of the Flood (Gen. 7: 1–24), there are repeated instances wherein God is portrayed by the Yahwist2 as being fearful and even antagonized by humans trying to strive for three elements: unity, divinity, and immortality. Understood in this manner, Nimrod’s role as a great leader, from the ranks of Ham’s allegedly cursed lineage, in bringing together otherwise willful humans into city-states and a sprawling kingdom (unity) under his leadership, was depicted by the Yahwist as directly antithetical to the will of God. But what is most evident in this biblical text is that the condemnation of Nimrod and his followers as well as the collapse of the tower is immediately contradicted by the election of Abraham as the progenitor of the Israelites, the chosen people.



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In his examination of the Tower of Babel story, biblical scholar Solomon Avotri suggests that the distinction between the “evil” Nimrod and the “good” Abraham is fraught with ethnocentrism. By implication, Nimrod is shown as out of favor with Yahweh while Abraham and his descendents received Yahweh’s unwavering support and blessing (Gen. 12:3). Avotri illustrates that the central irony is that as Yahweh becomes “an ethnocentric God—the God of a particular people, Israel,” the Yahwist constructs a narrative wherein “the God who denies the rest of humanity their effort to make a name for themselves now confers a name upon Abraham, Israel’s ancestor.”3 The Yahwist ostensibly creates an ontology that takes Nimrod’s strengths and virtues and inverts them into weaknesses and vices. Conversely, anyone familiar with the exploits of Abraham should see how deeply questionable it is that someone with his immoral qualities and undesirable persona subsequently became venerated and enshrined in the world’s three major monotheistic traditions— Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—as “the father of many nations.” This comparison suggest that, rather than being a prophetic revelation of a conflict between God and humans, the Yahwist account of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel actually depicts a power play among human beings using God’s blessings and curses as the line of demarcation between the haves and have-nots, between the oppressors and the oppressed. Put simply, Nimrod was the target of one of the oldest, most baseless smear campaigns in human history. Now the question is why? As we contend with the challenges and concerns of black people in today’s world, a reinterpretation of the Tower of Babel might be useful in our present situation. In reading the Tower of Babel account, there is a matrix of six interrelated elements that comprise a hermeneutical device that I refer to as the “Nimrod factor.” First, central to this particular analytic framework is the identification of black male leadership that is charismatic. Borrowing heavily from the Weberian notion of charisma, one might assert that a black male leader following in the proverbial footsteps of Nimrod is defined as a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are such as are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader.4

While not trying to discount the indispensable contributions and undeniable leadership of black women throughout history, there has been a very specific vilification of any significant attempts by men of African descent to achieve unity, divinity, and immortality for the black community.5



“LEST WE BE SCATTERED ABROAD”


A prime example of the intransigent sense of panic toward the black male leadership paradigm being codified within the U.S. government became evident when numerous declassified FBI documents pertaining to the Counterintelligence Program, (COINTELPRO) circa March 4, 1968, clearly indicated that the federal government was actively committed to preventing “the rise of a ‘messiah’ who could unify, and electrify, the militant black nationalist movement.” Using Nimrod as a touchstone, we can say that the threat to the dominant social order is not that charismatic black male leaders might become autocratic despots or tyrannical imperialists, because it seems that Western society has been perennially ready, willing, and able to coexist with dictators and warlords of African descent. Instead, the great threat to modern Western society seems to emanate from the chance that such leaders might demonstrate the spirit of messianic populism wherein the leader empowers and elevates the masses rather than vice versa. Second, much like Nimrod, charismatic black male leadership uses messianic populism to provide the black community with a fundamental vision of themselves and God that has the social and spiritual matters of the world around them firmly bound together. For instance, following Nimrod’s example, it is not enough to create a political and economic world order that denies all of humanity a chance for wholeness and advancement especially on a transcendent level. To wit, my thinking here is greatly influenced by theologian Paul Tillich’s thought on the synergy between the creation of a fair and just social order and the commitment to a deep religious faith—two realities that would work in tandem rather than at odds with one another.6 As demonstrated in the Tower of Babel account, rather than demand a lavish monument that was solely an exercise in rampant egotism and self-aggrandizement, Nimrod marshaled the vast resources at his disposal (both human and material) to create an extraordinary building project that sought to provide a sense of unity, divinity, and immortality for his people. More importantly, the completion of this undertaking would be the fruit of their own labors. As a means of analysis, Nimrod’s agenda seemed firmly rooted in the belief that the true power of the social order is religious insofar as it enables people to realize their full humanity. Third, more than being a mighty hunter, fearsome warrior, and a strong persuader, Nimrod was obviously a master organizer and builder whose bold and dynamic dream was probably perceived by his earthly rivals and detractors as a direct challenge to the supremacy of God. What is most insidious about this matter is the fact that Nimrod’s goal regarding the construction of this building was perfectly matched by his masterful efficiency and effectiveness to get the mammoth task accomplished. Nimrod and his latter-day counterparts reflected the “hedgehog” mentality discussed by philosopher Isaiah Berlin at work in their nearly



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indomitable attempt to galvanize human beings by the sheer force of his will and imagination to complete his daring goal to touch the sky. Notably the historic reproach on Nimrod and his progeny largely seems to arise from his foes’ passionate hatred of his audacity to have such a grandiose dream as well as the wherewithal to possibly realize the said vision. Fourth, as a member of a race generally reviled and despised by the dominant society, Nimrod’s inherent qualities served as illustrations used to appease non-black peoples’ sense of intimidation and insecurity. The fact that the storied achievements of Nimrod would be considered irrelevant by the Yahwist in comparison to the exploits of the other biblical patriarchs such as Abraham, Isaac (Israel), and Jacob is utterly confounding. Whereas the latter three figures were otherwise nondescript nomads who, despite having God’s blessing, found themselves traversing the broad expanse of the known landscape of their day running from one dire situation to the next, Nimrod was recognized as a master of the earthly realm who did so in spite of Noah’s curse on his family. It seems that, by some strange twist of fate, Nimrod’s great accomplishments were most likely undervalued because his greatest sin was his skin. Writing about the pernicious dimensions of being black in a world that abhors blackness in The Souls of Black Folk, historian W. E. B. DuBois contends that the central dilemma of being black rests in being denied the prospects to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius. These powers of body and mind have in the past been strangely wasted, dispersed, or forgotten. The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the shadow and of Egypt the Sphinx.

Furthermore, in a truly poignant statement, DuBois notes that “throughout history, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.”7 To fully understand the historic mistreatment and misrepresentation of black people is to gaze squarely at the realities ushered forth by a world so deeply unsettled by Nimrod that it wished that neither he nor the rest of us ever existed. Fifth, the Tower of Babel story reflects the struggle by Nimrod to promulgate an alternate black reality in such a way that, no matter how ostensibly short-lived or untenable it might seem, this redefinition of black people’s reality ultimately provides a counternarrative to dominant stereotypes of and biases toward black people who doubt their overall potential as human beings. For all intents and purposes, in the biblical narrative, we find Nimrod operating well beyond the constraints of what





is currently known as white normativity by using his talents and powers to their fullest extent in creating and governing an empire culled from the farthest reaches of the biblical world. Eschewing any questions about if he could hold dominion over the people, creatures, and everything else in his realm, Nimrod was free to imagine what and how he concretely wanted them to do in order to prove their, as well as his, greatness. The creation of such a counternarrative is crucial for the inversion and possibly even dismantling of the negative sense of black life and reality. By way of illustration, philosopher Lewis R. Gordon argues in Existence in Black that black existentialism (to which I would consider black religious humanism a parallel ideological system) addresses many themes similar to those of European existentialism but with some key differences. Race notwithstanding, both worldviews argue that the notion of a human being makes no sense outside of human communities, individuals make no sense without society, and ultimately societies make no sense without individuals. However, existentialists of European descent have largely defended the notion of individuality more often because they were automatically considered normal within their particular societies and sought to differentiate themselves from the mainstream, whereas black existentialists had to focus more intently upon community in order to demonstrate their membership in the broader sweep of humanity. Conversely, any question of individuality for black existentialists becomes one of simply showing that black people are not all the same but need to be acknowledged as human beings. Nonetheless, Gordon rejects the thesis that anti-black racism is about a “Self–Other” dialectic akin to Martin Buber’s I-Thou paradigm. According to Gordon, anti-black racists never see blacks as the Other on either a macro- or micro-level. He rightfully argues that such relations exist only between whites and whomever else they see as human beings or genuine others. Most commonly the prevailing narrative and logic of anti-black racism demands that people of African descent must perpetually offer justifications for their existence that are neither expected of nor recognized by whites. Moreover, Gordon argues, much like Frantz Fanon’s assertion in Black Skins, White Masks, that to seek white recognition leads to a pathological dependency on whites as this means that whites serve as both the standard of value and the source of meaning. Therefore, in Gordon’s view, the struggle against anti-black racism is ironically for blacks to become others. Following the example of Nimrod, however, I would suggest that Gordon should have gone further in his assessment by arguing that black people must actually become self-realized in order to more fully function on their own terms, without any obsessive regard about whiteness. Said another way, thinking along the lines of the Nimrod account means that in order to overcome the ravages of anti-black racism, black women, men, and children would have to be and define themselves with the ability to



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succeed or fail, to live or die, on their own terms. Nimrod seemed all the more accomplished when he did not allow himself or his people to be hampered by the scrutiny of outsiders and strangers. Sixth, after having accomplished such titanic feats as binding disparate people and diverse cultures into a sizable empire and then turning that empire’s energies toward undertaking this mammoth building project, there had to be a legitimate utopian vision that actually imagines the conditions of possibility for the black community. Even as Nimrod must have grappled with the inevitable ups and downs of his life and reign, he managed to cobble together what eventually became the rudiments of the Assyrian-Babylonian Empire that remained a dominant force in the biblical world for many generations. While I have no fondness for empires or imperialists, there must be at least a reckoning with the nature of the community that Nimrod established with the people or the manner in which the citizens of his realm were governed to understand both the historicity of their era as well as the implications for our own moment in time. Toward this end, questions must asked: Did the effort to build a city as well as a tower that aspired to reach the heavens involve exercise of a fundamentally human quest for survival in a weary, inhospitable land? Or, was it an act of audacity and arrogance, whereby people sought to wage war on both the domain and the dominion of God? Were the followers of Nimrod building the tower out of a sense of freedom or fear? Following the Yahwist account, is God’s intervention in human affairs (i.e., the destruction of the tower, dispersal of human beings, and the differentiation of language and culture) to be viewed as either pragmatic or punitive for the future generations who inherited this reality? These and countless other questions must be addressed so that we can have a richer, fuller perspective on the worst fears and best hopes that drew this mighty nation together under the rule of Nimrod. Meanwhile, addressing some of these queries and debates might also help us better understand similar needs and concerns in our current context. Using Nimrod and the Tower of Babel biblical narrative to interpret and understand modern black community organization and governance, this chapter will use the various insights mentioned above as a hermeneutic device for a general analysis of Marcus Mosiah Garvey as a key figure who demonstrated the emergence of a variegated, yet clearly articulated, humanist project in Harlem during the first half of the twentieth century. As an influential and visionary leader in his own right, Garvey gravitated toward uptown Manhattan with a very specific agenda, all of which had to equally confront how to go about merging the urgency of the “New Negro” militancy with the rising tide of religious and ideological diversity within the heart of black America’s most renowned urban community. To this end, the Garvey movement, much like Nimrod’s efforts thousands of years earlier, represents an attempt to radically upset the





various modes of what ethicist Victor Anderson calls “ontological blackness” that held the black sacred cosmos of black New Yorkers (and, by extension, countless other women, men, and children throughout the African diaspora) strictly bound to the experiences, expression, motivations, intentions, behavior, and aesthetics of white dominant culture in the United States. What Garvey offered was a different sense of communitas. In America’s Communal Utopias, historian Donald Pitzer proposes a concept called “developmental communalism” as a means of studying and understanding the existence of idealized, utopian communities such as Harlem.8 Developmental communalism has three main elements to be considered. First, all governments, movements, and peoples, throughout human history have used communal living as a “generic social mechanism” to achieve some collective goal. Next, communalism was typically adopted in the early developmental stages of a community’s formation or at a moment of crisis to safeguard the group’s existence. Finally, resisting or ignoring the need for change during the later developmental stages of communal living ultimately causes the stagnation and/or demise of that particular utopian experiment. Although developmental communalism has its merits in its systematic examination, this approach is greatly limited by its inherent pessimism and inevitability.

Reaching Higher Ground: Harlem as Racial Utopia Before fully discussing the similarities between Marcus Garvey and the biblical Nimrod, it is important to address a simple question: what is so important about Harlem? As James Weldon Johnson argues, “Harlem is more than a community; it is a large-scale laboratory experiment in the race problem, and from it a good many facts have been found.”9 Since the start of the twentieth century, Harlem has been attractive to black people in America both as the heart of black political, economic, and social activity and as a burgeoning cultural repository. Like their ancient ancestors in Nimrod’s realm, people of African descent at the dawn of the twentieth century also proclaimed “Come let us build ourselves a city” (Gen. 11:4a). These few words, regardless of when they were uttered, give us a glimpse of the innermost workings of the human soul. With that simple statement, the black newcomers to Harlem, like their counterparts in ancient Shinar, saw the process of building as a key phase of making a loose conglomeration of folks into a honest-to-goodness community. Around the turn of the century, with the deepest desire to build a world of their own, black folks arrived in uptown New York from all points of the globe. From great mansions to humble homes, from sprawling parks to cramped alleyways, from magnificent cathedrals to the simplest storefront



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churches, from somber libraries to swinging nightclubs, Harlemites diligently used their technological genius, physical prowess, religious devotion, and artistic imagination as well as their sheer energy and determination to make Harlem their refuge. Unfortunately, Harlem was born also from the manifestations of staunch racism of white Americans, ranging from residential segregation and exploitation to job discrimination, to racially motivated violence. These factors, in turn, have helped in creating the harsh and inhospitable reality that Harlem faces to this very day. Black people’s basic need for security and livelihood was integral to Harlem’s conversion into a black community but there were other forces that kept that community in place, both internally and externally. Nevertheless, there was clearly a deeper significance to black people’s decision to relocate to locales such as Harlem than simply real estate and scenic vistas. Like those ancestors who lived long ago, the building of a city proved to be a basic condition of survival for human beings in a hateful, inhospitable environment. Thus, building a city was not a luxury for these people but a necessity. Harlem has enjoyed a cherished and celebrated position within both the African American community and the larger American society. In his 1902 novel, The Sport of the Gods, pioneering author and poet Paul Laurence Dunbar provided a powerful portrait of Harlem as a veritable heaven on earth. Dunbar depicts how a trio of black southerners made plans to head to New York City in order to escape the oppressive atmosphere of the South. Echoing the thoughts and sentiments of countless black newcomers, Dunbar noted that they “had heard of New York as a plan vague and far away, a city that, like Heaven, to them had existed by faith alone. All the days of their lives they had heard of it, and it seemed to them the centre of all the glory, all the wealth, and all the freedom of the world.”10 Unlike the ancestors who were involved in the building of this massive tower to bring the earthly up to heaven, the Harlemites ironically tried everything possible to bring heaven down to earth. Historian John Henrik Clarke echoes this realization when he comments that “Harlem was the nerve center of advancing black America. Harlem is more than a community—it is a city within a city—the most famous black city in the world.”11 Serving as the Mecca for black artists, entrepreneurs, political and religious leaders, intellectuals, and other luminaries has led to Harlem being hailed as “the cultural and intellectual capital of the black race in the Western world.”12 That sentiment has been shared and expressed by many notable individuals such as renowned poet and writer Claude McKay who appropriately dubbed Harlem a “Negro metropolis” that was rich and thriving in its wealth of culture and diversity drawn from every corner of the African diaspora. In this sense, we see a transition of black New Yorkers from building a city to creating a civilization. Although “civilization” is an unbelievably loaded term nowadays, it is





crucial to comprehend that when those early ancestors insisted that they yearned “to make a name for themselves” and that they feared the idea of ever being “scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth” (Gen. 11: 4), they were proclaiming to neighbors and enemies alike that they can do more together than they ever could separated. The old adage “United, we stand; divided, we fall” has never been more fitting than addressing the sense of civitas (a deliberate gathering of people constituting a politically organized community) and solidarity that rest at the heart of human civilization. More than the sum total of amassed wealth, technological supremacy, or military hegemony, civilization is about developing a sense of kinship, mutuality, and the cessation of violent conflicts and bloodshed. Whether talking about ancient Shinar or modern Harlem, it is reasonable for human beings to not only unite in an urban context, but to also live together as a community for prevention of conflicts amongst themselves and protection of external threats. The slow and steady realization over the course of human history is that once we are scattered, it is easy for us to become strangers, if not enemies, to one another. Much of my thinking in this endeavor is focused on the notion that the shared racial identity, cultural heritage, and inchoate spirituality of African peoples have served as a distinctive rallying point for the descendents of Africa across the globe, especially those in the New World. This is the belief that there is a pervasive residual African organizing framework that informs ways of knowing, ways of apprehending and managing reality, and that influences options as well as expressions of praise, devotion, and worship. These urban communities, Shinar in the ancient era or Harlem in the modern age, were bound together by spiritual elements as well as materialistic exigencies. Scholars such as theologian Leonard Barrett refer to this motive as “soul force;” historian Charles Long makes reference to “the archaic religious consciousness;” and—most useful for this current discussion—sociologists C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence Mamiya provide a general sense of the “Black sacred cosmos.”13 As I read and assess Lincoln and Mamiya’s construction of this idea, there is a great and powerful realization that, even though African-descended people generally have a shared or transcendent experience in this world, it is incumbent upon each and every one of us to articulate individual or localized meanings in order to tap into our fullest religious, cultural, and intellectual potential. As Lincoln and Mamiya contend, “the close relationship between the black sacred cosmos and black culture has often been missed by social analysts who impose sacred/secular distinctions too easily upon the phenomena of black culture. What is often overlooked is the fact that many aspects of black cultural practices and some major social institutions had religious origin.”14 Toward this end, we will be merging humanistic and social scientific perspectives to generate a new perspective on interpreting



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and comprehending the rationale that leads people to search for “the perfect society.”

The major black Church denominations and major civil rights organizations of the era suffered under the weight of the same problem: although they achieved some successes in spiritual, political, and economic terms, they failed to speak to the total needs of black people in America, especially those on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale. Given this reality, the moment was certainly ripe for a visionary, charismatic figure such as Marcus Garvey who attempted to fill this void by simultaneously addressing the spiritual, political, and economic dilemmas facing black people in America and worldwide. In the 1920s, black nationalist Marcus Garvey recognized that his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), an organization with a worldwide mission, would find its most enthusiastic audience in the United States. After fighting World War I, ostensibly to defend democracy and self-determination, thousands of African American soldiers returned home to find intensified discrimination, segregation, racial violence, and hostile relations with white Americans. Sensing growing frustration, Garvey used his considerable charisma to attract thousands of disillusioned black working-class and lower-middle-class followers and became the most popular black leader in America in the early 1920s. Essentially, Marcus Garvey’s innate talents as an orator, writer, and entrepreneur seemed reminiscent of the power of persuasion indicative of Nimrod’s ability to unify the masses through his mastery and manipulation of language. More important than how Garvey expressed himself before his followers was what he told them. By encouraging black people in Harlem and elsewhere to love Africa and be proud of their African ancestry, Garvey offered a means for revolutionary transformation for a populace that had been taught that Africa was the “dark continent” of mystery and misery and Africans were a primitive, backward people. In less than a decade, Garvey’s relentless endeavor was able to bring about the conceptual redemption of Africa as well as the valorization of Africans in spite of the ascendancy of the Ku Klux Klan and countless other manifestations of white supremacy during his era. To almost single-handedly raise the cultural pride and racial consciousness of millions of black people and to dispel the ubiquity of anti-black racism is an accomplishment worthy of mention alongside anything that Nimrod did in his own era. Garvey’s unwavering embrace of religion and his merging it with the social, economic, and cultural agenda for people of African descent was the most vital dimension of his mass movement. As I read the Tower of



“If You Believe the Negro Has a Soul”: Garvey as Modern-Day Nimrod


Babel account, Garvey grasped a key aspect of Nimrod’s leadership style and utilized it well: before you can give the people a mission, you must give them something to believe in. As a result, the Garveyite movement was deeply invested in emphasizing how Christian faith when rooted in African perspectives can have considerable impact on how black people view God, themselves, one another, and their status in the world. George Alexander McGuire, as chaplain-general of the UNIA, made the religious and nationalistic dimensions of Garvey’s organization even more integrated into the ideological and ritualistic functions of Garveyism. In 1921, he compiled and published the Universal Negro Ritual, which was explicitly fashioned after the Anglicans’ Book of Common Prayer. All UNIA chaplains were expected to adhere to its directives as well as all members were compelled to acquire the Ritual and study its teachings.15 Ritual so understood took programmatic form during gathering. Even the timing of the gatherings spoke to a sense of ritual enactment: “Local UNIA meetings were normally held on Sunday evenings, though some divisions held morning services as well.”16 Furthermore, “Garvey’s speeches and editorials were sermonic in style, containing extensive use of Biblical references and religious imagery. Every address was a call to commitment, determination, and sacrifice, with a not infrequent note of apocalypticism creeping in.”17 Although Garvey’s black nationalist organization initially began as a business enterprise, it has been argued by historian Randall Burkett “that the religious ethos of the UNIA was pervasive, embracing nearly every facet of its organizational life.”18 In essence, Garvey successfully implemented rhetoric, rituals, and symbols in such a deft manner that the UNIA easily rivaled (and often surpassed) the ceremonial fare of Harlem’s most celebrated churches. More importantly, Garvey’s professed doctrine of racial pride and self-empowerment seriously challenged the espoused views of mainline black denominations. Most importantly, the creation of the African Orthodox Church in the early years of the twentieth century was a nascent form of black theology of liberation—decades before the work of James Cone made a theologized call for historical transformation an academic staple. Finally, I am certain it is no accident that Rastafarianism and the Nation of Islam are two contemporary religious movements that retained so much of Garveyite ideology and theology, serving as living testaments to Garvey’s own prophetic witness. The UNIA, committed to notions of racial purity and separatism, insisted that salvation for African Americans meant building an autonomous, black-led nation in Africa. To this end, the movement offered in its “Back to Africa” campaign a compelling message of black pride and economic self-sufficiency. On a related note, in a 1921 speech titled “If You Believe the Negro Has a Soul,” he emphasized the



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It is for me to inform you that the Universal Negro Improvement Association is an organization that seeks to unite, into one solid body, the four hundred million Negroes in the world . . . for the purpose of bettering our industrial, commercial, educational, social, and political conditions. As you are aware, the world in which we live today is divided into separate race groups and distinct nationalities. Each race and each nationality is endeavoring to work out its own destiny, to the exclusion of other races and other nationalities. We hear the cry of “England for the Englishman,” of “France for the Frenchman,” of “Germany for the German,” of “Ireland for the Irish,” of “Palestine for the Jew,” of “Japan for the Japanese,” of “China for the Chinese.” We of the Universal Negro Improvement Association are raising the cry of “Africa for the Africans,” those at home and those abroad.

He later argues that the great problem of the Negro for the last 500 years has been that of disunity. No one or no organization ever succeeded in uniting the Negro race. But within the last four years, the Universal Negro Improvement Association has worked wonders . . . If you believe that the Negro has a soul, if you believe that the Negro is a man, if you believe the Negro was endowed with the senses commonly given to other men by the Creator, then you must acknowledge that what other men have done, Negroes can do.

In his attempt to develop a sense of racial pride and solidarity (unity), inspire people to rethink and reaffirm their faith (divinity), and assert their human agency for the sake of creating a lasting legacy (immortality), Garvey was very much in keeping with the historic example of Nimrod. Much like his ancient forbear, Garvey too had many rivals who prayed and plotted for his demise and for the end of what he stood for as a symbol of black empowerment. Ultimately, the Garveyite vision and its emphasis on innovation, initiative, inclusion, and integrity of blackness drew the wrath of the U.S. federal government in the guise of J. Edgar Hoover and the F.B.I. during the mid-1920s. After Garvey’s deportation, the leaderless and bankrupt American branches of the UNIA gradually declined. “Factional disputes within UNIA locals as well as Garvey’s own growing political distance from the needs and concerns of American blacks were deeply damaging. Most detrimental of all to the UNIA, however, was the declining economic strength of black Americans.”19 Years after Garvey was deported, there was an explosive outburst between rival Garveyite factions in June 1929 over the possession of



inevitability of racial antagonism and the hopelessness of interracial coexistence by stating:


Liberty Hall. The Marcus Garvey Club and the UNIA, having split a year and a half earlier over “a disagreement in leadership,” each believed that they had genuine claims to the use of this otherwise nondescript onestory building.20 Members of the UNIA stormed the hall while the Garvey Club was having a social function and a riot nearly erupted. The episode pointed to the mounting animosity between these two groups revolving around competing claims to Liberty Hall. The hall had an immediate historicity as the Garvey Club, the parent organization, celebrated it as the meeting place designated by Marcus Garvey himself. The UNIA sought to take control, by force if necessary, of the building in order to legitimize itself within the surrounding urban black community of Harlem. Rather than aesthetic or monetary value, it was the memory of Garvey’s early presence in that building that served as the edifice’s main redeeming quality for both organizations. Paradoxically, the internecine discord between these groups dedicated to racial uplift had direct and negative effects on the surrounding black community. Rather than functioning as sources of racial pride and empowerment, in the true spirit of Garveyism, these factions left the surrounding neighborhood in utter disarray after their melee. Once the fracas was quelled, local residents were extremely unsettled and remained in “an air of nervous tension,” especially because “[t]he police were still on guard.”21 Moreover, the white press gave the story front-page coverage, emphasizing the most negative facets of the conflict for maximum sensationalist value. Therefore, both Garveyite organizations compromised their political agendas, social missions, and reputations for the sake of claiming this meeting place as their own. Despite its popular appeal and liberating social mission, Marcus Garvey’s UNIA was a highly criticized black nationalist movement. It is well understood that “Garvey had enemies not only among the European colonial powers, but also among a number of [B]lack American leaders. He criticized the light-skinned integrationists and middle- and upper-class [B]lacks . . . for being ashamed of their ancestry,” which is why many “established [B]lack leaders resented and feared him.”22 Even an effort such as Garvey’s UNIA, intended to build a safe haven for, by, and about black folks, faces the fearful prospect that all efforts by black people to unite will be doomed. The late black feminist thinker Audre Lorde states the dilemma this way: “We have had to fight, and still do, for that very visibility which also renders us most vulnerable, our blackness. For to survive in the mouth of this dragon we call America, we have had to learn the first and most vital lesson—that we were never to survive.”23 In light of the Tower of Babel story, maybe the UNIA served as the modern analogue to that mythic structure of biblical lore. Just as the tower’s collapse caused great chaos and consternation, the decimation of



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the UNIA also destroyed the near absolute unity that millions of black women, men, and children garnered from Garvey’s teachings and initiatives. The source of my fascination in either case is how soon things fall apart after the loss of such a revered symbol and unifying vision, whether it is a physical building or a global organization. In the case of either Marcus Garvey nearly a century ago or Nimrod many millennia earlier, a few questions should be asked: Can the human spirit truly rebound from the loss of a great dream? In the wake of all the chaos and confusion, could a different sort of unity have been cultivated that would have been more lasting? In closing, it is my belief that the various manifestations of the black radical humanist tradition (the revolutionary concept that blackness is a viable and necessary basis for the struggle for human dignity and social justice) demonstrated in Harlem even prior to World War II and the subsequent Civil Rights Movement, entails not simply the creation of buildings, organization, and other “structures” but the irrepressible drive of black folks to struggle against worldly antagonists and malefactors masquerading as divine will. Meanwhile, Frantz Fanon’s body of work challenges us to realize that historically black people’s defiance to their dehumanization within modern society has been deemed as either social deviance or sheer madness on the verge of insanity. But, much like Nimrod, we must struggle to find a meaningful and constructive existence that consists of being more than the alleged “wretched of the earth.” The example of Marcus Garvey’s UNIA in Harlem during the last century demonstrates that which we need most of all—a usable past; in other words, a history that can both inform and transform our future right now. In the ongoing struggle to redeem the hearts, minds, and souls of black people the world over, let us begin today lest we be scattered abroad the face of the whole earth yet again.

Notes 1. For the sake of my present argument, I define Black religious humanism as an integration of religious experience with humanistic philosophy that centers on human needs, interests, and abilities that is thoroughly infused with an African worldview. Contrary to the two most general approaches to religious humanism as either a humanist viewpoint that incorporates religious rituals and sensibilities or a revealed religious tradition with a humanist influence, I address the nature of black religious humanism as a structure of human relational understanding and philosophical inquiry that wrestles with affirming the dignity as well as integrity. 2. Many biblical scholars and theologians refer to the author of this story as the Yahwist. Although the author’s identity is not definitely known, the alleged source of this and numerous other stories in the Torah are attributed to the “Yahwistic source” because of its consistent use of the name “Yahweh” in reference to God as opposed to the name “Elohim,” which is the preferred designation for God in the Elohist source.





3. Solomon Avotri, “Genesis 11:1–9: An African Perspective,” in Return to Babel: Global Perspectives on the Bible, ed. John R. Levinson and Priscilla PopeLevinson (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1999), 23. 4. Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (Vol. 1 of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft), trans. A. R. Henderson and Talcott Parsons, rev. edition, with an introduction by Talcott Parsons (London: W. Hodge, 1947), 358. 5. Given the overwhelmingly patriarchal nature of modern Western civilization, it might still be unfathomable in many peoples’ minds—regardless of their background—to envision black women as models of liberating leadership, an issue that should and must be developed elsewhere. 6. Paul Tillich, The Socialist Decision (New York: Harper & Row, 1977). 7. W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903: New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1999), 11. 8. Donald Pitzer, “Introduction,” in America’s Communal Utopias, ed. Donald Pitzer (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), xviii. 9. James Weldon Johnson, Black Manhattan (New York: Da Capo, 1958), 281. 10. Paul Laurence Dunbar, The Sport of the Gods (1902; Miami, FL: Mnemosyne, 1969), 77–78. 11. John Henrik Clarke,” Introduction,” in Harlem: A Community in Transition, ed. John Henrik Clarke (New York: Citadel Press, 1970), 3. 12. Ibid., 4. 13. Adaptation of the concept of sacred cosmos qua worldview is “an integrated mesh of central attitudes and values” where “through the internalization of such a cosmos the potentially chaotic and frightening infinity of events ‘falls in place’ and the life of the individual assumes purpose and direction” found in Mechal Sobel, The World They Made Together: Black and White Values in EighteenthCentury Virginia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 15. 14. C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya, “The Religious Dimension: ‘The Black Sacred Cosmos,’ ” in Down by the Riverside: Readings in African American Religion, ed. Larry G. Murphy (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 35. 15. Randall K. Burkett, “Religious Ethos of the UNIA,” in African American Religious Thought, ed. Cornel West and Eddie Glaude Jr. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 561. 16. Ibid., 555. 17. Ibid., 557. 18. Randall K. Burkett, “The Religious Ethos of the Universal Negro Improvement Association,” in African American Religious Studies: An Interdisciplinary Anthology, ed. Gayraud Wilmore (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1989), 77. 19. Beryl Satter, “Marcus Garvey, Father Divine, and the Gender Politics of Race Difference and Race Neutrality,” in African American Religious Thought, ed. Cornel West and Eddie Glaude Jr. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 580. 20. “Sabers Used in Fight of Negro Factions,” New York Times, June 24, 1929. 21. Ibid., 7. 22. Mary F. Berry and John W. Blassingame, Long Memory: The Black Experience in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 411. 23. Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1984), 42.



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More than a Mighty Hunter: George Washington Williams, Nineteenth-Century Racialized Discourse and the Reclamation of Nimrod Abraham Smith

In 1883, George Washington Williams published his monumental History of the Negro Race in America (1619–1880), arguably the first scholarly race history depicting African descendants in the United States.1 The times in which Williams wrote were charged with racialized discourse, a discourse that also appealed to the Bible to demean and denigrate African Americans. This chapter seeks to track the times of Williams’s study, to study the response of Williams and other black historians to nineteenth-century pseudoscience and racist popular history, and to highlight Williams’s reclamation of the biblical figure Nimrod in the service of black dignity and pride. For our own times, moreover, Williams’s reclamation of Nimrod provides a deconstructive model for African Americans engaged in the transformation of biblical characters previously used to support the demeaning of black subjectivity.2 That is, without necessarily conceding to the logic of positing Ham as the biblical ancestor exclusively of black people, Williams’s depiction of the creative agency of Nimrod, one of Ham’s descendants, deconstructed the logic of those who averred that Ham’s posterity was cursed wholly and perpetually.



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Born black and poor in 1849, George Washington Williams excelled beyond his peers. He became a Union army soldier; the first black graduate of Newton Theological School; pastor of the historic Twelfth St. Baptist Church in Boston; Ohio’s first black legislator; a journalist, orator, and finally a historian.3 Yet, the times in which he wrote his history were arguably the times when race relations in North America was at its nadir.4 By the time Williams wrote his meritorious 1124-page work, Reconstruction had come and gone. Reconstruction itself was a limited affair both in its provisions and in its effectiveness. Its provisions included the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments (respectively, on due process and the right to vote for black males only) and the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Its effectiveness was curtailed, moreover, by the Hayes’s Compromise of 1877 (which included a policy of conciliation toward the South and the withdrawal of federal troops from the South); Garfield’s failure to articulate specific proposals to implement the tacit overtures to black suffrage and universal education; Arthur’s “abandonment of the Negro voters in the South”5; the silence of Cleveland in both of his terms despite his courageous resistance to American jingoism6; Harrison’s belated recommendation of specific legislation against lynching; and the silence of McKinley on the “grandfather” clause in an era of plutocratic graft and growing imperialism. Thus, in 1883, what little that blacks had gained from Reconstruction had been all but lost.7 In the last decades of the nineteenth century, moreover, blacks faced political disfranchisement, a tailspin of violence that created an aura of intimidation, and Jim Crow segregation that would eventually find sanction in the Plessy vs. Ferguson Supreme Court Case (1896).8

Nineteenth-Century Racist Pseudoscience and Popular History Williams’s race history was written at a time that saw not only the erosion of Reconstruction’s paltry gains but also the convergence of several streams of racist pseudoscience with racist popular history to demean black [and other non-white] subjectivity.9 One of these traditions, polygenesis, emerged in the early nineteenth century, supported an innatist view of human group distinctions,10 and found its apogee in the American School of Ethnology (which included the craniometrist Samuel George Morton, the physician Joseph Nott, and the Egyptologist George R. Gliddon).11 The school argued “on the basis of [so-called] new data that the races of [hu-]mankind had been separately created as distinct and unequal species.”12 Though secular in orientation, this school did have its religious proponents—proponents who posited two creations: in one,



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Adam and Eve parented whites; and in the other, blacks originated.13 Such logic, moreover, led to the development of crude pre-Adamite theories (such as the one developed by Buckner Payne [a.k.a. Ariel]) to explain the origin of blacks.14 Yet another pseudoscientific tradition, equally innatist in its perspective, was that of Social Darwinism.15 Promulgated by British sociologist Herbert Spencer and his American disciple William Graham Sumner, this theory transformed Darwin’s biological theory of natural selection to the social sphere, touted the slogan “the survival of the fittest,” and relegated African Americans and American Indians to the lowest rungs on the human ladder and Europeans to the highest. Although it was the ideological glue for many different strands of oppressive forces,16 it prominently supported white perceptions of blacks as primitive, as persons who lacked character and drive for bettering themselves,17 as persons who in the [supposed] racial hierarchy were at an arrested stage of childhood or adolescence,18 and therefore, as persons who needed the South’s paternalistic aid.19 Converging with these pseudoscientific forms of racism were popular forms of history that would deny blacks any civilization before their contacts with whites.20 In the study of history, Ulrich B. Phillips argued that slavery brought the African “savages” salvation and civilization.21 Likewise, Philip Alexander Bruce averred “blacks had shown a moral retrogression since slavery.”22 To make matters worse, the Bible was brought into the service of this racialized discourse. That is, biblical texts (1 Cor. 7:20–24; Gen. 9; 14:14; 14:18–20; 17:13; Exod. 12:43–45; 20:17; 21:2–6; 21:20–21; Lev. 25:44–46; Deut. 23:15–16; Eph. 6:5–9) were marshaled in abundance to support the heinous institution of slavery before Emancipation.23 Furthermore, some texts continued to service a racialized discourse that supported notions of black inferiority as blacks made their way from the cauldrons of North American slavery to the crucible of postbellum second-class citizenship. Perhaps the one text to which hegemony most appealed to play a role in the demeaning logic of its characterization of black subjectivity is Genesis 9.24 In truth, that text speaks of Noah’s—not God’s—curse against Canaan without the ascription of a specific color. Yet, early postbiblical assignments of the color black either to Canaan or to all of Ham’s descendants furnished hegemony with a rationale to justify both the enslavement of black bodies and the demeaning of black subjectivity with a slim fifty-one verses.25 Thus, for some nineteenth-century thinkers (e.g., Josiah Priest and Matthew Estes), the so-called Curse of Ham justified slavery.26 That is, these writers presupposed blacks to be descendants of biblical Ham, averred that the so-called curse on Ham’s posterity was irreversible, and thus deemed that curse “singled out the Negro for perpetual servitude to



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the white race.”27 For Samuel A. Cartwright, the myth supported a notion of black inferiority.28 Presupposing the Canaanites to have been inferiors to the Semites, and the Negro and whites to have been descendants of these biblical groups respectively, Cartwright thus argues that the Negro was inferior to whites.29 For yet others, their Hamite myth averred that descendants of Ham had overdeveloped sexual organs and were the original Sodomites of the Old Testament, guilty in ancient times of all conceivable forms of lewdness.30

The Response of Nineteenth-Century Black Historians Given the repressive times and the racialized discourse of the period (including biblical discourse), it is with little wonder that Williams’s nineteenth-century black predecessors (Robert Benjamin Lewis [Light and Truth, 1844]; James W.C. Pennington [A Textbook of the Origin and History of the Colored People, 1841]; and William Wells Brown [The Rising Son, 1874]) turned to the black vindicationist tradition and to the Bible to offer a response to these intellectual and popular traditions of racism. From the black vindicationist tradition, these black nineteenthcentury historians found a discourse about the ancient civilizations of the Egyptians and the Ethiopians.31 On the one hand, the discourse supported a distinctive black identity, in association with an African heritage.32 On the other hand, the discourse supported black integrationist ideals, for “white Americans were fascinated and inspired by Egyptian civilizations.”33 From the Bible a panoply of texts were deployed, though only a few can be mentioned here. Certainly nineteenth-century black historians “were influenced by the story of creation and [the] flood . . . To them, God’s proclamation in Genesis 11:6, ‘Behold, the people is one and they have all one language,’ was more than hyperbole—it was the basis of both their faith and humanity.’”34 As critical was Psalm 68:31 (“Princes shall come out of Egypt and Ethiopia shall soon stretch forth her hands”). After the Civil War, many black historians interpreted Psalm 68:31 to be a prophecy to indicate that the “African race,”35 represented by both Egypt and Ethiopia in the psalm, had a glorious civilization in the past. This interpretation, actually advanced as soon as Africans became literate and could use the scriptures on their own behalf, was proffered to refute the claim that African Americans were “inherently inferior.”36 Thus, African American historians refuted the notion of a curse on the black race and deemed their race to be descendants of powerful civilizations whose glorious past had been predicted by scripture.37



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Yet another biblical text was critical to late nineteenth-century black historians of the period: Acts 17:26. For example, James W. C. Pennington appealed to this text to deny innatist thought and to support his claim that “intellect in all human beings has been produced in the same way, and therefore it is inconceivable that there should be inferior orders of intellect.”38 Direct attacks were made, moreover, against any part of the Hamite myth that demeaned blacks, whether the myth was linked to Ham or Canaan. Thus, assuming that hegemonic discourse decreed a perpetual curse against Canaan’s descendants, Pennington stated, for example, “We [black people] are not the descendants of Canaan, the youngest son of Ham, as some say.”39 Williams, in turn, would rely on similar resources to offer a challenge to repressive times and structures. Thus, after seven years of research and the examination of 20,000 volumes of historical resources,40 Williams published his two-volume work to dispel racist myths.41 For each strand (polygenesis, social Darwinism, and racist popular history) of the now consolidated mythologies that developed, Williams had a response. In part, Williams’s critique of polygenesis resoundingly emphasized the unity of the human family. His first chapter is entitled “The Unity of Mankind,”42 a chapter in which he cites Genesis 11:1 (which signaled for Williams that all the people of the earth were of “one blood”),43 appeals to Paul’s “one man” references in Romans 5,44 and relies on Acts 17:26 (“And God has made from one, every nation of human beings to dwell on all the face of the earth . . .”).45 Next, before Williams goes on to give a history of slavery in the colonies, he reiterates his unity theme46 and returns to it yet again in the appendix to his first volume.47 In part, moreover, Williams’s critique against polygenesis also entailed direct mention (and sometimes critique) of members of the American School of Ethnology (Samuel George Morton, Josiah C. Nott, and George R. Gliddon),48 along with a direct mention and critique of Ariel (Buckner Payne), who had advanced a Pre-Adamite theory.49 Against Social Darwinism, Williams deconstructs the idea of a permanent, perpetual weakness for any social group. With vindicationist logic, Williams notes ancient Meroe’s “private and public buildings, its markets and public squares, its colossal walls and stupendous gates . . . its inventive genius and ripe scholarship.”50 At the same time, however, in acknowledging some recent decline in Africa,51 Williams attacked the heart of Social Darwinism’s idea of “inevitable and unbroken progress.”52 In fact, Williams accepted the slogan “survival of the fittest” to describe what he deemed possible within a so-called racial group but not to promote a hierarchy among so-called racial groups.53 Thus, for Williams, all civilizations had both the possibility for progress and the possibility for decline.54




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Against the racist popular histories, Williams’s aim was to write a corrective historiography, to “give the world more correct ideas [about] the Colored people”55 and to overcome race prejudice.56 Arguing against the idea of Negro inferiority so prevalent in racist popular histories, Williams repeatedly turned to the Bible, whether to critique it or to deploy it in his arguments. As we shall shortly see, Williams flatly denied the claim of a curse against Canaan.57 Williams also repeatedly lauded the blacks of his time through an appeal to Psalm 68:31: “Ethiopia shall stretch forth her hands unto God.”58 Beyond the appeal to the vindicationist tradition and to these scriptural texts, however, there was one biblical character that seemed to lie at the heart of Williams’s critique of the assumptions of Negro inferiority. That character was Nimrod; for Williams, he was more than a “mighty hunter.”

Nimrod: More than a “Mighty Hunter” Yet, for contemporary biblical critics (in whose rank I fall), who was Nimrod? What little that biblical critics actually know now about the enigmatic figure Nimrod begins in the biblical period, that is, with Genesis 10:8–12. Cast within the Priestly writer’s redaction of the Genesis traditions, the story of Nimrod appears to be “Yahwistic genealogical material” appropriated generally into P’s account of postdiluvian generations59—specifically into P’s Table of Nations.60 That is, while most of 10:1–7 emanates from the Priestly redactor, Genesis 10:8–12 draws on Yahwistic motifs: (1) the use of LORD—the NRSV’s rendering of the divine name Yahweh (Gen. 10:9); (2) a narrative style similar to the J material of Genesis 4:17–24; and (3) a view that links Asshur or Assyria with Ham, not Shem.61 Terse as these verses are, they are straightforwardly positive. Nimrod is “a mighty hunter before the Lord” (Gen. 10:9). He is associated with ancient Mesopotamia. He is Cush’s son, Ham’s grandson, and Noah’s great-grandson.62 Before Williams would ever learn about Nimrod, however, Nimrod’s c.v. would be enlarged and disproportionately so in a negative direction. That is, the epithet “a mighty hunter before the Lord” would evolve into “a mighty hunter against the Lord.”63 And, successive generations would stain Nimrod’s resumé with a long list of sordid traits: tyranny, rebellion,64 persecution of the faithful,65 arrogance, idolatry, and imperialist rulership, to name a few.66 Furthermore, in the North Atlantic, Nimrod would become racialized.67 Buckner Payne, whose work Williams knew, moreover, would link Nimrod to miscegenation. Never one to acquiesce to any black presence in the Bible, Payne would aver that (white) Nimrod had stirred up miscegenation through the aid of



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Negroes, who had also helped him in the aborted construction of the Tower of Babel.68 In contrast to much of the effective history on Nimrod, Williams’s portrait of Nimrod would return to a positive assessment. Williams would, in effect, reclaim Nimrod. Though Williams was ready and willing to critique the Bible and to see it as one resource—not the only one—for the living of life, a view consonant with my own as a biblical critic today, he also knew the Bible’s influence on people in general and on certain ethnologists in particular.69 Furthermore, although he could not have known then what contemporary biblical critics know now (that the socalled curse of Canaan is fictional, anachronistic, and intrinsically ideological in character),70 he knew that the pages of his race history could not be concluded without giving a critical response to the so-called curse of Canaan, a mythology connected to polygenists, monogenists espousing Social Darwinism, and racist historians. Thus, Nimrod was deployed by Williams rhetorically, and ( in my estimation as a biblical critic) sensibly, to deconstruct the discourse of those who saw the so-called curse as a prophecy and Africans in America as incapable of conducting themselves as citizens.71 Though Williams’s race history would mention the so-called curse more than a dozen times, his specific deconstruction of the myth proceeds in four stages.72 First, he reckons Noah’s state as one of drunkenness, thus not a state in which a prophecy would have been offered. He deems Noah’s words as “natural” but not “supernatural,” as a prediction or conjecture (subject to refutation) but not “inspired prophecy.”73 Second, he attacks the motivation of the so-called prophetic curse. He avers that the so-called curse was motivated by humiliation, Noah’s chagrin.74 Not discounting Noah’s antediluvian fidelity to God, Williams avers that Noah’s postdiluvian character was radically different and that his response to his humiliation was impulsive, “done without any inspiration.”75 This twin attack against the content and motivation for the so-called “prophecy” appears to be a response to racialized discourse that had treated Noah’s word as prophecy (e.g., Josiah Priest).76 Third, Williams avers that the so-called curse failed, if it is to be understood as a prophecy, because not all of Canaan’s sons were in slavery and some of Shem’s and Japheth’s descendants were enslaved (despite their being blessed by Noah). He also argues that the “human” curse never was directed against all of Ham’s descendants, and that blacks descended from the stem of Cush, though subsequent racists extended the so-called curse to all of Ham’s descendants, not just to Canaan.77 Fourth, à la the vindicationist tradition, Williams turns to Nimrod. Linking Nimrod to Cush, whom he again assumes is black, he avers that Nimrod “founded the Babylonian empire, and was the father of the founder of the city of Nineveh, one of the grandest cities of the ancient




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world.”78 It should be stated, moreover, that “empire” was a critical term for Williams and it directly connected to his critique of polygenesis, Social Darwinism, and racist history.79 That is, in the context of refuting Ariel’s “croaking about Negro inferiority,”80 Williams mentions “Negro empires” in antiquity.81 In the same context, as if to denounce Social Darwinism, Williams avers that the presence of the empires becomes “an argument against the theory that he [the Negro] is without government.”82 Furthermore, against the belief that blacks have “weak intellects,” arguably a dictum for polygenesis proponents, Social Darwinists and racist nineteenth-century historians alike, Williams cites Nimrod as the “founder of the Babylonian empire.”83 He avers, “We are not led to conclude, from these wonderful achievements by the posterity of Cush (who was the progenitor of Negroes), that this line of Ham’s descendants was so weak in intellect as to be unable to set up and maintain a government.”84

Conclusion Williams faced the repressive times and structures of his day with the rhetorical weapon of vindicationist history. Obviously, as a biblical critic, I think there are problems with the vindicationist tradition, its “civilization” logic, and its use of the Bible as a historical base of information about ethnic groups. I would like to state clearly, moreover, that “a monumentalist conception of culture,” as Cornel West has noted, overlooks the “labor of thousands and thousands of persons” who suffered to produce the monuments.85 This chapter has sought, though, not to defend the vindicationist tradition but to situate and thus understand Williams’s use of it. The vindicationists of this period (Robert Benjamin Lewis, James W. C. Pennington, William Wells Brown, and George Washington Williams), unlike some modern examples, moreover, supported neither a vilifying rhetoric toward other so-called racial groups nor a rigid racial essentialism. Instead, their works were offered as a corrective historiography in the midst of inane, pseudoscientific, and popular views about race. Williams’s depiction of Nimrod, thus, indulged neither in rigid racial essentialism nor in ethnic chauvinism.86 He simply wanted to show the inherent weakness of the logic of the so-called curse of Canaan as developed in the racialized discourses of polygenesis proponents, Social Darwinists, and racist historians. For Williams, Nimrod was altogether a positive character and one that could be reclaimed to bolster black pride. For Williams, Nimrod was more than a “mighty hunter before the Lord.” Read through the strictures of a vindicationist logic that had become an acceptable canon of rhetorical persuasion among some black historians in Williams’s time, you will see that Nimrod was a symbol of a past that categorically dismissed any claims of black inferiority.



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1. Dickson D. Bruce, Jr., “Ancient Africa and the Early Black American Historians, 1883–1915,” American Quarterly 36 (1984): 685. George Washington Williams, History of the Negro Race in America: 1619–1880 (orig. published in 1883; New York: Arno, 1968). 2. On the possibility of transforming traditional interpretations, see Anthony Pinn, African American Humanist Principles: Living and Thinking Like the Children of Nimrod (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 6. 3. Bruce, “Ancient Africa,” 686. Also, see Dickson D. Bruce, Jr., “The Ironic Conception of American History: The Early Black Historians, 1883–1915,” Journal of Negro History 69 (1984): 54. For a biography of Williams, see John Hope Franklin, George Washington Williams: A Biography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985). 4. Rayford W. Logan, The Betrayal of the Negro: From Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson, with a new introduction by Eric Foner (New York: Da Capo, 1997), 11. 5. Ibid., 71. 6. Ibid., 84–89. 7. Dickson, “Ancient Africa,” 684. 8. Between 1884 and 1900, “more than 2500 blacks were lynched.” See Jan N. Pieterse, White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 176. 9. On this convergence, see Scott L. Malcomson, One Drop of Blood: The American Misadventure of Race (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2000), 347. 10. Supporting an innatist view (the belief in “innate biological difference”), the polygenesis proponents opposed those who explained human group differences on the basis of environmental conditions. See Bruce, “Ancient Africa,” 696–697. 11. Ibid. 12. George M. Fredrickson, The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817–1914 (New York: New York University Press, 1971), 74. 13. Clarence E. Walker, We Can’t Go Home Again: An Argument about Afrocentrism (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2001), 19. 14. Fredrickson, Black Image in the White Mind, 188, 277. Payne’s crude preAdamite theory posited the Negro as a beast made by God before the formation of Adam and Eve. See Ariel [Buckner Payne], The Negro, What Is His Ethnological Status? (Cincinnati, OH: Buckner Payne, 1867), 22. Payne (30–31) also averred that God’s grief in Genesis 6:6, a grief that led God to send a flood on the earth, was miscegenation, i.e., the mixing of the sons of God with the daughters of men (namely, Negroes). For another example of a preAdamite thesis, see Alexander Winchell, Preadamites (Chicago: Griggs, 1890). 15. The word was not actually coined until the twentieth century, though the traits were present in the nineteenth century. See Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1998), 121. 16. For example, for the corporate magnates, bank financiers, and railroad kings, Social Darwinism supported a laissez faire economy. That is, it offered a critique against the state’s interference with the latest and most evolved and, therefore, complex form of production, namely, the corporation. See Foner,



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17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24.

Story of American Freedom, 121. For the expansionists, Social Darwinism gave the West a mission, namely, to bring the “white man’s” civilization to the socalled barbarian nations. Thus, America’s new imperialists could justify the annexation of Hawaii (1898) and claim expansion into the Caribbean (Cuba and Puerto Rico) and the Pacific (the Philippines and Guam) as a part of the “white man’s burden” though the securing of American business interests (e.g., in Hawaii and Cuba) were the clear catalysts for the interventions. Rod Bush, We Are Not What We Seem: Black Nationalism and Class Struggle in the American Century (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 69–70; Norman F. Cantor, The American Century: Varieties of Culture in Modern Times (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), 20; Donnarae MacCann, White Supremacy in Children’s Literature (New York: Routledge, 2001), 190–196. The term “new imperialism” is used to indicate the ongoing role of expansion in the history of the United States. As MacCann states (146), the imperialist tradition in the United States can be seen in the near-extermination of American Indians, the appropriation of Mexican territory in the Southwest, and the proclamation of American hegemony in the Western hemisphere (the declaration embodied in the Monroe Doctrine of 1823). By the end of the nineteenth century, of course, the Monroe Doctrine was being stretched to encompass the Pacific Ocean as well as the land masses of the continent. The term “white man’s burden” is a pro-Western imperialist expression coined by Rudyard Kipling when the United States invaded the Philippines. See Pieterse, White on Black, 77. In truth, moreover, the United States, like the European nations that were engaged in the “scramble for Africa” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was also, in part, seeking to secure abroad a wider economic market for its goods and a cheaper labor supply to curb the strength of the growing workers’ movement in the United States and Europe. Bush, We Are Not What We Seem, 86; Pieterse, White on Black, 77, 85; Judith Stein, The World of Marcus Garvey: Race and Class in Modern Society (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1986), 10. This “scramble for Africa” included the Belgians’ horrific slaughter of the Congolese, the Germans’ atrocities in East Africa, and the British war against the Boers (or Afrikaners) who themselves had taken most of the southern most part of Africa from the Zulus. On the scramble, see Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 17. Foner, Story of American Freedom, 121. Bush, We Are Not What We Seem, 70. Patricia Morton, Disfigured Images: The Historical Assault on Afro-American Women (New York: Praeger, 1991), 18. Bruce, “Ancient Africa,” 698. Ulrich B. Phillips, “The Plantation as a Civilizing Factor,” Sewanee Review 12 (July 1904): 257–267. Bruce, “Ancient Africa,” 698. On this list, see Robert Allen Dunne, “A Protestant Backlash: The American Dream Myth and Marginalized Groups, 1820–1860” (Ph.D. diss., Lehigh University, 1992), 191, note 5. On the lingering effects of the hypothesis, see Cornel West, “Marxist Theory and the Specificity of Afro-American Oppression,” in Marxism and the



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25.

26. 27. 28.

29. 30.

31.

32. 33. 34.

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Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 22. In truth, Genesis 9:18–27 was likely initially deployed—most unfortunately—in the biblical text as justification for the despoliation of the Canaanites. As Cain Felder argues, the extant version of the story was “motivated by political developments in ancient Palestine [that] attempts to justify the subjugation of Canaanites by Shem’s descendants (Israel) and those of Japheth (Philistines).” Cain Hope Felder, “Race, Racism, and the Biblical Narratives,” in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Tradition, ed. Can Hope Felder (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1991), 131. On the Americanization of this myth, see Sylvester A. Johnson, The Myth of Ham in Nineteenth-Century American Christianity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). Until recently, many scholars assumed that the connection between Ham, blackness, and slavery was first made in the rabbinic material and that sixteenth-century interpreters were influenced both by this type of Jewish interpretation and (subsequently) by proslavery antebellum writers on this score. In recent years, however, several scholars (e.g., Braude and Goldenberg) have averred that the blame for the thesis that Ham was black cannot be placed on rabbinic literature because the association (although present) was not widespread in rabbinic literature and because there is no evidence of a direct link between the rabbinic material and later racist uses of Genesis 9:18–27. On the ambiguity of the Jewish sources, see Benjamin Braude, “The Sons of Noah and the Construction of Ethnic and Geographical Identities in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods,” William and Mary Quarterly 54 (1997): 103–142. According to Goldenberg, we “first see this kind of explicit link between skin color and slavery [in effect, a ‘dual curse against Ham’] in Near Eastern sources beginning in the seventh century.” David M. Goldenberg, The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 170. Fredrickson, Black Image in the White Mind, 60–61. H. Shelton Smith, In His Image, But . . . : Racism in Southern Religion, 1780–1910 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1972), 130. Fredrickson, Black Image in the White Mind, 87. It must be noted, though, that Cartwright changed his views over time and eventually adapted a preAdamite hypothesis. Johnson, Myth of Ham, 41–42. Ibid., 276. For more on the genesis traditions, see Mason Stokes, “Someone’s in the Garden with Eve: Race, Religion, and the American Fall,” American Quarterly 50 (1998): 718–744. See, e.g., Robert Benjamin Lewis, Light and Truth Collected from the Bible and Ancient and Modern History (Boston, MA: A Committee of Colored Gentlemen, 1844), 280–302; William Wells Brown, The Rising Son; or, The Antecedents and Advancement of the Colored Race (orig. published, 1874; Miami, FL, Mnemosyne, 1969), 36–48. Bruce, “Ancient Africa,” 685. Ibid. Clarence E. Walker, We Can’t Go Home Again: An Argument about Afrocentrism (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2001), 19. Walker’s quote emanates from Fredrickson, Black Image in the White Mind, 74.




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35. Albert J. Raboteau, A Fire in the Bones: Reflections on African-American Religious History (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1995), 42. 36. Ibid., 45. The equation of the word “Ethiopian” with people of African descent can be seen as early as the writings of enslaved intellectuals such as Philiss Wheatley, Jupiter Hammon, and Olaudah Equiano. They adopted this lexical designation from their slaveholding English masters who, in the tradition of European geographers, used the expression “Ethiopian” as a generic term for all people from the “African interior.” William R. Scott, The Sons of Sheba: AfricanAmericans and the Italo-EthiopianWar, 1935–1941 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993), 13. 37. On the mention of Ethiopia in these works, see Clarence Walker, Deromanticizing Black History: Critical Essays and Reappraisals (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1991), 88–90. Cf. Lewis, Light and Truth, 25. 38. James W. C. Pennington, A Textbook of the Origin and History of the Colored People (Hartford, CT: L. Skinner, 1841; Detroit, IL: Negro History, 1969), 46. 39. Ibid., 9. Pennington’s direct critique of the Curse of Canaan as applying to blacks occurs on pages 12–18. 40. Williams, History I, Preface, vi. 41. Williams’s History of the Negro Race in America is composed of two volumes: the first, covering the ancient period, the development of Africa’s languages, arts and letters, the evolution of various African republics, and the history of blacks in North America from 1619 to 1800; and the second covering the history of blacks in North America from 1800 to 1880. 42. Williams, History, I, 1. 43. Ibid., I, 2. 44. Ibid., I, 5. 45. Ibid., I, 4, 5, 113. 46. Ibid., I, 108. 47. Ibid., I, 443–444. 48. On Morton, see Williams, History, I, 17; on Gliddon, see Williams, History, I, 14, 16; on Nott, see Williams, History, I, 15–16. 49. Ibid., I, 108; cf. I, 443–444. 50. Ibid., I, 22. 51. Note Williams’s critique of human sacrifice in Dahomey (I, 28–31). 52. Bruce, “Ancient Africa,” 698. 53. Williams, History, I, 98. 54. Bruce, “Ancient Africa,” 698–699. 55. Williams, History, I, vi. 56. Ibid., II, 551. 57. Ibid., I, vi; I, 108. 58. Ibid., I, 111, 114, 212. 59. The P (Priestly) redactor furnishes both an antediluvian set of generations (5:1–32) and a postdiluvian set (10:1–32). See Theodore Hiebert, “Genesis,” in The New Interpreter’s Study Bible, ed. Walter Harrelson, New Revised Standard Version (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2003), 23. According to Cain Hope Felder, “The Priestly tradition (P) may be dated 550–450 BCE, beginning in the exilic period (Babylonian captivity) but extending into the postexilic period where the redaction evidently continued.” See Cain Hope Felder, “Race, Racism, and the Biblical Narratives,” in Stony the Road We Trod: African



80

60. 61.

62.

63.

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American Biblical Interpretation, ed. Cain Hope Felder (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1991), 130. The Yahwist tradition (J) was “presumably written during the United Monarchy [950 BCE]”; and it “prefers to use the divine name Yahweh (sometimes spelled Jahweh).” See Bernhard W. Anderson, Understanding the Old Testament (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997), 21. Hiebert, “Genesis,” 23. Ibid., 23–24. The use of the Hebrew bnêy (for the “sons” of Ham and the “sons” Cush, 10:6–7) would likely make 10:6–7 also a part of the P tradition. See Randall C. Bailey, “Beyond Identification: The Use of Africans in Old Testament Poetry and Narratives,” in Stony The Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation, ed. Cain Hope Felder (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1991), 171. Beyond these basic conclusions, scholarship on Nimrod has found the story intriguing. First, Nimrod is associated with two parts of ancient Mesopotamia (either southern Mesopotamia [Babylonia], Genesis 10:10; or northern Mesopotamia [Assyria], Genesis 10:11). On this matter, scholars generally believe that the trajectory of Nimrod’s rule—first in Babylonia and from there his rule over Assyria—suggests “the long-standing cultural superiority of Babylonia over Assyria.” s.v. “Nimrod,” in Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 1117. Second, through Nimrod and Cush, Ham is associated with Asshur (or Assyria, 10:11), though later (as aforementioned) Asshur is connected to territory related to Shem (10:22). See Hiebert, “Genesis,” 23–24. And just how the latter matter is resolved varies in scholarship. Some scholars aver that P and J had different impressions about Cush’s location. J viewed Cush as modern-day Sudan, while P viewed Cush in association with the Kassites (Kassu in Akkadian), a tribal federation that ruled Babylon for 450 years from the sixteenth to the twelfth centuries. Hiebert, “Genesis,” 23–24. Also, see David M. Goldenberg, The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 20. The Kassites were “from the Babylonian-Arab desert (the Kasshu of the Assyrian inscriptions), a people whose home was across the Tigris, northwest of Babylonia.” See Yaacov Shavit, History in Blacks: African-Americans in Search of an Ancient Past (London: Frank Cass, 2001), 174. Other scholars hold that the association of Cush and Nimrod with ancient (southern and northern) Mesopotamia bespeaks Cush’s influence over the Mesopotamian territory [through Nimrod], not his actual presence in it, thus maintaining Cush’s presence in Africa. See Bailey, “Beyond Identification,” 170, n. 22. Whatever one makes of the source history, many scholars would see the figure of Nimrod as legendary, a composite at that and an eponym. See Yigal Levin, “Nimrod the Mighty, King of Kish, King of Sumer and Akkad,” Vetus Testamentum 52 (2002): 366. According to Genesis 10:9, Nimrod was “a mighty (gibbôr) hunter before (lipnê) the Lord.” In the Septuagint (LXX), “mighty,” gibbôr, becomes gigas, “giant.” Reading the LXX, which translates the Hebrew prepositional phrase lipnê with the Greek preposition enantion, Philo (Questions in Genesis, 2.81–82) understood enantion to mean “against.” Other commentators (e.g., the targumim or Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Bible, and Augustine in Book XVI of City of God) follow in this tradition. See K. van der Toorn and P. W. van der Horst, “Nimrod before and after the Bible,” Harvard Theological Review 83




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64.

65.

66.

67.

(January 1900): 18–19. Cf. Stephen R. Haynes, Noah’s Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 46. In Antiquitates 1.113–114, Josephus sees Nimrod as a tyrant and as one who led the people in Shinar both to raise suspicions about God and to rebel against God by building a tower. Toorn and Horst, “Nimrod before and after the Bible,” 20–21. The Talmud and the midrashim continue the tradition of Nimrod as the rebellious persecutor of Abraham (b Erabin 53a, Pesah. 94b, and Hag. 13a, Genesis Rab. 23.7, 26.4, 37.2–3), or of Nimrod as a worshipper of idols (Aboda Zar 53, b. Pesah. 118a, and Gen. Rab. 38.13). Toorn and Horst, “Nimrod before and after the Bible,” 25–26. With Clement (in Recognitions), Nimrod is linked again to tyranny and rebellion. With Ambrose, he is seen as a “consummate symbol of human pride and rebellion.” And, with Isidore of Seville, he now becomes an African, though not in a racialized sense. All of the references to the so-called church fathers are taken from Haynes, Noah’s Curse, 47–48. In his Liber antiquaritatum biblicarum, Pseudo-Philo suggests not only that Nimrod was arrogant (superbus) but also that Nimrod also confronted Abraham who refused to join the project of building the Tower in Babel. Moreover, Abraham is jailed and placed in a fiery furnace, from which God delivered him without harm, a motif attesting to the influence of Daniel 3 on the story. See Toorn and Horst, “Nimrod before and after the Bible,” 19. In the Middle Ages, along with established features of the Nimrod mythological tradition (Nimrod as a giant, a tyrant, a symbol of pride, and as one associated with the confusion of speech at Babel), two additional elements were added to Nimrod’s resumé: astronomy and imperial “rulership.” Dante’s Divine Comedy includes all of the established features. In Inferno, 31.42, Nimrod is one of several legendary giants (known from classical or biblical literature) in Hell. On this and the links between Dante and Edmund Spenser’s The Fairie Queene, see Roger O. Iredale, “Giants and Tyrants in Book Five of The Fairie Queene,” Review of English Studies 17 (1966): 373–381. In the same section, Virgil (Dante’s guide) says of Nimrod “This is Nimrod, through whose wicked device the world is not of one sole speech.” See Haynes, Noah’s Curse, 50. On Nimrod and the tower, see Purgatory 12.34–36. On Nimrod as a symbol of pride in Inferno 31.61, Christopher Kleinhenz avers “Just as Adam and Eve’s transgression resulted in banishment from the Garden of Eden, a punishment charged with both individual and universal consequences, the effect of Nimrod’s insubordination in building the Tower of Babel was the confusion of his own speech and of the world’s languages.” See Christopher Kleinhenz, “Intertextual Approaches to the Divine Comedy,” Italica 63 (1986): 228. On Nimrod and astronomy, see, e.g., The Book of the Caves of Treasures and The Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius (Haynes, Noah’s Curse, 48). Though both works were composed in Syriac, the extant form of the former is explicitly Christian, with its goal of providing an explanation for “the story of the Magi and the Star of Bethlehem,” while the latter lacks a “link to the gospel nativity account.” See Stephen Gero, “The Legend of the Fourth Son of Noah,” Harvard Theological Review 73 (1980): 327. On Nimrod and imperial rulership, see Haynes, Noah’s Curse, 49. Some Europeans, e.g., Alexander Hislop, in his Dictionary of the Bible, 1722, “consciously racialized” Nimrod (Haynes, Noah’s Curse, 106). Antebellum



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68. 69. 70.

71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76.

77. 78. 79.

80. 81. 82. 83. 84.

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writers in the United States drew their colors from the same palette. In addition, they fashioned their views of Nimrod in accordance with a precedent set by “antebellum readings of Noah’s curse” (Ibid.). Nimrod became both dark and disorderly, “the genuine [racialized] personification of Hamite disorder” (Ibid.). Nimrod’s American portrait was strongly influenced by “Joseph Priestly’s Slavery and Alexander Hislop’s The Two Babylons,” both of which “consciously racialized” Nimrod (Haynes, Noah’s Curse, 106). In formulating a justification for slavery, Priestly presents Nimrod as the “black king of Babel,” one associated with rebellion, idolatry, and a “lack of self-restraint” (Ibid., 107). As Haynes notes, “Priestly’s interest in Nimrod’s legend is a function of its usefulness in depicting Ham’s descendants as a beastly, uncivilized lot, suited for slavery” (Haynes, Noah’s Curse, 108). Ariel [Buckner Payne], Negro, 31. According to Williams (I, vi), the Bible was “not the best authority on ethnology.” As noted earlier (see f.n. 24), scholars now know that the so-called Curse of Canaan depicts Canaan (the ancestor of the Canaanites) as depraved to justify the later despoiliation of Canaan. That is, scholars believe that Genesis 9:18–27 “most likely reflects conditions in the tenth century BCE, specifically the enslavement and debasement of ‘Canaanites’ by the Israelite monarchy” (Haynes, Noah’s Curse, 6). And as Isaac Ephraim avers, “as people who shared the same land or held contiguous territories, and as neighbours and relatives, the Israelites and the Canaanites, like most other states, peoples, and societies must have continually been at cross-purposes, quarreling, disputing, fighting wars with each other, and becoming perpetual political enemies and antagonists. There is little doubt that the story of the curse of Canaan was invented to explain the feeling of the Israelites toward the Canaanites and the reason for their struggle with the people with whom they were perpetually at odds.” See Ephraim Isaac, “Genesis, Judaism, and the ‘Sons of Ham,’” in Slaves and Slavery in Muslim America (Vol. 1 of Islam and the Ideology of Slavery), ed. John Ralph Willis (London, Frank Cass, 1985), 78. Note that the subtitle of Williams’s history was “Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens.” See Williams, History, I, iii. Cf. I, vi. Williams, History, I, vi, xi, 1, 7, 8, 19, 11, 12, 19, 108, 212, 216, 444, 445. Ibid., I, 8, 12. Ibid., I, 8, 10. Ibid., I, 8. See Josiah Priest, Bible Defence of Slavery (Glasgow, KY: W. S. Brown, 1851), 83. For other examples, see the list provided by Thomas Virgil Peterson, Ham and Japheth: The Mythic World of Whites in the Antebellum South (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1978), 62–63, n. 61. Ibid., I, 8–11. Ibid., I, 9. Note, e.g., Williams’s remarks: “Two or three hundred years ago there were several very powerful Negro empires in Western Africa. They had social and political government, and were certainly a very orderly people.” I, 26. Ibid., I, 108. Ibid., I, 110. Ibid. Ibid., I, 445. I, 445, with Williams’s own italics.




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85. See Cornel West, Prophetic Reflections: Notes on Race and Power in America (Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1990), 125. 86. For a critique of Afrocentric approaches that support either a rigid black essentialism or cultural hierarchies, see Cain Hope Felder, “Afrocentrism, the Bible, and the Politics of Difference,” Journal of Religious Thought (1997): 45–56. On Williams’s view of race as a construct, “not a biological dictum,” see Walker, We Can’t Go Home Again, 49.


6

The Story of Nimrod: A Struggle with Otherness and the Search for Identity Arthur L. Pressley

Robert Miller in an article on business ethics entitled “The four horsemen of downsizing and the Tower of Babel”1 discussed the changing demands of global markets and ecommerce. Miller argued that the information age has constructed an “epistemological Tower of Babel” similar to Alice’s Wonderland, where a word can mean so many different things, and where the core question over the battle of words is the issue of who is to be in charge and how to cope with people who are different. Miller stated that the warriors from the Information Revolution and the corporate Tower of Babel have created a condition that is breaking down a great peace, an international power that has unified the world in language, customs, and ideologies. Religion, art, and technology, and then at a certain point, thanks to its own ungovernable complexity, collapses because the barbarians are pressing at its borders; these barbarians are not necessarily uncultivated, but they are bring new customs . . . . These barbarians may burst in with violence, because they want to seize a wealth that has been denied them.2

It is interesting Miller used a traditional interpretation of the Tower of Babel to highlight the clash of values in business, social violence. One of the arguments of this chapter is that such an approach to the story of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel not only describes cultural conflicts but also may reinforce the condition that it describes.



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The Story of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel is perhaps one of the best known stories in Western culture. Unfortunately, this story has been generally interpreted as a parable of human arrogance and has possibly become a powerful and destructive cultural metanarrative that influences the way racial, ethnic, and cultural differences are interpreted. This ancient myth continues to be a vital symbol for expressing an inability of diverse groups to communicate or function cooperatively. That is to say, in business and law journals,3 in struggles among religious groups,4 in academic circle debates about the sharing of research,5 and most recently in articles about regulating the Internet,6 the Tower of Babel remains a metaphor of human frustration and the inability to function interculturally. Nonetheless, the figure of Nimrod must be reinterpreted and redeemed to assist in our efforts to create diverse communities with equality and respect. This chapter will present a critique of the traditional approach to Nimrod and the destructive implications that accompany the dominant understanding of this story. Furthermore, it suggests an alternative approach to the tale of Nimrod reflective of African American spirituality. That is to say, the African American community offers possibilities for reinterpreting the narrative of Nimrod that promote new possibilities for social life and for spiritual expression. There exists within the parable of Nimrod a hope for cooperative and mutual human interaction that is lost in the babble of traditional interpretations. This tale has an unrecognized and radical understanding of our createdness as human beings that can provide new confidence in our ability to overcome many of the racial and cultural divides that have tormented human communities. This potential has been ignored for a number of reasons. First, as we are uncomfortable with our humanity and our innate potentials, we seek to place the control for our lives outside of ourselves. In The Future of an Illusion,7 Freud suggested that civilizations tend to project the best and worst of their characteristics onto the Gods. He explained that this kind of projection not only provided a certain amount of protection but also locked humanity into vicious cycles of violence and repression. Expressed in theology terms, we have, as yet, failed to embrace the stance suggested by William Jones:8 We are cocreators with God and need to more fully assume responsibility for our well-being. Second, most persons are unable to comprehend or feel comfortable with social and cultural differences. They respond to this intellectual confusion and social alienation by creating religious explanatory systems that justify the social distance between groups. James Williams, Robert Hamerton-Kelly, René Girard, and other scholars suggest that humans need difference in order to form identity, but yet they are frightened by these differences.



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Lastly, most intellectual and religious communities still have not taken seriously the intersubjective nature of existence and what this means for social interaction. Typically most approaches to social conflict use modernity’s twin strategies of social control and rational thought. Because of a failure to consider issues of identity and kinship, most approaches to improving intercultural relationships have been ineffective. James Williams in The Bible, Violence, & the Sacred,9 following the work of René Girard, argues that most religious communities tend to view biblical literature from the perspective of fear and rivalry. It is likely that the story of Nimrod has suffered this fate. On the conscious level, it has served as a myth to explain how the one family that survived the Flood became many nations with different languages. And, at the level of the unconscious, it may justify feelings of social alienation and intolerance. This is not to suggest social alienation and intolerance are necessarily rooted in the text, only that this is likely the result of centuries of cultural interpretation. Like the support for oppression gathered from particular interpretations of the Curse of Ham, the tradition interpretation of Nimrod may have added to violence in our world and, consequently, may hamper spiritual growth and maturity. This revisiting may be more important for African Americans than many other groups at this point in history. As African Americans struggle with chronic stress, racism, and what some have termed Posttraumatic Slave Syndrome,10 it has been difficult for this community to acknowledge its spiritual resources and create healthy relationships with other communities. In short, African Americans, as a group, have been ambivalent about their social, political, and spiritual power. Because the African American community has, at times, identified with Nimrod and the descendents of Ham, a reinterpretation of this story may be required in order to achieve a more significant degree of “wholeness.” It is essential to be aware of the power of our stories. Freedman and Combs point out that people are born into stories that have an influence on what they think and on what is obscured from their awareness.11 Furthermore, various psychoanalytic traditions, reflected in the work of René Girard and others,12 suggest that myths not only symbolize the human condition but, as narratives, also shape behavior and social interaction. Cultural stories, whether of Oedipus or Narcissus, “original gangsters,” or Manifest Destiny become paradigms that shape human history. Unexamined or unchallenged narratives become even more determinative in human interaction when alternative narratives are not provided as counterbalances or correctives.13 What is significant is that the meaning of narratives, including the social myth of Nimrod, can be altered to provide liberation from destructive meanings.



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Most Rabbinic14 and Christian scholars interpret the story of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel as representing human ambition and rivalry with God. It is not only that humanity is attempting to control their destiny, but that they do so in opposition to God’s plans for humanity. The “sin” of Nimrod, hence, is the attempt to unify humanity based on a political system and architectural technology. This act of arrogance and rivalry provokes God’s anger, and humanity is cursed with divisive languages and cultures—thereby making a worldwide empire impossible.15 However, there is some agreement that what motivated Nimrod (and the people) to build the tower was anxiety—anxiety that the various communities would become splintered and that, with this division, their kin people might become their enemy.16 (The division is healed at least partially by the promise made to Abraham in Genesis 12.17) The biblical story of Nimrod, as a cultural narrative, has traditionally symbolized for many people that certain forms of difference are a result of human sin and ambition. Robert Hamerton-Kelly describes how religious texts are interpreted in ways that not only alienate communities but also require the presence of victims. In a lecture to the Committee of the Presbyterian Church in 2003, Hamerton-Kelly tells of a television program involving a Rabbi telling the Exodus story to a group of children. At one point in the program the Rabbi asked the children why we celebrate Passover. He then answered his own question: “Because God killed the first born of the Egyptians and told us to mark the doorpost of our houses with the blood of a lamb so that the angel of death might pass over us.” Hamerton-Kelly concluded that this interpretation of the scripture gave the children permission to act in ways aggressive toward those who are different.18 In much the same way, the story of Nimrod appears not only to explain but also to give divine sanction to violent separation of social and cultural groups. And this sanction can give rise to anxiety and fear of difference. For instance, recent debates concerning the rights of immigrants or the need of more secure national borders are reflective of a fear of living with people who are culturally different. James Williams argues that humans become self aware through perception of difference and interpret difference with “mimetic desire.” That is to say, following René Girard, human identity and community originate through a psychological process of identification with others, while also desiring to differentiate themselves from others through rivalry and, at times, violence. Furthermore, this process of mimetic desire and rivalry, according to Girard, is at time sanctioned through religion.19 Traditional interpretations of Nimrod highlighting cultural divisions as divine action



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in response to a human push for autonomy support conflicted attitudes regarding interdependence.20 On a related note, divine action in response to human initiative—one of the more intriguing aspects of the traditional approach to the narrative of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel—concerns the implication that God is threatened by human potential: “and the Lord said, behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”21 Another way of stating this point is that the Divine is threatened by collective social and communal activity. Yet, Nimrod’s objective was to call the various communities together in order to establish a place of perpetual communal importance and cohesion. The response of the Divine is confusing in that God develops a plan for unity of various groups through Abraham. What is the metaphysical objective? Using the approach of Girard, Williams, and Hamerton-Kelly, it may be argued that the story provides a rationale for differences, but the placement of difference within a divine-human conflict and rivalry sets the stage for intergroup conflict and tension. Since these problems have been created by human sin and divine punishment, there is little that humanity can do to better its situation. Assuming that only God can bring about unity among social groups may lead people to feel, either consciously or unconsciously, that human initiative leads to the sin of Nimrod. This assumption has ample support in theological and biblical discourse. For example, Karen Baker-Fletcher’s Dancing with God: A Womanist Perspective on the Trinity argues that evil and suffering exists because men and women desire to be godlike. Her contention is that human freedom is appropriate only when it is used for stewardship in accordance with divine law.22 Although the work of Girard as noted above is compelling, it is limited in that it understands human nature as coming into existence as the result of differences. This approach assumes, much as other Freudians, that people are fundamentally created as separate and distinct entities. Perhaps Girard takes this approach because he does not have a cooperative or intersubjective understanding of human nature as reflected in some aspects of African American thought. This African American understanding of human nature, discussed in more detail later in this chapter, frames consciousness as a social activity, with humans as co-creators with God regarding every aspect of our existence. W. Sibley Towner makes a strong case that this story needs be understood within the genre of a primordial myth.23 The issue then is to understand the role this metanarrative serves in religious discourse and to offer alternative interpretations where current ones are destructive. With this said, it is likely that religious and cultural groups have used the story



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of Nimrod to give legitimacy to human fear of the other. Our fear of rivalry, of the alien, and of difference is now given heavenly justification. We can argue that some biblical passages grow out of spiritual insights gained from an encounter with the Holy. There are other parts of religious texts that stem from human fears, misunderstanding, and misguided attempts to resolve past hurts. Psychological analysis would suggest that the Nimrod account entails human fear of the future, more so than the will of a divine being. That is to say, the assumption that an omnipotent God is threatened by the activities and initiatives of human beings appears to be narcissistic and related to anxiety over human existence. Although some contemporary scholars have acknowledged that these concerns might have been motivating factors behind the story of Nimrod, they have avoided the conclusion that such human-based concerns might simply be laid over the text.24 According to Robert HamertonKelly, the dirty secret is that “violence is the heart and soul of the Sacred.” By this statement, he is not suggesting that mature spirituality requires violence, but rather that humans tend to interpret and respond to religious material in ways that lead to violence and scapegoating.25 Related to this more human-centered perspective, one of the more interesting interpretations of Nimrod has been Anthony Pinn’s African American Humanist Principles. In this work, Pinn points out similarities between the story of Nimrod and the myth of Prometheus. Although Prometheus is associated with intellectual traditions that fail to capture the corporate and communal understanding reflected in some aspects of the African American intellectual tradition, there are some similarities worth noting. The story of Prometheus is an ancient Greek myth where the Gods want to maintain the distance between themselves and humanity. Zeus punishes Prometheus for giving humanity the gift of fire, by having a birds tear away at his liver, which regenerates. The gift of fire unleashed a flood of inventiveness and culture, art, and literacy. Included in this myth, as with Nimrod, is the punishment of humanity for attempting to “be” as the Gods. The narrative of Prometheus, much like traditional understanding of the stories of Adam and Eve and Nimrod, seeks to explain human suffering while holding beliefs in the everlasting and eternal goodness of God.26 Accordingly, the only possible explanation then for human suffering must be human sin and failure. This sin must be monumental: human sin causes human misery. This allows the believer to think that God is essentially good, that all is well in the heavens, and most importantly that there is the possibility for redemption and change in the future. The traditional interpretation of the Nimrod account suggests a similar posture, what has been labeled by some scholars a “moral defense.” The moral defense, seen in the traditional interpretation of the tale of Nimrod, assumes that all interpretations of biblical stories must begin with the assumption that



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God is good and always acts in the best interest of humankind. There, however, is a problem with this posture in that moral defense of a text may take on a life of its own and resist new and healthier interpretations. As W. R. D. Fairbairn notes, a moral defense can have the negative implication of keeping individuals and communities in a child-like posture rather than in a position to take control over their own destiny.27 Furthermore, this child-like posture can result in, for example, undue suspicion concerning human inventiveness—technology. This ambivalence may at times lead to a failure to develop needed resources, and a failure to have adequate public discussions that might more creatively direct the use and control of resources.28 The dominant culture has created a narrative about Nimrod, like Freud’s Oedipus, where human communities are afraid of their potential as well as the possibility of conflict. Cultural symbols do not need to be conscious to be part of the script that guides how people interpret the events of their lives. It is not always conscious thought that determines gender relationships, racial interactions, or parenting styles. It is rather the stories that are used to organize and interpret all the actions that take place during a person’s life that hold such power to shape existence. These stories become a hermeneutic for the individual and community. The issue here is the degree to which the traditional approach to Nimrod adds to irrational anxiety of encountering difference. We live in a world where diversity is feared rather than celebrated. We tend to view those with a difference as Robert Miller’s barbarians who steal and bring violence. Most metaanalysis of social and political efforts to reduce racial and ethnic conflict over the past fifty years have concluded that the problems can be contained with at best little significant change. These studies, such as the field of Contact Hypothesis, consistently point to the ineffectiveness of most programs to improve relationships between social and cultural groups. One interpretation of this failure is that these programs fail to confront issues of identity, and feelings of powerlessness and anxiety when faced with social difference.29 With the traditional interpretation of Nimrod, where separation and rivalry are assumed to be a given of social reality, it is impossible for communities to live together in mutuality. This is in part due to the tendency to see difference as intrinsically problematic and to adjust for this by negating the realities of another group. The only recourse for social change, argues Jessica Benjamin, involves the temptation to merely reverse or elevate what has been denigrated or overvalued. The tendency to exalt traits previously denigrated occurs in many oppressed groups seeking to gain recognition.30 The attempt to establish the superior traits of any group leads to dualistic thinking that reinforces the very systems the oppressed (i.e., those whose realities are attacked) seek to challenge. Even when there is no tendency to elevate what had been denied, there is



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no vision that articulates how previously warring or competing communities can begin to develop what Martin Luther King describe as the “Beloved Community.”

Moving beyond the damage done by traditional interpretations of Nimrod requires several steps. First, there must be recognition that human initiative is not sinful. This suggests that the act of Nimrod, the desire to build a symbol that would unify communities, was a bold and creative act. Second, it is vital to acknowledge that Nimrod’s vision was a radical and courageous idea that assumed people could shape their destiny in positive ways. This runs counter to assumptions of humanity as coming into existence through difference but affirms that life is found in community, mutuality, and diversity. It is vital that we have signs and symbols, rituals and meanings, that harness this revised take on attributes once despised in Nimrod. Recognition of these attributes, in subtle and nondirect ways, as noteworthy is often found in African American rituals. For example, there is a prayer, given by an aged African American woman, that speaks to the spirit of ingenuity, determination, and communal life found in Nimrod when the story is reconsidered using the analytical tools briefly noted above.31 She prayed, Dear Massa Jesus, we uns beg Ooner come make us a call dis here day. We is nutting but p-oor Etiopian women, and people don’t care much about we. We ain’t trust any of dem great high people for to come to we church, but do’you is de great Massa, great to much daan Massa Linkum, you ain’t shame to care for we African People. Come to we, dear Massa Jesus. De sun, he hot too much, de road am dat long and boggy and we ain’t got no buggy for send and fetch Ooner. But Massa, you ‘member how you walked dat hard walk up Calvary and ain’t weary but to tink about we all dat way. We know you ain’t waery for to come to we. We pick out the torns, de prickles, de back slidin’, and de quarrel, and de sin out you path so dey don’t hurt Ooner feet no more. Come to we, dear Massa Jesus. We all uns ain’t got no good cool water for to give you when you thirsty. You know, Massa, de drought so long, and the well so low, ain’t nutting but mud to drink. But we gwine to take de ‘muion cup and fill it wid de tear of repentance and love clean out we heart. Dat all we hab to gib you, good Massa An Massa Jesus, you say you gwine staand at the door and knock. But you ain’t gwine stand at we door, Massa, and knock. We set the door plum open and watch up the road for to see you.



Reframing Nimrod’s Character

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The woman who offered this prayer was a descendent of the African slaves shipped to the Americas. Given the world that the prayer’s author inhabited, it is astounding that she expresses the degree of hope reflected in this prayer. This prayer suggests a capacity for community that avoids many of the conflicts generally seen in traditional interpretations of the Nimrod text. There is also a rather mature form of spirituality that has been rarely displayed in most religious doctrines or in literature. The way that this woman chooses to deal with her reality offers a possibility that models a form of spirituality and consciousness that acknowledges divine presence and places considerable emphasis on human participation. There are several notable features of this prayer. First is her use of the word we, much more than the words “ours,” “I,” or “us.” The passion of this prayer is in the we-ness. It is important to appreciate the transpersonal and intersubjective nature of consciousness reflected in this prayer and the implications for a broader definition of identity and spirituality. This model of consciousness takes seriously the corporate nature of the self. This reflects not only dependency on others but also the degree to which all thinking, planning, reflecting, and acting are done as social acts. Where object was, subject must be. This concept of consciousness connotes a self-awareness that comes into realization in this interaction. It expresses a basic human desire to be known, to be seen, and to find approval. It acknowledges our finitude and our vulnerability in existence. Without acknowledging the inherent connectedness of human existence, our relationships can involve rage directed at self and others. The we-ness used in this prayer suggests a mutuality that is not only aware of the subjectivity of others but also identifies with them to the extent that they share the same emotional and psychic space. The often used saying “because I am we are, and because we are I am” is clearly reflected by the unnamed woman in this prayer. For her, we and I are synonymous. In order for this sense of identity to truly exist, no one can be considered outside of community. The hope in this prayer is relational and grows out of radical grace that ultimately cannot choose between insider and outsider. This concept of identity bridges social, physical, and individual realities. The prayer by this African American woman moves from considering the effects of slavery, to asking questions about transforming the nation’s consciousness. We must assume that the trajectory of her thinking will lead her to consider not only the plight of blacks but



Come, Massa Jesus, come! We know you is near, we heart is all tremble, we so glad for hab you here. And Massa, we church ain’t good nuff for you to sit down in, but stop by de door just one minute, dear Massa Jesus, a nd whisper one word to we heart-one good word- we do listen, Massa.

ARTHUR L. PRESSLEY

also more general questions of issues of poverty, homeless children, and the needs of other marginal groups. Lastly, this prayer involves a note of anticipation. Living with this type of anticipation provides a person with confidence, poise, balance, selfawareness, self-assurance, and discipline. It is the resolve that no matter what the circumstances of life, these are all lived in relationship. Anticipation is the affirmation of being connected to others and of having trust in the essential goodness of the universe despite the suffering encountered. The anticipation that flows from this prayer reflects a belief that joy can always be found in life, despite the challenges of life. This prayer, applied as a sort of hermeneutic to the Nimrod account and the Tower of Babel, recognizes not only the dilemmas of human existence but also the possibilities inherent in this very same, messy realm of life. A rethinking of the Nimrod account may reflect, much like the prayer of the African American woman, an approach to social identity and a relationship to the Divine that has more potential for change than previously understood. Instead of Nimrod being understood as committing an act of rivalry and competition, his act may be seen more as a desire to create oneness with God and others.

Notes 1. Robert Miller, “The Four Horseman of Downsizing and the Tower of Babel,” Journal of Business Ethics 29 (January 2001): 147–152. 2. Ibid., 148. 3. Michael Sutton, “Legislating the Tower of Babel: International Restrictions on Internet Content and the Market Place of Ideas,” Federal Communications Law Journal 56.2 (March 2004): 214. 4. John Wilkins, “Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the New Creationism,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 79.2 (June 1, 2001): 302. 5. Jean Dryden, “A Tower of Babel: Standardizing Archival Terminology,” Archival Science 5.1 (March 2005): 1. 6. Herman Wasserman, “Between the Local and the Global: South African Languages and the Internet,” African and Asian Studies 1.4 (2002): 303. 7. Sigmund Freud, The Future of and Illusion, trans. James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1961), 30. 8. See William R. Jones, Is God a White Racist?: A Preamble to Black Theology (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1997). 9. James Williams, The Bible, Violence, & the Sacred: Liberation from the Myth of Sanctioned Violence (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 7–20. 10. Joy DeGruy Leary, Post-traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing (Milwaukee, OR: Uptone Press, 2005), 14. 11. Jill Freedman and Gene Combs, Narrative Therapy: The Social Construction of Preferred Realties (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1996), 43–47. 12. René Girard, Violence and the Sacred (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins Press, 1977).



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13. Freedman and Combs, Narrative Therapy, 47. 14. W. Gunther Plaut, The Torah: A Modern Commentary (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregation, 1981), 83. 15. W. Sibley Towers, Genesis (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 108–109. 16. Plaut, The Torah, 83. 17. Tower, Genesis, 117–121. 18. See Robert Hamerton-Kelly, Sacred Violence: Paul’s Hermeneutic of the Cross (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992). 19. Williams, The Bible, Violence, & the Sacred, 6–7. 20. The Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 1, ed. George Arthur Buttrick (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1952). 21. Genesis 11:6 (King James Version). 22. Karen Baker-Fletcher, Dancing with God: A Womanist Perspective on the Trinity (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2006), 78–79. 23. Tower, Genesis, 108–109. 24. Ibid., 110–111. 25. Robert Hamerton-Kelly, “Violence and Religion” Conference on Religion and Terrorism. Committee on Social Policy of the Presbyterian Church, 2003. 26. Baker-Fletcher, Dancing with God, 208. 27. W. R. D. Fairbairn, Studies of Personality (London: Tavistock Publishing, 1952). 28. Patricia Wallace, The Psychology of the Internet (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 29. Yair Amichai-Hamburger and Katelyn Y. Mckenna, “The Contact Hypothesis Reconsidered: Interacting via the Internet,” Journal of Computer mediated Communication, Vol. 11, 3, Article 7, 1–20; Anne Anlin Cheng, The Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis, Assimilation, and Hidden Grief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). 30. Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988). 31. Harold Carter, The Prayer Traditions of Black People (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1976).



THE STORY OF NIMROD




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Nimrod: Reading the Bible with South African Eyes Elelwani B. Farisani

This chapter looks afresh at Nimrod and attempts to restore his dignity and that of black people. This will be done in five stages below. First, we briefly highlight the identity of Noah’s children in order to place into context Nimrod, who is the focus of this study. Second, we examine the negative portrayal of Nimrod by certain scholars. Third, we discuss the use of Ham/Nimrod’s story in the oppression or enslavement of black people. Furthermore, we will critique such a use of the story to oppress black people. Fourth, we discuss Nimrod’s achievements. The focus here will be on his major achievements as a great ruler, mighty hunter, and builder. The aim of this section is to counter the negative interpretation that Nimrod has previously received. In addition, we will offer a positive interpretation of the curse on Ham/Cush/Nimrod. Fifth and finally, we will spell out the significance of the Nimrod story for those who have been oppressed and enslaved on the basis of this text. The focus here will be on South Africa.

Noah’s Children Noah had three sons, namely Shem, Japheth, and Ham. Nimrod was Ham’s grandson. Ham was Noah’s youngest son (9:24), and it is generally agreed that Shem was the eldest son of Noah and Japheth was the second born.1 The curse of Ham and his descendants (including Nimrod) has been interpreted to mean also the curse of black people and their descendants today. This interpretation has had very serious consequences for black people. The story of Ham’s curse is recorded in Genesis 9:18–29. Drunk



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with wine from his own vineyard, Noah lay uncovered in his tent. Ham “saw that his father was naked and went outside and told his brothers” (9:22). Shem and Japheth discreetly covered Noah with a garment. Noah reacted by pronouncing a curse on Ham’s son, Canaan, while blessing the descendants of Shem and Japheth.2 According to Gen. 10:21–32, Shem is called the father of all the sons of Eber, because two tribes sprang from Eber through Peleg and Joktan, namely, the Abrahamides, and also the Arabian tribe of the Joktanides (vv. 26ff).3 The significance of the genealogy of Shem is that it is the line from which Abram, and ultimately Christ, sprang.4 These were thought to be the Semitic peoples to the east of Palestine among whom the Hebrews themselves originated.5 Japheth’s descendants are introduced in Genesis 10:1–5. In verse 1 the names of the three sons are introduced according to their relative ages, to give completeness and finish to the Tholedoth.6 The Japhethites are primarily associated with northern and western sites of Palestine, namely Asia Minor and Europe.7 According to Genesis 9:18–27, Shem and Japheth were blessed, while Ham was cursed to be a slave to them both. As already mentioned, the story of Noah’s offspring recounts a curse placed on Ham (Canaan). It is alleged that Ham’s sin was disrespect toward his father, Noah. Certain scholars argue that the curse of Ham’s son, Canaan, was actually a curse on all of Ham’s descendants, including Nimrod, his grandson.8 Scholars generally agree that the sons of Ham (10:6–20) emigrated southward and are generally regarded as the Africans and various peoples of Babylon, Assyria, and Palestine.9 Keil and Delitzsch say the following about a link between the descendants of Ham and the Africans Cush: the Ethiopians of the ancients, who not only dwelt in Africa, but were scattered over the whole of Southern Asia, and originally, in all probability, settled in Arabia, where the tribes that still remained, mingled with Shemites, and adopted a Shemitic language. Mizraim is Egypt: the dual form was probably transferred from the land to the people, referring, however, not to the double strip, i.e., the two strips of land into which the country is divided by the Nile, but to the two Egypts, Upper and Lower, two portions of the country which differ considerably in their climate and general condition. . . . The old Egyptian name is Kemi (Copt. Kême), which, Plutarch says, is derived from the dark ash-grey color of the soil covered by the slime of the Nile, but which it is much more correct to trace to Ham, and to regard as indicative of the Hamitic descent of its first inhabitants. Put denotes the Libyans in the wider sense of the term (old Egypt. Phet; Copt. Phaiat), who were spread over Northern Africa as far as Mauritania, where even in the time of Jerome a river with the neighboring district still bore the name of Phut; cf. Bochart, Phal. iv. 33.10



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The above issue of a link between Ham/Nimrod and people of African descent will be fully developed later in our discussion. There are four groups amongst Ham’s sons: Cush, Mizraim (Egypt), Put, and Canaan.11 Seven peoples are named as descendants of Cush (v. 7) and seven from Mizraim (vv. 13–14, excluding the “Philistines”).12 It is important to note, however, that the dominant interest of the author of Genesis 10 is the Hamite “Nimrod,” who receives special attention as the first ruler and builder of Mesopotamia’s urban centers (vv. 8–12).13

The Negative Portrayal of Nimrod It is important to note that the portrayal of Nimrod in a negative manner is not a new phenomenon. Scholars today are continuing the trend started many years ago. Below we discuss how Nimrod has been portrayed in a negative manner by certain scholars from as early as the rabbinic period. Nimrod has been regarded in Jewish tales as a short-tempered murderer. The tale narrates how the descendants of Noah’s sons appointed princes to rule over them after the Flood. While Nimrod was appointed a prince for the descendants of Ham, Joktan was appointed for Shem’s descendants and Phenech for the descendants of Japheth.14 The three princes began to build the Tower of Babel as described in Genesis 11. Then “twelve righteous men,” Abram among them, dissent from the plan. “When the twelve are brought before the princes, Nimrod and Phenech become enraged and resolve to throw them into the fire.”15 Another tale narrates Nimrod’s rise as a man of military might. Nimrod raises an army from the descendants of Shem and Ham in order to rout the Appetites. The Hamites crown Nimrod king, and he vanquishes the Semites. Having achieved dominion over Noah’s descendants, Nimrod builds a fortress upon a round rock, setting a great throne of cedar-wood upon it to support a second great throne, made of iron; this, in turn, supported a great copper throne, with a silver throne above the copper, and a golden throne above the silver. At the summit of this pyramid, Nimrod placed a gigantic gem from which, sitting in divine state, he exacted universal homage.16

The rabbinic legends also portrayed Nimrod’s impiety. Nimrod is portrayed as someone who made and worshiped idols of wood and stone and, aided by his son Mardon, tempted his subjects to evil. The consequences of Nimrod’s actions are clearly mentioned: Men no longer trusted in God, but rather in their own prowess and ability, an attitude to which Nimrod tried to convert the whole world.



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Nimrod’s tower building was seen by rabbis as a rebellious act against God. According to the tale, Nimrod said, “I will be revenged on Him for the drowning of my ancestors. Should He send another flood, my tower will rise even above Ararat, and keep me safe.”18 Upon completing the tower, the builders shot arrows upward. When these returned to them covered with blood, they cried, “We have slain all who are in heaven.”19 Following the episode at Babel, Nimrod continued to rule and build cities, “which he filled with inhabitants, reigning over them in majesty.”20 Rabbis also tell us about Nimrod’s relationship with the Hebrew patriarchs, particularly Abram. In a legendary account of Abram’s birth, Nimrod is an astrologer who discerns from the stars that a child will overthrow the gods he worships. His counselors advise him to slaughter every male child in his kingdom, which he does. Observing the slaughter, the angels cry out to God, “Have You not seen how Nimrod the blasphemer murders innocents?” But the unborn Abram is miraculously undetected in his mother’s womb. He survives, grows to adulthood in twenty days and instructs Nimrod on the nature of the true God.21 From the above discussion, the following picture of Nimrod emerged: (1) He governed the sons of Ham following the Flood; (2) he was a universal ruler whose success was attributable to dark magic; (3) he was an irascible man prone to violence; (4) much like the fallen angels, he fomented rebellion against and within heaven; (5) he demonstrated his defiance by building a tower with which he intended to avert a second deluge; (6) his contumacious character and belligerence toward God were reflected in the tower’s builders; (7) he encouraged human self-sufficiency and introduced the worship of idols; and (8) he posed as a god and demanded that the nations pay him homage.22 Like the rabbis, Christian writers of the patristic period felt obliged to explain reference to Nimrod inserted into the Table of Nations in Genesis l0. Among the fathers, Augustine’s was probably the most influential commentator. He attempted to clarify the Bible’s sketch of Ham’s grandson by translating Genesis 10:9 as follows: “[Nimrod] was a gigantic hunter against the Lord God.”23 Augustine’s translation has influenced subsequent interpreters in two ways. First, Nimrod became known for his large size. Among Christian writers, this idea can be traced through Tertullian in the second century and Filaster in the fourth. But ultimately this idea of Nimrod as giant may actually be based in Jewish sources: the Septuagint version of Genesis (which reads, “And Cush begot Nimrod; . . . He was a giant hunter before the Lord God.”)24 and 1 Enoch,



Therefore people said, “since the creation of the world there has been none like Nimrod, a mighty hunter of men and beasts, a sinner before God.” In some versions of Nimrod’s legend, he wishes to “set himself up as a god” so that all nations will pay him divine homage.17

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a third-century B.C.E. apocalyptic text25 that contends that the forbidden union between “daughters of men” and “sons of God” described in Genesis 6 yielded a race of giants. Because the description of Nimrod in Genesis 10:8–9 features the same word (gibbor, “mighty”) used in Genesis 6:4 to describe the inhabitants of the antediluvian world, early Bible readers assumed that Nimrod must have been “mighty” in this physical sense.26 Augustine’s claim that Nimrod was a hunter against, rather than before, the Lord is the second significant influence on subsequent commentary. Augustine concluded that the noun hunter could “only suggest a deceiver, oppressor and destroyer of earth-born creatures.”27 Through a combination of translation and interpretation, Augustine portrayed Nimrod as an enemy of God and a foil to true humility: “The safe and genuine highway to heaven is constructed by humility,” Augustine noted, “which lifts up its heart to the Lord, not against the Lord, as did that giant.”28 In his view, the supposition that Nimrod resisted God was intimately related to the assumption that he, “with his subject peoples, began to erect a tower against the Lord, which symbolize[d] his impious pride.”29 Several patristic writers reinforced Nimrod’s long-standing association with tyranny. For instance, Jerome (347–420) asserted that “Nimrod the son of Cush was the first to seize tyrannical power [previously] unused, over the people.”30 In his Recognitions, Clement elaborates this picture of Nimrod and his descendants: In the seventeenth generation Nimrod I reigned in Babylonia, and built a city, and thence granted to the Persians, and taught them to worship fire. In the nineteenth generation the descendants of him who had been cursed after the flood [Ham], going beyond their proper bounds which they had obtained by lot in the western regions, drove into the eastern lands those who had obtained the middle portion of the world . . . while themselves violently took possession of the country from which they expelled [its inhabitants].31

For Clement, Nimrod is associated with city building and idolatry, and his descendants are said to emulate the tyrannous behavior for which he became notorious. Clement charged Nimrod with opposition to God’s plan for postdiluvian dispersion, an accusation that would become a leitmotif in the history of biblical interpretation.32 Patristic interpreters assigned Nimrod symbolic as well as historical significance. His legendary role as hunter, tower builder, and tyrant made him a consummate symbol of human pride and rebellion.33 In time, Nimrod came to represent “an excessive attachment to earthly things, a noble but ill-directed ambition, since its objective was not God but





human goods.”34 Meanwhile, despite his legendary connection with Babylon, Nimrod’s descent from Ham through Cush led patristic authors to regard him as an African. Some claimed that “in Hebrew Chus means Aethiops,” others that “Nembroth means Aethiops.” In both cases, Nimrod and his tower were Africanized through association with Ham. The combination of spiritual and genealogical attributes that tradition ascribed to Nimrod led Ambrose to conclude that he was a personification of humanity’s dark side: “Forced by his nature to live and act more like an animal than a creature of reason, Nimrod is an image of the guilty soul, ‘Ethiopian, enemy of the light, deprived of brightness.’”35 The legend of Nimrod continued to evolve during the Christian Middle Ages. Nimrod was increasingly associated with hidden knowledge, being credited with composing a prophecy to inform the Magi of Jesus’ birth, unlocking the mysteries of the stars, and mastering the knowledge of statecraft.36 “The revelation of Nimrod” was thought to be a Christian messianic prophecy, the knowledge of which brought the Magi to Bethlehem.37 Furthermore, one medieval tradition connected Nimrod with the mysterious fourth son of Noah, Yonton (Jonathan), who, the story goes, traveled to the east and encountered Nimrod.38 There he taught the giant-king oracular wisdom and astronomy. By the sixth century, Nimrod had become an astronomer, “and an astronomer he remained to the men of the Middle Ages.” As evidence of this, a medieval manuscript features a drawing of Atlas and Nimrod, the two kings “whom classical and oriental tradition respectively make the founders of astronomy.” According to the manuscript, “Atlas is depicted standing on the Pyrenees and bearing on his shoulders the firmament with its stars, while Nimrod stands on the mountain of the Amorites and looks upward while he supports in his hands the heavens without stars.”39 Beyond the above depictions, literature did not forget Nimrod. For example, the aspects of Nimrod’s evolving legend transmitted by Alighieri Dante are his giant stature, his tyranny over humanity, and his responsibility for the confusion of language at Babel. Dante discovers Nimrod in the region of hell inhabited by the giants of myth and legend and describes him in terrible detail.40 From the thirteenth century onward, negative perspectives on Nimrod dominated discussions devoted to the “hunter of men.” For instance, as Dorothy Farasani briefly notes in her contribution to this volume, this perspective on Nimrod penetrated the thought of such notable figures of the Reformation as Luther. And, this perspective continued into the modern period of religious and theological thought. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, scholars argued that Nimrod was the prototypical tyrant who invented idolatry and built a city and tower, around which he organized an expansionist empire.41 According to Matthew Henry, Nimrod was first a usurper: “Nimrod was



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a violent invader of his neighbor’s rights and properties, and a persecutor of innocent men, carrying all before him, and endeavoring to make all his own by force and violence.” Second, he was an idolater. Like Jeroboam, Nimrod set up idolatry to consolidate his dominion. “That he might set up a new government, he set up a new religion upon the ruin of the primitive constitution of both.” Third, he was a hunter against the Lord: “He carried on his oppression and violence in defiance of God . . . as if he and his huntsmen could out brave the Almighty.” Fourth, he was a political sovereign. He laid “the foundations of a monarchy, which was afterwards a head of gold, and the terror of the mighty, and bade fair to be universal. . . . See the antiquity of civil government, and particularly that form of it which lodges the sovereignty in a single person.” Fifth, he was a cunning builder. Nimrod was most likely the architect of Babel. When his project to rule the Noahides failed in the confusion of tongues, Nimrod left and built Ninevah. Sixth, he was an object lesson in human ambition: From Nimrod we learn that ambition is boundless, restless, expensive, and daring. Finally, he was regarded as a rebel: “Nimrod’s name signifies rebellion, which (if indeed he did abuse his power to the oppression of his neighbors) teaches us that tyrants to men are rebels to God, and their rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.’’42 The above negative interpretation of Nimrod was taken further and applied to black people. It was argued that Nimrod was black for three reasons. First, his grandfather Ham was the first African. Second, his father Cush was the ancestor of Ethiopians. Third, he personifies human nature’s darker side.43 Accordingly, all black people were seen as the descendants of Ham/Nimrod and were thus also cursed. This line of interpretation has caused serious harm.

Nimrod and the Oppression of Africans Although the curse on Ham and, by implication, on his grandson Nimrod has been directly used to oppress modern-day blacks in South Africa, there are several issues arising from the stories of Ham/Nimrod, which have been ignored by those who justified the contemporary oppression of South African blacks. From an ethnic point of view there are several inaccuracies in the groupings of the story. First, Genesis 10 lists Elam as a son of Shem. But the Elamites, who lived in present-day Iran or Persia, were not Semites by race.44 “Elam” was a non-Semitic and yet is said to be a son of Shem (v. 22).45 Second, there is no uniform tradition as far as the three sons of Noah are concerned. In 9:18 the sons are listed as Shem, Ham, and Japheth. This is also the order in Genesis 10. But the story of Noah’s curse seems to suggest that Canaan is one of Noah’s sons, because in 9:25





Shem and Japheth are called his brothers. Another problem is that verse 24 speaks of Canaan as the youngest of Noah’s sons. This is clearly in conflict with the genealogy where Ham, who in verse 22 is termed the father of Canaan, is the second son. An additional problem concerns the person to whom the curse is addressed. The curses and blessings in verses 25–27 are directed against Canaan, but, according to verse 22, it is Ham the father of Canaan who did the shameful deed. The question that scholars who have advocated segregation and oppression of black people based on Noah’s curse fail to ask is this: Why would both the son and the grandson (Nimrod) be cursed for what the father did? Or conversely, if Canaan was the perpetrator of the shameful act, why should his father be cursed?46 Third, among Cush’s children, there is a clear classification of the Canaanites with the nations of Africa. However, the Canaanites were as Semitic as the Hebrews, living in the same land and speaking the same Semitic dialect.47 Fourth, there are duplications in the story (Gen. 10). “Havilah” and “Sheba,” for example, occur both in the Hamite and Shemite divisions (vv. 7 and 28–29).48 Alternative recommendations have been offered, but not widely received.49 Let it suffice to say at this point that the focus of the table is ethnogeography, as shown by the recurring emphasis on the boundaries of each division’s “nations” (vv. 5, 19, 30, 32), not languages or ethnicity.50 Gunther Wittenberg argued that the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth do not represent ethnic groups or races, but a social and political system. Fifth, certain scholars consider the Curse of Ham narrative as an etiological explanation of the enmity between the Israelites and the Canaanites. “Here undoubtedly is the source of the curse on Canaan in the story,” Gibson notes. “It,” he continues, “reflects the threat which Canaanite religion with its sexual emphasis presented to the purity of Israel’s faith.”51 The sixth observation, not based on ethnic groupings, is that, according to Genesis 9:18–27, Noah carries no blame for his actions leading to the Curse of Ham. Scholars abiding by the traditional depiction of Ham and his descendents have not asked an important question: Why should the focus of blame in this text be so much on Ham and not on Noah, whose distasteful misbehavior exposed his youngest son to such shocking behavior (9:24)? From the above discussion, it follows that one cannot reasonably justify the oppression of black people on the basis that Genesis 9 and 10 support it. The above discussion has shown that there are clear literary problems with both Genesis 9:18–29 and Genesis 10, based on contradictions and inconsistencies. Wittenberg has argued convincingly that the table of nations is an artificial composition in a genealogical pattern reflecting no reality in any historical period. That is to say, “the genealogy of Noah pretends to embrace the entire pre-Israelite world and its population, but at the same time, the ethno-geographical map which emerges from this enumeration of countries and nations cannot be assigned to any



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Nimrod’s Achievements Reconsidered Despite the fact that scholars have generally tarnished the image of Nimrod as a cursed descendant of Ham and uncritically applied this curse on black people, we are able to make the following observations from our study of the text (Gen. 10:8–12). It is important to note that, contra what several scholars assert, the biblical text in question does not view Nimrod in a negative way at all. Rather, it points to a very positive picture of his achievements. First, Nimrod is described in Genesis 10:8 not as a dictator, as his detractors have maintained, but as a mighty warrior on earth—one responsible for an expansive region. The biblical Nimrod is the first powerful king on earth; the first cities of his kingdom were the famous Babylon, Erech, and Accad in Babylonia, and Nineveh and Calah in Assyria (v. 10). Nimrod was the hero-founder of the great Eastern empires that threatened Israel during much of its existence.53 The extent of his kingdom is reported (10:10–12). There are first the cities “in Shinar” (v. 10). “Shinar,” or “the land of Shinar” (11:2; “Babylonia,” Dan 1:2; Zech 5:11), includes at least the region of Babylonia known in antiquity as “Sumer and Akkad.”54 From Shinar, Nimrod went to Assyria, the country on the east of the Tigris, and there he built four cities, or probably a large imperial city composed of the four cities.55 In this way, Genesis 10:11 describes the expansion of Nimrod’s influence into the region of Assyria (Heb. àssûr; Akk. assûr).56 Nineveh is listed first (of the four) as the most prominent city of the large region dominated by Nimrod. It is located on the east bank of the upper Tigris River opposite the city Mosul (northern Iraq). Much later it became central to the neoAssyrian Empire of the eighth and seventh centuries that so grievously impacted the political history of Israel and Judah and was the focus of the prophetic ministries of Jonah and Nahum. Also noted are Rehoboth Ir, Calah, and Resen. Calah (Akk. Kalkhu) is well known to us as modern Nimrud, located about twenty miles south of Nineveh. Resen, however, is known only from the description “between Nineveh and Calah.”57 Furthermore, he is described in Genesis 10:9 as a mighty hunter before the Lord. Nimrod is not described here as a rebel but as having hunting skills superseding those of the descendants of Shem and Japheth.



historical period.”52 If all who portrayed Nimrod in a negative light based on Noah’s curse had considered some of the issues raised above, they might have reconsidered their interpretations. Having discussed how Nimrod has been negatively portrayed in scholarly debates, we will go on, in the next section, to look at his achievements as a way of giving him a positive assessment.


In this way, his abilities are linked to a trait found commonly in Assyrian kings.58 The association of “mighty warrior” (v. 8) with the prowess of the hunt (“mighty hunter,” v. 9) also reflects the early traditions of Egyptian and Mesopotamian kings famous for this practice. In both expressions, gibbpr (“mighty”) refers to the strength of Nimrod as a champion warrior, a person who makes himself renowned for bold and daring deeds. Usually the term occurs in the context of military achievements (e.g., Josh 10:2; Amos 2:14, 16).59 Some scholars have interpreted the proverb “Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord” to mean that God disapproved of Nimrod’s hunting skills. Other scholars argue that the phrase “before the Lord” carries the suggestion not that God approved of what Nimrod did, but that in his providence he permitted it.60 However, I am of the view that it should best be taken as God’s favor toward Nimrod, as there is no reference in this text that God is indeed displeased with Nimrod’s hunting skills. Third, contra Reformation and Renaissance scholars, Genesis 10 does not suggest any biological link between the Curse of Ham and Nimrod’s achievements. Furthermore, as a matter of scholarly concern, there is a need to critique Noah’s actions leading to the alleged curse. The Hebrew text suggests that Noah deliberately uncovered himself in a shameful manner. Some excuse Noah by suggesting that the new atmospheric conditions of the earth since the Flood would lead to the fermentation of wine, and that Noah did not fully know what he was doing.61 Nevertheless, Noah cannot “walk away” without taking responsibility for his actions. Yet, as the story goes, instead of taking full responsibility for his behavior, he cursed Ham, his youngest son, for reacting to his father’s distasteful behavior. Even if one considers the curse plausible, Nimrod defies the odds of his curse through hard work, persistence, resistance, and determination. He can be understood as someone who struggled against the vengeful “bad wishes” of his great grandfather, Noah, who “cursed” Ham and his descendants to become slaves. Jamieson could not agree more, when he said that Nimrod distinguished himself by his daring and successful prowess in hunting wild beasts. By those useful services he earned a title to public gratitude; and, having established a permanent ascendancy over the people, he founded the first kingdom in the world [Gen. 10:10].62

Viewed this way, one might assume God sided with Nimrod in enabling him to achieve the abovementioned successes in contravention of an earlier curse on his grandfather by Noah. If Nimrod is to be called a rebel, his rebellious acts should be seen against the unjust distribution and curse against his grandfather, Ham. In



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other words, Nimrod rebels against Noah’s curse on him by reestablishing himself before the Lord as a skillful ruler, mighty hunter, and a builder.

The biblical accounts of Ham and Nimrod have been used not only to deny black people their basic human rights but also to undermine their views and intelligence. As cursed descendants of Ham, people of African descent were to be slaves of their white masters. However, by reexamining the story of Nimrod, we see someone who has struggled against the odds of this alleged curse to become a successful individual in his own right. Nimrod defies the odds to become a great hunter, ruler, and builder. Nimrod did not allow the “curse” to become a stumbling block on his way toward his destiny of success in career. Like Nimrod, the cursed blacks of South Africans have had to struggle against the odds to achieve their educational, economic, and political rights. The South Africans at home and abroad have fought oppression—rejecting biblical justification for their suffering.

Notes 1. K. A. Mathews, Vol. 1A: Genesis 1–11:26 (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; K. A. Mathews, The New American Commentary (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2001), 439; R. Jamieson, A. R. Fausset, and D. Brown, A Commentary, Critical and Explanatory, on the Old and New Testaments. On Spine: Critical and Explanatory Commentary (Oak Harbor, OH: Logos Research Systems, 1997). 2. H. L. Willmington, Willmington’s Bible Handbook (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1997), 13. 3. C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, Vol. 1 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002), 107; Willmington, Willmington’s Bible Handbook, 13; J. C. Laney and R. B. Hughes, Tyndale Concise Bible Commentary, rev. edition of The New Bible Companion (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2001), 14; Mathews, New American Commentary, 458. 4. L. Richards, The Bible Reader’s Companion (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1991), 31. 5. J. C. L. Gibson, Genesis: The Daily Study Bible Series, Vol. 1 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 201. 6. Keil and Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, 102. 7. Mathews, New American Commentary, 431, 442; Gibson, Genesis, 201; Keil and Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, 104; Laney and Hughes, Tyndale Concise Bible Commentary, 14; Jamieson et al., Commentary, Critical and Explanatory. 8. Laney and Hughes, Tyndale Concise Bible Commentary, 14. 9. Ibid.; Gibson, Genesis, 201; Mathews, New American Commentary, 431; Keil and Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, 104.



Conclusion


10. Keil and Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, 104. 11. Sarna observes that three are of North Africa, and the fourth is the land bridge (Canaan) connecting Africa with Asia. 12. Mathews, New American Commentary, 443; Jamieson et al., Commentary, Critical and Explanatory; D. A. Carson, New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition (Leicester, UK: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994). 13. Mathews, New American Commentary, 443. 14. Stephen Haynes, Noah’s Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 42. 15. Ibid., 42ff.; Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, Vol.1 (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1968), 174–180. 16. Ibid., 43. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 179. 20. Haynes, Noah’s Curse, 44; Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 180. 21. Haynes, Noah’s Curse, 44. 22. Ibid., 45ff. 23. Augustine, City of God, XVI:3 in A Selected Library of the Nicene and Postnicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 8 vols., ed. Philip Schaff (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1955). 24. James L. Kugel, The Bible as It Was (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 128. 25. Ibid., 578. 26. Haynes, Noah’s Curse, 46. 27. Augustine, City of God, XVI: 3. 28. Ibid. 29. Haynes, Noah’s Curse, 46; Augustine, City of God, XVI: 3. 30. Haynes, Noah’s Curse, 47. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid., 48. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid.; Stephen Gero, “The Legend of the Fourth Son of Noah,” Harvard Theological Review 73 (1980): 321–330. 38. Gero, “The Legend,” 321–330. 39. Haynes, Noah’s Curse, 49. 40. Ibid., 49ff. 41. Ibid., 57. 42. Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996), 76–77; Haynes, Noah’s Curse, 57. 43. Haynes, Noah’s Curse, 60–61. 44. Gibson, Genesis, 201. 45. Mathews, New American Commentary, 434. 46. Gunther Wittenberg, “ ‘Let Canaan Be His Slave’ (Gen. 9:26) Is Ham also Cursed?” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa (1991): 48. 47. Gibson, Genesis, 201; Mathews, New American Commentary, 434.



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48. Mathews, New American Commentary, 434. 49. B. Oded, “The Table of Nations (Gen. 10)—A Sociocultural Approach,” ZAW 98, 1986: 31. Oded proposes that the three divisions originally represented types of communities: mariners (Japheth), nomadic peoples (Shem), and agricultural-urban societies (Ham); but later changes occurred that “do not fit into the author’s original intention, thus obscuring the basic pattern and hampering our correct interpretation of the text.” 50. Mathews, New American Commentary, 434. 51. Gibson, Genesis, 201. 52. Wittenberg, “Let Canaan Be His Slave,” 51. 53. Clifford, Nimrod, 1985; J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck, Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1983), 43. 54. Mathews, New American Commentary, 450. 55. Keil and Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, 105–106; Mathews, New American Commentary, 450. 56. Mathews, New American Commentary, 450. The expected syntax would read Asshur as the subject; thus, “Asshur went out and built,” but the syntax permits Nimrod as the subject (“he”) that best fits the flow of the narrative description whereby Nimrod moves “from that land,” namely, Shinar, to the new region of Assyria. This tradition is reflected in the eighth-century prophet Micah, who speaks of Assyria as “the land of Nimrod” (5:6). 57. Mathews, New American Commentary, 450; Keil and Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, 105–106. 58. Walvoord and Zuck, Bible Knowledge Commentary, 43. 59. Mathews, New American Commentary, 448; Keil and Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, 104–105. 60. Gibson, Genesis, 203; R. J. Clifford, “Nimrod,” in Harper’s Bible Dictionary, ed. Paul J. Achtemeier (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1985). 61. See Warren Wiersbe, Wiersbe’s Expository Outlines on the Old Testament (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1993). 62. Jamieson et al., Commentary, Critical and Explanatory.







8

Nimrod and Dead Prez: Walking Like a Warrior Ralph C. Watkins

The characteristics present in the Nimrod account provide a biblical vocabulary and grammar for theological exploration of the work of rap artists. This is to say, the study of Nimrod as a work of human creativity is important in that it provides a way of exploring rap music, in the tradition of biblical drama, as religious and theological vocabulary for current circumstances. To this end we bring the Nimrod account in conversation with a particular rap tradition and rap group. The Nimrod account is put in dialogue with the tradition of politically conscious rap music, particularly the rap group Dead Prez. This exploration is meant to reverse the hermeneutical flow in such a way that Dead Prez’s lyrics and life situation as artists and young African American males is used to unpack the Nimrod story. The life circumstances of Dead Prez will shed light on the biblical drama as we see the ways in which both Nimrod and Dead Prez are despised characters of ingenuity. The use of Dead Prez’s narrative to unravel the Nimrod story will be the basis for a metanarrative that expands our understanding of the biblical narrative.

Methodological Considerations The interpretive tool of reversing the hermeneutical flow as Larry Kreitzer suggests in his work will be central in the development of this exploration.1 Kreitzer has developed a model of biblical interpretation that moves from popular culture back to the biblical text. It is Kreitzer’s contention that biblical themes as explored in popular culture, when put in dialogue with the biblical text, adds new life to biblical stories. The



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movement from sacred text to popular cultural narrative as a tool for biblical scholarship has great promise in making our work relevant in the world of hip hop. Moreover, when this methodological tool of reversing the hermeneutical flow is partnered with the cultural studies approach to understanding scripture, we have a loop of inclusion. According to Brian Blount, “the cultural studies interpreter wants to know how contemporary cultures interact with each other and with texts and, more to my own investigative point, how contemporary cultures invest themselves, their agendas, their interests, and their presuppositions into their reading process.”2 The cultural studies interpreter is concerned with how readers make meaning of the text as it applies to their lives: How are readers interacting with the text? How does the reader make the text or biblical narrative their own as they attempt to make meaning and gain understanding? It is taken for granted by the cultural studies interpreter that readers come to the biblical text as an ideologically positioned reader. Blount puts it this way: for the cultural studies reader the text is neither mean nor medium; it is a construction that takes shape when an ideologically positioned reader, with or without an equally positioned methodology, engages the meaning potential of the text. Because this reader is always ideologically situated, the meaning she constructs from that potential will always be ideologically conditioned. The end result is a democratization of the interpretative process.3

The democratization of the interpretive process is realized through my use of Dead Prez and their lyrics as an interpretive lens for the Nimrod narrative. The Nimrod narrative is put on par with the rhymes and life circumstances of Dead Prez, as Dead Prez becomes the ideologically positioned reader. (I take liberties as an interpreter of Dead Prez to suggest how I hear them speaking back to the biblical text as reader.)

Positioning the Reader Dead Prez is doing the work of nation building in the tradition of black nationalism, while extending the traditional notions of black nationalism in the form of neo-black nationalism, or what S. Craig Watkins calls hip hop nationalism. Watkins argues that the neo-black nationalism in hip hop is unmistakably market driven, it is indicative of the ever evolving relationship between black Americans and racial capitalism. The exuberant commodification of black nation discourse points, in numerous ways,



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Dead Prez has benefited from our media-saturated culture and the commodification of blackness. The group has positioned itself and its followers as oppositional to the selling of soul, while directly benefiting from the market as critics and proponents of a neo–hip hop black nationalism. This is a paradox, one that Joan Morgan notes: “We are the first generation to grow up with all the benefits of Civil Rights (i.e., Affirmative Action, government-subsidized education and social programs) and the first to lose them. The first to have the devastation of AIDS, crack, and black on black violence makes it feel a blessing to reach twenty-five.”5 The tension of being a nation builder while resisting a system of oppression is operative in their music and this tension will be worked out in concert with the biblical narrative we find in the Nimrod story. According to George Smith we find that Nimrod was a “son of Cush,” that is a Cushite, or Ethiopian, and he distinguished himself as a mighty hunter. He afterwards became king, commencing his reign in Shinar or Babylonia, and still later extending his empire into Assyria, where he laid the foundations of that state by the foundation of the four leading cities, Nineveh, Calah, Rehobothair, and Resen. The fame of Nimrod is again alluded to in the Bible, where Assyria is called the land of Nimrod.6

Nimrod’s legend became proverb. Great warriors of conquest were referred to as being like Nimrod or were labeled referencing the work of the warrior/nation builder. Some take this renown even further. For example, in his book The Two Babylons or The Papal Worship Proved to be The Worship of Nimrod and His Wife, Alexander Hislop argues that Nimrod and his wife became the objects of worship. According to Hislop, Nimrod was deified and seen as the father of gods, although I would argue that Nimrod was a human, an outstanding and gifted one at that.7

Are We Children of Nimrod? Are the Dead Prez members, and the hip hop generation in general, children of Nimrod? Is this group, like Nimrod, fighting to establish a nation? Are both warriors? Will Dead Prez become legendary freedom fighters? These questions will guide us as we tease out the truth in the narratives we explore. Dead Prez is composed of two young African American males, M-1 and Stic.man. M-1 was born in Carendon, Jamaica, but he spent his early



to the inventive ways black cultural producers maneuver to exploit emergent fissures in a media-saturated economy, shifts in black racial consciousness, and the wider participation of blacks in consumer culture.4

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years with his family in Brooklyn’s Albany housing project. His family later moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, where he spent the majority of his teenage years. His father was a teacher and his mother worked odd jobs. He applied and was admitted to Tallahassee’s Florida A & M University in 1990; it was here that he met Stic.man. Stic.man is a Florida native who grew up in Shadeville, Florida. His mother ran a salon and his father was an electrician. When M-1 and Stic.man met, they realized that they shared black nationalist beliefs and were active in political organizations.8 For example, they were cofounders of the Black Survival Movement in 1992 while also being members of the National People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement. After being an active part of these and other organizations, the two made a decision to leave Tallahassee and move to New York. It was in New York that they began to develop their rap “thang.” The members of Dead Prez see themselves as warriors similar to Nimrod, who was a hunter and great warrior. As young African American males in the late twentieth, and at the beginning of the twenty-first century, M-1 and Stic.man were raised in war zones, they were raised to be warriors. The war zones they were raised in were the wastelands of the inner city. Work disappeared, the middle class escaped, and they saw their people fighting to survive.9 They grew up in a time of war as they saw their civil rights being attacked. Their struggle became commodified as the image of poverty and the ghetto became a hot selling item. Children who are raised to be warriors in a time of war have similar life questions—questions of existence, life expectancy, the role of God in their lives, and other such issues. The God of the nation sanctions the role of the warrior because warriors see themselves fighting for their people, who are also the people of their God. Dead Prez, like Nimrod, marks its prowess through control of the existential situation confronting them— through dominance. In his poem “Nimrod,” Jay G. Williams raises the question: And as for Nimrod Are not all of us, By birthright His children? Do not we all Bear his Name?10

Dead Prez deals with the dress, walk, talk, and psychoemotional state of the warrior. The group takes us through a maze of emotions and relationships that are central to understanding the complexities of being a warrior. Their picture of the warrior, rebel figure sheds light on the



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biblical text and positions them as readers exercising the posture of the sociotheologian. Robert Beckford says of theology, “Theology is essentially God-talk— an attempt to express the meaning of God in the world. However, theology is never value-free or neutral: because it is human, our language, motives and ambitions affect its expressions . . . theology tells us as much about God as it does about humans beings who are writing about God.”11 Related to this, Dead Prez is not involved in value-free theology; rather, theology is presented as informed by life background and context. Doing theology is intentional work on the part of rappers or emcees. Stic.man makes this clear in his book, The Art of the Emcee: An emcee is a creator, innovator, communicator, orator, translator, teacher, visionary, representative, thinker, convincer, speaker, story teller, messenger, poet, griot, a writer, master of ceremonies, historian, leader, reporter, a vocal instrument, philosopher, fan, an observer, a student, therapist, social analyst, evangelist, a minister, a professor, sales person, motivator, mack, charmer, host, and artist all in one!12

For Stic.man the role of the rapper includes that of philosopher and minister, the ones who do the deep thinking and theological reflection. Anthony Pinn speaks to this mode of theologizing: Theology is a deliberate or self-conscious human construction focused upon uncovering and exploring the meaning of religious experience within the larger body of cultural production. It is, by nature, comparative in a way that does not seek to denounce or destructively handle other traditions. Conceived in this way, African American theology’s only obligation, then, is the uncovering of meaning and the providing of responses to the questions of life that explain experience, assess existing symbols and categories, and allow for healthy existence.13

Dead Prez, in keeping with the framing of theology offered by Beckford and Pinn, focuses on uncovering the religious and spiritual sensibilities of young African Americans—asking questions related to ultimate concerns within their particular context.

The Walk of the Warrior Dead Prez, the self-defined black male warriors, resonate with the legendary Cushite warrior, and there is an attraction to such figures in their work. Yet, Nimrod was not only a warrior but was also considered a rebel in that he went against a system to build an alternate system. According to Allen P. Ross in his commentary on Genesis, the name Nimrod is




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“connected with the verb ‘to rebel’ (marad).”14 The connection to the meaning of the name and the legend of his great conquest begins to shed light on the Nimrod character. The word rebel is not to be thought of in a negative sense, especially in this work. I see the word “rebel” as positive, as pointing to useful attributes and characteristics. Nimrod is rebelling and simultaneously building a nation. In their lyrics, posture and thought, Dead Prez style themselves rebellious against an oppressive system while simultaneously trying to build a new arrangement of relationships that benefit the African Diaspora. By looking at Dead Prez and Nimrod, we see the quandary in which rebel warriors finds themselves. They are both a part of and apart from the very nation they fight. As much as Nimrod is rebelling, he is yet building a nation that, in many ways, has the potential to become a tool of the very oppressive forces against which he fights. Dead Prez sees the first act of the warrior as one of self-definition in the context of sociotheological struggle. Who is the warrior? For whom and for what does the warrior fight? In the case of Dead Prez, the group’s identity and struggle has been sold on the open market. The task, then, is to reclaim authority over that identity and engage in the construction and reconstruction of their “being.” Furthermore, the identity of the warrior is countercultural—forged in struggle against a system in order to develop a more livable system of relationships. The members of Dead Prez define themselves as gangsta types of characters. And, from the group’s perspective, gangsta is a synonym for warrior or rebel. A gangsta, as defined by Dead Prez, is a person who is organized and prepared to be a part of the struggle. To be a part of the struggle or be a warrior is not a fly-by-night commitment. It is about order and organization. One could argue that for Nimrod the same had to be true. The life of Nimrod as an outstanding warrior was one of commitment. The warrior is one who is both admired and unpopular. The warrior lives by a different set of rules. The rule of violence as a way of life is the key to being a good warrior/gangsta. As we think about Nimrod we can see in him this struggle as well. Nimrod has historically been portrayed as being against God, but if one were to query Nimrod on this question what would he say? Would he be on the side of his God? Rebel warriors are also nation builders: they must fight against the God of the nation they intend to topple. Those who lead the nation, that is the enemy of the rebel warrior, will write a history that presents the rebel warrior as opposed to their God, but the rebel warrior is under the guidance of a spiritual force. We get a glimpse into the mind of the warrior as we continue to put Dead Prez in dialogue with Nimrod. They help us understand what may have been the musings of Nimrod. The warrior sees his world as one that was created and sustained through war. As sociotheologians, Dead Prez make sense of their world as a violent reality. They see themselves and those like them as being under attack. They loudly and boldly complain



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that life is hell. For them, a life of struggle takes one to the deepest exploration of truth. The group’s utterances are affirmed by the community of warriors—those caught in the struggle. Rap becomes sacred text that has spiritual, theological, and philosophical meaning. Their worship sites are concert halls, street corners, and cars as they bounce to the beat and repeat the rhymes. The song Walk Like a Warrior, for instance, is a sacred hymn in the struggle for black life in the context of the hip hop generation. Dead Prez uses its cultural lens to make theological sense of the biblical character Nimrod in the context of working-class African American community: Walk Like a Warrior I was trained to defend myself for my brain and my mental health The white man got the wealth he held back We’re living in hell black and niggaz can sell crack But that ain’t gonna change this thang15

The members of Dead Prez, like Nimrod, are trained capable warriors. The warrior lives his life in the struggle. His legend is made via his conquest. People tell and retell the stories of the warrior. They repeat these stories, and they become legend. In this context the repeating of the raps in the context of the community spread the lore of Dead Prez. The repeating of these stories is exactly what happened in the context of Nimrod. The story and legend of Nimrod was so well known that the lost written record was outlived by the stories that were told and retold orally. The warrior, the hunter is remembered. The hunter enjoys the hunt and dreams of the kill. Jay G. Williams put it this way as he describes Nimrod: Always, I have I loved the hunt: The dead night wakening To hone the points And check each shaft for Straightness, Before the dawn melts The silence of the eastern sky And the first bright Sparrow of the morning Starts form its hidden refuge16

Dead Prez exposes us to the warrior’s love of war in the songs I Have a Dream, Too and D.O.W.N. In I Have a Dream, Too, the dream involves fighting against the police or state powers that have been identified as enemies. As the song opens with a report of how the police killed an




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innocent young African American male, the stage is set. The song goes on to tell the story of the fight. At the end of the song, it becomes clear that this is not a fairy tale as they list the names of actual slain revolutionaries. They say, “this ain’t just stories you nahmsayin? People like . . .” D.O.W.N. is linked to the previous cut. To be “down” is to be a part of the struggle, in one’s own way. One might not be an actual gun-totting fighter but may be supportive of the cause in other real and tangible ways. The point here is that one is under attack, no matter how down with the struggle or not. As it was in Nimrod’s day, those fought against were not personal enemies but rather enemies of the nation. The legend of Nimrod is wrapped in obscure reference in Genesis. In Genesis we see a testimony to the legend of Nimrod as a mighty warrior. The compilers of Genesis understood that the legend of Nimrod was so well known that a reference to him was sufficient because the story had been told and retold so many times in daily conversation.17 He was a protector of the nation from wild beasts, and the hunt was where he honed his fighting skills. Nimrod led the people into war to defeat one nation and build another. The tragic story of the warrior is full of twists, turns, and contradictions. Yigal Levine points out this tension in his article on Nimrod. Levine paints the picture of a warrior who was as much hated as he was loved. He was as admired as he was loathed.18 Hislop charts beautifully the uniform of Nimrod, down to the last detail including hairstyle and the use of horns on helmets, as important for the legend.19 Nimrod’s powers were linked to his dress. His image is portrayed in graffiti and hieroglyphics in full dress. These visuals are imposing as they symbolize the power of dress for the warrior. The depictions are of a menacing presence that is prepared for battle. For Dead Prez the uniform of the warrior is dominated by three colors of significance in the history of Black Nationalism: red, black, and green. The art of the group’s CD bandanas weaves the three colors together. The red, black, and green wristband is worn on the right wrist as yet another part of the uniform. The first letters of the colors (R,B,G) have at least four different meanings as displayed on the fold-out poster of the CD: Revolutionary but gansta Red Black and Green Real black girls Riders basic guidelines

When warriors don their uniform, they become revolutionaries. They are now ready to engage in battle. The uniform sets them apart from the general public. The reference to Nimrod in Micah 5:6 depicts him with sword drawn ready to deliver. Warriors must not be taken by the distractions of frivolity



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or drunkenness. They must be sober and focused. Dead Prez lifts up sobriety and preparedness on the cut fucked up. The members of Dead Prez share their own struggle with drugs and alcohol while calling warriors to preparedness. In the second verse of the song they say, “I don’ want to be a Gil Scott Heron ya’ll.” They are making a reference to the artist Gil Scott Heron and his struggles with drug addiction as referenced in his famous song The Bottle.20 In fucked up there is a call for the revolutionary to be sober and focused. The image of warrior provided by Dead Prez and the account of Nimrod entails fitness and alertness. The final cut listed on the CD is Way of Life. On this cut, Dead Prez pushes the listener to think about how he/she lives as a warrior intentional about everything from health to spirituality, as well as humble with camaraderie and courtesy.

War in the End is a New Beginning The Nimrod warrior figure resonates with Dead Prez. The group wants to embody the despised warrior figure who conquered one system and built another. We see Nimrod in Dead Prez. We see and hear the warrior. The things Nimrod could not say Dead Prez has eloquently put into rhyme. We hear and see the tension of the warrior as we listen. As we reflect on Genesis 10:8–12, 1 Chronicles 1:10, and Micah 5:6, we get glimpses of Nimrod; however, when we read these in light of Dead Prez’s eleven cuts, we see more clearly who the warrior is and what he represents. We understand his life and story. We see his sociopsychological victories and struggles. We see what he represents to himself and the nation.

Notes 1. L. J. Kreitzer, The Old Testament in Fiction and Film: On Reversing the Hermeneutical Flow (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994). 2. Brian Blount, Can I Get a Witness: Reading Revelation through African American Culture (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005). 3. Ibid., 23. 4. S. Craig Watkins, “Black is Back, and It’s Bound to Sell,” in Eddie Glaude’s Is It Nation Time? Contemporary Essays on Black Power and Black Nationalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 206. 5. Joan Morgan, When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost . . . My Life as a Hip Hop Feminist (New York: Simon & Schuster Press, 1999), 61. 6. George Smith, The Chaldean Account of Genesis: Containing the Description of the Creation, the Fall of Man, the Deluge, the Tower of Babel, the Times of the Patriarchs, and Nimrod: Babylonian Fables, and Legends of the Gods; from the Cuneiform Inscriptions (New York: Scribner, Armstrong and Company, 1876), 175.




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7. Alexander Hislop, The Two Babylons: Or the Papal Worshiped Proved to Be the Worship of Nimrod and His Wife (New York: Loizeaus Brothers Bible Truth Depot, 1944), 32. 8. S. Foster, “Free Agents,” XXL Magazine (2003): 142–146. 9. W. J. Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Knopf, 1996). 10. Jay G. Williams, “Nimrod,” Theology Today 50.1 (April 1993): 117–120. 11. Robert Beckford, Jesus Is Dread: Black Theology and Black Culture in Britain (London: Longman and Todd, 1998), 14. 12. Stic.man, The Art of the Emecee (Atlanta, GA: Boss Up, Inc., 2006), 13. 13. Anthony B. Pinn, Varieties of African American Religious Experience (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1998). 14. J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck, The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1983). 15. Dead Prez, RBG: Revolutionary but Gangta (New York: Sony, 1994). 16. Williams, “Nimrod,” 117. 17. Y. Levin, “Nimrod the Mighty, King of Kish, King of Sumer and Akkad,” Vetus testamentum 52.3 (2002): 350–366. 18. Ibid., 358. 19. Hislop, Two Babylons, 32–35. 20. Gil Scott-Heron, Winter in America (New York: Strata-East Records, 1974).



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Nimrod and the South African Context* Dorothy M. Farisani

The stories of Ham and Nimrod have been used to oppress black people in South Africa. This chapter seeks to reclaim the value and honor of the figure of Nimrod. This will be done in the following three stages. First, a brief description of how Ham’s curse has been negatively interpreted throughout history to include the curse of black people will be provided. Second, there will be a discussion of how the law has been used to curse black people in South Africa. Third, there will be an examination of how the law has been used to restore the honor and dignity of black people in South Africa.

Negative Interpretation of Noah’s Curse Nimrod is the great grandson of Noah and the grandson of Ham. Noah had three sons: Shem, Japheth, and Ham. Genesis 9:18–27 tells of the curse of Ham on the one hand and the blessing of Shem and Japheth on the other. The curse upon Ham was not only intended for one person, but also for all the descendants of Ham, including Nimrod. Over the years certain scholars have unashamedly linked the curse on Ham to black people in Africa and the United States. Throughout the history of scripture interpretation, Nimrod has been portrayed in a negative way. Nimrod has been associated with everything that is negative, from being a rebel against God to being a tyrannical ruler. He is seen as a deceiver, oppressor, destroyer, a heretic, and an enemy of the divine plan for humanity. Below are a few examples of these negative interpretations provided as a matter of theological and historical context.



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Augustine translated Genesis 10:9 as stating that “[Nimrod] was a gigantic hunter against the Lord God.”1 This translation had an impact on future translations, particularly when it came to Nimrod’s large size. Such translations referring to Nimrod’s size became an enduring aspect of the interpretive tradition as theologically framed by Augustine.2 Beyond the connotations of his alleged size, Augustine’s claim that Nimrod was a hunter against, rather than before, the Lord implied that Nimrod was an enemy of God.3 Augustine’s perspective held sway over much of the theological insight into Nimrod; it is mirrored in various ways during the major theological/religious movements of the Western world. This is certainly the case during the Reformation. For example, in his Lectures on Genesis, Martin Luther indicates just how, in the Christian imagination, Ham and Nimrod had become closely associated. The line between the two characters seems to disappear when certain significant aspects of Nimrod’s character are ascribed to Ham.4 Luther goes so far as to place Ham in Babylon, where, “together with his descendants, he engages in building a city and a tower.”5 Despite the apparent close association between the two characters, Luther points out the fact that Nimrod acquired power in a tyrannical manner and that as a ruler he caused much affliction.6 Like several church fathers, Luther criticizes Nimrod’s “unjust tyranny on his cousins, whom he expelled from their paternal lands.”7 Luther further condemns the Hamites’ invasion of Shem’s territory under the leadership of Nimrod. This leads to the following negative statement about the Hamites: Even though there is no written record of what they attempted against the true church, against Noah himself, the ruler of the church, and against his pious posterity, it can nevertheless be surmised by analogy if we carefully consider the actions of our opponents at the present time. For Satan, who incites the ungodly against the true church, is always the same.8

Nimrod’s actions thus lead to him being associated with the evil one.9 The writings of scholars such as Augustine and Luther, who have shaped the Western theological tradition, served to frame and provide a language for the negation of Nimrod. The modern period would follow this line of reasoning for the most part, and would extend it to justify oppressive, racial policies.

Links between Ham and Black Oppression in Contemporary Scholarship The argument that Nimrod was black emerged and the reasons put forth were the following: He is connected to Ham and the Ethiopians, and



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represents the worse or “dark” dimensions of humanity.10 It follows, therefore, that all black people, as the descendants of Ham/Nimrod, were also a people of disfavor. This interpretation has impacted very negatively on the lives of black people. James W. C. Pennington attributed the historic degradation of the African people to Nimrod. Pennington contended that although they were descendants of Cush and Mizraim, Africans had strayed too far from the pure religion of Noah. Pennington blames the fact that Nimrod’s posterity worshipped him. The Ethiopians of the second generation did the same. According to Pennington, this became part not only of their theology, but also of their government and literature.11 Pennington further uses the legend of Nimrod to explain idolatry, ancestor worship, heathenism, and immorality among Africans.12 J. W. Sandell, who wrote long after Pennington (in 1907), interpreted Noah’s curse to mean that the African race was “prophetically condemned to an inferior relation to that of Shem and Japheth, was not fit for self-government and should not rule in either church or state.”13 Sandell focuses on Nimrod’s legend and its potential as a biblical rationale for racial segregation. “It is an outrage upon nature,” Sandell writes, “to undertake to force the extremes of the races to equality with each other.”14 This is later reflected in the interpretation of Noah’s curse as meaning that the Negro, as a descendant of Ham, is destined by God to fill permanently a subservient place in society, that he should never be considered an equal by the white man. On the basis of the curse, some even contend that the Negro is innately inferior and that he can never lift himself or be lifted to the intellectual, cultural, or even moral level of other races.15

On the other hand, religious integrationists who wrote in the late 1950s identified Genesis 9:20–27 as a scripture that promotes segregation. For example, G. T. Gillespie16 dwells on the theory that racial separation can be traced back to the period immediately after the Deluge when Noah’s sons “became the progenitors of three distinct racial groups, which were to repeople [sic] and overspread the earth.” According to this theory, the descendants of Shem occupied most of Asia, those of Japheth traveled west toward Europe, and those of Ham moved southward in the direction of the tropics and the continent of Africa.17 Gillespie further states that the confusion of tongues at Babel and the consequent scattering of peoples was “an act of special Divine Providence to frustrate the mistaken efforts of godless people to assure the permanent integration of the peoples of the earth.” He further avers that the development of different languages was an effective means of preserving the



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separate existence of racial groups. Interpretations of this and other biblical texts comprise the heart of Gillespie’s argument that racial segregation is fully compatible with Christianity.18 Kenneth R. Kinney agrees with Gillespie’s reasoning and blames “the disorderly conduct of the Hamitic family for interfering with the orderly line of segregation.”19 According to Kinney the way to ensure that there is order is via segregation. He argues that God’s intention was for the three original groups to maintain their own identities. It follows that the descendants of these three are bound by scripture to do likewise. For that reason, there ought not to be intermarriages between “Japhetic (European), Shemitic (Oriental) and Hamitic (African) groups.” Although Kinney, like Gillespie, does not mention Nimrod by name, he makes reference to Genesis 10:6–9 and 11:1–9, scriptures that have been used to link Nimrod with the rebellion at Babel. The above mentioned scholars interpret Genesis 9–11 in such a way that racial segregation is promoted.20 The portrayal of Nimrod as an African descendant of Ham has had a direct effect on the Africans in the United States and on the African continent. In the United States such an interpretation was used by proslavery theologians and politicians to justify the subjection of black Americans to the slave trade and slavery. In South Africa, it was mainly Genesis 9:18–27 together with Joshua 9:27 that were used to justify the oppression of black people. According to this ideology, black people have the “Curse” of Ham placed upon them because of Ham’s sin against Noah, for which Noah cursed him.21 Joshua 9:27 talks about how Joshua made the Gibeonites “hewers of wood and drawers of water,” and this was used to justify, among other things, job reservation for white people and the subjection of blacks to menial labor.22 In this section I have briefly highlighted the fact that certain scholars have linked the Curse of Ham/Nimrod to the oppression of black people. In the next section, I illustrate how the curse on blacks was actualized in concrete legal terms in South Africa.

The Legal Curse on Black South Africans The Ham/Nimrod curse was used mainly by theologians to justify the racial policies of the government in South Africa. The white minority rule was sustained through a series of legal ordinances that legalized the oppression of black South Africans. These statutes ensured that there was a separation of the race groups on all spheres: geographical, educational, political, social, economical. They effectively separated the black people from the other race groups and hampered their development as a people, while ensuring the advancement of the white minority.



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In terms of the Mines and Works Act,23 black people could be employed only as unskilled and semiskilled laborers in the mines. By requiring certificates of competency for certain positions,24 this act effectively legalized the practice of reserving skilled jobs for white people in the mines. At a later stage, in terms of the Industrial Conciliation Act,25 the minister of labor could reserve certain categories of work for white people. This practice became known as job reservation and in practice it meant that the minister could classify certain jobs as jobs that could be done only by white people, if the minister was of the opinion that the Africans were competing with whites for those particular jobs.26 Such classification usually came with the elevation of wages. Job reservation effectively deprived black South Africans of the chance to be promoted. By limiting black people to jobs requiring none or hardly any skills, the law was used to deprive black people of the opportunity to become skilled workers, thus ensuring that black people remained “hewers of wood and drawers of water.”27 Furthermore, the Native Labor Regulation Act28 made it illegal for black people to renege on their work contracts.29 In this way they were forced to continue doing work for employers who mistreated them and had to endure the low wages they were earning. This act effectively took away the rights of black people to choose whether to stay in the employ of a particular employer or to resign. Another piece of legislation impacting heavily on the rights of black people was the Natives Land Act,30 which prohibited black people from buying or even leasing land from white people, unless this took place in “scheduled native areas.”31 The definition of “native” in the act was wide and included corporate bodies run by black people.32 The act thus limited the black people’s ownership of land and resulted in them occupying less than 8 percent of South Africa’s land, while the white minority remained in control of more than 80 percent of the land. In addition, by means of the Group Areas Act,33 people belonging to different race groups were prohibited from dwelling in the same residential areas. As a result of this act, black people were forcefully removed from areas demarcated for coloreds or whites. The Group Areas Act had a heavy impact on black South Africans as at that time they relied heavily, and in some cases completely, on agriculture for survival. It resulted in many families and communities forfeiting arable lands, thus losing their primary food source. Moreover, they had to move away from their ancestral land, this effectively deprived them of the ability to visit the graves of their loved ones. Areas to which black people were moved were in most cases remote areas that were infertile.34 As a result of these two pieces of legislation, the black people of South Africa effectively lost their land. Noah’s curse meant that Ham and his descendants would be slaves and would be deprived of their land. In the Group Areas Act and the Natives Land Act we see the curse being actualized to the detriment of black South




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Africans, as they were believed to be descendants of Nimrod, hence descendants of Ham. The Natives Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents Act,35 made it compulsory for black people to carry their identification passes or Reference Books at all times.36 Information found in this document included the individual’s names and photograph, place of origin, employment history, and other such details.37 The act prohibited black people living in rural areas from moving to urban areas without permits from the local authorities. It further made it mandatory for them to obtain a permit to look for work in an urban area. The impact of this act on black people was that it subjected them to frequent harassment by the police. The Black Sash referred to these as “harsh and bureaucratic control of the lives of non-White citizens.”38 Reference books had to be produced upon demand; when a black person was unable to produce a Reference Book, it resulted in physical abuse by the police and often imprisonment without trial. In conjunction to this, the Criminal Law Amendment Act39 stated that any person in the company of a person convicted of offenses that were committed in the process of protesting or calling for the repeal of any law would also be presumed guilty and would bear the burden of proving his or her innocence. In a normal society a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty by a competent court of law.40 The statute specifically provided for a reverse onus, whereby the person had to prove his/her innocence instead of the onus being placed on the prosecution to prove the person’s guilt. The Native Labor Settlement of Disputes Act41 was another draconian piece of legislation. It prohibited strike action by black workers, thus making it impossible for them to take part in collective bargaining. They were thus forced to endure their unsatisfactory and often dangerous working conditions and meager wages. The act effectively suppressed the voice of the workers, thus allowing employers to continue exploiting them without fear of possible strike action. These acts made the lives of black South Africans difficult and the oppression was justified by making reference to Genesis 9:18–27 as well as Joshua 9:27. With regard to public facilities, the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act42 was enacted. By means of this act, facilities such as public transport, beaches, parks, public toilets, and the like were separated. The act further stated that there was no need for the facilities to be of equal standards. As a result the facilities for so-called “Non-whites” were normally dilapidated and service provided to them was poor. The effect of the Act was that it restricted interaction between the different race groups and deprived black people of the right to enjoy well-maintained and safe public facilities. The Natives (Prohibition of Interdicts) Act43 took away the right of Africans to approach the courts when they were forcefully removed from one area to another. Recourse to the law was therefore made impossible



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and the people had to simply accept the removal from their fertile and arable lands to dry and distant areas allocated to them by the government. In terms of the Terrorism Act,44 people suspected of terrorism could be detained indefinitely without trial.45 These suspects were almost always Africans, who were openly defiant against the government of the day and its racist policies. Together these pieces of legislation took away black people’s dignity as well as their basic human rights. They further entrenched the notion that whites were superior and strengthened the belief that black people were cursed. It is important to note that although black people in South Africa were, like Nimrod, “cursed” by God, they struggled against the odds and achieved a great deal, to an extent beyond the imagination of those who oppressed them for many years. In protest against Pass Laws it was stated that “passes mean prison; broken homes; suffering and misery for every African family; just another way in which the government makes slaves of the Africans; hunger and unemployment; passes are an insult!”46 Other laws that promoted segregation had similar effects, so the law was used to infringe upon the dignity of black people. The struggle of African people in South Africa eventually led to a peaceful transition of power from the minority to a democratically elected government. In the post-Apartheid era, we see the law being used as an instrument to restore the rights and dignity of black South Africans. The question whether in light of these changes there should be a rereading of the Nimrod/Ham story arises. In an attempt to answer this question a few examples of the new laws will be discussed. In 1993, after negotiations between the government and other political parties, an interim constitution came into being and it was made the Supreme Law of the country.47 The constitution, together with other statutes that were enacted after it, brought about welcome changes. The law was, this time, used by the government to correct the wrongs that had been caused by laws enacted during the era of white minority rule. For the first time, the constitution extended the franchise to all who had reached the age of majority, regardless of their race. It also included the Bill of Rights guaranteeing fundamental human rights. This important legislation was subsequently replaced by the final constitution—Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act.48 Its preamble states, We, the people of South Africa, Recognise the injustices of our past; Honour those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land; Respect those who have worked to build and develop our country; and Believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity.




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Heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights; Lay the foundations for a democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the people and every citizen is equally protected by law; Improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person; and Build a united and democratic South Africa able to take its rightful place as a sovereign state in the family of nations . . .

The wording of the preamble is important in that it shows that black South Africans had finally reached an era in which, like the other racial groups, they would finally enjoy protection of the law especially from inequality and discriminatory behavior by the white minority group. Equality and nondiscriminatory behavior among the different race groups is in conflict with Kinney and Gillespie’s interpretation of the Nimrod/Ham story. Moreover, the negative interpretation of Noah’s curse on Nimrod/Ham does not fit in with the provisions of the Bill of Rights, found in chapter two of the constitution. Among others, the Bill of Rights guarantees the following fundamental human rights: the franchise (s. 19), the right to life (s. 11), the right to equality (s. 9), the right to dignity (s. 10), workers’ right to form and join trade unions (s. 18) and embark in strike action (s. 23), the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty (s. 35) (3) (h), general rights of accused persons and prisoners that prohibit the detention of persons without trial (s. 35). The Bill of Rights contradicts the interpretation that blacks are descendants of Nimrod and ought to remain “hewers of wood and drawers of water.”49 The Bill of Rights protects all South Africans regardless of race. After almost an entire century of oppression the constitution finally made it possible for black people to be able to play an active role in the political arena. No one can legally be deprived of the right to vote on the basis of skin color.50 What is more, the constitution specifically guarantees the right to life. In terms of Section 10 of the constitution, “everyone has inherent dignity and the right to have their dignity respected and protected.” After a stream of statutes that promoted discrimination based on race, the constitution introduced the concept of equality before the law. Black South Africans are to be treated as any other racial group in South Africa. Discrimination is a direct infringement of the constitution and the aggrieved party has recourse to law. In the constitution, the law is used to ensure that all peoples’ right to dignity is respected and not infringed in any way. This is important and, as seen in S versus Makwanyane, the Constitutional Court views the right to dignity as one of the most important human rights.51



We therefore, through our freely elected representatives, adopt this Constitution as the supreme law of the Republic so as to:

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In the Apartheid era, the law had been used to suppress the voice of the workers. Black people had no freedom of association and could not bargain collectively to force employers to improve their working conditions and to give them a living wage. The constitution, the Labor Relations Act and the Basic Conditions of Employment Act brought about changes that had far reaching consequences in the labor sphere. The employment conditions of unskilled and semiskilled workers were finally regulated by statute and this included minimum leave entitlements and maximum working hours. Discrimination in the workplace based on race is also an issue addressed by the current legislation. Of importance is the Employment Equity Act52 that “aims at promoting equity in the workplace by eliminating unfair discrimination and implementing affirmative action programs and policies.”53 The preamble of the Employment Equity Act makes reference to the unjust laws of the past and their effect on labor: “as a result of apartheid and other discriminatory laws and practices, there are disparities in employment, occupation and income within the national labor market; and that those disparities create such pronounced disadvantages for certain categories of people.”54 It further states its aims that include ensuring “the implementation of employment equity to redress the effects of discrimination.”55 The introduction of equity laws/affirmative action is thus intended to reverse the damage caused by laws such as those that introduced and promoted job reservation for Whites. These are temporary measures by the government to see to it that properly qualified black people56 are given the opportunity to hold professional positions that in the past they could not hold. In the work sphere, relationships between employers and employees are regulated by the Labor Relations Act.57 The act regulates both individual labor law (the relationship between the individual employee and the employer) and collective labor law. Unlike in the past, all employees have the right to freely enter into and out of employment contracts. In terms of the Labor Relations Act, employees are able to resign and move to “greener pastures,” provided that they give notice of resignation and serve their notice period as per employment contract. This is a far cry from the time when Africans could not cancel their employment contracts. The constitution together with the Labor Relations Act allows employees to take part in collective bargaining and grants them the right to strike. In this way the law is used to ensure that rights that had been taken away from Africans are restored. Finally Africans could collectively bargain with the powerful and mainly White employers to force them to improve their wages and working conditions. The Labor Relations Act differentiates between a protected and an unprotected strike; therefore, the trade unions have a responsibility of making sure that their collective




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action is protected so as to avoid the possibility of job losses. The constitution provides that “A person or community dispossessed of property after 19 June 1913 as a result of past racially discriminatory laws or practices is entitled, to the extent provided by an Act of Parliament, either to restitution of that property or to equitable redress” [s. 25 (7)]. The Restitution of Land Rights Act58 as amended by the Land Restitution and Reform Laws Amendment Act,59 allows communities/families to reclaim land from which their communities/families/ancestors were forcefully removed under Apartheid laws. They must be able to prove that the lands originally belonged to them and their claims have to be first verified before any order regarding the land can be made. Although it is a lengthy and difficult process, the fact is that the government is making an effort to restore to black people property that rightfully belongs to them. Although the new laws mentioned above have no direct reference to Nimrod, they are meant to address the imbalances and injustices brought about by the application of the negative interpretation of Nimrod on black people in South Africa. Biblical scholars have argued that Ham’s curse affects both Nimrod and black people. Nimrod fought against the odds and triumphed as a mighty warrior, skillful ruler, hunter, and builder. Similarly, black people of South Africa fought against Apartheid and this eventually led to the abolition of oppressive laws.

Notes *

Dr. Elelwani Farisani’s assistance with accessing and understanding relevant theological literature is acknowledged.

1. St. Augustine, City of God, XVI:3 in A Selected Library of the Nicene and PostNicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 8 vols., ed. Philip Schaff (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1955). 2. Stephen Haynes, Noah’s Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 46. 3. St. Augustine, City of God, XVI:3 4. Haynes, Noah’s Curse, 50ff. 5. Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis, in Martin Luther’s Works, 55 vols., ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1955), ch. IX, 175. 6. Ibid., 210. 7. Ibid., 212. 8. Ibid., 219. 9. Haynes, Noah’s Curse, 51. 10. Ibid., 60–61. 11. James W. C. Pennington, A Text Book of the Origin and History of the Colored People (Hartford, CT: L. Skinner, 1841), 32; Haynes, Noah’s Curse, 111. 12. Pennington, Text Book, 32; Haynes, Noah’s Curse, 111ff. 13. J. W. Sandell, The United States in Scripture. The Union against the States. God in Government (Magnolia, MS: Tucker Printing House 1907), 41ff. 14. Ibid., 48.



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15. Haynes, Noah’s Curse, 116. 16. G. T. Gillespie, A Christian View of Segregation. An Address Made before the Synod of Mississippi of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S., November 4, 1954 (Greenwood, IN: Association of Citizens’ Councils of Mississippi, 1954). 17. Haynes, Noah’s Curse, 117–118. 18. Gillespie, A Christian View of Segregation, 4, 11; Haynes, Noah’s Curse, 117. 19. Kenneth R. Kinney, “The Segregation Issue,” Baptist Bulletin (October 1956): 9–10; Haynes, Noah’s Curse, 117–118. 20. Kinney, “The Segregation Issue,” 9–10; Haynes, Noah’s Curse, 118. 21. Genesis 9:25–27; D. Williams, An End to This Strife: The Politics of Gender in African American Churches (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2004). 22. Gunther Wittenberg, “Let Canaan Be His Slave” (Gen. 9:26) “Is Ham also Cursed?” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa (1991), 46. 23. Act 12 of 1911. 24. Section 4(1) (n). 25. Act 28 of 1956. 26. The preamble specifically states that the “Act intends to provide safe-guards against inter-racial competition.” 27. Joshua 9:27. 28. Act 15 of 1911. 29. Section 14. 30. Act 27 of 1913. 31. Section 1. 32. The word “native” is defined “as any person, male or female, who is a member of an aboriginal race or tribe of Africa; and shall further include any company or other body of persons, corporate or unincorporate, if the persons who have a controlling interest therein are natives” (Native Land Act 27 of 1913, s. 10). 33. Act 41 of 1950. 34. http://home.snu.edu/~dwilliam/f 97projects/aparthied/Laws.htm. 35. Act 67 of 1952. 36. Section 5. 37. http://africanhistory.about.com/library/b1/blsalaws.htm. 38. (The Black Sash, March/April 1963, Vol. 7, no. 1, 19: http://disa.nu.ac.za/ articledisplaypage.asp?filename5BSMar63&article5The1Pass1Laws.) 39. Act 8 of 1953. 40. Section 4. 41. Bekker et al., Criminal Procedure Handbook (Capetown, South Africa: Juta, 2003), 10. 42. Act 49 of 1953. 43. Act 64 of 1956. 44. Section 2. 45. Section 6. 46. Extract from a pamphlet issued by the Federation of South African Women and the ANC Women’s League June 13, 1957 accessed from http://www.anc.org. za/ancdocs/history/women/repeal.html. 47. Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act 200 of 1994. 48. Act 108 of 1996. 49. Joshua 9:27. 50. Constitution of South Africa Act 108 of 1996, s. 19. 51. 1995 (3) SA 391 CC; 1995 (2) SACR 1 CC.




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52. Act 55 of 1998. 53. Visser et al., Gibson South African Mercantile and Company Law, 8th edition (Cape Town, MA: Juta, 2003), 590. 54. Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998, Preamble. 55. Ibid. 56. The statute specifically refers to “black people” and it defines this term as “a generic term which means Africans, Coloreds and Indians.” Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998, s.1. 57. Act 66 of 1995; Visser et al., Gibson South African Mercantile and Company Law, 589. 58. Act 22 of 1994. 59. Act 63 of 1997.



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Who Is the Man . . .?: Nimrod, Afrocentricism, and the African American Dream Lee H. Butler, Jr.

The first part of this chapter’s title is, of course, an allusion to the urban hero “Shaft.”1 As a movie character, Shaft, a private investigator, was more than “a legend in his own mind.” He was the cultural hero who expressed a nonreligious, although not irreligious, component of the African American psyche. Defining his own space in the hard city of New York, he was respected as a “man” by those who knew him. And in instances where he was not known, if disrespected, he would declare himself as a force to be reckoned with and respected, or else! The image of Shaft declared that we can do more than live to survive. Shaft was thriving with the will and power of self-determination. As a cultural image, Shaft epitomized every African American man living as an individual with some concern for the issues of the African American community on a “case-by-case” basis. Shaft was not interested in “nation building,” nor was he a social justice activist interested in liberating African American life. Although he was “the man that would risk his neck for his brother man” and, furthermore, “the cat that won’t cop out when there’s danger all about,”2 Shaft’s very proud rugged individualism projected him as an iconoclast in an era that desired to redefine black heroism. While Shaft was an image of black manhood that was supported by a black-consciousness movement, the image of Shaft was not dependent upon black culture for expressing the meaning of this black hero. When the source of black identity is African American culture, the “who” question is answered with community and relationships as the core values for declaring the self.



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Shaft is very much an “Americanized” understanding of blackness, one that promotes individualism as the highest value. The man Shaft stands alone and stands on his own terms, relying only on his own strength to overcome adversity. Shaft, in some ways, during the period of the 1970s, presented a certain perception—a black-based evoking—of the American Dream as it has promoted an individualized success that is dependent upon none: To become an “American” is to declare one’s independence. Nevertheless, I would like to suggest that Nimrod is more representative of an African American dream, one with more enduring qualities and sharper sociocultural vision. Nimrod represents a heritage that is connected to Egypt3 and, therefore, to Africa as a whole.4 Nimrod’s legacy, which is consistent with African American culture, is that of building a nation that is strong: a nation respected for its arts, sciences, and religious heritage. This chapter explores Nimrod and Babylon as an alternative image for guiding the development of an African American dream.

Who is Nimrod? To explore identity is to explore the existential questions and relationships that declare how a person locates herself or himself within the context of community and culture. In order to come to the clearest, most appropriate conceptualization of an identity, it is imperative to reflect on history— personal history, family history, and cultural history. The real challenge to such a reflection is that it must be done without interpreting and clinging to historical traditions that extinguish one’s own voice. In other words, it is imperative that we work to discern a “true” sense of self from a “false” sense of self. When taking the long view of history, it is important to accommodate old images and ideas to the new contextual realities. Because we cannot talk to Nimrod, an exploration of “who he is” must begin with his story as it has been recorded. So, we begin with his genealogy. Biblical genealogies do more than identify family heritage and social location. The genealogy is also understood to highlight an individual’s character through political and ideological foci. This, I think, is particularly true when the text makes a descriptive statement beyond simply offering a list of who “begat” whom.5 There was a time when it was more clearly understood that family relationships are representative of character. In days gone by, it was not unusual within the African American community for introductions to be followed with questions such as, “who’s your family” or “who are you related to?” The identification of family relationships was intended to disclose the character of the person being introduced. If the family name was not approved, the person being introduced would not be welcomed. As products of our family, we are the bearers of our family heritage of blessings



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and curses. Biblical genealogies often functioned in the same way. They identified who was appropriate and who was socially problematic. A review of Nimrod’s family tree identifies him as a descendent of Ham. As a result, we are immediately struck with concerns associated with the “Curse of Ham.” This was a curse that specifically extended to all the generations of Ham. Consequently, is Nimrod another “bad seed” in a long line of “bad seeds”? I find it fascinating that both Nimrod and Ishmael, progenitors and prototypes of African American men, are identified as hunter-warriors. Both are blessed of God, yet both are perceived to be enemies of God’s chosen people through their connections to Africa. Although we are fully aware of the textual confusions associated with the “Curse of Ham” narrative (related to who was cursed, why the curse, and the curse itself), we cannot overlook the challenges of being able to see Nimrod as a valued man in God’s sight when he is identified as a “bad seed” from a cursed family tree. This challenge is typical of a longer history of interpretation that was intended to mislead and deceive. Certainly, the majority of the interpretations that attempted to introduce Nimrod were grounded either in this cursed family heritage or in the denigration of Africa, interpretations that ultimately describe Nimrod as an enemy of God and a tyrannical leader of a people. If, however, the curse is lifted from Ham and Nimrod and the ancient light of Africa is allowed to shine, we will see Nimrod as one who fought for God and the people rather than as one who stood against God and tortured the people.

Nimrod, Babylon, and Egypt Whereas Nimrod has been clearly identified as Hamitic, we must conclude that he is a man of African descent. As such, it is not unreasonable to assume that many of the cultural markers that are identified as African were also a part of Nimrod’s socialization and outlook. Furthermore, if we follow the geography given us in Genesis 2, which demarcates Eden and the known world, Mesopotamia and Babylon are a part Africa’s Eden just as Egypt and Cush are.6 The scriptures tell us that Nimrod was a community builder establishing the city of Babylon and building the Tower of Babel. Although Babel fell as a result of the confounding of tongues, the building project was initiated within the context of unity, with God as a central player in its construction. Not unlike the ethos that motivated the great builders in Egypt, Nimrod was a builder of a nation like his “cousins” in Egypt. Apart from not seeing Africans positively in general, the Christian heritage has “demonized” Nimrod and Babylon just as many “American Christians” had demonized enslaved Africans. Just as “white” was contrast with “black” to declare good and evil, Jerusalem was contrast with Babylon to declare



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good and evil. In short, Nimrod and Babylon have been linked, consciously and unconsciously, with black, African, and evil. A variety of approaches to Egypt and Egyptology have resurrected Egypt in many positive ways and isolated Egypt from the whole of Africa in other ways. Clearly, much of Egyptology has been a discipline in the hands of white supremacy, but other Egyptologists, such as Cheikh Anta Diop, have continuously declared ancient Egypt to have been a black African nation. As a result, these various approaches have given us the ability to see Egyptians and Cushites, who are also Hamitic, in a positive light. By reflecting on Nimrod’s story as one that is not completely disconnected from an extended family history and heritage of nation builders, we are able to reframe our understanding of who Nimrod is (or at least can be) to African American people.

Babylon as a Holy City Although African American Christians prefer to maintain Jerusalem as the holy city into which Jesus made his triumphal entry, we must not forget that Jerusalem was also the city where Jesus was condemned to die by crucifixion. Even the holy city was not so holy, which is why Jesus wept over the city. The holy city was filled with unholy people: incestuous rapists, fratricidal and adulterous murderers, false accusers, infant killers, thieves and robbers. It was in Jerusalem that a woman was raped by her older brother, and her rape was avenged by another brother. It was in Jerusalem that a married woman, who was voyeuristically observed bathing, was impregnated by a man who was not her husband. Her husband subsequently had a “contract hit” made on him by the father of the woman’s unborn child. It was in Jerusalem that a called prophet declared himself a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips. It was in this city that a king ordered the massacre of newborns to protect his seat of power. It was in Jerusalem that the house of prayer became a den of thieves. Jerusalem was not merely a city with bad sections: the holy city was an unholy place. Preferring to deny the acts of unholiness in order to maintain Jerusalem as the holy city, Christian believers have tended to think of the unholy city as Babylon. The irony of this tendency for today is related to the fact that Babylon is located in present day Iraq, where our nation has declared the fight of good (holy) against evil (unholy). Ancient Babylon was the political, commercial, and religious center of a world empire within the area often referred to as the “cradle of civilization.” Babylon, a place well noted for its architectural luxury (containing one of the “wonders of the world”), has also been noted as having been morally decadent. Biblically, it is often pictured as an unholy place, a maddening power, a



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prostitute, and a seducer of the righteous with maddening wine.7 The Book of Revelation identifies “this mysterious title . . . Babylon the Great, the Mother of Prostitutes and of the Abominations of the Earth” (Rev. 17:5). Consequently, our worst ideas of a city or a people are often associated with Babylon as an unholy city filled with the enemies of God. It is my contention that if we liberate our interpretations of Nimrod and Babylon, we will come not only to a clearer understanding of Nimrod and Babylon but also to a clearer sense of who we are as African Americans. When considering the ways cities are divided into ethnic communities, the black section has tended to be described as having the characteristics of Babylon. Although the black community is not called “Little Babylon,” the black community is regularly understood to embody all the evil and negativity attributed to Babylon the Great. We are thought to be religiously corrupt, morally bankrupt, emotionally infantile, and socially deficient. If we accept this critique, we live under the misconception that nothing good can come from our living, that we must flee Babylon for the safety and security of Jerusalem. But to do so is to declare that God is not with us—that God does not walk with us, that God does not talk with us, that God does not tell us that we are God’s own. It has been widely accepted that the Magi were Babylonian. So, if we accept the negative critique on Babylon, we deny the part of the Gospel that says Magi left Babylon to worship the King of kings. It is not that the Magi were fleeing Babylon for the holiness of Jerusalem as much as they were spiritually aware of the activities of God in the world. When we look at what the Babylonians have said of themselves, we read that “the genius of Babylon . . . was one of peace, and culture, and progress. The building of temples, the adorning of cities, the digging of canals, the making of roads, the framing of laws was their pride; their records breathe, or affect to breathe, all serene tranquility.”8 That is a far cry from declaring a depraved condition of unholiness. So, recognizing the extent to which people find it necessary to belittle one place in order to improve the image of another place, we must disconnect Babylon from Jerusalem as an opposing evil force and see Babylon’s intrinsic goodness and value. By reflecting on Babylon from an Afrocentric worldview, all the negativity is turned inside out and diffused. Through this interpretive frame, different images of Nimrod and Babylon are revealed. By viewing Babylon through African lenses, the enemy of God is seen as one who fights for God. Babylonians are seen as favored by God for God did warn the Magi in a dream to not report their worship of the newborn King to King Herod of Jerusalem. An Afrocentric reimagining of Nimrod and Babylon helps to reimagine African American life, and perhaps even our hopes for the future.




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Racism is a religion of the American psyche.9 So deeply embedded are its tenets that its removal requires that the psyche’s structure be reconstructed. Because religion interprets and orders the world, allowing people to negotiate the angst associated with suffering and death, the human psyche is dependent upon religious categories for its functioning and survival. But racism, as a religion, is also an idolatrous faith. Through a subtle anthropomorphism, God is replaced by the skin color and one’s own perceptions of superior difference are exalted and deified. All the good that one perceives one’s self to be is projected onto God, thereby making one’s self into the deity to be trusted and worshiped as the ultimate. Racism in America is about the degradation and destruction of black humanity. Racists have objectified Africans and reduced the description of our being to animals or some category of subhuman being. There are many outlandish historical statements that identify Africans as apes and/or as copulating with apes. Racism is about declaring otherness, and the “other” is always described as a death-dealing succubus. It is as though the criterion that led white racism is whether any good thing can come out of Babylon. Whereas enslaved Africans were considered chattel, emancipated Africans were considered three-fifths human. We have always been considered genetically inferior.10 Racists, therefore, believe it is their right and responsibility to control others whom they, like Adam, have named and identified as animals and as less than human.

Birth of the Nation Continuing to hold to the idea that esteeming one’s self often includes degrading another, let us consider the birthing of Babylon and the United States of America. Nimrod’s life as a builder has been interpreted as motivated by arrogance and empire building. And due to the negative view of Africa in relation to Israel and to white supremacy, Nimrod has been characterized as an oppressor, in terms of both tyranny and the oppression of evil upon goodness. However, instead of Nimrod esteeming himself through degrading another, Nimrod and Babylon have been degraded in order for other nations to esteem themselves. The American identity was formed through a degradation process that declared liberty for some and servitude for others. Just as Nimrod has been degraded in the history of biblical interpretation, Africans became one of the groups in the United States who were degraded in the identityformation process of the nation. Feeling the legislated oppression from the land of their origin, the founders of the United States of America declared their independence from tyranny. We are quite familiar with the



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statements that portray our heritage as Americans: “No taxation without representation”11 and “Give me liberty or give me death!”12 The founders sought to establish a nation on the fundamental principles of justice and liberty. Because we understand this to have been the good intentions of the founders, the question that must be asked (although not answered at this time) is whether Nimrod began his work with good intentions only to have his goals perverted by power for his own safety and security. The labor pains that resulted in the birth of this nation began in 1770 in Boston. The “water broke” by the event that became known as the Boston Massacre. There is, however, an irony that accompanies the legacy of the fight for liberty in the United States. “The first to defy and the first to die”13 in the Boston Massacre was a black man named Crispus Attucks. I will not go as far as to say that Attucks is a “Nimrod-figure,” but it is an interesting thought. The irony of the thought is this: While African Americans have been willing to fight and die for this nation—even when this nation was just a dream—the nation has been all too willing to sacrifice us on the front lines of battle, and always without affording us the benefits of full citizenship. My thesis has been that Nimrod likewise has been sacrificed without the full acknowledgment of his life’s work. And although we have fought for life and liberty in the pursuit of happiness like all others, we have been terrorized and sacrificed by others in the pursuit of their own happiness. We have been the object of a nation’s fear and terrorized for a nation’s survival. We have been regarded as the Babylon of the United States!

Fear and Terror Fear is a basic human emotion that constricts human behavior. While anger causes us to attack that which is threatening, fear most often causes us to withdraw from a threat. Fear can range from simple uneasiness to total insecurity. It can make you stop in your tracks, shake in your shoes, and empty your bladder. Fear is stronger than someone on steroids and will make the bravest of people cry. While it is quite clear that fear can be an inhibiting force, fear can also instigate aggression, which is a victimizing force. Yet far more profound than the fear that pervades our existence is the debilitating terror that denies life’s vitality. To live with terror is to live with a constant fear so intense that there is no place where one feels safe. There are those who tactically make use of terror to control the activities of people as well as to manipulate the lives of others. Some people control their homes through a reign of terror. Some people control their neighborhoods through a reign of terror. And some people control countries through a reign of terror. Because terror is a chronic condition, it




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causes people to do more than shed a few tears. There is a whaling that goes along with terror because there is always tragic loss that accompanies terror. The narrative of the three Hebrew boys, a favorite among traditional African American preachers, probably had this kind of effect on its Israelite listeners. The narrative implies that Babylon was ruled by terror. It presents a terrorizing threat to submit or burn for the Babylonians, and to resist or die to the Israelite listeners. Terrorism is nothing new to America, and September 11, 2001 was certainly not the first time in the history of this nation that terrorism came to “roost” in America. Unfortunately, when one thinks of terror and terrorism in America, most minds are immediately drawn to the events of september 11. A special edition of the Chicago Tribune after the twin towers attack read, “When Evil Struck America.” Terror and terrorism have often been identified as bombing. And our consciousness has been shaped in such a way that we now think that bombers have always been Arab and Muslim (and, given the war in Iraq, Babylonian). However, African Americans have been terrorized in this land for generations, not by Arabs, but by persons of European descent who have professed Jesus the Christ. Their terrorism has firebombed and perpetuated the leading evil act of American terrorism—Lynching.14

Lynching as a Weapon of White Supremacy’s Dream Although there are many who might like to declare the United States as a holy land with God on our side, this country, like Jerusalem, has been an unholy land that has scapegoated its residents in the name of justice. Nimrod dreamed a dream to build a tower to God. Because the American Dream is often a secular vision of prosperity cast in a sacred hope, judgments had to be developed to maintain the dream as a blessing for a chosen few. The judgment upon Nimrod was confusion. Only who is more confused, the residents of Babel or modern-day interpreters of Nimrod’s Babel? Lynching has been a judgment and one of the weapons for the maintenance of the American Dream. Lynching is murder—execution without a lawful trial. It is mob action for the purpose of intimidation. Often understood as Southern justice, lynching most often occurred for economic reasons and out of a fear of sexual inferiority. While nearly 200 antilynching bills were introduced to Congress, none of them ever passed the Senate. Senator James Heflin (D-AL) said in 1930, “Whenever a Negro crosses this dead line between the white and the Negro races and lays his black hand on a white woman, he deserves to die.”15 This preoccupation with line crossing, of course, was unidirectional. Laying a “white hand” on a black woman did not carry the same prohibition.



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As a weapon of white supremacy, lynching has great historical, social, and psychological significance as a terrorist action in the service of supremists attempting to preserve their vision of the American Dream. There are 3,446 documented cases of African American lynchings between 1882 and 1968.16 There are thousands of undocumented cases. As an act of aggression, lynching has sought to declare the social vulnerability of African American men as well as to advocate an assertion of white male dominance. Lynching is related to black manhood the way rape is related to black womanhood. Lynching has been an act of violence for the sole purpose of domination and control over the body and soul of another to compensate for one’s own fears and inadequacies. As a terrorist act to promote the survival of white supremist ideology, lynching became a compulsion, a ritual continually reenacted to stave off the fear associated with living and the despair associated with the loss of an idealized, even deified, self. As a result, the religious and theological dimensions of lynching as a self-preserving act of brutality must not be overlooked. Between 1880 and 1960, lynching was the most prominent ritual of sacrifice reenacted by white supremacy in an effort to preserve its way of life. In like manner, Nimrod’s Babylon has become the lynching rope for maintaining white supremacy and the dominance of European Christianity.

Rituals of Sacrifice for Self-Preservation Upon closer examination, we can see how rituals of sacrifice reveal the human (religious) tendency to attempt to control nature for the sake of safety. Clearly, safety and survival have always been important human issues. Humanity, in some ways, has always seen itself as frail and vulnerable, as a finite being. In that self-assessment, animals have frequently been both feared and admired for possessing powers perceived to be greater than human strength. This self-assessment of human frailty and vulnerability has resulted in many actions to gain control over nature and the animals. A variety of rituals were developed in an effort to control nature and to acquire nature’s and the animals’ power. To the extent that Nimrod’s Babylon has been associated with libidinous desire and the primal of humanity, Nimrod’s Babylon is seen as a powerful predatory animal to be killed. There is a long religious history of human beings attempting to acquire the power of an animal by sacrificing and/or ingesting the animal. Furthermore, the history of animal sacrifice to satisfy the gods and to extend one’s own life by the sacrifice is equally as long. Humanity has frequently exhibited a thirst for power in its attempts to exercise dominion over creation. Some theorists have suggested that as alternative forms of power developed, humanity began to dissociate from the idea of animals as the desired power and became the vengeful hunter




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in an effort to establish human superiority. This is, no doubt, how some came to interpret Nimrod as the hunter-warrior who stood in opposition to God. White supremacy has continued to live in this transitional phase of dissociation. White supremacy seeks to establish itself by being a vengeful hunter in the name of self-defense and by advocating a race war as the “final solution.” When white supremacy defines whiteness as the central quality of human beings, their ideology promotes and maintains a legacy of objectifying others. They identify other people as animals to be hunted and killed as a statement of dominance and superiority. This has included the practice of sacrificing those persons identified as animals.17 Such acts have given them a sense of power and security. Racists do not eat the flesh of those persons identified as animals, but they have feasted their eyes upon bludgeoned and burning bodies. Their rituals of sacrifice have included shootings, lynching, rape, and burnings.

The African American Dream Interpreters of the biblical record have accused Nimrod of being an enemy of God and used the accusation as grounds for lynching him and distorting Babylon. This is no different from what Africans Americans have experienced within the United States. We too have been accused of being the enemies of God, evil beings whose accursed nature is evidenced by our black skin. Our homeland of Africa has been distorted to say African history began with the arrival of the European. Most Africans arrived in this land not with a vision of hope rooted in an American Dream of prosperity; we arrived in despair as the commodified symbols of prosperity with our vision revealing that we had landed in Hell. In the same way I asked, “Who is the man Nimrod?” we must ask the question, “Who are we as African Americans?” As I consider the pain and suffering being experienced by Africans in America, and the ways our image as human beings has been distorted through white supremacy’s ritual of sacrifice, the task of defining ourselves as African American citizens from a beautiful and bountiful family tree blessed of God is paramount. Attempting to answer the question “who are we?” is one way we participate in the works of salvation. We must declare our dream, more ancient than the American Dream. In the lives and works of our ancestors, we find an African Dream of community, a community that maintains relationships that are so powerful, not even death can separate us. A community that is so intimately connected to God that to treat one another with dignity and respect is the first way to honor God. The African American Dream, which is deeply rooted in the African Dream, must not submit to the individualized dream of prosperity that is the heart of soulless American Dream. We must be builders of lives and communities, as one nation in harmonious unity with God.



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1. Shaft is a 1971 film about a black detective, John Shaft, who takes on the Italian mob to find the missing daughter of a Harlem crime figure. This first film stars Richard Roundtree as Shaft. The movie was directed by the late Gordon Parks and features an award-winning musical score composed and performed by Isaac Hayes. 2. Lyrics from Shaft’s theme song written by Isaac Hayes. 3. Charles Copher, “Black Presence in the Old Testament,” in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation, ed. Cain Hope Felder (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991), 153–154. 4. Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1974). 5. Randall C. Bailey, “Beyond Identification: The Use of Africans in Old Testament Poetry and Narratives,” in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation, ed. Cain Hope Felder (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991), 171. 6. “The idea of the Fertile Crescent as the cradle of civilization that extends from Egypt around through Syria-Palestine and on to the Tigris River appears to be an attempt to claim that Egypt is not a part of Africa but rather part of the West” (Bailey, “Beyond Identification,” 168). 7. See Revelation 18:2–3. 8. Catholic Encyclopedia, “Babylonia,” http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/ 02179b.htm. 9. See Lee H. Butler, Jr., Liberating Our Dignity, Saving Our Souls (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2005); and George D. Kelsey, Racism and the Christian Understanding of Man (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1965). 10. This history is clear and today can be reviewed in most American history texts. Jordan covers this history most thoroughly in his work White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1977 [1968]). 11. The rallying cry of the American Revolutionary War coined by the Rev. Jonathan Mayhew in a sermon in Boston. 12. The closing words of a speech by Patrick Henry delivered March 23, 1775. 13. A nineteenth-century memoirist wrote these words speaking of Crispus Attucks. 14. See Anthony B. Pinn, Terror and Triumph: The Nature of Black Religion (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), Chapter 3, “Rope Neckties: Lynching and Identity.” 15. See “A Senate Apology for History on Lynching,” Washington Post, June 14, 2005, A12. 16. See Robert L. Zangrando, The NAACP Crusade against Lynching, 1909–1950 (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1980). 17. Also see JoAnne M. Terrell’s reflections on “The Hermeneutics of Sacrifice in Biblical and Historical Perspective” located in Chapter 1 of her book, Power in the Blood?: The Cross in the African American Experience (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998), 17–22.



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Nimrod as Infamous



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The Strength of Collective Man: Nimrod and the Tower of Babel Allen Dwight Callahan

Introduction Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse: But who can live for long In an euphoric dream; Out of the mirror they stare, Imperialism’s face And the international wrong. —W. H. Auden, “September 1, 1939”

The story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 is one of Western literature’s earliest and most famous accounts of “the strength of Collective Man.” In the story’s history of interpretation, the tale becomes Nimrod’s story. Nimrod is implicated in the project of Babel because of his association with Babel and the land of Shinar in the preceding chapter of Genesis. The biblical theologian Gerhard Von Rad insisted that “chapters [10 and 11] must be read together because they are intentionally placed next to each other,”1 and ancient commentators read the two chapters together in their unanimous identification of Nimrod as the principal architect of the Tower of Babel. Chapter 10 features the so-called



CHAP TER


Table of Nations: the lineage of “the generations of Noah” (10:1), the genealogical list of the descendants of Noah’s three sons, Japheth Ham, and Shem, as the forebears of all the nations of the earth. Ham’s son Cush, the eponymous ancestor of the Cushites or Ethiopians, is the father of Nimrod. According to Genesis 10, Babel in the land of Shinar—the region of Babylonia as it is referred to in Egyptian and other ancient sources2—is “the beginning” of Nimrod’s kingdom (Gen. 10:6–10), and Babel heads the list of cities in the land of Shinar according to Genesis 10. Thus Nimrod, the founder of a kingdom in the land of the Babylonians, is a king of African descent—a son of Ethiopia. Nimrod is described as “a mighty one” and “a mighty hunter before the LORD” (Gen. 10:8–9). Because the same Hebrew word “mighty,” gibbor, is used to describe the offspring of the gigantic Nephilim (Gen. 6:4), some ancient interpreters understood the biblical phrases “mighty man” and “mighty hunter” in chapter 10 to suggest that Nimrod was a giant. The Septuagint so interpreted gibbor in its rendering of Genesis 10:8–9: “And [Cush] begot Nimrod; he began to be a giant upon the earth. He was a giant hunter before the Lord God.”3 PseudoEupolemus, cited in Eusebius’s Preparatio Evangelica (9.17.2–3), claims that those who built the Tower of Babel were giants that had somehow escaped the Deluge.4 The Authorized Version of the Bible conventionally translates gibbor as “mighty man of valor.” In the minds of several commentators, however, the word suggested violence, not valor. In Symmachus’s Greek gloss of Genesis 10:8, Nimrod “began to be violent before the Lord.”5 Pseudo-Philo renders the verse, “he began to be arrogant before the Lord” (Biblical Antiquities 4:7).6 Writes Augustine, “It is humility that builds a safe and true path to heaven, raising aloft the heart towards God—not against God, in the way that . . . [Nimrod] was said to be a hunter ‘against God,’ . . . He and his people thus erected a tower against God, by which is signified irreligious arrogance” (City of God 16.4).7 The negative assessment of Nimrod is intensified in the Targum Neophyti’s free rendering of Genesis 10:9: “He was mighty in sinning before the Lord; therefore it is said ‘like Nimrod, a mighty man in sinning before the Lord.’ ”8 The name Nimrod resembles the Hebrew root “to rebel,”9 and the rabbis enlist this linguistic accident in their exegesis. “Both the story [of Babel] itself and the name [Nimrod] suggested that Nimrod was some sort of rebel against God . . . a ‘mighty hunter before [and perhaps a would-be snarer of, a hunter against] the Lord.’ ”10 The Fragment Targum of Genesis offers the following commentary: “[Nimrod] was a mighty man, powerful in hunting and mighty in sinning before the lord. . . . For this reason it is said, ‘Like Nimrod the mighty one’—mighty in hunting [people] and mighty in sinning before the Lord.”11



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In Genesis 11, we encounter the mythical moment in ancient prehistory when the hunter-king was praised in the songs of grateful bards and the dawn of royal propaganda. Lewis Mumford has argued, “Before the city springs into being, there are definite indications in Palestine that the hunter’s temporary camp has turned into a continuously occupied stronghold. This stronghold is held by someone that the archaeologist somewhat too vaguely describes as the ‘local chieftain,’ obviously note alone, but with a supporting band of followers.”12 This legendary figure of the “local chieftain” is idealized in the heroic Sumerian hunter Gilgamesh who builds the wall around Uruk, the Babylonian Enkidu who “took his weapon to chase the lions,” and in Nimrod, the mighty hunter who erects the prehistoric skyscraper in Babel.13 Art imitated urban life in ancient Mesopotamia and later the metropolitan life of the imperial capitals of Assyria and Babylon. The monumental stone reliefs of Ninevah silently attest to the reputation Assyrian emperor Ashurbanipal (668–627 BCE) as a fearless hunter of lions.

“On Earth against Heaven” The Hebrew writer has ingeniously redacted an ancient myth that, as we now know, was well known in the ancient Near East. In the Sumerian fragment of the myth of Enmerker, the confusion of human speech is due to a quarrel between two gods.14 “It appears” observes Gerhard von Rad, “indeed that the oldest version of the narrative represented the building of the tower precisely as a danger and threat to the gods,” but the “Yahwistic revision removed this feature.”15 “The saga about the confusion of language is concerned with . . . the cosmopolitan city of Babylon,” comments von Rad, “but the story certainly does not originate from Babylon; rather it shows ideas that were strange to Babylon.”16 The Hebrew writer has given this story, already old when it came to her, a new turn. But why, in the Hebrew version of the myth, does the deity destroy the tower and visit chaos upon its well-organized builders? “The narrative does not make clear what man’s sin actually was,”17 comments James Kugel; “ancient interpreters felt obliged to find something in these words that might justify the divine punishment that followed.”18 These commentators creatively inferred that the construction of the tower must have been an assault on heaven. The Book of Jubilees says of the builders, “they built the city and the tower, saying, ‘let us ascend on it into heaven’ ” (Jubilees 10:19). In the allegorical interpretation of Philo of Alexandria in the middle of the first century CE, the tower is an image of aggressive enmity. “He who is zealous for earthly and corruptible things always fights against and makes war on heavenly things and praiseworthy and wonderful natures, and builds walls and towers on earth against heaven” (Philo, Questions and Answers in Gen. 2:82). According to the



THE STRENGTH OF COLLECTIVE MAN


angeles interpres of 3 Baruch, the builders “are the ones who built the tower of the war against God” (3 Baruch 2:7) and “sought to pierce the heaven” (3 Baruch 3:7). In their retelling the story of the tower, the rabbis claimed that its builders sought to “build a tower and climb to the firmament and strike it with hatchets until its waters flow forth” (b. Sanhedrin 109a). In the Targum Neophyti’s gloss of Genesis 11:4, the builders say, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach the heavens, and let us make for ourselves at its top an idol and we will put a sword in its hand, and it will make war against Him.” The rabbis put in the mouth of the builders the confession of idolatry, the ultimate expression of arrogance. The Qur’an’s version of the figure of Nimrod (Surah xxi, 68–69) is in keeping with the notion that the fall of the tower was divine retribution for Nimrod’s royal arrogance. Yet the Qur’an offers its characteristic variations on recognizable themes of biblical narrative and, more importantly in this case, biblical interpretation. What we encounter in the Qur’an is as much a version of the interpretation of the story of the tower as it is a version of the story itself. There Nimrod becomes more than a legendary figure in Levantine prehistory: he is the haughty sovereign made foolish by his own hubris and the antagonistic foil of the great patriarch and moral paragon Abraham. When Nimrod sees Abraham come unharmed from the furnace, he said to him: “Thou hast a powerful God; I wish to offer Him hospitality.” Abraham replies that his God needed nobody’s hospitality. Nevertheless Nimrod sacrifices thousands of cattle, fowl, and fish to God. God does not accept the unsolicited sacrifices, and the enraged, insulted Nimrod assembles his ministers and tells them that he will build a high tower to ascend into the heavens and strike down Abraham’s God. But in Genesis, the ingenuity of ancient exegetes notwithstanding, the divine destruction appears unprovoked. Nowhere does the biblical text accuse the builders of attempting to storm heaven.19 “The statement that the tower should reach to heaven must not be pressed,” cautions von Rad; “. . . it is only an expression of the special height of the building . . . That men wanted to storm heaven . . . is not said.”20 The ziqqurat, the Babylonian pyramidal temple made of sun-dried and kiln-dried bricks, is the model for the ancient skyscraper of the Genesis story. The phrase “with its top in the sky” appears in several ancient Babylonian temple inscriptions that describe the height of a ziqqurat. The description of the tower in the Hebrew text, however, is technical terminology borrowed by the Yahwist. Commentators have accused the nameless protagonists of attempting to breach heaven on the basis of reading à pied de lettre an ancient Near Eastern architectural phrase. The temple was the monumental citadel at the center of the ancient temple state. It was “deliberately meant to awe and overpower the



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beholder. . . . The heavy walls of hard-baked clay or solid stone would give to the ephemeral offices of state the assurance of stability and security, of unrelenting power and unshakable authority.”21 Mesopotamian masonry was a breakthrough in building technology so important that its invention is attributed to the gods in Enuma Elish: indeed, the Babylonians claimed that the gods had built the ziqqurat Esagila, the great temple dedicated to the Babylonian god Marduk. But the tale in Genesis turns such a claim on its head: the power that builds the tower is human; the power that destroys it, divine. Several modern commentators have suggested another motive for Yahweh’s intervention. Harold Bloom comments, “[Yahweh’s] reaction is akin to his judgment that Adam and Eve must be expelled from Eden lest they devour the fruit of the Tree of Life.”22 God “comes down,” as he does to attend to affairs in Eden, and later, in Sodom and Gomorrah. In several tales of the Yahwist, God attends personally to earthly affairs in which he judges the situation especially dire and the stakes especially high. What, in the narrative logic of the text in its present Pentateuchal context, motivates Yahweh’s descent at Shinar? In the priestly tradition of the Pentateuch, God commands human fecundity and diversity in Genesis 1:28 and 9:7: human beings are to spread out, fill up, and rule over the earth. The same priestly tradition supplies the catalogue of names and nations in Genesis 10; in Genesis 12, it reports God’s promise to give Abram a name of renown and a dispersed, innumerable progeny. But as the medieval commentator Rabbi Samuel ben Meir suggested long ago, humankind’s attempt to band together in one place opposes the divine command to spread out and fill up the earth.23 The order is given to Adam in Genesis 1:28 and to Ham along with Noah’s other sons in Genesis 9:7 and is presumably binding on all progeny in both instances. The command, however, comes from the priestly tradition, P. The narrative of the Tower of Babel, on the other hand, comes from the deft hand of the Yahwist. In the Yahwist’s story, those who build the tower have traveled from the east to settle in Shinar. The builders have flouted, for the moment at least, the geographical drift of divine judgment that the Yahwist recounted earlier in Genesis. According to J, Adam and Eve are driven out and settle east of Eden. Cain, their son, also settles east of Eden after he murders his brother.

East of Eden The Yahwist also tells us that Cain, the first fratricide, is the Bible’s first urban planner: “And Cain . . . built a city” (Gen. 4:17). Thus begins J’s polemic against urban culture, a polemic that the story of the Tower of Babel revisits. The story of Babel is a thicker description of urbanism than





the brief mention of Cain’s city earlier in the Primeval History. “The polemic thrust of the story,” comments Robert Alter, “is against urbanism and the overweening confidence of humanity in the feats of technology. This polemic, in turn, is lined up with the stories of the tree of life and the Nephilim in which humankind is seen aspiring to transcend the limits of its creaturely condition.”24 As Kugel notes, “the ‘city’ part of this building project receded into the background: for interpreters, the tower seemed to be the whole point.”25 But the text is clear that the anonymous builders erect the tower in a city; the founding of the city is the first item on the collective agenda. The centralized control of both the mode of production and the mode of communication is prototypical of the city and especially of the metropolis. Thus in Fritz Lang’s silent film classic Metropolis, the prophetess Maria uses the biblical story of the Tower of Babel as an implicit allegory for the class structure of their dystopic city. She explains that those who decided to build the tower were unable to do so alone, and so they retained “hired hands for wages” who never understood what they were building or why. Thus the division of labor and capital, “the hand” and “the head,” as the narration of the intertitle puts it, is born in ancient urbanism. The tower is a ziggurat “with its top in the sky,” as the cliché in Mesopotamian building inscriptions describes it; this is the sense of the Hebrew migdal, “fortress,” which signifies “the collective ability to bear arms.”26 The city, with the technology of surplus and the ideology of war, became in turn the center of empire: the polis became the metropolis. The city is the first form of permanent, collective human organization to achieve a surplus of food and arms by the coercive disciplining of human labor through violence and propaganda. The later iconography of the biblical story signifies an awareness of the integral relation of the first great cities with the first great royal despots. Medieval and Renaissance iconography associates the construction of the tower with the consolidation of urban regimes.27 An anonymous French master rendered an illustration of the construction of the tower in colored washes, gold leaf, and ink on parchment in La Bible Historiale of Jean Berry, published in Paris between 1390 and 1400. As part of the illustration, a giant king, presumably Nimrod, directs the work in progress. In the depiction of the construction of the Tower of Babel featured in a mosaic in the basilica of San Marco in Venice, the right side of the scene is dominated by an enthroned figure at court in a structure that mimics that of the tower under construction at left. Several of the courtiers to the left of the throne gesture toward the tower. In the upper left-hand corner of a page from the fourteenth century Spanish Golden Haggadah, a robed figure on the far left pensively oversees the work in which all the other figures are busily engaged. And Pieter Brughel the Elder’s painting, “Little Tower of Babel” (1563),28 features on the lower left a royal figure with his admiring entourage and military retainers.



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With his contemporary Antwerp as the backdrop, Pieter Brughel the Elder has captured a perennial scene: the monumental edifice, and the monarch, surrounded concentrically by his military retainers, court propagandists, and, finally, by a multitude of human drones with faces turned to their tasks. The illustrator of a 1690 edition of the Latin Vulgate depicted a gigantic Nimrod, armed, crowned, standing in front of the Tower, and glowering down at minions half his height. In the imagination of ancient interpreters, Nimrod becomes the builder of Babylon and the Bible’s first tyrant. Jerome comments, “Nimrod the son of Cush was the first to seize tyrannical power, [previously] unused, over the people and he ruled in Babylon” (Hebrew Questions in Gen. 10:8).29 Long ago the Yahwist anticipated the dubious benefits of tyranny that Thomas Hobbes described in Leviathan. “The only way to erect a common power,” wrote Hobbes, “. . . is to confer all their power and strength upon one Man, or upon one Assembly of men, that may reduce all their Wills, by plurality of voices, unto one will.” According to the Yahwist vision, the Tower of Babel is built through the reduction of wills and plurality of voices. As von Rad has noted, the Tower of Babel is humanity’s first experience with “a centralized authority and a high degree of organization,”30 and Nimrod, with centralized authority and organization of a tyrant, builds the Bible’s first metropolis.

The Language of Babel The Hebrew story of the tower is a tale of language told with plays on words: the text itself is a language game. Robert Alter describes the story as “an extreme example of the stylistic predisposition of biblical narrative to exploit inter-echoing words and to work with a deliberately restricted vocabulary.”31 The passage is replete with assonance: h.eimar , “bitumen” and h.omer , “mortar”; the repeated word sham, “there” with shamayim, “heavens” and shem, “name.”32 The phrase “all the earth” appears five times.33 Also appearing five times in the text is the word translated as “language.” But contrary to the prevailing translation of the opening verse, the builders do not speak in “one language” or “one tongue.” For that meaning the text would require leshon, ubiquitous in the Hebrew Bible, as “tongue” or “language.” Nor does the Hebrew phrase sefat ehat mean that they speak in unanimous agreement. In the Hebrew Bible, to speak unanimously is to speak peh àh.ad, “with one mouth” (see, e.g., Josh 9:2). But the builders do not speak, properly speaking, “with one mouth.” The text neither has leshon, “tongue,” nor peh, “mouth,” but the word sefat, “lip.” The builders speak with sefat ehat, literally, with “a





single lip.” Sefat means both the anatomical lip and, more broadly, a mode of discourse. Thus the builders speak with a single mode of discourse, “one lip.” The tale begins with the builders speaking debarim ahadim, “the same sort of words” (11:1). In the unusual construction of the Hebrew sentence of verse 1, “one lip” signifies one mode of discourse that “happened,” “occurred,” “came into existence” coincident with the construction of the tower. The first verse of Genesis 11 might be rendered as follows: “And it came to pass that the whole world had the same sorts of words, a single lip.” The sense of the opening verse of the story is not that humanity spoke one language up to the time of the project of the tower: it is that the project of the tower occasioned the constraint of human speech. That constraint facilitated the command and control that the construction of the tower required. And that command and control, according to biblical commentators, was in the hands—and in the speech—of Nimrod. Long ago the rabbis intuited that Nimrod’s power was exercised through language. “[Nimrod] used to entrap human beings through their speech and say to them: Abandon the statutes of Shem and adopt the statutes of Nimrod.”34 In the Qur’anic account, Nimrod’s tower collapses with such a noise that the people of Nimrod’s city faint with terror. Upon reviving, they find that they have lost their voice: speech for Nimrod’s subjects becomes not merely unintelligible but altogether impossible. In the last movement of The Genesis Suite (1945), a musical interpretation of the Primeval History by several of the mid–twentieth century’s most distinguished symphonic composers, Igor Stravinsky’s “Tower of Babel” signifies the fall of the tower as silence—the failure of human speech. Though the Janssen Symphony of Los Angeles premiered the work with narration of the biblical text accompanying the other movements, Stravinsky dispensed with narrators altogether in his musical rendition of the tower’s rise and fall. In both the twice-told tale in the Qur’an and in Stravinsky’s interpretation, the project of Babel deprives its builders of the power of speech. Nimrod was mighty not only because he could coerce men with brute strength but also because he could entice them with persuasive words. He was the master of propaganda, that is, discourse without disagreement, without difference, without diversity—a discourse of “one lip.” That both the homogeneity and the confusion of language are features of the project of Babel is suggested in Metropolis. In the first half of the film, the prophetess Maria preaches a sermon on the story of Babel to the workers gathered to hear her in the catacombs of the City. “The people spoke the same language,” says the intertitle of Maria’s sermon, “but could not understand each other.” In the film’s Marxist twist to the story of the tower, labor and capital speak the same language but are nevertheless mutually unintelligible.



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All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky — W. H. Auden, “September 1, 1939”

The Tower of Babel is toppled by no less than the Most High. Unbidden, the god of the Yahwist delivers human beings from their own attempts at transcendence in Shinar by toppling the tower, just as he does in Eden by a flaming sword and Cain’s protective mark, and just as he does in the era of the Giants by a flood. “Yahweh’s interference,” von Rad observes, “has a preventative character.”35 Yahweh’s intervention is prophylactic— Providence as preemptive strike. This fall, the fall of the tower, is an act of God, and it is the grace of God. Toni Morrison has urged us to see it as such. The conventional wisdom of the Tower of Babel story is that the collapse was a misfortune. That is was the distraction or weight of many languages that precipitated the tower’s failed architecture. That one monolithic language would have expedited the building, and heaven would have been reached. Whose heaven, she wonders? And what kind? Perhaps the achievement of Paradise was premature, a little hasty if no one could take the time to understand other languages, other views, other narratives. Had they, the heaven they imagined might have been found at their feet.36

The stated goal of the builders is to establish “a name”—a single name, spoken by “a single lip.” Those who strive for “a name” are a collectivity. Theirs is the aspiration of Gilgamesh, who admits, “No mere human can scale heaven,” and who consoles himself with the thought of his future fame: “Should I fall, I shall have made me a name.”37 On reading chapters 10 and 11 in tension, we appreciate the remarkable contrast between the two. Chapter 10 treats people and peoples, with many names, events, and regions. But the project of Babel in chapter 11 has done away with the many names of chapter 10. Chapter 11 treats a city and a tower, with the direct discourse of an anonymous “we” and with neither ancestry nor lineage. In the language and vocabulary of the Yahwist’s tale of Babel, humanity makes a concerted effort to obliterate, in the words of Toni Morrison, “other languages, other views, other narratives.” Of the few names in the Hebrew text of the tale of the tower, one is suggested obliquely by the writer’s paronomasia. The name Babylon is



Children of Nimrod


derived from bab ilim, “gate of the gods,” and is related, as ancient Semitic readers would have readily recognized, to the phrase bab-el, “gate of God.” Babel also sounds like bilal, “confusion,” yet another play on words, one to which the Yahwist calls our attention. But bilal also means “medley.” The project of Babel supplants a medley of proper nouns with one personal pronoun “us”—“let us,” the nameless builders declare, “make a name for ourselves.” It is not an assault on heaven; it is an assault on difference. In a project that absorbs all collective energy in the monumentalism of the ancient urban regime. The nameless builders, shorn of their identity, “had little choice but to obey,” comments Lewis Mumford, “whether they were openly enslaved or more subtly enthralled. To preserve his self-respect, mid all the new impositions of the ruling classes, the urban subject, not yet a full-fledged citizen, would identify his own interests with those of his masters.”38 Though they seek a transcendent identity, the nameless mob of Babel does not take the name of its forbears, nor does God grant Nimrod a great name, as he will for Abraham. The first person plural pronoun of the text both signifies and occludes the collective subject. The anonymous builders of Shinar endeavor to make a name for themselves on their own; in so doing, they doom themselves to anonymity. Only after the fall of the tower, after the debacle of divinely disrupted hegemony, do we encounter a medley of names once again in verse 10. Once again we learn of descendants by their lineage and languages and lands. We find an acknowledgment of ancestry and progeny that introduces the story of Abram, the man through whom all the diverse families of the earth shall be blessed (Gen. 12:3). “Much ink of mockery has been spilled in deploring the polyglotism of the Tower of Babel,” laments Basil Davidson, “even while the beauties of imperial monoglotism, of ‘world language,’ leave so much to be desired.”39 Between the Priestly tradition’s divine mandate to Noah and divine promise to Abram, the Yahwist has posted a warning against the monolingual oppression of regimes, ancient and modern. Diversity is one of our most potent weapons against hegemony and makes for plenty of good room at the Table of Nations. True diversity is not eclectic exoticism, personal idiosyncrasy, or mere deviance, it is the medley of collective identities rooted in history, persons who together as peoples claim a name among many names of “the children of Adam,” as Genesis 11:5 puts it. My esteemed colleague and noted humanist Anthony Pinn has suggested that we trade up to Nimrod as our new mascot of human possibility. Ever since Aeschylus’s dramatic rendition of the ancient Greek myth in Prometheus Bound, Prometheus has been a symbol of human progress against divine caprice. The Titan Prometheus resists the gods of Olympus, who are the personifications of the pitiless and tyrannical forces of nature. Henceforth Prometheus has been the hero of progress and



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Nimrod according to the Judeo-Christian tradition was known as a great hunter who controlled a kingdom that included Babel. Associated with the construction of the Tower of Babel . . . Nimrod became a cursed figure in theological-religious circles. He challenged the constructive and technological dominance of God, thereby threatening the cosmic framework of the universe.40

Ancient, medieval, and modern commentators have seen Nimrod as the forebear of human hubris. But Pinn proposes to read this purported hubris as heroism, the courageous advance of human possibility. Rather than awkwardly striving to see themselves in the Promethean selfunderstanding of humanists of European descent, “African American humanists might consider themselves, again through a signifying of traditional interpretations, the children of Nimrod—those who seek to celebrate and safeguard human creativity, potential, and responsibility.” To “ ‘flip’ or signify earlier interpretations,” Nimrod “becomes a significant figure in the development of humanism in that he sought to extend human creativity and maximize human potential. . . . Nimrod celebrates human ingenuity.” “Such a hermeneutical turn, the re-capturing of Nimrod,” then, “provides an important icon, or central ‘metaphor’ for African American humanism.”41 In Pinn’s view, this reinterpretation of Nimrod suggests that once one breaks preoccupations with supernaturalism and unfounded cosmic issues it dictates, humans confront the possibility (not always realized, as existentialists have shown us) of nurturing creativity and potential in transforming ways. It is this quest for a fuller sense of being—for greater existential and ontological worth—that also informs the basic principles of African American humanism.42

Pinn finds in Nimrod a biblical figure for African American humanism that would serve as a symbol of its principles just as Prometheus has served as a symbol of human progress in the Western intellectual tradition. “Those of African descent who rejected supernaturalism were not associated with Prometheus and the ‘best’ of the Western tradition of human potential and optimism.” Pinn turns from Greek mythology to the Bible: “the [Nimrod] legend . . . can serve as a powerful mode of existential and epistemological reformation for African American humanists



human possibility in the Western intellectual tradition. Pinn would impress the biblical figure Nimrod into this semiotic service for African American humanism:


who have long sought out signs and symbols that might do for them what Prometheus has done for their white fellow travelers. Nimrod, when a hermeneutic of humanism is applied, takes on new dimensions of importance.”43 The Yahwist, I fancy, would heartily agree with Pinn’s choice of Nimrod as the African American answer to and advance on the Prometheus of humanist imagination. As an icon of monumental urbanism, Nimrod’s figure is much more faithful to the human capacity for transgressing limits than that of the benign, hapless Prometheus. But the Yahwist would emphatically disagree with both the theology of the ancient Greek and the antitheology of Pinn. The Greeks saw human beings as frail and helpless before their capricious, jealous, and occasionally cruel gods. Prometheus was a Titan, a hybrid of divinity and humanity, who favored the latter over the former to his peril and is viewed with sympathy in the myth that recounts his awful punishment. Nimrod would symbolize for Pinn the “controlled optimism that recognizes both human potential and human destructive activities”44 that African American humanism affirms. The Yahwisht, on the other hand, is much less sanguine about “human potential.” As Pinn himself explains, “The legend teaches a negative lesson that does not in actuality promote healthy life options: Human ingenuity, creativity, and ambition result in destruction. . . . gains made and advances sought must remain within imposed limits.”45 If we follow the legend of Nimrod as mighty hunter and builder of Babel, we may read his achievement as the short-lived, ill-fated advancement of a fantasy: a project to “make a name” that is conceived and realized in anonymity. The norms of Genesis 10 are diversity, plurality, and fecundity; as our close reading of the text has shown, these norms are abruptly suspended in Genesis 11 in the construction of the tower. The figure of Nimrod offers the fantasy of notoriety in anonymity, a collective identity that obliterates difference and erases the many names and languages and cultural patrimonies signified in the Table of Nations. It is the fantasy that human beings can be who they are and know who they are on the basis of projects that they themselves conceive and undertake. As fantasy according to Pinn’s definition, it transgresses limits, the limits that the Yahwist tacitly advocates. “Fantasy involves a rupturing of existing standards as they relate to relationship and in this way it opens toward opportunity to embrace what was once despised. Fantasy within this context means the push against relationships and interactions—against normative structures of being and meaning—in the form of an impulse toward the subversive.”46 The Tower of Babel stands and falls as a sign of the “impulse toward the subversive.” “I see fantasy as bringing history into fundamental question,” Pinn explains, “destroying history by toppling the social structures and relational possibilities that frame it.”47



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In its obliteration of names, families, tribes, and tongues, the tower overturns the diffusion of difference that has been humanity’s divine charge according to the blended theologies of the Bible’s Primeval History. Indeed, J is the classic advocate of God-as-limit. It is J who recounts that the homosexual gang of Sodom and Gomorrah is so abhorrent to the Deity that he incinerates both cities, destroying every living thing in them: “And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground” (Gen. 19:28). In the Yahwist’s judgment, homosexuality provokes passions that drive men to disregard as sacrosanct and venerable an ancient imperative as hospitality. And it is the Yahwist who gives us the gendered stories of the creation of human beings and their expulsion from Eden, stories that comprise the heterosexual paradigm for human intimacy against which the unvarnished homosexual desire of Sodom is a heinous offense that earns the severest retribution. J’s tales, to wit, offer us, in Pinn’s words, “warped notions of relationship that render sexism, homophobia, and heterosexism normative stances.” And between Eden and Sodom, there is Babel. There, the Deity protects diversity, identity, and individuality—his other “normative stances.” The destruction of the tower secures the possibility of family, of language, of names. The Yahwist’s God would not allow humanity to lose—through one monumental, collective achievement—the very things that make humanity human. In Pinn’s description of African American humanist principles, the Deity “recognizes both human potential and human destructive activities.” Sitting high and looking low, Yahweh recognizes both, in this fateful instance, as one and the same.

Conclusion Prometheus smuggled technology to humanity: “I am the hunter of mysteries,” he boasts in Aeshylus’s’ tragedy, “the source and teacher of technology,/who stole and brought the secret fire/to aid the plight of men.” As punishment, Zeus chains him to a lofty peak where vultures eat at his liver. But they do not eat it up: the organ continually regenerates after the birds’ sorties, and Prometheus’s liver remains intact. The liver, according to the anatomical symbolism of the Greeks, is the seat of compassion. The penalty for theft that was given on humanity’s behalf does not destroy the Titan’s capacity for compassion. The gods punished Prometheus for having a heart for human beings—for having a liver for them, as the Greeks would put it. Nimrod, however, has for humanity only “a single lip.” Nimrod does not give us technology; he gives us over to it. The myth of the tower is recounted in Lang’s Metropolis as the intertitles of Maria’s sermon alternate with scenes of myriad half-naked men with shaven heads dragging enormous monoliths over rolling logs and





under the overseer’s lash. Though the film makes no reference to the Cushitic king Nimrod, its depiction of the tower’s construction is reminiscent of the labor that built the pyramids of Egypt. Later in American popular cinema the scene would be repeated as the image of the Egyptian levy of Hebrew slaves in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments and other film dramatizations of the Exodus. The ancient innovation of Mesopotamian brick cemented with pitch made possible the secure, complex multistory structures of which the ziqqurat was the crowning architectural achievement. But like the cotton gin and the sewing machine of a later age, advanced technology in Babel becomes the basis for human thralldom. Such thralldom, tacitly suggests the Yahwist, becomes the basis for civilization. Unlike the myth of Prometheus, the legend of Nimrod has no sequel that suggests that the builders of the Tower of Babel regroup to see to the care of the now-multilingual throng surviving amid the ruins of their fantastic project without a name. The Priestly Source follows the story of the tower with a characteristic genealogy: names and more names, until Abram takes the stage, the one whom Yahweh promises, “I will bless thee, and make thy name great” (Gen. 12:2). If we allow the identification of Nimrod as the architect of Babel, we may charge him with being the Bible’s first tyrant. Under his regime, those he commanded to build the ancient skyscraper of Babel became a faceless multitude bound together like the sticks of a fasces. In their common project of transcendence, they aspired to a great name. But as the story was retold and interpreted by Jewish and Christian exegetes, the name Babel henceforth becomes parody and the only name that survived the tower’s ruin was that of Nimrod. As such, Nimrod is an unpromising symbol for the aspirations of people of African descent, who struggle daily around the world and suffer the ravages of oppressive regimes past and present, including the loss of their very own names. In our own historical moment, marked by the enslavement of working people and the silencing of dissent in ever-swelling metropolises, “Imperialism’s face/And the international wrong” have gained a new respectability. We would do well to be warned by the cautionary tale of the Tower of Babel— warned and chastened.

Notes 1. Gerhard von Rad, Genesis, trans. John H. Marks (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1961), 147–148. 2. Nahum Sarna, JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis (Philadelphia, New York, and Jerusalem: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 80–84. 3. James L. Kugel, The Bible as It Was (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1997), 128. 4. Ibid., 128.



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5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

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Ibid., 126. Ibid. Ibid., 127. Ibid., 126. Ibid., 125. Nimrod’s name presumably would derive from the niphal of the root marad. Such derivation from the niphal, however, is rare in the Hebrew Bible, where the noun “rebel” is usually rendered by the qal participle of the root, i.e., môred (e.g., Ezekiel 20:38). Thus the association of the name Nimrod with rebellion may be more a matter of rabbinical ingenuity than Semitic philology. Kugel, The Bible as It Was, 125–126. Ibid., 126–127. Lewis Mumford, The City in History (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1961), 22. Ibid., 22. Sarna, Genesis, 80–84. von Rad, Genesis, 146. Ibid., 147. Ibid. Kugel, The Bible as It Was, 123. Ibid. von Rad, Genesis, 145. Mumford, City in History, 65. Harold Bloom, The Book of J, trans. David Rosenberg (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990), 191. See Rabbi Samuel Ben Meir’s Commentary on Genesis: An Annotated Translation, ed. Martin Lockshin (Lewiston, ME: Edwin Mellen Press, 1989). I am indebted to Prof. Robbie Harris for this reference. Alter, Genesis, 47. Kugel, The Bible as It Was, 123. von Rad, Genesis, 151. On the relation of centralized autocracy, militarism, and the rise of the modern city, see Mumford’s City in History and The Culture of Cities (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1966). For our understanding of this complex interplay, I heartily concur with Cornel West that Mumford’s oeuvre remains “indispensable.” See Cornel West, “A Note on Race and Architecture,” in Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America (New York: Routledge, 1993), 50. http://web.njit.edu/~turoff/image/tower-of-babel.jpg. Kugel, The Bible as It Was, 127. Sarna, JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis, 83. Robert Alter, Genesis: Translation and Commentary (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1996), 47. See ibid., 47. Alter, Genesis, 47. Kugel, The Bible as It Was, 126–127. von Rad, Genesis, 147. Toni Morrison, Lecture and Speech of Acceptance, Upon the Award of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Delivered at Stockholm on the Seventh of December, Nineteen Hundred and Ninety-Three (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), 19.





37. Mumford, City in History, 69. 38. Ibid., 52. 39. Basil Davidson, The Black Man’s Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation State (New York: Times Books, 1992), 98. 40. Anthony B. Pinn, African American Humanist Principles: Living and Thinking Like the Children of Nimrod (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 3. 41. Ibid., 7. 42. Ibid., 6. 43. Ibid., 3, 5. 44. Ibid., 7. 45. Anthony B. Pinn, “Embracing Nimrod’s Legacy: The Erotic, the Irreverence of Fantasy, and the Redemption of Black Theology,” in Loving the Body: Black Religious Studies and the Erotic, ed. Anthony B. Pinn and Dwight N. Hopkins (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 169. 46. Ibid., 171. 47. Ibid., 172.



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Nimrod: Paradigm of Future Oppressive Systems Jimmy Kirby

The biblical account of Nimrod (Gen. 10:8–12) describes him as a post-Deluge, pre-Israelite hero who gained prominence as “a mighty hunter before the Lord” (Gen. 10:9; NIV) and also as the first to establish kingdoms in Bablylon, Erech, Akkad, and Calneh in Shinar (Gen. 10:10). This biblical narrative further notes that it was Nimrod who went into Assyria and built the cities of Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah, and Resen (Gen. 11–12). The eighth-century prophet Micah further supports this account (Micah 5:5–6). According to the biblical chronology, Nimrod was the great-grandson of Noah, the grandson of Ham, and the sixth son of Cush. Identified as a Cushite Black, Nimrod destroys the historical myth that attempted “to explain the origin and natural subordination of black cultures and peoples and the negativity of blackness.”1 Though it is rather difficult to find precise historical references to this biblical legend, numerous views have been presented concerning this acknowledged leader and ruler over all of Mesopotamia. This chapter, while acknowledging the great achievements of Nimrod, will focus more on his “failure of ethical leadership,”2 the combination of God’s judgment and grace in God’s action, and Nimrod as a paradigm of future oppressive systems. From my perspective as an ethicist, moral choices and decision making are influenced or impacted by rules already in place, the goals to be achieved, and virtue or character. The Old Testament witness reveals God as the source and basis of morality, and as “the most common way to stress morality as the obedience to God’s explicitly revealed will.”3 Beginning with the account of Adam and Eve, the temptation for finite



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human beings is to overreach their own limitations to try for the prerogatives of God (Gen. 3:5). Old Testament scholar Bruce Birch states, “The nature of sin here is that of pride and arrogance, and since God had made specific command that this boundary be observed, it is disobedience as well.”4 Thus, the moral imperative was revealed and known long before Nimrod arrived. Although there is evidence that substantiates Nimrod’s ability as a creator of great cities, it is the critical decision to build the tower that marks a departure from his previous actions of “building” to the more obstructive action of “acquisition,” that is, to acquire more for his kingdom than entitled by his humanity under God. This was a significant and declining point in his leadership because the decision to build the tower was not based on collective need (unlike protection from wild animals from which the entire community could receive direct and immediate benefit), but on the choice of the decision-maker who considered only his aspirations. This is a dilemma of leadership when decision makers are faced with choices. In this regard, Nimrod failed to make an ethical leadership choice. Further, his leadership set biblical precedence for the establishment of systems that would do likewise, even to the point of oppression.

The Greatness of Nimrod “He [Nimrod] was a mighty hunter before the Lord; that is why it is said, ‘Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord’” (Gen. 10:9). Some scholars contend that one of the primary functions of the king from the early period of the sacral kingship was to “ward off and destroy the wild animals threatening the community.”5 Thus Nimrod, the founder king, was a man of might and power because of his ability to subdue wild animals and secure the life of the community.6 He is credited in the Genesis account as the builder of the cities of Babylon and Nineveh (future enemies of Israel) that for several centuries afterward were the two leading cities of the known world. By consolidating the cities of Erech, Accad, and Calneh into one kingdom under his rule and dominion, Nimrod may be considered the first to establish state government and the father of imperialism. As such, Nimrod is viewed by some scholars as the first empire builder and “the most outstanding leader in the four hundred years between the Flood and Abraham.”7 I do not refuse acknowledgment of the achievements of Nimrod as the recognized leader of his people and as the founder and builder of cities. However, from an ethical position, I do challenge the extent to which these achievements actually made him great or even advanced him to a level of high distinction because of the basis of the choice(s) he made while assuming the role of sovereign over his people. The basis of greatness for enlightened leadership does not rest on one’s own self-interests.



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It can be, however, the basis for the creation and development of systems that work to the disadvantage of the people it is conceptually designed to serve. As such, under the leadership of Nimrod, the people, by elevating their own purposes to the status of the ultimate, idolatrously violated the harmony of the whole. Walter Wink depicts this as the third fall, that is, the fall of the nations (the first being the Fall of Adam and Eve in Gen. 3; the second, that of the angels in Gen. 6: 1–4): “the systems and structures that exist to protect human life become idolatrous and unjust, and subordinate the people they exist to serve to ends not ordained by God (Gen. 11).”8 The Bible is silent as to precisely how Nimrod came into power or how he laid the foundations of his monarchy. It has been postulated by some that he could have been the architect in the building of the city of Babel and the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:4). As a result, his kingdom began there. Either postulation supports the significant agreement among scholars that “Nimrod’s dominion is seen as something new, as an epoch making beginning.”9 One scholar who supports Nimrod’s greatness, not only as a builder of cities, but more so as a spiritual leader, is Rev. Walter Arthur McGray. In his two-volume work, The Black Presence in the Bible, McGray places significant emphasis on Nimrod’s spirituality. He states that the phrase “before the Lord” suggests that Nimrod was spiritual and sensitive to the Lord, and that he “was conscious of the Lord’s presence and mindful that he was accountable to the Lord for his actions.”10 McGray provides a listing to help the reader capture the character and work of Nimrod: 1) Nimrod was a Creative Pioneer: He is viewed as the “first” on earth to be a mighty man. 2) Nimrod was a Liberator: He was a “mighty man,” a “champion”; he was a “champion hunter,” a “champion of game.” Nimrod delivered the community from man-slaying beasts. He was a social activist. 3) Nimrod was Spiritual: His actions and activities were done “before the Lord.” He maintained a sense of the presence of God, to whom he was accountable. 4) Nimrod was Legendary: People would proclaim to their children, young people, adults—to anyone who would excel—“(May you be) like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord.” Through his acts of deliverance, Nimrod earned a great reputation. His life was worth emulation. 5) Nimrod was a King: Through his acts of deliverance, Nimrod ascended into the kingship. His kingdom was the offspring of his acts of deliverance and spiritual character. He was a servant-leader.



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6) Nimrod was a Kingdom Builder: His kingdom was anchored by building, not conquering, great cities such as Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh in Babylon, “the land of Shinar.” His building was an achievement of excellence. . . . He built “great” cities. 7) Nimrod was Progressive: The righteous self-determination of Nimrod led him to bring the benefits of his kingdom into the land of Assyria. He made progress, and others benefited by his progress. There is not one hint that Nimrod was violent or oppressed other people. Instead he “built” Nineveh, Rehoboth-Ir, Calah and Resen—all Assyrian cities.11 In Volume One, Chapter three (particularly footnotes 142 and 143), McGray highlights some of the negative aspects of Nimrod noted by other scholars. However, as he applies the characterizations to various aspects of Nimrod’s development and work, it is apparent that he sees their suggestions and negative stereotyping of Nimrod as “hypotheses.” McGray prefers the more positive affirmation of Nimrod’s spiritual value and feels that this is what is important for us to grasp.12 When reading Chapters 10 and 11 of Genesis together, I find it somewhat problematic to place Nimrod in the category of social activist and as a leader of high spiritual value who “maintained a sense of presence before the Lord, to whom he was accountable for his actions.”13 Although Nimrod’s name is not mentioned in Chapter 11, we know from Chapter 10 that Babylon was the initial city of his city-building empire. As such, in order to glean a more accurate depiction of the character and spirituality of Nimrod, we cannot exclude the first nine verses of Chapter 11. This chapter offers a very different perspective, one that brings into question the spiritual and ethical leadership of Nimrod.

The Transgression of Nimrod “Then they said, ‘Come let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth’” (Gen. 11:4). Saint Augustine alludes to this scripture in his important work, City of God: “What is certain is that the society of the wicked made an appearance in that overwhelming effort to reach heaven by the tower which is the very symbol of godless pride.”14 For Augustine, pride is the beginning of all sin. He defines pride as an appetite for inordinate exaltation. [And] exaltation is inordinate when the soul cuts itself off from the very Source to which it should keep close and somehow makes itself and becomes an end to itself. This takes place when the soul becomes inordinately pleased with itself, and



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Unlike Augustine, Donald Gowan believes that the expression “with a tower that reaches to the heavens” should not be taken literally but simply implies that the tower would be the most prominent feature of a great city. In addition, he makes the claim that no sin is clearly identified in the narrative. Gowan points out that one of the motives of the builders, “making a name for themselves,” does not necessarily constitute undue pride or ambition. The other motive, “the anxiety of being scattered,” “is obviously seen as a threat, leading to weakness and the inability to have all the good things that the concentration of their power and resources in a city can provide.”16 Claus Westermann’s interpretation is closer to that of Augustine’s. He interprets the phrase “to the heavens” to mean “reaching to, climbing, storming the heavens. . . . The high culture of Mesopotamia raises the scaling of the heavens ‘to rival the heavens.’”17 In addition, Westermann, unlike Gowan, contends that the motive of the builders, “so we will make a name for ourselves,” is the result of ambition. (For “name” in the Bible denotes the character and reputation of the person. Several sources indicate that the name “Nimrod” means “to fall away” and “to rebel”).18 Westermann recognizes that there are other passages in which someone makes a name for himself by outstanding deeds. For example, “God makes a name for himself [sic] by his [sic] saving acts on behalf of Israel. David in 2 Samuel 8:13 makes a name for himself; in 2 Samuel 7:23 God makes a name for Israel.”19 Yet it appears that the builders of the tower are in some way rebelling against God and attempting to be like God, which is an affront to God. As such, it appears that Nimrod, as leader, had no respect for the people, neither did he have fear or reverence of God. Those who hold to a more positive view of Nimrod overlook the point that God did not bless the endeavors of the tower builders but instead frustrated their efforts by imposing a confusion of languages that in turn prompted a separation. Biblical tradition is replete with similar consequences when moral and ethical behaviors (disobedience and sin) displeased God: Adam and Eve, who were expelled from the garden because they sought to become like God; Cain, who was banished for killing his brother, Abel; Saul, the first King of Israel, was denied messiahship for his refusal to give the spoil of battle that rightfully belonged to the offering pot; King David built a magnificent united kingdom but succumbed to the temptation of lust and as a consequence had to endure the deaths of his beloved sons; “Solomon, the most glorious and powerful king in Israel’s history, whose pride led him to build a palace for himself that was bigger than Yahweh’s temple, with the result that revolution tore



such self-pleasing occurs when the soul falls away from the unchangeable Good which ought to please the soul far more than the soul can please itself.15

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the nation asunder permanently.”20 The account of Nimrod and the tower builders served as another reminder that sin and disobedience meet with God’s judgment and that God is the only guardian of the moral order. Abraham Heschel makes the observation that “His [God’s] favorite was not Nimrod, ‘the first man on earth to be a hero’ (Gen. 10:9), but Abraham: ‘I have chosen him that he may charge his sons and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice’ (Gen. 18:19).”21 In addition, these positive assessments, though plausible, overlook the view that the subjugation of a people is the implicit result of decision making that is dominated by a single vision, a vision that requires the labor of those over which the leader has authority, and under which all others (or significant portions of the populace) are forced to comply. This is especially the result when the benefits for and future of humanity, as a whole, are not fundamental to the choices made by a designated leader. Such becomes the basis for the development of structures of authority that oppress the basic tenets of humanity, and hence also high ethics. The question that must be asked is “What kind of leader was Nimrod?” The Genesis passages do not explicitly say. Yet, other noncanonical sources single Nimrod out as a tyrant and the greatest sinner since the Flood. Dudley F. Cates examined several noncanonical sources such as Antiquities of the Jew (written by Jewish historian Flavius Josephus), the Book of Jasher; Pseudo-Philo, the Book of Jubilees, and The Legend of the Jews. Cates concluded that Nimrod was supreme dictator over all of Mesopotamia, tyrannical ruler over all the descendants of Noah, and idolatrous builder of the Tower of Babel. . . . There is no doubt that Nimrod was a powerful king, ruling with cruelty and without belief in the existence of his Creator or in the wisdom still extant in the persons of Noah, Shem, Heber and others of the God-fearing and righteous line descended from Noah.22

Another writer surmises that the term “mighty hunter before the Lord” denotes Nimrod as a warrior—a hunter of men rather than of wild animals. As such, his kingdom was consolidated because of his ability to fight and kill and rule ruthlessly. His Babylonian empire sought to rule over people tyrannously while neglecting God.23 One older commentary is in agreement with these noncanonical sources: He [Nimrod] aimed at universal monarchy, in order to which, under pretence of uniting for their common safety, he contrives to keep them in one body, that, having them all under his eye, he might not fail to have them under his power. It is God’s prerogative to be universal



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Westermann adds to this: “It [the story concerning the building of the Tower of Babel] demonstrates the peril that threatened the nations in their struggle to increase their power by force. At this point a law of history is anticipated which is remarkably pertinent, viz., that such a forcible increase in power will lead inevitably to the ruination of society.”25 While these materials and theories provide a different perspective on Nimrod, we must be cautious not to read something into the biblical narrative that is not there. However, I do contend that the arrogance and pride of character implied in Nimrod’s name coupled with God’s intervention in Genesis 11:5–9 provide sufficient hints that indeed Nimrod was in defiance of God and was the primary cause of the people’s dispersion that they feared.

The Intervention of God But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that men were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why is called Babel—because thee the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth. (Gen. 11:5–9)

Genesis 11:5–9 reveals God’s disapproval of the building project in Babel. As a result of God’s disapproval, God intervenes by confounding the language of the people, stopping the building project, and scattering the builders over the face of the earth. Westermann makes an interesting observation of what is taking place in these passages: “God sees— reflects—decides—intervenes . . .”26 He notes that God’s first response upon observing the project is a reflection (“then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them”) rather than an action. Thus, God’s intervention is not so much against the present building project, but toward what people may be capable of doing in the future if a state of absolute autonomy persisted.27 This raises several questions: Did God feel threatened by humankind? Did God act in defense of God’s self? Did God have a problem with unity?



monarch, Lord of all, and King of kings; the man that aims at it offers to step into the throne of God, who will not give his [sic] glory to another.24

JIMMY KIRBY

If God in this narrative was threatened by the prowess of humankind, it would imply that God believed there were powers—other created beings in the universe—more powerful than God’s self. This would violate everything presented about the sovereign God in the rest of the Bible.28 Instead, God recognized the intelligence and powers of humankind (demonstrated by the building of the city and the tower) and observed that “when humans were no longer satisfied with the limited state of their existence, [they] wanted to force their way into the realm of gods or God.”29 Westermann views God’s intervention as of a preventative character to avert human beings from overstepping their limits and to keep them “within the limits of their state as creatures.”30 It appears that humans have the potential to overstep their bounds as created persons. The fear is that people could become like God. However, Gowan notes: “. . . but unfortunately they are unable to use the powers given to them without bringing pain into the world. They are neither wise enough nor good enough to be their own gods.”31 I am in agreement with Gowan: It was not God who was threatened by human prowess; the threat was to humanity. “The more power they [humans] are able to concentrate, the more harm they will be able to do to themselves and the world.”32 Thus God’s intervention was on behalf of humanity and the indelible harm that can be done to humans, not God, through the concentration of too much power. Did God have a problem with unity? The assumption has been that unity of creation and created persons is the purpose of God, the creator. Walter Brueggemann offers pertinent insight on this question. He suggests that there are two kinds of unity. First, a God-willed unity that permits and encourages scattering so long as all of humanity is in covenant with God and God only, responds to God’s purposes, and relies on God’s life-giving power. Second, the scattering God wills is that life should be peopled everywhere by his [sic] regents, who are attentive to all parts of creation, working in his [sic] image to enhance the whole creation, to bring “each in its kind” to full fruition and productivity. This unity-scattered dialectic does not presume that different families, tongues, lands, and nations are bad or disobedient. They are a part of his [sic] will. And the reason God allows for that kind of differential is that all parts of humanity look to and respond to God in unity.33

Thus Brueggemann does not view this text in the conventional either/or proposition: “the disobedient unity of the peoples based in pride or the scattering done by God as punishment.”34 Rather, he offers what he terms a three-factored possibility: “(a) the unity desired by the peoples in resistance against God, (b) the scattering feared by the peoples and



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carried out by God as punishment, but also (c) a unity willed by God based only on loyalty to him” [sic].35 As such, the scattering of the peoples denotes God’s judgment but, at the same time, God will still accomplish God’s purpose by forming a community (though scattered) that has diverse languages and other cultural identities and yet is indistinguishable in loyalty to God. One other point must be made regarding this issue of unity. Some have examined the first eleven chapters of Genesis to substantiate their argument that God’s intended will was for the separation of races and cultures. In other words, God’s anger was kindled toward the tower builders, not because of their desire to make a name for themselves and not be scattered, but rather because of their deliberate attempt to defy God’s original command at creation, that humankind should separate and multiply. As such, their attempts toward unity were already in defiance of God’s will. This interpretation has been instrumental in fostering a superior/inferior mindset and ethos. Douglas Bax points out that the sin of the tower builders is in Genesis 11:4 rather than Genesis 11:1, thus presupposing that the linguistic unity of humankind was a prior, given cultural fact. He writes, It was the state all people naturally enjoyed before and up to when they built the city and the tower on the plain of Shinar, not something they accomplished or somehow regained by their humanistic arrogance. It is something they lost for the first time only after and as a result of what happened at Babel (11:6–9). . . . Were this not so, mankind [sic] would have been punished long before they reached the plain, for they had unity and homogeneity long before they arrived there (11:1)36

Each of these views appears to answer the question of whether God had a problem with unity in the negative. Yet, following the commentaries on this point, it appears that the only unity accepted by God is that which also accepts God’s supremacy as the highest ethical end. Thus, taking the theme of the commentaries a step further, it also appears that those who transgress in their humanity by seeking greater “powers” or access to greater power can arouse an immediate and direct response from God. Under these circumstances, the issue may not be unity in the sense of a tangible collective of people, as much as it may be a unified, intangible, inability to be able to transcend human capacities. In the sense that no human can be God, all humans are unified. This is a significant point because if there is a unity in capacities, then, in at least this one important sense, all humans can be considered equal. Such a conclusion furthers the negative legacy of Nimrod in that he exemplifies what happens when a system of governing does not recognize this perspective and therefore, by definition, becomes the antithesis of humaneness or becomes oppressive.




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The judgment of God appears again and again in the process of history, dramatized in the rise and fall of peoples who have neglected to build their civilizations toward ends of high ethical responsibility. If a man [sic] be selfish, hardened as to sympathies, insensitive to the needs of others, in the end he [sic] will destroy himself [sic] because life denies him [sic] at the last its blessing, and the qualities that he [sic] manifests he [sic] becomes. This does not mean that the wicked do not prosper, but it does mean that the diabolical character of the enterprise itself destroys the vehicle so that finally energies are scattered and dissipated. He [sic] who places his [sic] life completely at the disposal of the highest ethical end, God, to him [sic] will not be denied the wine of creative livingness.37

Sin is not explicitly identified in the narratives of Nimrod and the building of the tower. Gowan, Westermann, and Brueggeman see God’s action as preventative and protective. Although I am in agreement with these scholars on this observation, I am of the opinion that God’s judgment was meted out as a result of Nimrod’s transgression in deciding poorly and of self-absorption resulting in sinful action. Human beings are created with godlikeness—with the abilities and power to achieve great things, as Nimrod demonstrated. In addition, human beings possess sinful tendencies and have the abilities and power to corrupt and oppress, as Nimrod also demonstrated. God’s judgment was on the basic sin of human beings—pride. Reinhold Niebuhr identifies three types of pride: “pride of power, pride of knowledge and pride of virtue. The third type, the pride of selfrighteousness, rises to a form of spiritual pride, which is at once a fourth type and yet not a specific form of pride at all but pride and self-glorification in its inclusive and quintessential form.”38 God’s judgment fell on Nimrod’s desire for power and glory and on the collective egotism of the people, the builders of the tower. Niebuhr reminds us that “there is a pride of power in which the human ego assumes its self-sufficiency and selfmastery and imagines itself secure against all vicissitudes. It does not recognize the contingent and dependent character of its life and believes itself to be the author of its own existence, the judge of its own values and the master of its own destiny.”39 Nimrod is an example of a leader whose will to power overstepped the limits of his “creatureliness.”40 His intellectual and cultural pursuits became infected with the sin of pride. Even though Reinhold Niebuhr is not writing explicitly about Nimrod, he captures the essence of Nimrod’s character.



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Man’s [sic] pride and will-to-power disturb the harmony of creation. The Bible defines sin in both religious and moral terms. The religious dimension of sin is man’s [sic] rebellion against God, his [sic] effort to usurp the place of God. The moral and social dimension of sin is injustice. The ego which falsely makes itself the centre of existence in its pride and will-to-power inevitably subordinates other life to its will and thus does injustice to other life.41

This is what the prophet Isaiah speaks of when he alludes to the pride and arrogance of the fallen angel, the adversary of God, who desired to make himself like the Most High: “You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’” (Isaiah 14:13–14). The sin Isaiah is pointing to is the effort of the adversary to transcend his proper state (like Nimrod) and to become like God. Isaiah’s condemnation of Babylon in Chapters 13 and 14 is compared with the pride of the fallen angel Lucifer. It is enough to know that Babylon was built by Nimrod and that the Babylonian kingdom had its beginning through Nimrod. From the founding of Babylon by Nimrod, kings (including Nimrod) successively were the oppressors of God’s people. Babylon was the epitome of unjust oppression, evil, and persecution. Thus, within the creation of cities under Nimrod, a leadership precedence was established that provided a historical reference for succeeding progressions of ill-conceived, or unenlightened, decision making. If Nimrod had not made the historical impression he did make, it could be argued that there would not have been a reference for the negative type of leadership he exercised. Hence, a certain “blame” can be attributed to Nimrod. Nimrod misused the blessings of God, as did the people during the days of Noah. It was the wickedness and sinfulness of humankind that grieved God’s heart and prompted God to respond through destructive measures. “The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the Lord said, ‘I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them’” (Gen. 6:6–7). The sins of Nimrod and the people of Babel were no less grievous to God than those three generations earlier. The consequence of sin and rebellion against God is judgment. As such, God did indeed respond with judgment. However, God did not destroy the people, nor did God destroy the building project. “So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city” (Gen. 11:8). Although God intervened in judgment and thwarted their building project, God’s grace protected them from




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Nimrod: Paradigm of Future Oppressive Systems History is replete with prototypes of Nimrod. This “Nimrodian philosophy” has been manifested in persons, civilizations, and sociopolitical economic systems throughout the ages. Whenever a person or groups of persons seek to establish a unity, whether cultural, racial, or otherwise with the intent of making himself/herself or themselves the idolatrous end, we find Nimrod. Whenever a person or groups of persons enter into empire building as a rebellion against God’s intent of unity, we find Nimrod. Nazism and the Saddam Hussein regime are but two obvious examples of pride and the will to power—Nimrod. The slave system in America is but another example of pride and the will to power. By conquering, enslaving, and oppressing African and African American people, Euro-Americans exhibited both the pride of self-righteousness and the pride of power. The relationship here points again to choice. Leadership can recognize its ultimate humanity or ignore it, as did Nimrod, in the expediencies of gaining wealth and power. However, in this context, slaves were the human “tools” used to build the “tower” of an expanded “kingdom.” Or, in other words, slaves were the tools for the needed labor and production essential to maintaining the system of government prevalent in this nation. What slavery did to people reflects back to the choice Nimrod made to follow interests other than those designated by God, in an attempt to build a city that would take on godlike qualities. The transgression of such a city is its attempt to alter the nature of humanity as God provided. Manning Marable writes, “The ordeal of slavery was responsible for accelerating the economic and political power of Europe and North America over the rest of the mostly nonwhite world.”42 The economic structure built on the backs of innocent Africans and African Americans became America’s Tower of Babel. It is this Tower of Babel that has caused the domination, exploitation, and even extermination of blacks and other peoples of color. This sin of pride and collective egotism has led to an exaltation of a nation over against God, that is, to a sort of self-deification. Nowhere is the power of this economic Tower of Babel more evidenced during the period of slavery than in its ability to “convert” the New England Puritans. “The main purpose of the colony according to the Puritan leaders was that God might be worshipped according to the



total destruction. God’s intervention prevented prideful, created persons from striving to attain godlike power through a unity organized against the purposes of God. Through God’s grace, the scattering of the people would ultimately allow God’s blessings to flow out to the entire world.

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Bible.”43 It was the New England Puritans who believed “that the progress of the Reformation had been arrested in their beloved homeland, placing on them a special mission to demonstrate before the world the right way to order church and society.”44 Nevertheless, the economic consideration in the business of enslaving was so powerful that it caused the New England Puritans to not only “altogether disregard the views of their leaders that the Bible Commonwealth must be kept pure of foreign or disbelieving groups if it was to survive,”45 but to also replace God for economic prosperity (which included exploitation and subjugation of other human beings). Both New Englanders and Puritans justified the enslavement of Africans and African Americans on the grounds of labor shortage. However, it was the Puritans who added a spiritual dimension: “Negroes were a cursed people, and enslavement was a proper method to bring them within the reach of God’s grace.”46 This Tower of Babel (economic and religious) was “mighty” enough to create an atmosphere in which the institution of slavery could exist and thrive. In a sense, the self-made unity of the New Englanders and Puritans, like Nimrod and the builders of the Tower of Babel, neglected the promises or mandates of God and sought a human unity through oppressive conformity, void of the vision of God’s will. If an inferiority can be attributed to Nimrod, as early colonial communities sought to do, this speaks more to the oppressive nature of those communities than to Nimrod’s ultimate status as human, that is, the willingness of the colonists to justify their perceived superiority over others. What such an outlook speaks to more than anything else is the narrow perspectives of the colonists who chose not to see that God’s action toward the people of Babel reflected a value of humanity, even of Nimrod, rather than deadly force. God “corrected” the people of Babel, God did not deny their humanity. One could say, given the discussion thus far, that the very nature of that humanity was precisely the issue. In such a case, an individual or a set of individuals would be inferior, rather all of humanity would be so. Once again, the consequence of this sin of pride and rebellion against God was judgment. And once again God’s judgment was tempered with God’s grace.

Conclusion Against the background of the wonder of creation by a transcendent God who is the source of all life and whose purposes in creation are good, there reverberates a somber, tragic theme. Man [sic], who has been made for God and made to exercise power responsibly under God, seeks to overstep the limits of his [sic] creatureliness. He [sic] attempts to place himself [sic] at the centre of existence and to find his [sic] own security. Chaos and insecurity, enmity between man




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Nimrod is a prototype of a person [system/civilization] created with godlikeness who attempted to do more than was best for humankind. Although he possessed the ability for great achievements, his sinful tendency corrupted his great accomplishments. The resulting dilemma for humanity created a state of dispersion and an inability to communicate in a single language. Together the concerns attributed to the story of Nimrod and his tower provide a lesson in what God does not expect nor will tolerate among humans. Resulting issues of whether God wanted unity among humans, whether the distribution of people speaking distinct tongues, although resulting from displeasure, may have actually provided a very caring form of discipline. Humanity was allowed to retain those capacities that make all people part of a single species. All the capacities that we value as humans, that of thought, ability to love, to choose, remained a part of our humanity. Hence, to this era, human beings may not be able to understand each other’s native language, but communication can rise above such limitations, especially in instances of particular emotional, political, or social significance. Thus, when it is important that human beings communicate, they manage to do so from the basis of their joint humanity. However, a certain legacy was left by Nimrod. His failed attempt to acquire more than he was entitled to due to his human qualities established a precedence; not a precedence of inferiority, but a precedence of negative choice. Nimrod shows that when a leader chooses a course of action that denies the capacity and the value of being human, and when that course of action is ingrained in a system of authority, opportunity for a disconnect with God finds fertile ground. The resulting danger is the increased potential for an elite to strive for superiority through unbridled oppression of others. This legacy has been reflected in a series of atrocities throughout the world, slavery is among them. The connection of Nimrod with slavery is based more on the justification provided for African Americans to be considered less than human. Although this justification is greatly unfounded and misguided, it nonetheless supported the efforts of early colonists to exercise mastery over those they considered essential to building their nation, but whose humanity they chose not to recognize. Nimrod remains an important lesson in service to God. As a prototype of systemic oppression, Nimrod, in paradox, gives hope that decision makers who make negative choices, or choices against the commonality of our ultimate humanity, can by those same capacities be directed to overcome, begin anew, and prosper.



[sic] and his [sic] brother ensue, God’s judgment is an ever-present reality. But into this somber theme there breaks again and again the note of hope. Rebellious man [sic] is never utterly rejected by God.47


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1. Robert E. Hood, Begrimed and Black: Christian Traditions on Blacks and Blackness (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994), 155. 2. Walter Earl Fluker uses the phrase, “the failure of ethical leadership,” to describe “the failure of public leaders to resolve America’s long history of shame and to address what constitutes the human need for love, hope, and a sense of community.” Walter Earl Fluker, “The Failure of Ethical Leadership and the Challenge of Hope,” in The Stones That the Builders Rejected: The Development of Ethical Leadership from the Black Church Tradition, ed. Walter Earl Fluker (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1998), 1. 3. Bruce C. Birch, Let Justice Roll Down: The Old Testament, Ethics, and Christian Life (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1991), 37. 4. Ibid., 92. 5. Claus Westermann, Genesis I–II: A Commentary, trans. John J. Scullion (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1984), 516. 6. Ibid., 516. 7. Henry Halley, Halley’s Bible Handbook (Grand Rapids, MI: Zonderman Publishing House, 1965), 82. 8. Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992), 67, 77. 9. Westermann, Genesis I–II: A Commentary, 516. 10. Rev. Walter Arthur McGray, The Black Presence in the Bible and the Table of Nations (Genesis 10:1–32), Vol. 2 (Chicago: Black Light Fellowship, 1990), 88. 11. Ibid., Vol. 1, 69–70. 12. Ibid., Vol. 2, 88–89. 13. Ibid. 14. St. Augustine, City of God, trans. Gerald G. Walsh, Demetrius B. Zema, Grace Monahan, and Daniel J. Honan (New York: Doubleday, 1958), 370. 15. Ibid., 308–309. 16. Donald E. Gowan, From Eden to Babel: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis 1–11 (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1988), 117–118. 17. Westermann, Genesis 1–11: A Commentary, 548. 18. See Dudley F. Cates, The Rise and Fall of King Nimrod (Raleigh, NC: Pentland Press Inc., 1998), 55. Also, Lambert Dolphin, “The Tower of Babel and the Confusion of Languages,” April 16, 2000; available from http://www. Idolphin.org/babel.html; accessed May 13, 2004. In addition, The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol. 4, ed. David Noel (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 1117, and Walter Brueggemann, Genesis: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta, GA: Westminster John Knox Press, 1982), 92. 19. Westermann, Genesis 1–11: A Commentary, 548. 20. Ted Peters, Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994), 92–93. 21. Abraham J. Heschel, Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism (New York: Free Press, 1959), 84. 22. Cates, The Rise and Fall of King Nimrod, 1–2. 23. Dolphin, “The Tower of Babel and the Confusion of Languages.” 24. Matthew Henry’s Commentary, ed. Leslie F. Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1961), 25.



Notes

JIMMY KIRBY

25. Claus Westermann, Handbook to the Old Testament, trans. Robert H. Boyd (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1967), 28. 26. Westermann, Genesis 1–11: A Commentary, 549. 27. Ibid., 551. 28. Gowan, From Eden to Babel, 119. 29. Westermann, Genesis 1–11, 552. 30. Ibid., 555. 31. Gowan, From Eden to Babel, 119. 32. Ibid. 33. Walter Brueggemann, Genesis: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1982), 99. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36. Douglas Bax, “The Bible and Apartheid 2,” in Apartheid Is a Heresy, ed. John W. DeGruchy and Charles Villa-Vicencio (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1983), 121. 37. Howard Thurman, “Judgment and Hope in the Christian Message,” in The Christian Way in Race Relations, ed. William Stuart Nelson (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1948), 234. 38. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man: Volume 1, Human Nature (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1964), 188. 39. Ibid. 40. This is a term used by Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, 179. 41. Ibid. 42. Manning Marable, How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America: Problems in Race, Political Economy, and Society, updated edition. South End Press Classics Series, Vol. 4 (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000), 7. 43. Robert T. Handy, A History of the Churches in the United States and Canada (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 19. 44. Ibid., 30. 45. John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans, 3rd edition (New York: Vintage Books, 1969), 102. 46. Ibid., 105. 47. Robert Davidson, Genesis 1–11 (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 107.



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Beyond the Curse of Noah: African American Pastoral Theology as Political Edward P. Wimberly

This chapter assumes the political reality that biblical stories and traditions have been used by dominant groups throughout ancient and modern history to further political and social agendas and to oppress and belittle certain groups of people. While realism speaks about what is perceived to be real, the faith of African American Christians speaks to another and a deeper reality, one that did not develop from conferring with flesh and blood.1 This deeper reality has a spiritual source, but it motivates political, social, and economic efforts toward freedom, liberation, and justice. It works to silence and dethrone the cultural creations intended to undermine, enslave, oppress, and victimize others. While the biblical story of Nimrod and the Curse of Ham have been employed for centuries to demean and enslave nondominant groups and people of color, there is a much stronger spiritual dynamic at work in history that is overthrowing human efforts to enslave others through counterfeit uses of the holy scriptures. The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate how the discipline of African American pastoral theology, or pastoral care and counseling, is grounded in this dynamic and spiritual, overthrowing and liberating, reality working within history. Such a pastoral theology works with people who have internalized the results of the misuse of scriptural stories and narratives. More precisely, this chapter will demonstrate how African American pastoral care, counseling, and pastoral theology work with African Americans who have internalized beliefs and convictions rooted in biblical distortions promoted by dominant groups seeking the physical and psychological enslavement of African Americans.



CHAP TER

EDWARD P. WIMBERLY

I assert that misusing scripture to enslave others is a political process intended to disenfranchise people by preventing them from participating fully in determining their own destiny. This process also demeans their self-esteem and undermines their identity. While we African Americans have been the target of manipulative uses of scripture to undermine our identity and to disenfranchise us, forces to counter these efforts have always been at work. Our faith, for example, has challenged us not to give in to such perversions of the truth. Yet, these falsehoods do have an impact at the subconscious levels of our lives, and none of us can escape the subtle influences wielded by the constant bombardment of these negative untruths. Despite the persistent undermining of the negative use of biblical stories, African American Christians have not always been comfortable embracing the influence of these enslaving human creations. Politically, African American pastoral care, counseling, and pastoral theology function not only to resist efforts to enslave us psychically, but also to free us from internalizing the dominant group’s oppression. We cannot totally escape the influence of negative creations; some of these human distortions of the Bible become internalized despite our best efforts to resist them. Consequently, pastoral counseling seeks to free persons from any internalization of sabotaging beliefs. Pastoral care, counseling, and pastoral theology become political processes when they seek to free people from such undermining beliefs. As political processes, they liberate persons from untruths, but equally important, they liberate the creative spirit of human agency, which works to end injustice and fight oppression. Pastoral counseling as a political process frees people to accept God’s gift of self-worth and value and to also participate fully in determining their own destiny, participate in society, and exercise Godgiven gifts to their fullest potential.2 To fulfill the purpose of this chapter, several key topics are explored. First, the reality of what Cain Hope Felder calls sacralization in biblical tradition is affirmed, particularly in the way stories of the Curse of Ham and Nimrod have been used to exploit. Sacralization is the “transposing of an ideological concept into a tenet of religious faith (or theological justification), in order to serve the vested interest of a particular ethnic/ racial group.”3 The work of Charles Copher, the eminent forerunner of African American biblical scholarship, is examined to show how the Curse of Ham tradition was clearly extrabiblical in nature, created and used to oppress darker people.4 Second, the contribution of the story of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel to liberation dimensions of pastoral theology will be explored. The exploration will include the potential of the legacy of these two stories to provide a background for addressing liberation of African Americans from biblical stories into which African Americans have been recruited for the purposes of undermining their worth, dignity, and value. The conceptual



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works of Anthony Pinn on fantasy and of Thomas Hoyt on imagination will be examined for their contribution to a pastoral theology of liberation from internalized oppression. Third, the chapter explores how African American pastoral care, counseling, and pastoral theology are inherently political processes. They tap into the dynamic liberating forces at work in scripture and in history, seeking to liberate people from historical biblical distortions into which many African Americans have been recruited. Stories of Nimrod and Ham historically have been used to recruit darker races of people into roles and functions that serve the vested interests of the dominant group. Pastoral care, counseling, and pastoral theology seek to remove the internalized oppression resulting from such recruiting. Recruiting is a political process, and so is liberation from this recruiting.5 Fourth and finally, the chapter presents a case illustration of how pastoral care, counseling, and pastoral theology, as political processes, seek to edit the negative stories and narratives we have internalized based on the misuse of scripture. The concept of recruiting and the process of editing stories into which we have been recruited for negative purposes are explored into and illustrated by the case study.

The Sacralization of Scripture According to Cain Hope Felder, the process of utilizing the Bible to politically disenfranchise an entire population, and in so doing, undermine collective identity, begins with the sacralizing process.6 Using scripture to justify the vested interests of one group over against another has taken place for centuries, and the results of such methods have devastated people of color all over the world. Dr. Charles B. Copher, in conversations at Interdenominational Theological Center, would often say that 98 percent of the texts presented as biblical to justify racism and to subjugate black people are not found in the Bible. In fact, Copher wrote that it is difficult to talk about the black presence in the Bible because the dominant perspectives for doing so come not from the biblical texts themselves but from rabbinic interpretations of some biblical texts. Such perspectives, he contends, were given interpretive precedence over what the texts themselves have to say.7 Copher argued that views about the curse of blackness in the Bible and the attribution of negative characteristics to black people are not part of the text itself. The most prevailing negative attribution toward black people is what Copher calls the “Hamite view.” This view is based on the curse of Canaan in Genesis 9:24–27 that speaks of what some have called the Curse of Ham and his descendants, listed in the Table of Nations in Genesis 1–14 and 1 Chronicles 1:8–16. “According to this view, which proliferated into



BEYOND THE CURSE OF NOAH

EDWARD P. WIMBERLY

several versions, Ham and/or Canaan, more often Ham, was turned black as a result of Noah’s curse, and his descendants were doomed to bear the same color,”8 says Copher. This interpretation was found first in rabbinic literature and later traced to twelfth-century Europe. In the United States, this view was promulgated in anti-Negro literature.9 Nimrod is depicted in the Bible as a direct descendant of Noah. It is safe to conclude that he was also included in the Curse of Ham, because Ham was Noah’s son. In Copher’s mind, Nimrod was indeed black and is portrayed as one who founded civilization in Mesopotamia.10 However, the notion that blackness was part of a curse appears not to be part of the text but is a sacralization and a political spin used historically to justify racism, particularly in the United States. Consequently, Felder says, “In fact, the Bible contains no narratives in which the original intent was to negate the full humanity of black people or view blacks in an unfavorable way.11 Such negative attitudes about black people are entirely post-biblical.”12

The Liberative Use of Imagination in interpreting Scripture This section will address the contribution that a reframing of the story of Nimrod might make to a pastoral theology that addresses the liberation of African Americans from internalized oppression. The effort of Anthony Pinn to reframe the meaning of the Nimrod legacy and the Tower of Babel story will be the focus along with the insights of Thomas Hoyt. Genesis 10:8–10 presents the story of Nimrod. He is the son of Cush, whom Copher recognizes as being black. Nimrod is presented as a mighty hunter who was centered in God and lived for God. He was also described as a leader and ruler of a kingdom that included Babel and other places. Pinn points out that some antebellum pro-slavery interpreters of the story of Nimrod and his connection with the Tower of Babel used Genesis 10:8–15 and 11:1–9 to show that blacks sought to stifle the “divinely ordained servitude of Blacks to whites.”13 Pinn’s observation shows how specific passages of scripture have been distorted and used to poison the cultural and social environment, which contributed to undermining the identity and dignity of African Americans. Of course, what whites did with scripture to support the heinous system of slavery was directly communicated to African Americans. Pinn draws on the concept of fantasy in his reframing of the stories of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel. His use of fantasy is couched in the context of human sexuality, and he wants to use the story of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel to extend the normative boundaries that have informed human sexuality. He envisages the legacy of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel as a normative ground for rich relationship possibilities in human interaction leading to freedom.



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For Pinn fantasy ruptures existing standards and relationships and opens new opportunities for embracing what is despised.14 For him fantasy pushes toward subversion and identifies what is the unsaid and unseen of culture: the silenced, the invisible, the covered over, and the absent. Fantasy, then, is an attempt to attend to that which is hidden, but present nonetheless. Pinn is unhappy with the meaning of imagination and uses fantasy to illustrate what he means by subversive. For him imagination takes place within current boundaries defined by culture, but fantasy is irreverent and indecent. It provides a new view of history, a fresh vision on how selves are constructed, and a vision of new realities. Fantasy brings history into question, overthrows social structures, and makes possible new relational possibilities.15 I can embrace Pinn’s notion that Nimrod’s legacy and the reframing of the Tower of Babel story can be rethought in order to overturn the way the curse of Noah has been used to enslave and oppress African Americans. In my mind, the misuse of the Nimrod legacy and the Tower of Babel story to foster slavery and the disenfranchisement of African Americans are political ideas undergirding social structures that must be subverted and overthrown. Moreover, his understanding of fantasy as irreverent when applied to internalized negative stories and self-images is critical for exorcising the internalized sabotage of African American personalities. I am critical of Pinn’s notion of fantasy as a means of reframing the story of Nimrod and the literal biblical meaning of these stories, however. More specifically, literal meaning refers to a consensus within the Christian community about texts that have remained consistent for more than 1800 years based on the character of the texts themselves and not on an external theory applied to them.16 For me, the Tower of Babel is about loss of trust in God, and believing in the power of human creativity over against the wisdom of God. The story condemns neither blackness nor black people or human creativity. Rather, it condemns human creativity that is out of control. The passage must be understood in light of the fall of human beings in Genesis 3 and their seeking to be the creator and not the created. Yes, human creativity is a wonderful creation of God, but under certain conditions it has its limits. The story of the Tower helps to identify the limits. Another level of critique is Pinn’s view of fantasy and human creativity and the source of human creativity. Pinn embraces a humanistic vision of human creativity that stems from Eros.17 He says that Eros makes black Christianity and black theology nervous, and he criticizes Cone for making agape inseparable from God’s being. He says that Cone believes that any deviation from agape love is a distortion of authentic Christian self-sacrificial love.18 Drawing on Paul Tillich, Pinn offers an alternative to grounding human creativity in agape as an inseparable dimension of God’s being.




EDWARD P. WIMBERLY

For him, “Eros is a force that gives shape to human ingenuity and expression on a variety of fronts and in a variety of forms.”19 It is far reaching and gives birth to mutuality and creative relationships. Thus, he wants to move black theology away from its preoccupation with agape, which has no connection with “libidinal and erotic feelings.” Pinn believes that grounding human creativity in God’s being eliminates the possibility for black theology and Christianity to embrace a holistic view of life and to appreciate the place of the erotic in life. He does not envision a truly embodied theology growing out of God’s being. I embrace liberation theology’s view of human creativity resting in God’s being, and to base it in Eros opens the door to a view of human capacity that lends itself more to human self-deception. Beginning human creativity with God and God’s relationship with us increases our ability to embrace the erotic and to give it its proper place within human relationships. My own realistic theology, which recognizes the human capacity for self-interest and self-deception, prevents me from grounding human creativity in Eros. Given my religions convictions about the literal meaning of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel, I must embrace what Bishop Thomas Hoyt, a biblical scholar, has to say about imagination. For example, he indicates that the black experience in the United States has conditioned the way African Americans interpreted the Bible and that “blacks have displayed a tremendous transcendent spirit that has enabled them to confront the biblical text creatively.”20 Imagination is the key to interpreting scripture for African Americans. For him imagination refers to the evoking power of verbal images of the biblical text and how they evoke mental images in the interpreter and hearer.21 He draws on his own background growing up in a parsonage and the black church listening to his father use scripture to evoke saving images. He points out that the rhetorical power of scripture was a similar method used to evoke mental images in the original hearers and readers of scripture.22 Hoyt says that imagination opens the text so that both the society and the person can be transformed. For him, the purpose of scripture is not to provide information, but to form the reader and hearer.23 For him, “Scriptures are pastoral documents intended to shape, orient, and inspire the church in the process of addressing the whole person.”24 Pinn considers the use of imagination by biblical scholars such as Hoyt and liberation theologians to be restrictive and denies the capacity of humans to expand meaning and human creativity, because this view of imagination does not challenge current social meanings. In fact, Pinn says, Put yet another way, imagination as the agent of liberation does not call into question the essential “realness” of the reality promoted by the dominant social system. It may rebel against certain aspects of it



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While I see a role for Pinn’s understanding of the fantastic with regard to pastoral theology and internalized oppression, I like the term imagination as it is more conservative given the fact that I believe human creativity should have realistic limits, and the literal meaning of the Tower of Babel helps to set these limits. I think many African Americans are evangelical and conservative theologically, because they recognize the human capacity for self-deception and evil. Moreover, the use of scripture to benefit one’s own self and community is a temptation that transcends race and extends to all humanity. For me, the Tower of Babel is a realistic warning about the limits of human creativity.

African American Pastoral Care and Counseling Are Inherently Political For me, the use of scripture toward ends that seek to disenfranchise African Americans is a political process. Politics in the United States relates to how scarce resources are allocated and who has privileged access to these resources.26 Societies have systems of values and rationales for assuring that dominant groups have access to scarce resources—economic and material, for example—while restricting the access of other groups. One means of denying access is to create negative meaning structures in everyday discourse into which nonvalued and nonprivileged groups are recruited. The expectation is that these nonvalued groups will then internalize the negative meaning structures. The goal is to facilitate a noncoercive internalized barrier within nonvalued group members, which will prevent them from wanting access to the treasured scarce resources or from desiring to dismantle the barriers. If this end is achieved, there would be no need for physical structures that deny access to such resources. Recruiting, then, becomes a political tool for denying nonvalued people full access to certain resources. For me, the political use of scripture for the self-interest of one group over another group is the misuse of human creativity. The use of the Curse of Ham and related stories of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel to undermine African Americans and to disenfranchise them is human creativity out of control. It is taking human imagination too far without the proper limits being in place. Consequently, this is the reason why I cannot embrace a view of human creativity that does not begin with God.



(e.g., racism, sexism, classism), but it fails to cause the type of damage to the social system that does more than necessitate a change in its symbol system. Imagination is important, but it is not the stuff by which relationships are examined and reconceived in ways that pose long lasting damage to things as they have been.25

EDWARD P. WIMBERLY

At this point, I want to go further into the discussion of the misuse of human creativity to dehumanize African Americans. Erik Erikson, one of the first European behavioral scientists to understand how recruiting works in the United States, wrote about the formation of negative identities in the American Negro child.27 According to Erikson, identity takes place during adolescence and involves interaction between the youth’s self-understanding, developed since birth, and the concrete options that correspond to the youth’s self-understanding that the wider culture provides. In Erikson’s mind, these concrete options are vocational and are held out to youth as they gradually aspire to confirm their identities. Erikson implies that positive identities are scarce and limited realities in the wider culture in the United States and, therefore, African American youth must be denied access to this scarce resource by recruiting them into negative identities. Such recruiting then results in a permanent loss of identity for the adolescent. Erikson says the following about the negative identities into which African American youth are recruited: Three identities are formed: (1) mammy’s oral-sensual “honey-child”— tender, expressive, rhythmic; (2) the evil identity of the dirty anal-sadistic, phallic-rapist “nigger”; and (3) the clean, anal-compulsive, restrained, friendly, but always sad “white man’s Negro.”28

Though Erikson wrote in the 1950s, these slave mentalities are still operative in contemporary society, and they continue to affect many black youth. The process of internalizing these mentalities is particularly evident in the profiling of black youth by police. Such profiling often results in many youth internalizing the image of the gangster and criminal. Being a criminal is an identity into which our black youth are recruited, and many black youth internalize such negative images. Internalizing such pejorative images leads to political disenfranchisement and limited access to the scarce vocational resources. Romney Moseley, in his brilliant analysis of the formation of identity, draws on Erikson’s conclusions to talk about contemporary black youth. Moseley, now deceased, emphasized that the negative identities talked about by Erikson are now the norm for black youth.29 He points out that there must be trust between the youth’s self and his or her environment, but unemployment, poverty, racism, and substance abuse stand in the way of building this trust. Consequently, the interaction between the self and the environment facilitates the recruiting of black youth into the negative identities inherited from slavery. Historically, religion has played a significant role in shaping the external environment in the United States. People with politically vested interests in denying certain groups access to the scarce resources of vocation have used religion to justify exclusion as well as to recruit these



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groups into negative identities. For example, there is a historical link between religion and racial prejudice. Gordon Allport’s classic studies on racial prejudice point to this connection; they confirm Cain Hope Felder’s conclusions about sacralization and the use of scripture to reinforce economic, political, and social vested interests of dominant groups. In a 1967 study entitled “Personal Religious Orientation and Prejudice,” Gordon W. Allport and J. Michael Ross coined the categories of intrinsic and extrinsic orientations. Intrinsic people were committed to and interiorized the positive values of the faith, while those who were extrinsic used religion to further their vested interests. Persons of extrinsic vested interest were more prejudiced.30 The point is that people who see religion and faith as a means to economic and political self-interest were more likely to be prejudiced than those who were serious about living out the tenets of the faith. In this context, the correlation between religion and the negative identities into which African Americans are recruited is very real.

Conclusion The purpose of this chapter was to illustrate that African American pastoral care, counseling, and pastoral theology are rooted in a dynamic, spiritual force that liberates people from internalized oppression and political disenfranchisement. These disciplines use scripture in liberating people from oppression. Whenever the pursuit is liberation from oppression, the use of scripture in African American pastoral care, counseling, and pastoral theology is consistent with the dynamic thrust of God moving toward establishing God’s reign and rule. Instead of pursuing the political self-interests of African Americans, these disciplines are pursuing the common good. When African American pastoral care, counseling, and pastoral theology serve the ends of establishing God’s rule and reign through liberation, they represent a positive political force. We have concluded that those who would make blackness a curse and impose that curse on the story of Ham and his descendants are distorting scripture and using it for negative political purposes. Nimrod had his own political agenda, and he was also black. His blackness was not a condition of the curse, but a reality of his pigmentation. Nimrod was a human being with great capacity for creativity. The text supports his creativity and its origin in God. The Tower of Babel, however, focuses on human creativity that is out of control. Human creativity out of control is a condition of being human, and it is not a condition of blackness. In short, there is no need for African Americans to internalize the distortions that some biblical interpretation, church history, and pro-slavery justifications have imposed on the story. As David Shannon says, we need to read what is




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actually in the text.31 Despite the historical attempt to attach “distance from God and denial of the more positive trajectories of ‘salvation’ to black skin,” given the conclusions of Charles Copher and Cain Hope Felder, the biblical witness itself does not make this identification. Consequently, our role as pastoral theologians is to set the record straight about what scripture actually says, and we need to help liberate those African Americans who have internalized distortions of scripture. Pinn’s notion of fantasy being used irreverently and indecently can be embraced when biblical stories are used to enslave people or to perpetuate the self-interest of dominant groups. However, I would not employ fantasy as a means of removing the literal meaning of the story of the Tower of Babel, a story that I suggest places limits on out of control human creativity. I agree with Brian K. Blount that scripture cannot be interpreted in any way we want as the grammar, the syntax, and the original time-bound dimensions of the text exist along with what the reader brings to the text from his or her social location.32 Indeed, what we African Americans bring to the text as reader from our own social location allowed us to draw meaning from biblical texts that spoke to our needs. Yet, Blount believes that the language of the biblical world shaped the experiences of African Americans and limited how they interpreted the text.33 In fact, in his study of the Spirituals, he concludes that biblical language overwhelmed slaves and helped them not only to explain the world but to also create it.34

Notes 1. See Galatians 1:16. 2. For fuller discussion of pastoral counseling as a political process, see Edward P. Wimberly, African American Pastoral Care and Counseling as Political Processes (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2006). 3. Cain Hope Felder, “Race, Racism, and the Biblical Narratives,” in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation, ed. Cain Hope Felder (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991), 128–129. 4. Charles B. Copher, “The Black Presence in the Old Testament,” in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation, ed. Cain Hope Felder (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991), 146–164. Charles B. Copher “Three Thousand Years of Biblical Interpretation with Reference to Black Peoples,” in African American Religious Studies: An Interdisciplinary Anthology, ed. Gayraud Wilmore (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1989), 105–128. 5. The source for the view of pastoral care and counseling as political processes is found in Wimberly, Pastoral Care and Counseling as Political Processes. 6. Felder, Stony the Road We Trod, 128–129. 7. Copher, “The Black Presence in the Old Testament,” 146–147. See also Stephen R. Haynes, Noah’s Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Michael Joseph Brown, Blackening of the Bible: The Aims of African American Biblical Scholarship (New York: Trinity Press International, 2004), 24–53.



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8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

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Copher, “The Black Presence in the Old Testament,” 146. Ibid., 147–148. Ibid., 153. Randall C. Bailey does not take up the issue of the misuse of the Curse of Noah on racial grounds. Rather, he argues that the genealogy of Ham in Genesis 9 is the background for Israelite denunciation of the Egyptians and Canaanites as sexual deviants. See “They’re Nothing but Incestuous Bastards: The Polemical Use of Sex and Sexuality in Hebrew Canon Narratives,” in Reading from This Place: Social Location and Biblical Interpretation in the United States, ed. Fernando Segovia and Mary Ann Tolbert (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1994), 121–138. Felder, “Race, Racism, and Biblical Narratives,” 127. Anthony B. Pinn, “Embracing Nimrod’s Legacy: The Erotic, the Irreverence of Fantasy, and the Redemption of Black Theology,” in Loving the Body: Black Religious Studies and the Erotic, ed. Anthony B. Pinn and Dwight N. Hopkins (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 168. Ibid., 171. Ibid., 172. See Hans W. Frei, Theology and Narrative Selected Essays, ed. George Husinger and William C. Placher (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 16–17. Pinn, “Embracing,” 158–166. Ibid., 159. Ibid., 162. Thomas Hoyt, “Interpreting Biblical Scholarship for the Black Church Tradition,” in Stoney the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation, ed. Cain Hope Felder (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991), 27. Ibid., 34. Ibid. Ibid., 37. Ibid. Pinn, “Embracing Nimrod’s Legacy,” 166. Edward P. Wimberly, African American Pastoral Care and Counseling as Political Processes (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2006). Erik H. Erikson, Childhood and Society (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1963), 241–246. Ibid., 242. Romney M. Moseley, Becoming a Self Before God: Critical Transformations (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1991), 70. See Bernard Spilka, Jr., Ralph W. Hood, Bruce Hunsberger, and Richard Gorsuch, The Psychology of Religion (New York: Guilford Press, 1996), 362. Conversations with the elders at the Interdenominational Theological Center, Atlanta, GA, April 5, 2005. Brian K. Blount, Cultural Interpretation: Reorienting New Testament Criticism (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995), 32–33. Ibid., 60. Ibid.







THREE

A Neutral Stance



SECT ION




14

A Tower of Pulpits Dale P. Andrews

The infamous Curse of Ham and the notorious legend of his grandson, Nimrod, can overwhelm any researcher, no matter how objectively one attempts to study the horrific legacy of American slavery and the repugnant racism that seems to survive any effort to bury it, like some creature in a low-budget horror flick. Burying this kind of creature only seems to provide a womb in which to mutate and reemerge. Perhaps a better way to destroy the creature is continually to name the evil, to reexpose it, to subject it to scrutiny, resistance, and hopefully even justice. This chapter probes how we often fall short in our scrutiny of the evil of racism in our theology and therefore in our resistance to its mutation in our practices of faith, especially in our preaching. In this volume we have been asked to excavate the tomb of Nimrod from the Tower of Babel and the history of its interpretation, to analyze the legend and possibly reinterpret or, say, transform the creature. As a homiletician and practical theologian, I am particularly concerned with the efforts of African Americans to retell the story through speeches and sermons. While the confines of an essay somewhat limit the breadth of such an approach, a close look at a few significant historical contributions helps us to decipher some key developments in naming the evil and resisting the surviving adaptations that actually contort our theological responses to racism. To focus attention on a few African American responses to the vile distortions of biblical folklore, it will be necessary first to explore how the relevant texts were employed by a couple of the more flagrant protagonists of slavery and racial subjugation. This chapter will also review some important African American responses to the central features of the curse upon Ham and the legend of Nimrod in view of developing theological arguments and religious identity. Ultimately in the goals of practical theology that seek strategies of response, I hope to raise



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Early Pro-slavery Biblical Hermeneutics and Theology American slavery of Africans did not wait for religious justification to buttress its enterprise. The economic forces driving the development of the slave trade inspired arguments of necessity.1 These arguments did, however, turn eventually to religion to address cultural conflicts over the moral question of enslavement and the brutal treatment of slaves. It would not be long before slavery in the South would become what some referred to as a sacred institution.2 The idea that people often turn to religion to interpret their historical or cultural realities should not be news to even the casual reader. American history claims divine will, intervention, or sanction in almost every major scene. As Puritan images of the new Israel would blur into sanctions for the American Revolution, the claims of biblical sanctions for slavery and of divine will in white superiority are not unimaginable, though appalling. The North-South divide over slavery would become well entrenched in the early nineteenth century, particularly after the Nat Turner slave revolt; by the 1830s, the biblical justification for slavery and racial subjugation was a main staple in the religious diet of the American cultural debate.3 Implications of the legend of Nimrod in the American racial conflict are rooted in the biblical myth of Noah’s curse upon his son Ham (Gen. 9: 18–28). Oddly enough, one of the more iniquitous and prominent renditions of the curse and therefore its meaning for American slavery comes from the pen of a Northerner, Josiah Priest, in the mid–nineteenth century. Priest’s views on humanity and the role of color begin with the creation myths of Adam and Eve. Given his ultimate stance on the white race in God’s divine plan for humanity, it is rather surprising that Priest claims that the skin color of humanity was originally a “bright florid red.” However, the introduction of sin changed humanity and darkened their red hue. From thereon, the first humans suffered a darker copper hue.4 With this argument, Priest sets the stage for the relation of color to the character and state of humanity. The correlation of a darker hue to the sinfulness of humanity reflects already an early depiction of the hierarchy of color in the religious justification that delineates racial subjugation within divine will and a perverse meritocracy. Sin and the darkened copper hue of humanity still did not yet account for the various races of humanity, never mind their stratification. Like most biblical apologists for slavery, Priest turned to Noah’s curse upon



critical questions regarding how both sides of the race conflict mirror religious arguments and pose problems of biblical interpretation and theology in preaching ministries and public discourse resisting racism even today.

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Ham. But first, he explains that Noah’s three sons, though born from the same mother, were formed in the womb as three distinct races—red (copper), black, and white—with the commonly held physical attributes for each color.5 Of course, this was a matter of divine intention. Priest initially asserts that the races were chosen arbitrarily; but then, he later purports that God determined the races in foreknowledge that the ensuing flood would produce quite divergent climates and ecological conditions across the world and, therefore, would require different human traits to thrive, respectively.6 Still, Priest emphatically rejects any argument holding that the races developed in response to their climates or environments. This stance stresses that neither color nor physical attributes emerged from natural causes. The only acceptable explanation would be that God created the distinct races and conditioned them for their prospective environments after the Flood. It should not be necessary here to narrate the biblical account of the curse upon Ham. Though it may be difficult to perceive the violation of Noah in what seems to be an accidental exposure, the more apparent violation, for Priest, is Ham’s reaction. Priest charges that Ham ridicules his father in announcing such a discovery to his brothers. It is a matter of character, which Priest names as the blight of the Negro race. He charges that Ham acted in accordance with his already malfeasant character. The curse is due to the corrupt character of black humanity.7 The endurance of the curse was not God’s response to Noah’s charge. Instead, Noah responded to the charge of the Holy Spirit. Although this curse was an enduring indictment of the character of the Hamitic bloodline, the language of prophecy does not adequately describe the nature of the curse. To speak of prophecy is to reduce the curse to a forecast of future events even if based in current conditions. Here Priest responds directly to interpretations proffered by abolitionists. He is concerned with pointing out the act of judgment in the curse.8 If the curse was simply foretelling the enslavement of Africans, the notion of divine sanction would not be sufficiently established. A judicial pronouncement, however, indicates intentionality. Just as the character of Ham extends beyond himself, into the very character of black humanity, so too does judgment. The arms of that judgment were subjugation and slavery. With the judgment of the black race, the “intrinsic superiority” of the white race is readily apparent, wherein white becomes the natural and moral sign of all that is good and pure. Priest concludes that Christ therefore was a white man, despite his copper parent—because God was light, he was thus white9—the juxtaposition being that black signifies moral evil and judgment. With the curse upon Ham (in the name of his own son, Canaan), the three sons of Noah and their progeny would retain their distinct races. The copper-red son, Shem, would secure the middle region of the known



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world in the initial fulfillment of the curse by displacing and subjugating the Canaanites. Ham, the black son, would migrate to the south into Africa, and Japheth, the white son, would come to inhabit the north and ultimately share in fulfilling the judgment upon Ham. The eventual justification of American slavery would also build upon a biblical text (Leviticus 25: 44) sanctioning the enslavement of the surrounding “heathen negro race” by the Hebrew children of Shem, that is, as Priest interprets it.10 The black race would not escape the “sins of their father,” neither in character nor in condemnation. In essence, the state of black humanity became inured to the afflicted character and curse under which it lives. Within these dynamics of character and curse, Priest conditions the legend of Nimrod. In short, Nimrod reflects the spiritual and moral rebellion of the black race. Priest painstakingly attempts to relate multiple biblical stories of depravity or sedition to the character of black humanity and the influence of black humanity upon others. The presence and spiritual practices of black people from the African nations and old Palestine were responsible for the Israelites’ sinful neglect of their true religion.11 In this vein, Nimrod, as the grandson of Ham, is portrayed as the archetype of black immoral character and human rebellion against God.12 Archaeological remnants of what is attributed to the Tower of Babel becomes proof of Nimrod’s stature, but not of any gifts or abilities attributable to black humanity. Any mathematical or scientific knowledge necessary for building such a tower or such a kingdom of dominance was inherited from the household of Noah and was not any product of black ingenuity or accomplishments.13 In fact, Priest extends the point to aver that the black race has not advanced human knowledge to any degree but has instead only diminished in intellect, while increasing only in their animalistic nature.14 The greatest gift, and perhaps the only one, attributed to the Hamitic race was the gift of rebellion. Nimrod may have been the progenitor of the first great kingdom and great cities, but for Priest and others of like mind, his only legacy was the skill of rebellion against the honored God of Noah, Shem, and ultimately Japheth. Priest is as clear in his depiction of Nimrod as he is on the curse upon Ham: On [account of Ham’s unconquerable hatred, not only toward Noah, but also toward Shem and Japheth], it was that Ham left the paternal tents and altar of sacrifice, near Ararat, much sooner than did the other sons, . . . till they came to the great flats of Shinar, where Nimrod, the grand-son of Ham, commenced the foundations of his empire, and where he and Ham and all the race, set about building the tower as a [defense] against another flood, and as a temple of idolatry, and as a rallying point for their tribes in the coming ages. It was no doubt on the



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account of Noah’s curse, that Nimrod, the great leading spirit, like Satan among the fallen angels, opposed himself so cruelly with all his power, to the religion of Noah, as propagated by Shem . . . . His grand object was to produce and consolidate a power, by which to protect his race against the threatened servitude of Noah, his grand-sire, announced in the curse, as well as to establish a contrary system of religion, which would [subserve] the same end.15

Nimrod’s claim to fame was that of a tyrant and idolater. His biblical legacy (Gen. 10: 6–14, and Gen. 11: 1–9) could be described only as rebelling against the God of Noah and Shem in seeking to advance idolatry once again in humanity. The judgment of God in the destruction of the tower was to confuse human language only among the people of Nimrod. Even if they were to recover their original language they were effectively separated from Noah and his other children, as was the indulgence of Nimrod.16 Nimrod’s indulgence would be further reflected only in African religious rebellion and in the character of depravity that pervade their animalistic nature and moral character.17 Unfortunately, Priest was not alone in his outrageous claims and interpretations concerning the biblical folklore of Ham and Nimrod. Common to proslavery platforms, the peoples of the Hamitic race were considered the progenitors of all “pagan” religion and uncivilized society. Any vestiges of such religion in the white societies of Japheth were due to the poison of Nimrod and the idolatry of the black race. The dispersion of the Hamitic people in the confusion of languages certainly affected other peoples, but never to the degree of moral depravity and diminished capacity of the black race.18 So thorough was the belief that Ham and Nimrod were responsible for all idolatry, some proposed that they diametrically revived the idolatry of Cain in the original religious rebellion amidst the first biblical family of humanity.19 Unlike the judgments that Israel would suffer for idolatrous conduct, as the argument charges, there would be no restoration for the children of Ham and Nimrod. Biblical prophecy repeatedly pointed to the restoration of Israel, but no biblical prophecy claimed restoration for the children of Ham or the kingdom of Nimrod.20 Interestingly enough, the deplorable, rebellious character and curse of Nimrod himself, like Ham before him, had been established even prior to their outright use in fortifying racial subjugation and American slavery. Nimrod became the “antagonist of God’s truth and God’s people” and “Satan’s first attempt to raise up a human universal ruler.”21 Biblical interpretation emphasized that God not only condemned this rebellion but also formed another unique people of God who would become the instruments of divine judgment as well as an all-encompassing divine will for humanity.22 God dismantled human domination and reestablished



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divine dominion. This very pattern would reemerge in different ages and contexts of domination and biblical interpretations. Nimrod’s rule, rebellion, and idolatry earmarked biblical traditions of the anticipated anti-Christ in various ages or villains associated with Satan’s work in humanity. For instance, early British works on Nimrod applied the rebellious biblical folklore to antipapal treatises, attributing the new Babel to the Roman Catholic Church.23 The same pattern of biblical application in turn appears with full force in the historical context of American racism and slavery by the late eighteenth century and well into the nineteenth. However, now, the twisted nature of human domination becomes God’s divine will. And as the curse upon Ham became divine sanction for the Israelites’ conquest of the Canaanites, so too does divine sanction belong to the subjugation of Africans. The legacy of Nimrod in American proslavery arguments upheld the long established rebellion of Nimrod. But when couched in the enduring curse upon Ham, the charges of rebellion, moral depravity, and the degeneration of intellect would belong ontologically to the entire black race.24

Early African American Preaching and Public Discourse Resisting Racism Indisputably, the rendering of black humanity and the divine sanction of racial subjugation and slavery were critical issues in the public discourse and sermons of African American leaders. Much of the available literature on the biblical folklore of Ham, the curse, and somewhat also the legend of Nimrod is focused specifically on the late American debate over the institution of slavery. A recent study on the curse upon Ham, by Sylvester Johnson, underscores that the debate over slavery was less central in the public discourse among African American leaders in the nineteenth century. Greater concerns lied with the arguments behind the slavery debate, which for Johnson are issues regarding “identity and existence—what kind of creatures were they?”25 In a similar vein, I have just named the essential features of the biblical folklore behind American slavery as the character of the people of Ham and the enduring properties of the curse. The rebellion and idolatry of Nimrod crystallizes in the religious justification of both these essential features. The very humanity of the African American in both religious and sociopolitical discourse had been assaulted. Johnson therefore suggests that in the very assertion that the black race descended from Ham, African American discourse found a biblical testimony to their humanity, even if it were couched in racist allegations. Thus he contends that the American debate over the curse upon Ham had less to do with slavery than it had to do with challenging any denigration of the Negro’s original or core humanity.26 Herein I agree with Johnson only insofar as the



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question regarding African American humanity is undeniably a key factor in understanding associations with Hamitic lineage. However, it is rather difficult to substantiate any attempt to relegate the justification of slavery to a secondary focus in African American preaching and public discourse. A stronger argument might proffer his contention, more so in the era after the Civil War when segregation, propped by violence, increasingly became the central mechanism in sustaining racial subjugation. At least for the century prior to the Civil War, the American debate on race had everything to do with slavery and a primary means by which the colonies, and later states, would build their strength economically and politically. I am not sure how one might divide the debate on the curse upon Ham between racial subjugation and the slavery system. The two issues seem to have been inextricably intertwined as one sociopolitical dynamic within economic pursuits and cultural hegemony, both claiming biblical sanction and divine privilege. American colonialism and racial subjugation were concerned with dominance, that is to say, the means by which to sustain privilege and power.27 The debate over the curse upon Ham had to do with whether there could be religious justification for the enslavement of another race. In a sermon against slavery, addressed to the Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom and the Relief of Persons Unlawfully Holden in Bondage, Jonathan Edwards names the curse upon Ham as the first among the principle arguments defending the cancerous social institution: It is said, that the Africans are the posterity of Ham, the son of Noah; that Canaan, one of Ham’s sons, was cursed by Noah to be a servant of servants, that by Canaan, we are to understand Ham’s posterity in general; that as his posterity are devoted by God to slavery, we have a right to enslave them.28

Slavery as racial subjugation was wholly related to the debate over the curse upon Ham, along with the idolatry of Nimrod, though many of these dehumanizing explanations were maintained by some who were even against slavery. In his famous Appeal, David Walker ridicules the arguments of Thomas Jefferson (in the latter’s Notes on the State of Virginia), for, though Jefferson eventually questioned the institution of slavery, he still maintained the natural inferiority of Africans.29 To be sure, African Americans would need to refute absurd claims that they were descended from beasts.30 In continuity with such refutations, Johnson demonstrates the central role of identity as a fulcrum in other lines of arguments from African American discourse. He underscores, for example, Benjamin Tanner’s insistence that the mere fact that Ham is the progenitor of Africans evinces the original humanity of the black race.31 Nearly a century earlier, I also find identity arguments are centerpiece in



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By prohibiting that abominable traffic, the Slave Trade. . . . it requires no further proof than a recurrence to your own experience, to convince you of the benefits that will accrue from this act of theirs. The idea of our being acknowledged men is competent to raise us from the foul abyss of indignity into which we have been plunged. I say of our being acknowledged men; because the conduct of our oppressors has perspicuously exhibited an opinion of our mental faculties being inferior to theirs.32

My point here is that identity and existence, to use Johnson’s terms, were immediate factors in the racial debate on slavery. The curse upon Ham was fundamental to the protagonists of slavery and other forms of racial subjugation alike. Black character and the biblical curse through Ham and the legend of Nimrod, as I have described, remained critical to issues of identity in African American discourse both before and after the Civil War. Lending a great deal to the affirmation of black humanity in the American racial debate, claims of identity and character also emerged from the evangelization and conversions of slaves and free African Americans. I have argued elsewhere that faith identity for African Americans shaped black ecclesiology through the development of natural and historical identity in the formation of personhood and peoplehood.33 Personal and communal faith identities are formed through internalized interpretations of biblical traditions and meanings developed through historical experiences. The dominant paradigms of meaning that emerged in the African American adaptation of Christianity and the struggle against slavery and racism not only shaped the black Church’s early social identity but also intrinsically engaged one’s human identity in biblical interpretation and one’s communal identity as a people of God. For instance, historian Albert Raboteau explains that evangelization and conversion of Africans or African Americans inherently underscored their valued humanity before God.34 Likewise, the appropriation of biblical folklore, as with the anticipation of deliverance in the Exodus narrative, shaped corporate identity as a people of God, which would vindicate black humanity. With emancipation from slavery, this sense of peoplehood would continue to be a vital resource in seeking liberation from continued racial violence, political subjugation, and reconfigured biblical exploitation of the Curse of Ham and the legend of Nimrod.35 With these reconsiderations in mind, I believe Johnson still makes an important observation: African American discourse in the late nineteenth century did not usually question the prevailing arguments holding that they were descendent from Ham. The Hamitic lineage did counter at



sermons celebrating the cessation of any legal trans-Atlantic slave trade. Accordingly, one African American preacher proclaimed,

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least the debasing charge that the black race emerged from some kind of subhuman creature. Yet, it is harder to argue emphatically that African Americans were not also primarily concerned with the anathema on black character as argued from the curse upon Ham and the legacy of rebellion and idolatry from the legend of Nimrod, also within that curse. In essence the issues of identity in personhood and peoplehood hold together concern over maligned black character and the precedent depictions of animalistic origins or inferior capacities. At times, notions of the inferior capacities of the black race were directly correlated to the charge of immoral character, which, as we have seen from the pen of Josiah Priest, was endemic to Ham and, therefore, also to the behavior that elicited Noah’s curse. While Priest ascribed Ham’s color to God’s providential, supernatural, intrauterine creation, others argued that black humanity was created by the curse itself, “that the color peculiar to the Negro race is but the effect of the blast of this curse of the aged ante-diluvian patriarch.”36 Because Hamitic lineage was not usually challenged, many efforts were undertaken to discount any trumped up impeachment that intellectual deficiency or moral depravity were inherent to black humanity or had anything to do with the curse upon Ham. One typical African American countercharge would hold slavery and racial subjugation directly responsible for any struggle in selfadvancement: The real monster, slavery, cannot long exist, where it is sustained by legal codes alone. . . . When public sentiment, therefore, has become so morally, civilly, and politically corrupted by the principles of slavery, as to be determined in crushing the objects of its malignity, it is under the necessity of calling prejudice to its aid, as an auxiliary to its adopted formal code of wickedness, clothed like a semi-devil. . . . This auxiliary, is all powerfully capable of accommodating itself to local circumstances and conditions, and appearing with all the nature of the old beast, slavery; it is always ready to destroy every aspiration to civil, political and moral elevation, which arises in the breast of the oppressed. . . . By this monster, the withering influence of slavery is directed to the very vitals of the colored people—withering every incentive to improvement—rendering passive all the faculties of the intellect—subjecting the soul to a morbid state of insensibility—destroying the body— making one universal wreck of the best work of nature’s God. Such is its effect in the south, and scarcely less destructive at the north.37

Slavery and its partner in crime, racial subjugation, even in freedom states, are to blame for any failure of African Americans to overcome oppressed conditions or the personalized effects of oppression. These arguments, however, did not prevent some black preachers from calling upon African Americans to demonstrate their very humanity and divine gifts in personal



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capacities of intellect and moral character.38 The point was clear—moral conduct and character served as ways to refute racism and to elicit equal treatment in white society. Moral character and intellect would refute claims that the black race was cursed to an inhuman state of existence or identity. In fact, Alexander Crummell, a prominent preacher and leader in the American Colonization Society, argued that not only did the so-called curse upon Ham really fall on Canaan, and therefore not on Africans, but even among the Canaanites this curse did not affect natural human capacities or aptitudes, as evidenced by their advanced society, despite their heathenism.39 Embedded in Crummell’s challenge to the curse upon Ham are two major arguments pervading many African American sermons and treatises, which I believe tie the biblical folklore of the curse upon Ham to the rebellious idolatry of Nimrod. First, the biblical text has Noah directly cursing one particular son of Ham, Canaan. Although some proslavery apologists would attempt to explain that this was a textual variant and should be read “cursed be Ham, father of Canaan,”40 African American discourse often insisted upon distinguishing Canaan, who was the only son of Ham not to migrate to Africa, from his three brothers, Cush, Mizraim, and Phut; the typical implication being that the curse therefore could not apply to Africa.41 Benjamin Tanner had the three brothers escaping to Africa in an attempt to separate from the cursed Canaan.42 Others went to great lengths to demonstrate, similar to Crummell, that the curse was not an enduring indictment of the black race. One treatise reasoned that the curse could not be congenital to the black race because Jesus was from Canaanite lineage, hence Hamitic and, therefore, black. Here the case is built on the tribe of Judah. W. L. Hunter reasoned that Judah sired the line of kings from a Canaanite woman, who therefore was a “Negress.” So if David had Negro blood, so too did the rest of the lineage all the way down to Jesus. The Negro race was vindicated from any enduring curse, for Christ is evidence of the honor bestowed upon their humanity.43 Unfortunately, these representations of Canaan and the curse could not escape the implications of religious dissidence between the black Canaanites and the children of Shem, the Israelites. It remained incumbent upon African American discourse to redress the problem of “heathenism,” whether among the Canaanites or Africans, as evidence of God’s curse upon the black race, all of which is the second key argument denoted by Crummell’s challenge above.

Early African American Redress of the Demoralized State of Black Humanity The so-called heathenism of Africa stirred great urgency for African Americans seeking to rectify the damning claims that the rebellion and



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idolatry of Nimrod only evidenced the curse upon Ham in perpetuity for the black race. Sylvester Johnson cogently asserts that a crisis existed for African American Christians to redeem the heathenism of Africa spawned in the refusal to worship the God of Noah, known now in Christ.44 I have delineated within the racist claims upon the cursed in biblical folklore two paradigmatic refusals: the Canaanite abandonment of God and Nimrod’s rebellion against God. What resulted in each case was a unilateral depiction of heathenism. In turn, Johnson helpfully explains the crisis for nineteenth-century African Americans: Black Americans occupied a position that compelled them to hold in tension two opposing narrative identities: identity as people of God— the American Israel—and identity as heathens—children of Ham. . . . Black American Christians encountered Christianity as the Negro (Hamitic) race of non-Christian folk. . . . This meant that as a racial group, Negroes were illegitimate existents and constantly sought to change this condition as progressively and completely as possible.45

In a provocative text, John Norris, an African American minister, confronted the Hamitic curse by redefining the legend of Nimrod. Simply put, Nimrod launched the first great civilization of humanity. Some of the greatest cities ever known were built by Nimrod and his family, namely, Babylon and Nineveh. Generations upon generations from Nimrod would pass away even before the first attempt at civilization among any of the children of Japheth, namely the Greeks. Norris averred, Nimrod the son of Cush, and grandson of Ham and great grandson of Noah, . . . founded the first government known in human history this side of the flood, and likely the first in the world. . . . In this it seems that the Negro has sprung from a very fertile stock. We say this because of the fact that Nimrod was the son of Cush and Cush was the son of Ham. It must be remembered that Egypt, Ethiopia, and China were great flourishing nations and civilizations. When there was not a monument reared by the hands of the Aryan race, the Negro was associated with those civilizations . . . three thousand years before the birth of Christ. . . . [Ham, Shem, and Japheth] left the tower of Babel at the same time on the same day. . . . They were one color when they separated, they were all three brothers; one father’s children. But it seems that the followers of Japheth who are the Aryans . . . were the last to accept civilization and that ray of light came from Africa the home of the hated Negro.46

Norris’s point in this debate is that Ham was not cursed. As seen through Nimrod, the children of Ham were selected by God for great honor. This



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history testifies to the distinguished humanity of the Negro race and is further evidence of their intellect and ingenuity.47 Moreover, an honest consideration of African proverbs would demonstrate the moral character of the Negro ancestors. Norris goes as far as to insist that moral character of the black race surpasses that of his white, modern contemporaries.48 In all, Norris tackles the biblical folklore of a racial curse and the African American concerns with identity and character. Still, Norris is compelled to explain the state of heathenism in his contemporary Africa. Norris, among others, held that the Tower of Babel marked the dispersion and diversity of humanity.49 That diversity was distinctly observable among the three sons of Noah: The descendents of Ham seem to have been the more successful in giving the world civilization. The descendents of Shem are from one stem that gave the world religion. Japheth took on the civilization of Ham, and the religion of Shem and is now dominating the world.50

However, in the face of domination, the Negro race became reunited with the religion of Shem and the two of them—as people of God, delivered by God in restoration of humanity’s grasp of divine will—are anointed for the sake of humanity as “religious teachers” and “church builders.”51 For many African American religious leaders, the impending mission of Christian Negroes would demonstrate the value of their humanity before God. That mission was the evangelization of the heathen people of Africa. African heathenism was the result of human sin in straying and rebelling against God—not from being cursed through Ham, or Nimrod. Accordingly, J. W. Hamilton, the corresponding secretary of the Freedmen’s Aid and Southern Education Society, wrote: The declension and dwarfing of Africa is more a matter of sin than sovereign decree. God never determined against the Negro: The Negro determined against God. His apostasy accounts more for his lapses than his prognathism or his projecting heel. . . . But it has not obliterated human affinities, nor utterly concealed human relations.52

Perhaps most disturbing to the notion of sin held by some African American preachers were propositions that God had indeed sanctioned American slavery for the sake of converting Africa to Christianity, thus returning the African people to God. Some raised the possibility that, as Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers, it was God’s design for a greater purpose (Gen. 37–45). The purpose here would be the conversion of Africa.53 Some would insist upon this preordained plan



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I believe that the Negro was brought to this country in the providence of God to a heathen-permitted if not divine-sanctioned manual laboring school, that he might have direct contact with the mightiest race that ever trod the face of the globe. . . . The African was not sent and brought to this country by chance, or by avarice of the white man, single and alone. . . . Thus the superior African sent us, and the white man brought us, and we remained in slavery as long as it were necessary to learn that a God, who is spirit, made the world and controls it, and that that Supreme Being could be sought and found by the exercise of faith in His only begotten Son.54

Fortunately, not all prominent African American leaders were “sold” on the divine sanction of American slavery. Another official in the Freedmen’s Aid and Southern Education Society disclaimed any notion of divine sanction: I do not believe in the divinity of slavery. A system so cruel, so degrading, so inhuman, so barbarous was not God’s, his hand never directed it, his eye never approved it. . . . In spite of this evil then which God merely permitted, endured, great good has come.55

The point of redress throughout these sermons and public discourse was whether God foreordained American slavery or sought to vindicate the black race in the face of “what humanity meant for evil.” Even in this debate, the African American struggle to interpret biblical folklore would again turn to the distinction and controversy between prophecy and judgment in biblical texts as wrestled over in the curse upon Ham and the idolatry of Nimrod.56

Implications for Practical Theology and Preaching Today in Resisting Evil Exculpation of the black race from a historically and ontologically oppressed existence would center in at least two critical, dialectical contentions: (1) a theological predeterminism of divine prophecy or judgment; and (2) a theological anthropology of curse or sin. The curse upon Ham and the legend of Nimrod were the lynch pins in the historical and cultural hermeneutics of biblical authority and divine sanction concerning slavery and racial subjugation. My attention to sermons and speeches of African Americans is based on the centrality that preaching



beyond speculation. For instance, Bishop Henry Turner avowed without inhibition,

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and Christian education events often play in the development of theological or even doctrinal understanding in congregations and religious folk traditions. In the interests of practical theology, the task that remains before us is to ask how to interpret biblical traditions in situations of evil such as racial oppression or other forms of dominance that we may encounter today. Society seldom remains static. Clearly, the African American discourse we have reviewed by and large from the nineteenth century reflects the constant struggle to sustain a critical dialogue over biblical hermeneutics and the resilience of evil even in dramatic historical developments. In the twentieth century, we too have seen in the American racial climate that as society transforms ethically, social evil mutates. With racial oppression, we continually deal in forms of cultural, economic, and systemic mutations of power and dominance. The curse upon Ham at times still feels more like reality than interpretation. So too, we wonder if we can redeem the legend of Nimrod within the current racial and religious vistas that today are magnified globally. The theological, socioanthropological, and political debates over the racial character of Ham and the rebellious idolatry of Nimrod unveil some important implications and raise vital questions for our own preaching and teaching. Perhaps most germane is how we employ scripture when confronting evil. We will not escape controversy over the authority of scripture. The American racial debate and the responses typified in African American discourse clearly illustrate that cultural hermeneutics pervades the life of biblical folklore. In this chapter, we can identify theological presuppositions pervading the arguments in the racial debate over the curse upon Ham and the legend of Nimrod. Regarding how we employ scripture and biblical authority, three areas of theological dogma seem to rise above others; they are God’s sovereignty, providence or divine will, and theodicy. Although a thorough doctrinal treatment is beyond the scope of this chapter, I hope to raise critical queries for American religious discourse in current social and political climates riddled with racial and cultural conflict. Today, we contend with the looming mutations of political and economic systems of apartheid. Economic power may just be the prevailing womb for mutations of racism, colonialism, and militarism in “racialized” encounters among domestic and international cultures. American religious discourse certainly continues to claim and extend biblical folklore into these encounters. In political speech and religious discourse, as in sermons and theological education, the language of “chosenness” is tossed around rather freely both by those in domination and by those under oppression. As in the nineteenth-century racial debates, questions arise around the power and will of God and the problem of human evil. It appears that the starting point behind these debates has been the sovereignty of God. In both the white justification of racial subjugation



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and in the efforts of historical interpretation among some of the African American preachers reviewed above, the omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence of God are at stake. At one end of the struggle, divine sanction is necessary to legitimate systematic dominance over another people. God’s sovereignty ultimately empowers biblical interpretations that purport that human power structures perform God’s judgment and divine will. As the Creator, God is sovereign in the history of creation. Important to our understanding of the attributes of God and biblical history are God’s purposes in the act of creation, and whether God continues to work out or orchestrate God’s purposes within and for creation, or more specifically humanity.57 The idea that God is working out a divine plan for humanity in the American scene stems from as far back as the Puritan self-image as the new Israel. A direct relationship is established between God’s sovereignty and our role as “instruments” in the course of divine objectives.58 In both white racist religious discourse and African American responses, the appeals to a divine plan behind slavery are alarmingly similar. God’s sovereignty is the authorizing source of these claims, despite a great deal of doctrinal ambiguity in the nature and cause of evil. The sovereignty of God constitutes doctrinal qualification when preachers and religious educators probe whether historical events occur within or outside of direct divine will. What does it mean for African Americans to contend that nothing within slavery or the infliction of suffering is part of God’s plan, prophecy, or judgment upon particular acts of sin or rebellion? Certainly this question is the focal point for arguments proffered by the celebrated African American preachers and dignitaries cited above. Do we preach that our suffering is righteous judgment from God upon our acts of sin? What does it mean to argue that it is the providence of God, even divine sanction, that we suffer indignity or even atrocity for the sake of our salvation? Even if we reject such intentions, what does it mean that God endures our suffering for a greater good? These questions emanate from African American claims in biblical interpretations of the Curse of Ham and the rebellion of Nimrod in the course of slavery and racial subjugation. Moreover, I believe they grapple with the theological ideologies behind racist interpretations of these biblical traditions. As practical theologians and preachers, the drive to interpret our suffering or imbue it with meaning is unrelenting. Providence and divine will are frequently at odds in contending with theologically unexplained suffering but are often held as partners. This chapter has shown some of the intricate details in the interpretations of the curse upon Ham and the legend of Nimrod that revolve around axes of divine will in forms of judgment and prophecy on the one hand, and redemptive purposes on the other. Much like what the doctrine of sovereignty states, God’s purposes for creation shape our understanding of providence. God’s will for



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humanity is wholly consistent with God’s purposes in the creation events. Hence, God continues to work within that creative intent by sustaining, even guiding, humanity toward those purposes, as now defined by redemptive history.59 The problematic leap we often make in our preaching is to equate God’s will and providence with a predeterminism of all that happens, as God is omniscient and omnipotent. This leap distorts our interpretation of evil by distorting God’s encounter with evil. Does biblical folklore in the curse upon Ham and the judgment upon Nimrod translate into divine will of human suffering? As we have seen, some African American interpretations of these biblical narratives have determined meaning in a divine intent of suffering for redemptive purposes. Lest we mistakenly dismiss these problematic interpretations as belonging predominantly to bygone generations, we need only to point out similar arguments attempting to make theological sense out of such events as the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, and the recent tragedies of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. I have been among the unfortunate to hear sermons depicting each event as God’s will, in judgment of American sin. I suppose that some argument could be made that the terrorist attacks upon the Twin Towers were a response to American abuses of power and privilege, and therefore sin, however, the leap into claims of God’s will smacks of a leap into interpretations of the Tower of Babel and the proposed judgment visited upon Nimrod’s progeny. We see this problem in historical sermons by African Americans that mirror racist interpretations and theological distortions that hold divine will in the enslavement of Africans for their eventual Christian conversion and eventual mission to the heathen African homeland. Preaching providence among the descendents of Nimrod becomes problematic theologically even today when mistaking evil or tragedy for divine intent. The instance of hurricane Katrina exposes the offense more acutely. One preacher moralized that the destruction wrought by the hurricane was God’s judgment upon American sin of greed, privilege, and power, all for the sake of America’s salvation in redemptive history. When we perceive God’s judgment upon a privileged people’s sin in the suffering borne by the weak and oppressed, we experience a gross distortion of divine will and providence. The judgment upon Nimrod is then borne out in the suffering of an impoverished and exploited people once again. How we interpret the problems of evil and suffering facing humanity, and therefore facing God, will have to contend with divine will, omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence. Theodicy exposes incongruity between our doctrines of divine attributes and divine nature. The danger we face has been illustrated dramatically in the biblical folklore of the curse upon Ham and the legacy of Nimrod. When our preaching and religious discourse, even political discourse, attempt to resolve human



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conflict, evil, or suffering in claims of divine sanction as righteous instruments of God’s judgment or divine intent to effect salvation for/from ourselves, we assail what we know of God’s love. Clearly, we will still have to contend with biblical narratives depicting the suffering of God’s people as God’s judgment or divine will. And we will need to exercise utter restraint in anointing ourselves as God’s instruments in exacting God’s judgment upon others for their own sake and our own blessing. The travails of Ham and Nimrod teach us that God’s sovereignty and divine will are not ultimately defined in judgment or subjugation, but in God’s redemptive and liberating agency. Martin Luther King Jr. found that the question of God’s omnipotence in the face of evil and suffering was not answered in mysteries of God’s sovereignty marked by predeterminism or causation, but rather in the knowledge that “God is able” to contend with evil and suffering. Together with the love and agency of God, we are, therefore, able to overcome.60 The providence of God is in the love of God to sustain humanity, while moving us toward the full realization of redemptive history. God does not seek to constitute evil and suffering, neither is God impassive. We continue to be known by God and shaped by God’s love and purpose for humanity even in the face of our rebellion or idolatry.61 Religious discourse must continually reevaluate what the nomenclature “people of God” functionally means—especially when it is used to describe nations, cultures, or races. To what degree does the language of divine curse or divine sanction seek to justify our own dominion? As one theologian rightly contends, “Chosenness” can be “a powerful expression of idolatry.”62 Chosenness plays a dominant role in the racist biblical interpretations and theological folklore of Ham and Nimrod, as well as in African American responses attempting to redefine our humanity and mission. Our current national and religious landscape likewise appears to claim divine sanction in global dominance by means of economic domination, preemptive militarism, and the moral and violent authority to violate both civic and human rights in the name of righteous agency in supreme values. These political and theological interpretations are quite honestly mutated interpretations of the Tower of Babel into towers of yet another charged “depraved other.” The effect is that we repeat history in renewed political and economic dominance justified from bully pulpits. Our pulpits evidence our “chosenness” in our dominance. We use biblical folklore to interpret and therefore to claim more than divine sanction; we claim divine decree in the assault upon the evil other, dismantling the “Tower of Babel.” When we make such bold claims of divine mandate, we move far past ideals of liberty and make heinous claims upon dominance, “by any means necessary.” In so doing we construct a “Tower of Pulpits” on the very foundations of the evil of our own idolatry. And hence, no nation, no race, nor any faith can escape the challenge of interpreting the life of biblical folklore in the curse upon Ham and the legend of



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Nimrod—nor can the people of God be theologically, morally, or historically justified in conquest.

1. Thomas Virgil Peterson, Ham and Japheth: The Mythic World of Whites in the Antebellum South (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press and The American Theological Library Association, 1978), 1. 2. William A. Clebsch, “Foreword,” in Thomas Virgil Peterson, Ham and Japheth: The Mythic World of Whites in the Antebellum South (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press and The American Theological Library Association, 1978), xii–xiii. 3. Eugene D. Genovese, “ ‘Slavery Ordained of God’: The Southern Slaveholders’ View of Biblical History and Modern Politics,” The 24th Annual Robert Fortenbaugh Memorial Lecture (Gettysburg, PA: Gettysburg College, 1985), 7–8. 4. Josiah Priest, Slavery, as It Relates to the Negro or African Race, Examined in the Light of Circumstances, History and the Holy Scriptures; With an Account of the Origin of the Black Man’s Color, Causes of His State of Servitude and Traces of His Character as Well in Ancient as in Modern Times: With Strictures on Abolitionism (Albany, NY: C. Van Benthuysen and Co., 1845), 20. 5. Ibid., 27–28. 6. Ibid., 34, 39–44, 65. 7. Ibid., 78–79, 81, 136. 8. Ibid., 84. 9. Ibid., 136–138. 10. Ibid., 94. 11. Ibid., 159. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., 170, 174–175. 14. Ibid., 67–68, 179–180, 201–202. 15. Ibid., 319. 16. Ibid., 234–237. 17. Ibid., 320–321. 18. J. J. Flournoy, A Reply to a Pamphlet, Entitled “Bondage, A Moral Institution, Sanctioned by the Scriptures and the Saviour,” So Far as It Attacks the Principles of Expulsion, with No Defence, However, of Abolitionism (Athens, GA: 1838), 53–54. 19. Ibid., 19. 20. This argument was made concerning the curse upon Ham, relating the slavery propagated by the Israelites to the enslavement of Africans by Christians. The author is an anonymous pro-slavery advocate, named only as “a South Carolinian,” in a piece entitled “Practical Considerations Founded on the Scriptures, Relative to the Slave Population of South-Carolina” (Charleston, MA: A. E. Miller, 1823), reprinted in Bible Defenses of Slavery (Charlestown, MA: Acme Bookbinding, 2004), 19. 21. D. Woods, The Bible Confirmed by Archaeology (London: The Covenant Publishing Co., 1934), 5. 22. Ibid., 8–9.



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23. John Bunyan, “An Exposition on the Ten First Chapters of Genesis,” in The Works of That Eminent Servant of Christ, Mr. John Bunyan (London: William Marshall, 1692), reprinted in The Miscellaneous Works of John Bunyan, Vol. 12, ed. W. R. Owens (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1994). See also Alexander Hislop, The Two Babylons, or Papal Worship Proved to Be the Worship of Nimrod and His Wife (1858, reprinted New York: Loizeaux Brothers, 1953), as cited in Stephen P. Haynes, Noah’s Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 58–59. 24. Haynes, Noah’s Curse, 38, 56–57, 106–108. 25. Sylvester A. Johnson, The Myth of Ham in Nineteenth-Century American Christianity: Race, Heathens, and the People of God (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 5. 26. Ibid., 10. 27. Fumitaka Matsuoka, The Color of Faith: Building Community in a Multiracial Society (Cleveland, OH: United Church Press, 1998), 58, 77. 28. Jonathan Edwards, The Injustice and Impolicy of the Slave Trade and of the Slavery of the Africans Illustrated in a Sermon: Preached before the Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom and the Relief of Persons Unlawfully Holden in Bondage, September 15, 1791 (New Haven, CT: Thomas and Samuel Green, 1791), 13–14. 29. David Walker, Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular and Very Expressly, to Those of The United States of America, 3rd edition (David Walker, 1830, reprinted New York: Hill and Wang, 1965; 26th printing 1996), 10, 14–15, 26 (page citations are to the reprint edition); see also the “Introduction” by Sean Wilentz in the reprint edition for a brief discussion of Walker’s response to Jefferson, xvi–xvii. 30. Ibid., 10. 31. Johnson, Myth of Ham, 8; He cites B. T. Tanner, The Descent of the Negro (Philadelphia, PA: A. M. E. Publishing House, 1898). 32. William Miller, A Sermon on the Abolition of the Slave Trade: Delivered in the African Church, New York (New York: John C. Totten, 1810), 3–4. 33. Dale P. Andrews, Practical Theology for Black Churches: Bridging Black Theology and African American Folk Religion (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 31–49. 34. Albert Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 268. 35. Ibid., 311. 36. Alonzo Potter Burgess Holly, God and the Negro: Synopsis of God and the Negro or the Biblical Record of the Race of Ham (Nashville, TN: National Baptist Publishing Board), 29. 37. H. Easton, A Treatise on the Intellectual Character, and Civil and Political Condition of the Colored People of the U. States and the Prejudice Exercised Toward Them (Boston, MA: Isaac Knapp, 1837), 39. 38. Absalom Jones, A Thanksgiving Sermon, Preached January 1, 1808, In St. Thomas’s, or the African Episcopal, Church, Philadelphia: On Account of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade, on That Day, by the Congress of the United States (Philadelphia, PA: Fry and Kammerer, 1808), 17–18. 39. Alexander Crummell, “The Negro Race Not under a Curse,” in The Future of Africa: Being Addresses, Sermons, Delivered in the Republic of Liberia (New York: Negro University Press, 1862, reprinted 1969), 352–353. I am



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40.

41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

47. 48. 49.

50. 51. 52.

53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

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indebted to the archival collection at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York, for this resource and several pieces cited, and to my resourceful research assistant Carolynne Brown, a doctoral candidate in religious history at Boston University, School of Theology. Priest, Slavery, as It Relates to the Negro or African Race, 77; here he makes reference to Arabic translations. Much earlier several Hebrew myths would attempt to explain the role of Canaan in the curse: see Robert Graves and Raphael Patai, Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1963), 120–124. See also Cain Hope Felder, “Race, Racism, and the Biblical Narratives,” in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation, ed. Cain Hope Felder (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991), 129–132. One writer goes so far as to argue that as Canaan did not migrate to Africa, the curse could not apply to Africans because the Canaanites and their descendents were, therefore, not “Negroes”; Anonymous, Condensed Anti-slavery Bible Argument (New York: S. W. Benedict, 1845), 25. B. T. Tanner, The Descent of the Negro (Philadelphia, PA: A. M. E. Publishing House, 1898), 16. W. L. Hunter, Jesus Christ Had Negro Blood in His Veins: The Wonder of the Twentieth Century (Brooklyn, NY: W. L. Hunter, 1901, 5th edition 1908). Johnson, Myth of Ham, 9. Ibid., 19, 24. John William Norris, The Ethiopian’s Place in History and His Contribution to the World’s Civilization, The Negro-The Hamite, The Stock, the Stems and the Branches of the Hamitic People (Baltimore, MD: The Afro-American Co., 1916), 8–9. Ibid., 11, 15–16. Ibid., 45. Ibid., 9; see also T. G. Steward, “The Six Days, the Deluge and the Tower of Babel,” in Genesis Reread: Or The Latest Conclusions of Physical Science Viewed in Their Relation to the Mosaic Record (Philadelphia, PA: A. M. E. Publishing House, 1885). Norris, Ethiopian’s Place in History, 53. Ibid., 53, 57. J. W. Hamilton, “Occult Africa,” in Africa and the American Negro: Addresses and Proceedings of the Congress on Africa, December 13–15, 1985, ed. J. W. E. Bowen (Atlanta, GA: Gammon Theological Seminary, 1896, Electronic edition, Web site: http://docsouth.unc.edu/chuch/bowen/ bowen. html), 180. Jones, Thanksgiving Sermon, 18. H. M. Turner, “The American Negro and the Fatherland,” in Africa and the American Negro, 195. M. C. B. Mason, “The Methodist Episcopal Church and the Evangelization of Africa,” in Africa and the American Negro, 145–146. For example, see Miller, Sermon on the Abolition of the Slave Trade. John H. Leith, Introduction to the Reformed Tradition (Atlanta, GA: Westminster John Knox Press, revised edition, 1981), 75–77. Ibid. Bengt Hagglund, History of Theology, trans. Gene J. Lund (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1968), 314–316.



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60. Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1981 edition), 107–114, 133–136. 61. William C. Placher, The Domestication of Transcendence: How Modern Thinking about God Went Wrong (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), 202–209. 62. Matsuoka, The Color of Faith, 28.





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Reorientation by Reference to “Wrong Way” Makers: Evaluating a Modern Signifying Mythicization of an Ancient Mythicization Theodore Walker, Jr.

The narratives in Genesis concerning Noah, Ham, Cush, and Nimrod are part of a comprehensive anthropology within a comprehensive cosmogony. Whatever may be historically accurate, or historically inspired, about these narratives, they are not mere histories or memories. They are stories of selective memory, selected and remembered for existential purposes. With no intended prejudice to historical truth-value, historians of religions call such narratives “myths.”

Mythicization and History “Mythicization” is, according to historian of religions Mircea Eliade, a way of remembering historical events and persons. According to Eliade’s “Philosophy of History,” the mythicization of “historical personages” begins when a celebrated “historical personality” is “received into popular memory.”1 In popular memory, over time, “biography is reconstructed in accordance with the norms of myth,” and the historical person is transformed into a “mythical hero.”2 Eliade describes mythical heroes as “exemplary models,” “paradigms,” and “archetypes.”3 A mythical person or event is more than merely historical. A once-upon-a-time historical event influences our times, and other times and places. The influences of



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past events are selectively recognized and amplified by mythical remembering. Eliade speaks of the “transfiguration of history into myth,” and he quotes H. Munro Chadwick as saying, “‘Myth is the last—not the first— stage” in the development of a mythical hero.4 Through mythicization, historical persons and events are remembered in transhistorical terms. History is about remembering. It is a highly selective remembering. If history was not so highly selective, narrating the history of the Hundred Years War would take very much more than a hundred years. In large measure, history is creative remembering. From among a near infinite number of possible snapshots, the historian selects only a few. Selecting the snapshots is a creative and teleological process. Mythicization begins with the first creative acts of selective remembering.

Orientation Mythicization of by-gone historical events and persons often yields narratives that are important for contemporary orientation. Religion is about “ultimate” or “cosmic orientation”—“orientation in the ultimate sense,” says historian of religions Charles H. Long.5 We come to understand where we came from, where and who we are, and where we are headed (“orientation”) by reference to what we experience, remember, expect, and share via interactions, rituals, signs, symbols, images, and narratives. For the purposes of orientation—especially ultimate orientation: religion—the most important narratives are transhistorical mythicizations.

Biblical Markers and Oppressive Orientations Biblical narratives are transhistorical. For many religious people, they provide orienting information. The Genesis narratives provide the cosmological context—a creation created by a divine Creator and populated with creative creatures, including human creatures. According to Genesis and some other biblical narratives, from among all earthly human creatures, some were chosen for special relations to the Creator and were promised a specific land. These narratives provided reference points, register marks or markers, for orienting Hebrew relations to Yahweh, and Hebrew relations to all other peoples, tribes, nations, and lands, including especially the people and land of Canaan. The three sons of Noah—Shem, Ham, and Japheth—are the fathers of all subsequent peoples. The Hebrews are sons of Shem. The sons of Ham are Canaan, Cush, Mizraim, and Phut. In these biblical narratives, a curse upon Canaan, and a blessing upon the sons of Shem, authorized the Hebrew occupation of Canaanite land and the servitude of the Canaanite peoples. These were important markers for ancient Hebrew orientation.



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Modern readers have also found orienting markers in the Genesis narratives, including the Ham-Cush-Nimrod narratives. During the early modern period, some Judeo-Christian slave traders, slaveholders, and colonials understood the Ham-Cush-Nimrod markers to indicate divinely ordained relations between “white” and darkly “colored” peoples. They understood all “black” and darkly “colored” peoples originated as sons of Ham, Cush, and Nimrod. According to these readers, God cursed Ham, and the divine curse on Ham extended to all sons of Ham—Canaan, Mizraim, Phut, and Cush. Furthermore, the Nimrodic sons of Ham were doubly cursed on account of Nimrod’s unrighteous tower-building ambitions. Like the Canaanites, the darkly “colored” Cushite and Nimrodic sons of Ham were divinely destined to be landless servants. Thus, modern slavery and colonialism were authorized by a divine curse on Ham. This reading is a modern mythicization. The modern slavery-authorizing mythicization was constructed by reading modern color-consciousness into biblical narratives. The modern colonial readers noted that Phut (Libya), Mizraim (Egypt), and Cush (Sudan-Ethiopia) refer to parts of northern Africa, and that most ancient North Africans were darkly “colored” or “black,” not “white.” This bit of color-coded historiography was combined with a false anthropological presupposition—that there were no “black” or darkly “colored” peoples or individuals among the earliest humans (from Adam and Eve to Noah). Accordingly, the Ham-Cush-Nimrod narratives were read as though Ham, Cush, and Nimrod were said to be the original fathers of all darkly “colored” peoples. The merely historical content of the biblical narrative about Nimrod (son of Cush) is almost certainly vaguely historically true. There is little reason to doubt that, once upon an ancient time, hunter-warriormonarchs of Cushite ancestry organized the building of monumental towers. And no doubt, one or more of them encountered problems with multiple languages. One such historical figure (or perhaps a composite of such figures) was vaguely remembered as “Nimrod the mighty hunter” (Gen. 10:9). However, the early modern theory of racial origins (that early humanity included no “black” and “colored” peoples until they emerged from a cursed Ham-Cush-Nimrod ancestry) is not biblical, and not true.6 Also essential to the construction of the modern slavery-authorizing mythicization is the false idea that Genesis says all the sons of Ham were cursed through a divine curse on Ham. Careful readers, such as Gene Rice, note that “the Bible knows nothing of a curse on Ham.”7 Genesis 9:24–27 (KJV) says, 24 And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.



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25 And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. 26 And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

Contrary to the modern slavery-authorizing mythicization, the Genesis narratives include no divine curse on Ham. Instead, Noah curses Canaan—“Cursed be Canaan,” not Ham, not Mizraim, not Phut, and not Cush. Moreover, the curse is pronounced by Noah, not by God. The modern slavery-authorizing mythicization was constructed by misreading the text and by imposing upon the narrative an early modern theory of racial origins.

A Signifying Mythicization Though “mythicization” per se does not indicate or imply falsification, the modern slavery-authorizing mythicization did include two false claims: (1) God cursed Ham; (2) All dark-“colored” peoples originated from Ham-Cush-Nimrod. These false claims served early modern efforts to justify unjust and unjustifiable commitments to slavery and other colonial oppressions. As such, the modern slavery-authorizing mythicization is a “signification” in the sense defined by Charles H. Long in Significations. For Long, a “signification” is distinguished from a “symbol” (or sign) in that a “symbol” attempts to correspond to reality—to “that which is symbolized”—while a “signification” is an intentional “verbal misdirection” that “obscures and obfuscates.”8 Long judges that colonial thinking about color and race is a collection of “significations.” In reference to “the peoples and cultures who were conquered and colonized,” Long writes, with italics for emphasis, “they were signified.”9 He says: “By signification I am pointing to one of the ways in which names are given to realities and peoples during this period of conquest,” and “for the majority culture of this country, blacks have always been signified.” The early modern claim that God authorized enslavement of blacks by cursing Ham is an instance of colonial signifying.10

“Wrong Way” Markers and Liberating Reorientation Insofar as orienting by reference to selected markers authorizes the conquest and enslavement of indigenous peoples and the forced occupation of their homelands, Native American (Osage) Robert Allen Warrior judges such orientation to be morally unrighteous. By evaluating biblical



27 God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

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narratives from an indigenous perspective, Warrior challenges the morality of ancient Hebrew orientations toward indigenous Canaanites, and he challenges the morality of modern Judeo-Christian orientations toward indigenous peoples in the New World. In “Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians: Deliverance, Conquest, and Liberation Theology Today,” Warrior calls upon liberation theologians to reconsider their reading of Old Testament narratives. The liberationist interpretation is that these narratives reveal that God is always the deliverer/liberator of the oppressed. Warrior shows that, according to the narratives, “Yahweh the deliverer [from slavery in Egypt] became Yahweh the conqueror” of “indigenous inhabitants of Canaan.”11 Like most Christian theologians, when liberation theologians read Old Testament narratives, they ignore the oppression of indigenous Canaanites. Clearly, in challenging ancient Hebrew orientations toward indigenous Canaanites, and in challenging modern colonial orientations toward indigenous peoples (cowboys toward Indians), Warrior is victorious on moral and theological grounds. God loves all humans (and all other creatures), including all Canaanites. As people loved by God, indigenous Canaanites were entitled to live peaceably in their homeland, free of invaders claiming divine authorization to conquer, occupy, enslave, and oppress. The same entitlement applies to modern indigenous peoples, including modern Native Americans. Whether ancient or modern, oppression is unrighteous and is never authorized by God. Where our orienting by reference to selected biblical markers authorizes oppression, orientation by reference to God (“ultimate orientation”) calls us to repentance, to moral reorientation. Reorientation is not about ignoring biblical markers. Should we drop the habit of referring to these markers? James H. Cone’s answer to the question “must we drop God-language?” suggests that we should not.12 Though oppressors employ God-language to authorize oppression, rather than discarding all language about God, Cone prescribes criticizing the oppressor’s God-language and constructing an alternative God-language— a liberating God-language. Accordingly, Cone speaks of God as “black,” as “liberator,” and as “God of the oppressed.”13 Cone’s approach suggests that we should expose the moral and theological faults in all oppressionauthorizing references to biblical markers, and that we should identify and construct liberating understandings of their transhistorical meanings. Instead of adopting an oppressive orientation, or ignoring biblical markers, we should engage in liberating reorientation. Liberating reorientation requires recognizing that Warrior is correct, that some biblical markers are “wrong way” markers. Like beacons warning ships to avoid dangerous rocky shallows, they should not be ignored. Biblical “wrong way” markers are moral beacons signaling (not signifying) that we should go another direction.



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The modern signifying mythicization (that “God cursed Ham” and thereby authorized modern colonialism and slavery) of the ancient biblical mythicization (that Noah cursed Canaan and thereby authorized the conquest and enslavement of Canaan) points us in the wrong moral direction. Where orienting by reference to biblical markers points us toward believing that God has chosen us to conquer, occupy, enslave, and oppress, we are pointed in the wrong moral direction. The correct/righteous moral direction is towards love of God and neighbors—all neighbors, including Canaanites, Indians, cowboys, and even our enemies.

Notes 1. Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return or, Cosmos and History, trans. Willard R. Trask (1949, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974), ix, 39–40. 2. Ibid., 39–42. 3. Ibid., iv. 4. Ibid., 37, 43. 5. Charles H. Long, Alpha: The Myths of Creation (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1963), 17–19; Charles H. Long, Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpretation of Religion (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1986), 7. 6. According to contemporary science, the first humans were small dark people from Africa. See Spencer Wells, The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002). 7. Gene Rice, “The Alleged Curse on Ham,” in Holy Bible: The African American Jubilee Edition: Contemporary English Version (New York: American Bible Society, 1999), 127. 8. Long, Significations, 1–2. 9. Ibid., 4. 10. Ibid., 4, 7. Our recent habit of pleading color-blindness is another instance of signifying about race. Pleading color-blindness freezes our color-consciousness where it was at the moment of putative blindness. Such pleading places our color-consciousness beyond discussion or challenge. “We see no color” means we admit no challenge to our way of seeing colors. This is a signifying plea. 11. Robert Allen Warrior, “Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians: Deliverance, Conquest, and Liberation Theology Today,” Christianity and Crisis (September 11, 1989): 262. 12. James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (Philadelphia, PA: J.B. Lippincott, 1970), 110–114. 13. James H. Cone, God of the Oppressed (New York: Seabury Press, 1975).



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Edited with Introductions by Stephen C. Finley

The following is a selection of articles and book excerpts related to one another thematically in the sense that they all engage the biblical characters Ham and Nimrod and relate these stories to the history and identity of people of African descent.1 The importance of this appendix is the manner in which it provides historical, religious and theological context for African American thought on Nimrod; in so doing, it offers a useful framework for thinking about the tradition(s) out of which the chapters in this volume emerge. I present the selections chronologically. All of the literature was either published in the nineteenth century or the early twentieth century. Readers will note that each entry is preceded by a brief introduction that performs two functions. First, the introduction offers a brief biographical sketch of the author of the article or excerpt. Second, it summarizes the entry and/or draws attention to interesting and unusual aspects of the selection. Most of the pieces share common features in terms of their themes and methods, as reflected in the following general observations. Nearly all of the authors are African American men involved in some form of church ministry. Many of them are prominent figures in the history of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, but not exclusively. Many of the pieces have the goal of valorizing African Americans (“The Negro”) and their history. Also, the authors are intentional about decentering whiteness and critiquing the ways in which whites have used history to dominate and to subjugate African Americans. In terms of their method/theory, they universally view the story of Noah and his descendants, including Ham and Nimrod, as historical and authoritative. Sometimes it is implied and at other times it is stated explicitly that Moses was the author of the Genesis narrative of Noah and his family. As a result, the Genesis account is viewed as an infallible and authoritative framing of historical events—albeit some of this authority may be derived from the infallibility of the Bible as a whole, rather than being specifically related to Mosaic authorship. 10.1057/9780230610507 - African American Religious Life and the Story of Nimrod, Edited by Anthony B. Pinn and Allen Dwight Callahan


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One other observation is in order. With regard to nearly all of the selections, Nimrod is viewed and glorified as the embodiment of the glorious history of the Black race. He is seen as a superior intellect, a great organizer and builder of civilization, a paradigm of Black human potential, a great world leader, emperor, and conqueror, and the initiator of rich cultures and languages. This is not universal, however, for in one selection, for example, Nimrod is viewed antithetically as the reason why later Black cultures would suffer and fall from their historic greatness. Finally, many other selections could have just as appropriately been included in this appendix, and they share similar themes and methods as the ones located here. Among them are: Robert Benjamin Lewis, Light and Truth (1836); Hosea Easton, A Treatise on the Intellectual Character and the Civil and Political Conditions of the Colored People in the United States (1837); Frederick Douglass, The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered (1854); Harvey Johnson, The Hamite (1889); Caesar A. A. Taylor, The Negro Race Retrospective or the Negro’s Past and Present, and His Future Prospect (1890); Edward A. Johnson, A School History of the Negro Race in America, From 1619 to 1890 (1890); Pauline Hopkins, Of One Blood, or, The Hidden Self (1902–1903); J. W. Hood, The Negro Race (1914); and Joshua A. Brockett, Zipporah: The Maid of Midian (1926). Each of these texts would have contributed to the conversation in meaningful ways, but a paucity of space prevented their inclusion. The pieces included in this appendix appear with only minor alterations, such as change of spelling. A final note concerning the following documents: Documentation of referenced materials is spotty in the original versions of the writings contained here. In most cases the authors do not provide enough information to make tracking citations possible. Yet, these incomplete citations do not effect, in a substantial way, the authors’ arguments. *

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Genesis Re-read: The Six Days, the Deluge and the Tower of Babel 1885 Theophilus Gould Steward Theophilus Gould Steward (April 17, 1843–January 11, 1924) was a clergyman, teacher, and writer. He was born in Gouldtown, New Jersey, to free parentage, and he was educated in the Gouldtown public schools. He obtained his advanced education at the Episcopal Divinity School of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1863, he was ordained into ministry in the A. M. E. Church, and he was an active organizer for the Church in South Carolina and Georgia, where he was also very active in Reconstruction politics. In addition to establishing churches in the south, he was instrumental



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in developing churches in Haiti. He worked there intermittently but diligently from 1872 to 1891. Steward was also a professor of history, French, and logic at Wilberforce University in Ohio from 1907 until he died in 1924. At the time of this death, he was married to his second wife, Dr. Susan Smith McKinney, who was one of the first Black physicians in the country. Steward had been an active scholar since publishing his first book, Genesis Re-read in 1885. He published five other books, including his autobiography, Fifty Years in the Gospel Ministry (1920). The selection below is a brief excerpt from Chapter 10 of his first book. In it he proposes to describe the “first six days” of development after the Flood and the Tower of Babel, which he argues marks the origin of the diversity of language. His basic thesis maintains that science does not contradict the idea of a deluge and, together with developing the idea of the origin of languages, his remonstrance puts forth the biblical evidence for this notion. Genesis, “the first book of Moses” provides the historical and authoritative account for his argument. T. G. Steward, Genesis Re-read, or The Latest Conclusions of Physical Science, Viewed in Their Relation to the Mosaic Record (Philadelphia: A. M. E. Book Concern, 1885). *

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From the flood we pass to the tower of Babel, which witnessed the origin of that diversity of language which has prevailed among men from remotest antiquity. Here again we have a great question answered with startling simplicity. While the students of language are pondering over the great mass of various and subtle facts which this realm supplies, seeking for the laws which govern its development and produce its variations, in order to establish a chain of reasoning which would conduct them back into the past, and serve as a key for the unlocking of problems connected with social progress, Moses conducts us by a plain statement directly to the beginning of the diversity of language, and spreads before us, through Divine agency, the effects of a work done instantaneously. Let us quote the story from his baud (Gen. xi: 1–9): And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech, and it came to pass, as they journeyed from the East, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there, And they said, Go to, let us make brick and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men built. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now



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nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down and there confound their language that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth; and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth; and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

Let us first obtain a concise view of the event itself. Moses says the people were one, with one language, or one lip, and one speech or vocabulary. They seemed to have the same adjustment of vocal organs, or, as we might express it, the same tuning of vocal organs and the same set of words. The work of the Lord seems to have been entirely upon that element called in the Hebrew lip, and in our version, language. He did not confound their speech, i. e., their vocabulary, giving them different names for things and different words for actions, but he confounded their language or disturbed the adjustment of their vocal organs, so that the same words were given a difference in pronunciation. The miracle was quite largely, we will suppose, if not altogether, physical. So that, although their ideas were the same and their words the same, the pronunciation was so different that they could not understand one another’s speech (words). The unity of language remained in the abstract, but the diversity of pronunciation was complete, and this, in turn, would accomplish great divergence in the language itself when coupled with the fact of dispersion. We may consider next the place where this event is said to have taken place. It is called “a plain in the land of Shinar,” which the united descendants of Noah, who then composed “the whole earth,” found as they were journeying “from the east” (eastward). This “land of Shinar” Dr. Smith identifies with Babylonia, and says the matter admits of no doubt—a tract of land lying along the Euphrates not far from where the site of Paradise appears to have been. The time of the event, as fixed by the ordinary chronologists, is about a century after the flood. To repeat, let us remark that this confounding of language, as stated by Moses, took place in the land of Babylon about from one hundred to one hundred and fifty years after the flood. In considering this event, we may remark, first, that no record of diversity of language earlier than this date has as yet been found; hence, there is nothing in the way of supposing this to have been the first instance of it, and to some extent the origination of the great distinctions in language. Dr. Smith says: “Certainly it seems to be implied that some of the most striking differences which mark the various families of languages were then suddenly caused by God’s immediate act, and that the builders separated because they could no longer understand each other; but it does not follow that languages were then formed as they



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exist now, and the comparative grammarian may trace up the beautiful laws which show the very opposite of confusion, without fearing to contradict the true sense of the Scripture narrative.” If we read the record with the distinction between the instruments of utterance, which were, perhaps, distorted, and the words themselves, which were not confounded, we can at once see how language might go on in quite regular development notwithstanding this great confusion. If this reading is correct, we ought to find in language a primitive base, or Archaean age of unity, with subsequent strata of variations evolved in part, at least, from this antecedent condition after much the same order which we find in geology, natural history and biology. Philology ought to show us the same ordinary growth interrupted by the same inexplicable freaks and abrupt transitions, and so it does. All the languages of the earth, as they come to be studied philosophically may be grouped in five or six grand families, and these great families are so related to each other as actually to suggest an earlier age of unity. There is fair presumptive evidence outside of Scripture for the belief that all human languages are out-growths from a common stock. Professor Goodwin, a distinguished American theologian, in the “syllabus” which he uses in his classes, holds that “comparative philology points to the probable unity of original languages,” and “implies the physiological and psychological unity of the race.” He argues that the similarities in sound and sense and grammatical structure found in all known languages render it highly probable that all these languages have come from a common origin. Here, then, are the two sides of the problem of philology—1. Great variety in the known languages of earth patent to all. 2. A thread of unity pervading all languages, discoverable only by those who study language patiently. These facts fully accord with the early history of the human race as sketched by Moses, and with the peculiar transaction at Babel. Let us suppose that orderly dispersion described in the tenth chapter to be the description of the “scattering abroad” which the Lord caused at Babel. Let us suppose the tenth chapter to advance in point of time beyond the passage which we have quoted from the eleventh chapter; we will then be able to show how these great linguistic families may have received their first outlines. The tenth chapter proceeds to unfold to our view the various branches of the Noachian family, and occupies itself with their genealogy and territorial settlement, sending Japheth northward to Europe, Sherri eastward toward Asia, and Ham southward toward Africa, and concludes with the statement, “These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations; and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood.” Now suppose, instead of closing the chapter here, we read right on . . . . and regard the passage to the ninth verse as exegetical. The whole recital, then, from the



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beginning of the tenth chapter will connect logically with the remaining part of the eleventh chapter, and all the confusion in the dispersions will disappear. Let us re-read the passage as suggested and see at once how the obscurities modify. “These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations; and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood, for the whole Earth was of one language and of one speech,” etc. The cause and origin of the dispersion are then narrated as necessary to explain the manner and extent of this dispersion previously described. When we consider that the Hebrew had no subdivision of its past tense, we can see readily how persons in reading it may have misconceived the time-relations of the events narrated. Soon after this orderly dispersion we find mention of Egypt in the narrative. Egypt, Assyria, Babylon and the Jews are everywhere recognized as among the earliest nations, and their origin, so far as known, corresponds quite fairly with the forecast which Genesis tenth affords. The historian finds the nations referred to located where we would be led by Genesis to expect them; and the languages drop into great families, quite in accordance with this early partition, allowing for the necessary blending which has occurred in the lapse of ages. The facial conformation and complexion may also date, as to its origin, from this dispersion, although further developed by physical and spiritual conditions. The confounding of lip may have been the implanting of a tendency toward certain facial divergences corresponding to the languages to be spoken, and further necessary to accomplish the Divine purpose, as against the huddling inclination of man. Man congregates, and plans to locate himself permanently in one spot; God spreads him abroad over all the earth through differences of language, as expressed, and through differences of form and feature, as may fairly be implied. Clear distinctions in the races, visible to the eye, are recognized very soon after this dispersion. These have been from earliest antiquity, showing the same unity and physical connection which we find everywhere in nature, and yet the same striking variety which is everywhere else present, and which here, as elsewhere, may be partly accounted for by natural causes, and partly referred to causes of which we are ignorant. Impressive unity and perplexing diversity meet us in ethnology as well as in philology. The Tower of Babel marks the origin of this diversity, while Noah’s Ark emphasizes the historic expression of this unity. Here, as elsewhere, the diversity is apparent, the unity to be sought for. The six days of creation, the deluge and the affair of Babel have all been considered, and they so agree with the facts of observation and experience that the stories have been explained on the ground that the facts suggested them. It is claimed that the unsophisticated mind, looking



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only upon outward phenomena, fabricated these stories as explanatory of the facts which surrounded him. Nor has advancing science done more than to confirm the historic statements of Genesis in regard to all of these supernatural events. Science has demonstrated the necessity of an organizing, life-giving and mind-producing agency, if not an immediate originator of matter. It has shown the possibility of the deluge and the probability of Babel, thus actually strengthening, rather than vitiating, the testimony upon which mankind has always accepted the book of Genesis. *

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The Negro in Sacred History: Nimrod, the Sixth and Last Son of Cush 1887 Rev. Joseph E. Hayne Little is published about the life of Joseph Elias Hayne (b. 1849). He was a clergyman of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and a contemporary and colleague of Benjamin Tucker Tanner and Theophilus Gould Steward. As a matter of fact, both Hayne and Steward held the distinction of being the pastor of the Morris Brown A. M. E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina, although Steward appears to have preceded Hayne in that endeavor. Morris Brown A. M. E. was the church in which Denmark Vesey held membership in 1822, when he organized one of the most intricate and vast slave revolts in American history. Hayne was an active member of the A. M. E. Church, and he participated in the national leadership of that organization, particularly in missions. He wrote two other books that engage race and religion: The Amonian or Hamitic Origin of the Ancient Greeks, Cretans, and All the Celtic Races: A Reply to the New York Sun (1905) and The Black Man, or, The Natural History of the Hamitic Race (1849). The selection included here is “Nimrod, the Sixth and Last Son of Cush,” the ninth chapter of Hayne’s book, The Negro in Sacred History. In this text, Hayne argues that Nimrod scholars have, much to his dismay, given less historical attention than any of Cush’s other sons, given that for him Nimrod was the greatest of Cush’s sons. The chapter is a historical and geographical exposition of Nimrod’s kingdom, which he suggests began with what he calls the “Land of Shinar” or Babylon. According to him, this was the location of both the first post-Flood settlement and the Garden of Eden. But he goes beyond this to suggest that Nimrod’s kingdom extended beyond Babylon, and it included Assyria, Nineveh, and other areas. He valorizes Babylon as the greatest city in antiquity, and he maintains that Nimrod, who built the city, was of superior intellect, and, what is more, he was divinely inspired.



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Joseph E. Hayne, The Negro in Sacred History or Ham and His Immediate Descendants (Charleston, SC: Walker, Evans & Cogswell Co., 1887). *

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CHAPTER IX. Nimrod, the Sixth and Last Son of Cush . . . .Nimrod, whom we discuss, is the sixth and last son or Cush. He was born about B. C. 2218. Moses, in Gen. X, 8, mentions him thus: “And Cush begat Nimrod. He began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord. Whereof it is said, even as Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.”2 This boy was indeed the flower and pride of the family. After proving himself an indispensable factor of the community in those days when wild beasts were numerous, and on that account human life was very insecure; and after he and his compeers had subdued them, and all men began to laud him in the highest for his valor and wonderful feats, performed in those perilous chase, he turned his conquest over both land and people. And by reason of superior intelligence, experience and practice in the offensive weapons he soon made himself master of the situation, and founded the first great empire about B. C. 2189, which lasted 1487 years before the government changed hands, that is, fell into the possession of another line of Kings, but of the same nationality. It is very difficult to cover in a brief space a period of 1487 years, and give all of the important events therein such a consideration as they are entitled to. Nevertheless, we do the best we can, and leave the public as the judges of the work done. The building of Babel was, indeed, a wonderful feat in human history. Nimrod, its founder, must have possessed very lofty conceptions to contrive such a tower as that. Its completion was only miraculously interrupted by Divine Providence. It was near this same spot of ground that Nimrod, the founder of the Babylonian Empire, built Babylon, the Capital of his kingdom. The spread and influence of this monarchy was rapid and great. So powerful was it that it was dreaded far and near. It seems as though the geographical lines and the topography of the country might be given you, my dear readers, at this time and place with much profit. Babylonia, the Capital of the great empire, was magnificently situated between two great rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris. The rich and fertile plains of Mesopotamia extended far northward until they touched the basis of the mountainous districts of Armenia, while to the east arose



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the perpetual emerald tableland, and the everlasting mountains of Assyria. The soil in this region was so rich that it rivaled the fertility of the valley of the Nile. “So peculiarly situated for corn,” says an author, “that the husband-man’s returns were some times three hundredfold, and rarely less than two hundredfold,” The country could also boast of the luxuriant abundance of the rich oily grains of the panicum and sesamum. The large and beautiful palm trees were the living sentinels along the banks of the majestic rivers. Such was the state of the country we have very briefly described. We turn now to the founder of the empire that arose therein. He was the Ninus in profane history and the Nimrod in sacred history that established the above mentioned monarchy. As a warrior, a conqueror, the builder of great cities and the founder of a mighty empire, he had no equal in his day and generation. Nations fled before him as did the wild beasts of the forests. He was the monarch of the old world. Cities arose at his command behind him, and around him a glorious empire stretched. Babylon, the Capital of his kingdom, stood in the plain of Babylonia. It was a perfectly four square city. The River Euphrates ran through its centre, and also supplied the ditches around the outer walls with water. The streets thereof were one hundred in number; they were perfectly straight and crossed each other at right angles. The tower of Belus rose from the western bank of the river far above the massive walls into an unclouded region of the skies. Each side of the city measured about fifteen miles, making the circumference thereof sixty miles. A single palace therein occupied as much, if not more, ground than what our grand “Old City by the Sea” covers today. The walls that environed the inhabited city in which a dense mass of humanity moved measured in thickness eightyseven feet and in height three hundred feet, and they were “pierced with a hundred gates,” all made of solid brass, and out of them went myriads of horses and chariots and valorous men of war. These impregnable walls were completed within one year by three hundred thousand workmen. Across the Euphrates was stretched a beautiful and “sumptuous bridge,” about one-half mile in length and about thirty-feet in width, and at each end stood a gorgeous palace. The city was divided into six hundred and seventy-six squares, each measuring two miles and a quarter in circumference. “The great squares of the city were not all occupied by buildings.” Many of them were used as gardens, and even farms; and the great fertility of the soil, caused by irrigation, producing two and even three crops a year, supplied food sufficient for the inhabitants in case of a siege. Babylon was a vast fortified province rather than a city. On the right of the Euphrates, in Borsippa, I think within the walls, stood the Temple of the Spheres. Its foundations had been laid by an earlier king, but the building was erected by Nebuchadnezzar. It arose, like the Temple of the Moon God at Ur, in a succession of seven



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rectangular stages or platforms, of which the lowest was two hundred and seventy-two feet, and the highest twenty feet square. The sides of each platform were faced with bricks gorgeously colored and glazed. The ground stage, twenty-six feet high, was black like jet, the color of the planet Saturn. The next orange, Jupiter. The next blood red like ruby glass, Mars. The next was covered with plates of burnished gold, in honor of the Sun. Above this, pale yellow, Venus. Mercury, deep blue, gleaming like a sapphire. The highest, plated with polished silver, represented the Moon. Here stood the shrine; and here, if we may judge from the analogy of other Chaldaean temples, was the observatory, which observations were taken with instruments of sufficient accuracy to discover the satellites of Jupiter. The building appears to have been solid, and was ascended by an inclined plane circling around its outer surface. In high lights it must have glittered like cut gems laid nearly in the order of rainbow colors, and the description of it suggests the imagery of the Apocalypse. There is a curious fact that I do not remember to have seen noticed, and of which I will not venture here to suggest the explanation. Babylon stands in the Book of Revelation as the emblem of all the abominations that are to be destroyed by the power of Christ. But Babylon is the one city known to history which could have served as a model for John’s description of the New Jerusalem: “The city lying four square”; “the walls great and high”; the river which flowed through the city, “and in the midst of the streets of it, and on either side of the river the tree of life, bearing twelve manner of fruits”; “the foundations of the walls of the city garnished with all manner of precious stones, as the base of the walls inclosing the great palace were faced with glazed and enameled bricks of brilliant colors, and a broad space left that they might be seen—these characteristics, and they are all unique, have been combined in no other city.” These squares were like so many little beautiful villages enclosed within great walls. The greatest wonder in this queen of cities was the temple of Belus—it was a furlong square, and rose about six hundred feet into the heavens, diminishing in size as it ascended from the base to the topmost brick. This wondrous structure was divided into eight stories, which were reached by means of “a sloping terrace on the outside, sufficiently wide enough for carriages and beast of burden to ascend.” This “temple of Belus was the most ancient and the most magnificent in the world. It was originally the tower of Babel, which was converted into a temple. It had lofty towers, and it was enriched by all the succeeding monarchs till the age of Xerxes, who, after his unfortunate expedition against Greece, plundered and demolished it. Among the riches it contained were many statues of massy gold, one of which was forty feet high.” This building contained nearly the whole wealth of the nation, for all their “idols of gold” and “the plunder of the East” were treasured up



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there. If any one desires further investigation into this particular subject, Berosus, the great Babylonian historian can be searched with much profit. The information that he gives is considered by the best historians of all ages, since his time, to be of immense value. His exposition on the temple of Belus is of the highest authority, because he was one of its priests. Hence whatever he says about its priest-hood, and the records found in the temple, and the learning of the Chaldaeans can be relied upon. He “flourished in the reign of Alexander the Great, and he resided for many years at Athens.” He was a Babylonian by birth. The style of his great history indicates that it was composed of the earliest records, taken from the walls of the temple. Adjoining this magnificent place of wealth was the old strongly fortified palace of the Kings. And on the opposite bank of the river arose the new palace, “whose enclosures and pleasure grounds covered a space of eight miles round.” “And within its precincts were the celebrated hanging gardens, consisting of terraces one above another, raised upon pillars higher than the wails of the city, well floored with cement and lead and covered with earth, in which the most beautiful trees and shrubs were planted.”3 We come now to the following divisions that bring to our notice the political and social life of the ancient Babylonians: 1st. The fixed or regular system or administration of government of the Babylonians was monarchial in form. This despotic government of the Babylonians was that of the very worst form. The will of the king was the law. There could exist no code that his judgment dare not resist and break asunder at his pleasure. If he felt like setting aside the customs of those who anciently governed the nation there was no restrictions to prevent him, for he was all authority. He was not only the representative head of the government, but he stood at the head of ecclesiastical affairs and claimed for himself Divine worship, Daniel I, 8. Again, he surrounded himself with as many wives and concubines as it suited his taste. “And these were placed under the guardianship of eunuchs, an unfortunate race, first brought into use in Assyria.” No one can look by careful examination into the formation of that government and fail to recognize the elements of its own destruction, which took place in the fullness of time. 2nd. The public policy or politics touching the National and State affairs of the Babylonians were undoubtedly wisely managed. The character and worth of the men of that age were made to shine with brilliancy in the offices they so honorably filled. The despotism of that monarchy was indeed very severe, but the governmental affairs were in the hands of very able statesmen who were great credit to them-selves and their race. This is clearly attested by the duration of that awful form of government which lasted for 1,487 years. If we turn to sacred writ, especially the writings of Daniel, we will readily discover that the race of



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Esarhaddon, the fourth prince of the Assyrian Empire, was a wise and politicking. It was during his reign that “the royal family of the king of Babylon became extinct, and there was an interegnum of eight years.” When he discovered this weak and disordered state of affairs existing among the Babylonians, he seized the opportunity of annexing Babylon to his already extensive dominions. The boundary of the ancient Assyrian Empire, not considering its extensive conquests, embraced a large area of what is now known as Turkey in. Asia—nearly all the territories situated along the rivers Euphrates and Tigres. Stretching northward, it comprehended all that land between its centre and the Caspian and. Black Seas, and even the “dubious boundary” on Circassia. The western and northwestern extremities skirted the Mediterranean Sea and extended its powerful lines along Syria and Palestine. The Persian Gulf and the land of Arabia touched it on the south and southwest. On the east ancient Media and Persia and other territories formed its utmost limits. This union was rather untimely and unfavorable, for it soon ripened into the utter ruin of “that proud Empire.” Nebuchadnezzar, the son of Esarhaddon, succeeded his father on the throne about fourteen years after the union between Babylon and Nineveh. This powerful prince, to spread his fame, made war upon Phraortes, King of the Medes, whom he over-threw and slew in a terrible battle and took Ecbetana, the capital of Media. The warlike spirit and the growing power of the Medes would not be downed in that way, hence Cyaxares I, the son and successor of Phraortes, led a mighty and well-disciplined army against the Assyrians and defeated them, besieged Nineveh for the purpose of taking it, but was compelled to raise the siege and return to Media to protect his own territories against the Scychians, “a race of warlike savages.” After Cyaxares, by stratagem, had destroyed the power of the savage Scythians, he renewed his war against the Assyrian Empire, took its capital, Nineveh, and thus ended that powerful kingdom. The fifteenth king of Babylon was Nebuchadnezzar, the Great. Nebuchadnezzar, is thus described by a silver tongue orator: That monarch, a brilliant general, an able statesman, a magnificent patron of the arts and sciences, was a profoundly religious man. He united in himself the functions of general, king and pope. His ambition equaled his ability. Inheriting a kingdom scarcely larger than Portugal, he extended its limits over most of the then known world. The historic Babylon was purely his creation. His power was autocratic, and he could have said more truthfully than Louis XIV., “I am the State.” By an almost universal conquest, he inaugurated a general peace, and although the Hebrew prophet called him “the Hammer of the whole earth,” he strove to retain in cords of silk the



kings and princes and the men who ruled the Babylonians were men of great wisdom.

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nations that Nineveh had bound in fetters of iron. His supreme ambition was to make Babylon what Napoleon labored to render Paris, the incomparable metropolis of the world. Hence it came to pass that history records, perhaps, no other reign so lavishly adorned as his with both the triumphs of war and the splendors of peace. Vast resources enabled him to accomplish his designs. He had drained the treasuries of all the richest nations into his own, and taken captive an almost unlimited number of men to labor in executing his great works. The timber of Lebanon was his. The clay and bitumen beneath his feet supplied unlimited materials for building. The fleets of Phoenicia sailed at his orders. They brought him gold, iron, and tin, from Africa, Spain, and England. Their mariners, transported to the Euphrates, navigated his ships to India and Ceylon, and returned with gems, pearls, spices, and precious woods. The camels of Arabia bore his freights across the deserts. The science and skill of Chaldaea were at his command to make the most effective use of his resources. These were some of the faculties which enabled him to make “this great Babylon,” which he “built by the might of his power, and for the glory of his majesty,” “the Lady of Kingdoms, the glory of the Chaldees’ Excellency, the joy of the whole earth.” He conquered the kingdom of Judah and carried many of the royal princes in chains to Babylon as captives. Among them we find the prophet Daniel. He invaded Phoenicia and the lower valley of the Nile, and immediately after his return from these great conquests, he set up the golden image in the plains of Dura. . . . The reign of Nebuchadnezzar continued forty-three years. He left Babylon the metropolis of the world. Thither Egypt sent for sundials and water-clocks. Thence the ladies of the Orient received the fashions, as Christendom follows the fashions set by Paris. From Babylon, Tyre took the weights and measures that regulated commerce. From Babylon the Greeks received the tables on which their science was based, and Lydia the lutes on which she learned at last to excel her teacher. To Babylon, Egypt sent her finest gold and her choicest ivory, Tyre her most gorgeous dyes, India her largest pearls, Arabia her choicest spices, Media her agates and emeralds, which nowhere else could be so finely cut. The entire vintage of Hilbon was reserved for the Court of Babylon, as that of Champagne was monopolized by Napoleon. Thither Greece sent her most beautiful slaves, for in Babylon, a dancing girl might be sold for the price of a year’s pay to a thousand soldiers. The great Babylonian banking house of the Egibi, whose checks and receipts in clay still exist in great numbers, occupied for five generations at Babylon, the place filled in Europe by the Rothschilds since Waterloo Dan. III. Neboandal, the Belshazzar of Scripture, and Nabonadius and Labynetus of profane history, was not only the last but the weakest of all the kings of Babylon.



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First. That of social interest or concern. There never lived or existed a race of people who looked more to the social interest or concern of each other than the Babylonians. Their interest in each other was deeper than we can describe. The power of your own imagination will serve you better than our feeble attempt at the description of it. Second. That of social pleasure. There was no amusement known under the sun in that age of the world that human mind could invent and heart crave that the Babylonians did not have among themselves, and their enjoyment of it was to the fullest extent. Third. That of social benefits. The Babylonians were very careful with regard to their dealings with each other. Every act looked toward the mutual benefit of each member of the nation. In this particular they were exceedingly clannish. Fourth. That of social happiness. Looking to the social happiness of each individual family, no parent had the right to dispose of his daughter when she arrived at a marriageable age. The authority of the land took her and sold her in the market places to the highest bidder. The amount that the beautiful girls brought was taken and divided among the ugly ones for a support. The evils this method brought on are easily imagined. Fifth. That of social duties. The social obligations that each Babylonian was under to his fellow, had to be discharged with the utmost punctual and care, or else he forfeited forever his social standing in society. This, indeed, was a very high mark of moral sentiment and merits the laudation of the moralists of all ages and races of men.

In considering the Babylonian history from B. C. 2182 to B. C. 538, will of necessity be full of interest, as the sequence will show. But for the records whose authenticity is incontestable, we would deny the arguments, supporting such claims. The Assyrian Empire, which seemed to have formed a part of the Babylonian monarchy, was founded about B. C. 2199, by Nimrod, having Nineveh as its metropolis or Capital. These two mighty kingdoms continued to exist jointly down to B. C. 538. The history of the race of kings who governed the Babylonian Empire immediately after its founder, Nimrod, is not as clear as it might be. If we take up the kings of Assyria we would find that four of them covered in their reigns a period of sixty-seven years altogether. The first of them, Tiglath-Pileser, sometimes called Arbaces and Minus the younger, who reigned nineteen years. He was the first king of Assyria after the division of the Empire. He assisted the King of Judah against the Kings of Israel and Syria—2nd Kings XVI, 7. The second King of this Empire was Shalmaneser. In the sixth year of his reign he besieged Samaria, the capital of the Kingdom of Israel, and after three years took it, and then carried the ten tribes into captivity and located them in Media. 10.1057/9780230610507 - African American Religious Life and the Story of Nimrod, Edited by Anthony B. Pinn and Allen Dwight Callahan


3rd. The social life of the Babylonians gleams out through the mist of hoary ages in five noticeable or distinct points.

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This event transpired about 250 years after the separation of Israel and Judah. The history of the Ten Tribes will afford you great information on this subject. Shalmaneser died after a reign of four-teen years. The third king was Sennacherib, the son of Shalmaneser. He was a formidable prince. He invaded the kingdom of Judah in the reign of Hezekiah, defeated the King of Egypt, who, with a [illegible] army, was coming to aid the Jews; he would [illegible] according to human probability, taken Jerusalem, but his immense army was suddenly destroyed by pestilence. He then returned to Nineveh, where he acted the part of an awful tyrant, and for that reason he was put to death by his own sons in the temple of Nisroch. We come now to speak of the art of weaving. The Babylonians were great manufacturing people. Cotton and wool were manufactured into costly and valuable household goods. They manufactured a kind of cotton robes called sindones, supposed to be a species of muslin, they were so highly esteemed for their delicacy of texture and brilliancy of color, that they were appropriated to royal use. The “Babylonish garment” that is mentioned in Sacred Scripture which caused the death of Achan, must have possessed great attraction. Richly “perfumed waters,” elegantly carved walking canes, magnificent engraved stones, and beautiful seal rings, were abundantly wrought in the great city by the various artisans therein. “The art of cutting precious stones was also carried to a perfection not exceeded by our modern lapidaries, as is manifested from the collection of Babylonian gems in the British museum.” As a commercial people the Babylonians occupied a position in the front ranks of the mercantile world. They traded largely with the Persians, and the Indians, in gold, precious stones, and rich dye-stuffs. The fine wool out of which their costly garments were wrought, they obtained from Candahar and Kashmir. They procured immense quantities and an excellent quality of Emeralds, jaspers and many other precious stones from the desert of Bactria, now known as the modern Cobi; while the Bahrien Islands in the Persian Gulf furnished them large quantities of the finest pearls. Their commerce in these articles with western Asia and Europe was very extensive. This commerce was both by land and sea. The commercial alliance between the Babylonians and the Phoenicians was very strong, and it made them masters of the high seas, and thus enabled them to monopolize the mercantile business of that age of the world. In literature, they were the equals, if not the superiors of any of their day. In the science of astronomy, they possibly laid the foundation; and but for the mixture of Chaldaean mythology, their astronomical records would be the greatest scientific gift the ancients gave to the children of men. We can say this of the soldiery of the Babylonians; the world never produced greater. Their valor on a thousand battle fields still furnishes materials for the muse and the philosopher. In religion, they were politheistic. They were even given to that in human practice, the sacrifice of human life in the time of their religious worship. We know of no words more becoming, in which we can 10.1057/9780230610507 - African American Religious Life and the Story of Nimrod, Edited by Anthony B. Pinn and Allen Dwight Callahan


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end this little volume than the following: “These are the sons of Cush, after their families, after their tongues, in their countries, and in their nations” *

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1895 George Wilson Brent George Wilson Brent (b. March 21, 1860) was born in a log cabin in King George County, Virginia, to Mary Taylor and George Brent. His father was said to have been born in Africa, where he was supposedly drugged, held prisoner, and later sold to an English Naval officer. His father was sold into slavery in Virginia. He was reportedly orphaned at an early age when his father “ran away” shortly after marrying his mother and joined the army. In revenge for this act, his mother was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Georgia. He lived at the Orphan Home for “Colored” children in Washington, D.C., from 1869 to 1870. As a young man, he held many different jobs, but he converted to Christianity in 1877, which eventually led to his vocation as a clergyman. Brent was also a writer. Perhaps his most well-known work, Origin of the White Man (1893) was also his most infamous, given he argued that people were white initially due to the effects a sickness that was similar to small pox. In the piece below, however, he describes the origins of the black race in terms of its glory, although he locates the documentation of the historic origins of both whites and blacks in the Old Testament. Here, he argues for the ancient glory of Hamitic (Negro) people because they believe in the Bible, because they are unparalleled by any other race in terms of the magnitude and development of their ancient civilizations, such as Egypt, Sheba, Cush, and Phoenicia, and because their later New Testament descendents such as Simon of Cyrene sheltered Jesus in his weakest moments. George Wilson Brent, “The Ancient Glory of the Hamitic Race,” A. M. E. Church Review (October 1895): 272–275. *

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There is an old saying which runs thus, “a man talks best on that of which he thinks the most,” which is the equivalent of that Scriptural phrase, “out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh.” Such being the case, were I not limited in my remarks upon this topic, chosen by our Church fathers, I would go back to the beginning of race history and tell you how Ham, the father of the dark-skinned African race, helped Noah to build the ark; I might enlarge upon his vivacity as the sunbeam of the home life in the ark during the deluge. I might show you the architectural skill displayed in the building of Babel, afterwards known as, “Babylon,



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that great city,” the first of the series of Hamitic building enterprises which the Hebrew spies 728 years later declared were walled to heaven. I might forget myself and expand indefinitely upon the brilliancy and permanence of the historical achievements of Cush, the Ethiopian, father of Nimrod, the mighty hunter, who first laid the foundation of civil government 2218 B. C., and 131 years after the flood. But I must of necessity confine myself to the ancient glory of the dark-skinned people in such a manner that we may properly, hereafter answer the oft repeated interrogation “what has the Negro done to prove himself a man among men?” Our ancient glory lies in the following facts, that is, if we read and believe the Bible. First, Africa, our father land, the home of the Hamitic race, is the only country on earth whose past, present, and future so concerned the Lord, that of all notable events in the lives of Joseph, Moses, Jacob, Abraham, Solomon and Our Saviour Jesus Christ; the fact of their being there became a turning point in their lives. We glory in the geographical fact that Egypt, the mother state named after Mizraim, Ham’s second son, became the seat of ancient knowledge, the school of universal wisdom, and the mainstay of the nations of earth in her day. Ethiopia named after Cush, Ham’s firstborn divided honors with Egypt in holding the master-hand in sciences, astronomical, ecclesiastical, botanical, and biological. Canaan, Ham’s fourth and youngest son, invested and built up a country and, settled a nation bearing his name, whose glory, though obscured by the lapse of 3338 years, remains today the typical ensign of the Christian’s hope, concerning Africa’s future glory prophecy says, “Ethiopia shall soon stretch forth her hand to God,” and “in that day shall this be said of Egypt, this man was born there.” “Moreover in that day shall Israel be the third, with Egypt and with Assyria whom the Lord shall bless, saying Blessed be Egypt, my people, and Assyria, my hand-work and Israel, mine inheritance.” Secondly, we glory in the historical fact, that, since the day Joseph with his wisdom made Egypt the bake house and corn crib of the world; since the day Moses, in his God-like struggle with Pharaoh in the liberation and exodus of the Hebrews, caused the world to wonder, there is, there has been, none to parallel the race history of the sons of Ham. The Cushite, Canaanite, Jebusite, and Hamath peoples, left behind them a record of valor and war-like discretion to us their American descendants, which was pithily remarked in the late war by a noted General in that world famous sentence, “The colored troops fought nobly.” When we read of an ancient worship of Isis Osiris, the Temple of Belus, or the mystery of the Phoenix and Sphinx, or the architectural wonders of the post-diluvian epoch, we read of the departed glory of the Hamitic race. When we read about the Queen of Sheba, the wealth and precious things of Ophir and Colgonda, the beauty and effulgence of Solomon’s Court and Temple, we read of the Hamitic race; for Egypt was the mother of ancient science, of education and refinement. She was the first after the flood to have a



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stated religion, to have a written language, to have counselors and kings, and above all, she was the hope of the despised, oppressed, and friendless, in other words, what there United States now are to the world at large, so was Africa in her day of strength, an asylum for the afflicted, a refuge for the outcast, a home for the wanderer, a heaven for the rich, a storehouse for the merchant, and a market for the buyer and seller. Moses was born there and this was his record, “he was skilled in all the learning and wisdom of the Egyptians” and “he married an Ethiopian woman.” Solomon was the wisest man known to history and he married Pharaoh’s daughter, thus showing that for feminine grace and beauty coupled with mental accomplishments or moral excellence the glory of the black women was second to none: for he said “my love is the fairest among ten thousand altogether lovely.” We glory also in the fact that the Phœnicians, who were the master traders of the East, who gave to the world the science of computation by figures and were so well acquainted with astronomy that they “called the stars by name and worshipped them” were of Negro Hamitic stock. Third and last. The country of Ham sheltered our Saviour when a helpless babe from the fury of His enemies, even as it did the same kind office of Joseph from the envy and enmity of his brethren; Simon, the Canaanite, one of Christ’s chosen Disciples, was a dark man, Simon the Cyrenean, father of Alexander and Rufus, who helped bear Christ’s cross up Calvary’s rugged summit, belonged to that race. “Simeon, [that was called Niger] and Lucius of Cyrene who had been brought up with Herod, the tetrarch, and Saul” were members of the race. The Eunuch of Candace—the queen of the Ethiopians—who was baptized by Phillip and was thus numbered among the earliest converts from heathenism or paganism to Christianity, also affords us grounds to glory in the record of Race character. God said: “Out of Egypt have I called my Son.” Jerusalem the city of the Great King was first built and inhabited by the children of Ham, (the Jebusites); Canaan, the Promised Land, the land in which our Saviour was born, lived and died, belonged to Hamitic people. So then we glory in the prominence durability of the geographical sites chosen by our progenitors Ham and his three sons Cush, Mizraim and Canaan. *

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The Descent of the Negro4 (Prelude Fourth) 1898 Benjamin Tucker Tanner Benjamin Tucker Tanner (December 25, 1835–January 15, 1923) was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Hugh S. Tanner and Isabel H. Tanner.



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Unfortunately, his father died while he was very young, making it difficult for him to complete his education. He nevertheless, obtained a higher education, having studied at Avery Institute and Western Theological Seminary in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania. In 1856, he became a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. With permission of A. M. E. Bishop Daniel Payne, Tanner also served as a Presbyterian minister in Washington, DC for eighteen months from 1860 to 1861, returning to the AME Church, however, in 1962. During his career, he wrote several articles and books that addressed the intersection of “Negro” history and theology— books such as An Apology for African Methodism (1867). The selection below was a polemical response to officials of the Methodist Episcopal Church who were responsible for the publication of the church education periodical called the Sunday School Journal for Teachers and Young People, which doubted the biblical character “Ham” and his descendents were Negroes. Not only does Tanner argue that Ham was the progenitor of the Negro race, he also maintains that the Negro is of high rank in human development. Ham’s descendants, including the Egyptians, the Carthaginians, the Phoenicians, and the Canaanites, built pyramids and the Tower of Babel and were responsible for great accomplishments throughout history. At the same time, he refutes the Curse of Ham notion. His position is that the Bible is the primary authority on history in general and Negro history in particular, as it is an infallible source of information. Benjamin Tucker Tanner, “The Descent of the Negro (Prelude Fourth).” A. M. E. Church Review (July 1898): 513–528. *

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“It is not certain whether or not the Negro race descended from Ham.” So say the scholarly triumvirs who edit the Sunday School Journal for Teachers and Young People, Rev. Drs. John H. Vincent, J. M. Freeman, J. L. Hurlbut; and through and by these so says the great Methodist Episcopal Church, for they are her mouthpiece to the millions of young people who attend her Sunday Schools, and the greater number who attend her church services. Let us not be misunderstood. The Methodist Episcopal Church, in a publication the most doctrinal of any issued from her press, says authoritatively, “It is not certain whether or not the Negro race descended from Ham.” And she expects, nay, in a sense demands, her millions of young people to accept this doubt; for if this be not the case, why her Berean comments on the International Bible readings? Is it not the common understanding that each denomination will take these readings, and give the interpretation thought to be consistent with its standard of belief? Precisely so. The Sunday School Journal, wherein these triumvirs are heard



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to speak, is but the Methodist Episcopal Church speaking through her own chosen channels. Therefore does she say to her children, black, white, and to the world at large, “It is not certain whether or not the Negro race descended from Ham.” Nor does it seem to have occurred to these masters in this Christian Israel that there are two hundred thousand or more of these same Negroes in organic union with themselves, any one of whom, the votes requisite being had, in the nigh future might be elevated to the lofty rank of a Bishop in the same Church. And what a sight! A Bishop in whose veins no Noachic, if indeed Adamic, blood flows! But to our proposed answer. It is in place to say that no study is more legitimate, profitable or interesting than the origin of the races. Whence came they? is a question at which the greatest dullard starts up. Whence came the white man with his long goat-like hair? The yellow man with his black jetty locks? The black man with his hair of wool-like texture? Themes, these, so entrancing in interest as ever to have commanded the attention of the minds of the most magnanimous. Whence, then, the origin or descent of the Negro? We concede the pertinence of this question in common with the rest, and only demand that the discussion attending it shall be conducted in a spirit altogether in keeping with the general loftiness of the them: for, of the Negro we have to say that in all the possibilities of human greatness he is not a whit behind any. Scattered and peeled now, we confess, yet has he in him all those elements of character that everywhere rank high in scale of human development. Physically, the most enduring; morally, the most susceptible; and spiritually, of the keenest vision, he is destined yet to share largely in the future government of the world; and if the visions of Swedenborg be true, to reach the highest exaltation in the world to come.5 Fairness of discussion is all, then, that we demand of these Methodist triumvirs—these, who seem to be treading so hard in the footsteps of him who wrote “The Pre-Adamite.” But is fairness evinced in the work from which we quote—the fairness, we mean, that is shown in hunting up the origin of the white man in Europe and the yellow man of Asia? We do not hesitate to say that such is not the case; but on the contrary, a bias that utterly unfits them for the impartial performance of the work in hand. But let us make good this grave charge. We quote from Lesson IV, Sunday School Journal, January 23rd: “Noah begat three sons.” How do these Doctors know that such was the case? Manifestly they were not there to see, for according to accepted chronology Noah lived more than four thousand years ago. How do they know the number of his sons with their names? The answer is, as we all know, the Bible declares it. It is the Bible that says Noah had three sons and that their names were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And these gentlemen believe what the Bible says; at least, what it says in full of Shem and Japheth, but only in part what it says of Ham. But we continue to quote from the same Journal: “Shem: He was the son



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of Noah, through whom the covenant succession was maintained to Christ, and was a hundred years old at the time of the flood. He was the ancestor of most of the Oriental nations, as the Israelites, Syrians, Arabians, and many others. His descendants are known as Semitic races, and their most powerful branches have been the ancient Assyrians and the modern Saracens and Turks.” A deal of information is here given, it must be confessed. Whence did they get it? From whom learn it? As in the case of the information above, they are obliged to fall back on the Bible as the source of all this in formation. We continue to quote: “Ham: His name means ‘heat’ and perhaps refers to the climate of the land of his posterity. The earliest empires of history, those of Babylonia and Egypt, were both Hamitic, as were the Canaanites, Phoenicians and Carthaginians. The descendants of Ham built the pyramids and the Tower of Babel, and were the earliest navigators and traders. It is not certain whether or not the Negro race descended from Ham.” Again we ask: Whence did they learn all that is here affirmed? From the Bible—save the last gratuitous statement. Lastly we quote from this same lesson: “Japheth: The oldest of Noah’s sons (Gen. 10: 12), yet later than the other families in his history. While the Hamites and Shemites were founding empires, Japheth’s descendants were wandering tribes of shepherds. Yet they became the conquerors of all the other races, through the Brahmins in India, the Merles and Persians in Western Asia, the Greeks, the Romans and the Anglo-Saxons in Europe and America.” We are indeed astounded, to use an old English word, at the wealth of the information here given; so full, indeed, that we are compelled to say they think they get it from the Bible, and so thinking, credit it with same.6 But every unbiased reader knows that it is nothing more nor less than Japheth interpreting in his own interest. In deferring, however, to the extent they have, to the Bible, they deserve praise; for no better authority can be given than this same Bible, upon the matter about which we write. Nor is it exactly correct to say, “No better authority than the Bible can he given,” and for the reason that other authorities than it are implied in such a statement. The fact is the Bible is the best authority, not because it is the best attested of any, but the best because it is the only authority the race possesses upon the questions under discussion. It alone throws light upon man’s creation acid the early dawn of the races. Herein the literature of the Hebrews transcends in value the literature of all others. It is in vain that we seek for light upon this matter in the old Egyptian Book of the Dead, with what Manetho, their great historian, has written. Berosus, best representative of the old Assyrian literature, has nothing to say upon the subject of the rise of the races. Equally silent is the Vedic and Sanskrit literature of India. China, speaking through Confucius and the writers of the school of Taou, is dumb; while the Kojiki and Nibouji of Japan are equally so. As with these, even so is it



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with early Greek lore. All is fable. It is, then, to the Hebrew Bible that we are doomed to turn for aught that is authentic and credible pertaining to the origin of the races. More is told us in the single 10th chapter of Genesis than either Egypt or Assyria, Greece or India, China or Japan ever dreamed of, or ever knew. It is, then, to the Bible that these gentlemen must turn for information in regard to the rise of the races. And, as we have said, it is well they do. What the Scriptures say of the white, or Japhetic, race they accept—with a large percent of the imaginary; also what they say of the yellow, or Shemitic, race. Shall not the same fealty be shown to what these same Scriptures say of the Hamitic, or black, race? If not, why not? Where is the scholar who professes to accept the doctrine of Biblical inspiration that is prepared to take so timorous a step as accepting a hart of Holy Writ and rejecting a part? Is the Bible in error in what it says of Ham, why should we believe it right in what it says of Shem and Japheth? If wrong in regard to Shem and Japheth, why should we believe it right in regard to Noah? And if I error in regard to Noah, why should we believe it right in regard to the Deluge and antediluvian events generally? And if in error in regard to these, why should we believe it right in regard to Adam and the Creation? And if in error in regard Adam, why should we believe it right in regard to God and Christ and the great matters of faith in general? And, finally, if the Bible is in error in regard to these, why should we deem it right in the claims it makes upon us for unconditional acceptance regardless of the fact that here, as elsewhere, the saying of the old Latin holds good: “Ab uno disce omnes?” for if manifest error be admitted in statements here and there made, henceforth must the Bible lose its place in the affections of man. But is this so? Does this much vaunted Word of God prevaricate? We are unwilling to believe it. The Bible is still the book of God, and, therefore, the Book of books. It is still the “Rock of Ages” for the faith of the world. Therefore do we stand ready to resist to the uttermost of our power the infidel remark which concludes the statement in regard to us and those for whom we stand: “It is not certain whether or not the Negro race, descended from Ham.” Why is it not certain? Have Moses and the writers of the Bible spoken any less truly of this class than of their white and yellow cousins? No unbiased Bible reader will or can truthfully say so. And now having appealed to this literary Caesar; let us approach his august throne. That the Negro is of African patrimony the world knows. The dullest blockhead of the nest out-of-the-way country school knows that the father of the black fellow whom he is all the time meeting, came from Africa. Nor could the most persistent pedagogue get him to believe otherwise. The Negro, then, is out of Africa. But who settled Africa— which of the sons of Noah, we mean? The one authoritative voice in the



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settlement of this question is the Bible, for it alone, as we have said, throws light upon ages declared to be prehistoric by the secular analysts. Is Europe Japhetic? Is Asia Shemitic? Then Africa is Hamitic by one and the same testimony; reinforced, however, we may be allowed to say by the facts of philology; for, while Europe and Asia depend altogether upon the statements of history, Africa calls to her help philology. Why should Holy Writ be thought to speak infallibly of two and fallibly of one? Was the writer biased, or were the facts more difficult to remember? Neither supposition is to be entertained. These triumvirs believe what is written of two, even to excess. Why incredulous of what is said of one? They believe that Europe, substantially, is of Japheth; and Asia, substantially, of Shem. Why disbelieve that Africa is substantially of Ham? The response made is: They do, save as to the Negro. But if we subtract the Negro from the population of Africa, subtract the Hebrew, Cushim, the Greek, Ethiopian, but little of moment remains. Our argument is that Ham is the father of all Africa, and the Negro being of Africa, is necessarily of Ham. The Scriptural proof we offer divides itself into two heads: first, that which relates to Ham; secondly, that which relates to his sons. That Africa is Hamitic we read: “And smote all the first born in Egypt; The chief of their strength in the tents of Ham.” (Psl. lxxviii: 51).

Also: “Israel also came unto Egypt; And Jacob sojourned in the land of Ham.” (Psl. cv.: 23).

And: “They set among them his signs, And wonders in the land of Ham.” (Psl. cv.: 27).

Also: “They forgat God their Saviour, Which had done great things in Egypt; Wondrous works in the land of Ham.” (Psl. cvi.: 21–22).

What is the testimony here given by the poet king? And in perfect agreement, too, with what Holy Scripture everywhere says? It is, that, in the



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popular mind, the fact that Africa was the home of Ham was so well fixed, in keeping with the spirit of true poet, he makes use of it in writing his inimitable verses. And the editors of the Journal can safely be challenged to produce anything like as conclusive testimony to the fact, so readily assumed by them, that Europe, with a large portion of Asia, is the land of Japheth. They might, indeed, produce such testimony in regard to Asia as the land of Shem; but they will utterly fail in regard to Japheth. Before leaving this Scriptural evidence in regard to Ham, were we allowed to refer to secular history, we might mention the fact that just as the going of Ham into Africa, either in person or by proxy, was in the Jewish mind; even so was it in the mind of the great outside world, as is attested by Plutarch and Herodotus and Josephus. But fighting this battle within purely Scriptural grounds, we refrain. And now, as to the fact of Ham’s sons going into Africa. He had four sons: Cush, Mizraim, Phut, and Canaan. It is the testimony of Scripture that all these migrated to Africa, save him upon whom the curse rested, Canaan. Concerning this last well-attested fact, we are led to quote from our pamphlet of twenty years ago, “Is the Negro Cursed?” We there say: “The question is, Why did not Canaan and his posterity accompany tribes of Ham into Africa? Why this younger one-remain? In after years the twelve tribes of Jacob marched up from Egypt, not was one left behind. Why should not the four tribes of Ham march down?” The youngest child is most generally the pet, the best beloved. Jacob loved Joseph the best of all his boys, because he was the son of his old age. Human nature is one. Wherefore, then, should Ham leave this son of his old age behind? The whole affair is inexplicable without the assumption that some sad transaction made it necessary for him thus to act. This we find in the curse pronounced. With this understanding how natural does the course of these sons become? How justifiable, in forsaking a brother, aye, in compelling him to remain behind. These brethren had just experienced the wrath of the curse of God, had seen the floods descend, had heard the fountains of the deep break up, had felt the mighty throes of the earth beneath the feet of their angered God, and from the great depths of their souls they sighed to be spared another such visitation. They could not doubt the prophetic dignity of their father. They knew his voice made known the mind and will of God, and when in prophetic ecstasy they saw the roll of his eye and heard the muttering words, ‘Cursed be Canaan,’ they felt the breaking asunder of every tie of brotherhood and destiny. With one voice the brothers said, ‘Arise, let us go Hence.’ ” Where did they go? Straight into Africa. So says Holy Scripture. Let us refer to these sons in the order of their mentioning. And first: Cush is mentioned—with but a single exception (and where it refers to a person), the translation is, Ethiopia. That this may be accepted



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1. (a) The Cushim descended from Ham, as is well known, and inhabited a hot south country. Ham was in Africa, and his seed, doubtless, spread into the hot country of Ethiopia. (b) The Cushim were black. “Can the Ethiopian (or Cushite) change his skin?” Jer. xiii.: 23. (c) The Cushim were in close proximity to the Mizraimites, or Egyptians, for the two are uniformly coupled together. See Isaiah xx: 3, 4, 5; xliii.: 3; Nahuin iii: 9; Psalm lxviii.: 31, etc. (d) Isaiah (xviii.: 2) describes the Cushim as sending ambassadors in “vessels of bulrushes.” Bulrushes are purely an African or Nilotic production. With such an array of testimony as this, who can doubt the going of Cush into Africa? 2. In regard to the advent of the son Mizraim into Africa, the Scriptures speak most definitely. It is enough to say that Egypt as a country, is only known in the Bible by the name of Mizraini, Egypt itself being a Greek word, and, consequently, nowhere found in the original Scriptures. Against such a fact as this it is useless to protest and argue. 3. As to the posterity of Phut settling in Africa, the evidence in Scripture is that he is invariably joined with his brethren, the Cushites. Jeremiah xlvi.: 9, says. “Cush and Phut that handled the shield.” Ezekiel (xxxviii.: 5), says, “Phut and Cush with them.” So also speaks the prophet Nahum (iii. 9). What is the burden of this accumulated testimony? It is that Africa is unknown to the writers of the Bible, only as, it appears under Hamitic names. Refuse to recognize and accept these Hamitic names, and you have no allusion to it. It is the land of Ham. To the writers of the Bible, Egypt is Mizraim. To them, Ethiopia is Cush. And to them the land of Phut is always allied to the land of Cush. But cannot Ham be the father of Africa and yet not be the father of the Negro? Not if the Japhetic fatherhood of Europe takes in all the races of Europe. Not if the Shemitic fatherhood of Asia takes in all the tribes of Asia. Not if the great doctrine of Scripture be true that God made of one blood all nations of men. Not if Adam be the first father and Noah the second father of the race. Not, in short, if the Bible itself be true: that is, be what it is represented to be, the word of God. And lastly, not if harmony of interpretation be insisted upon. To attempt assigning the Negro another than Hamitic origin, is nothing less than an attempt to read the Bible with other than the old-time Christian eyes. In the light of those eyes the Bible is an



as a correct translation appears from the following considerations:

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inspired book; if not verbally inspired, certainly plenarily inspired. According to this light, the race is a unit, with Noah for its head as one, and Shem, Ham and Japhet as its heads in parts. But in the light of these new eyes all this is seen to be erroneous. Adam and Noah are simply the father of the white race. Negroes are somebody else.7 They are possibly Pre-Adamites. Crowned with age, if not with Honor, they were before the white man was! And all this the Sunday School authorities of the great Methodist Episcopal Church wink at, if they do not boldly teach. In this, we are sure they do not truthfully represent their time-honored body. As we have shown, however, Ham is of Africa, and because this is so, the Negro being of Africa, is necessarily of Ham. Three continents, Asia, Africa, Europe; three patriarchs, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Each continent for a patriarch; each patriarch for a continent. Nor were there any squatters in those primeval days. To say the Negro is not of Ham is to make him a squatter. But even then the pertinent question remains: Whence came he? Found in Africa when the Hamitic hordes first crossed front Shinar, what was his genesis? There is but one door of escape for these gentlemen, and it is to them what Scylla is to Charybdis. Do they mean to intimate, if not to say, that while the Negro is Adamic he is not Noahic? This is tantamount to saying that the Negro escaped the waters of the flood. Do they mean this? If so, why not have the courage of their conviction? But if the Negro escaped the flood, why may not other races have escaped also? and if so, what becomes of the words of Peter (iii: 20): “When the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, when the ark was a preparing wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water”? It is well enough to know that when we once deny the universality of the destruction wrought by the Flood, there is no possible way of telling where to stop. Did the Negro escape, why may not other of the African tribes—the “white” Hamites, for instance? And if these, why not some of the tribes of Asia, the Chinese, for instance? We confess here to intricacy; but why should the Negro be selected to settle it; why experiment upon him—an experiment that may well be said to bring in such an understanding of the Bible as to make it essentially a new book? Of the Flood, Moses says: “And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and all the high mountains that were under the whole heavan were covered. Fifteen cubists upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both fowl, and cattle and beast, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living thing was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and creeping thing, and fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the



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earth; and Noah only was left, and they that were with him in the ark” (Gen. vii: 19–23). In the face of such a record as this, it seems to us to be all folly to question the universality of the flood, both in extent and in concequences. We have no quarrel with science. We care little about its teachings as they may be thought to bear upon the discussion in hand. Our to do is with Moses. To us the one important question is: Does he or does he not teach that the Flood was universal? And by universal, we mean wherever man or beast or bird or creeping thing had gone. That he does, or, at least, intends so to do, is self-evident. Referring to Victor Hugo, De Pressense affirmed that France could never produce a poet to equal him, to say nothing of surpassing him. The reason he assigned was, that on the score of poetry, Hugo had “played the French language for all that it was worth.” Even so, Moses and the Flood. To say that he does not declare for the universality of the Flood, is to make it impossible for any to declare it, and for the reason that he plays human language for all that it is worth. Whether he tells the truth or not, is another question. Our present task is to find out what he says, and, for one, we believe he is abundantly able to make answer for himself. If the words we have quoted above do not tell us that the Flood was of world-wide extent, then our language—aye, or any other—is inadequate to the task of telling it; and if any doubt this, let him try to form a paragraph in which universality shal be told. As intimated, we do not presume to settle this question, especially after what the scientists have said, and after what the “conquered standpoints” of science seem to teach. That Moses, however, intended to say that the Flood was universal, is beyond question. But to say that the Negro did not spring from Ham is to settle the question in the interest of science, socalled, and against Moses—is to say, that the Flood was not universal; that all flesh did not die; that every man save Noah and those with him in the Ark did not perish. Nay, more, to say that the Negro is not of Hamitic birth is to impugn the word of Him in whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Did not Christ accept the popular idea that the Flood was universal? Did He not teach as much? Says He: “And as were the days of Noah so shall be the coming of the son of Man. For as in those days which were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and they knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall be the coming of the Son of man” (Matt. xxiv: 37–39). The one teaching of this is, that if the Flood was not universal, the coming of the Son of Man will not be; and that if some escaped the flood, why may not some escape the judgment? But let us conclude this reply: As was Asia when the second peopling of the earth by the sons of Noah began, desolate, but hospitable, for



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primeval nature is always thus: As was Europe when the sons of Japheth and their descendants, Gomer and Magog and Madai and Javan, and Tubal and Meshech and Tiras entered it, even so was Africa when Cush and Mizraim and Phut crossed at Suez, or waded at Babelmandeb. And from these, the mighty millions of the great peninsula have sprung, be they brown or black; be they of the regions bordering the Red Sea and the Nile, or the regions close to the setting sun. These triumvirs to the contrary, the statement Paul made on Mars Hill to the men at Athens is yet true: “And he made of one every nation of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed seasons, and the bounds of their habitation” (Acts xvii: 26). The Negro is a man. He is of Adam. He is of Noah. The Negro is a brother, and will be until science can demonstrate the Bible to be no more than a fable—that Moses made mistakes, and the divine Son of God, with men hitherto supposed to be inspired, endorsed them. *

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The Ethiopians Place in History And His Contribution to the World’s Civilization: The Negro-The Hamite The Stock, the Stems and the Branches of the Hamitic People 1916 Rev. John William Norris, D. D. John William Norris (b. August 8, 1842) was born in Jefferson County, Virginia. He relocated to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in his adult years, and he united with the Carlisle A. M. E. Church in 1870. That same year he decided to devote his life to Christian ministry. In 1877, Bishop Daniel A. Payne of the A. M. E. Church licensed him as a local minister and admitted him to the Church’s Philadelphia Conference. He attended Lincoln University for two years at the suggestion of the bishop, prior to engaging in active ministry. He transferred to the Baltimore Conference in 1889, and he became the Pastor of the Trinity A. M. E. Church. He was an itinerate preacher and scholar for three decades. The selection included here was his greatest intellectual work. The text is an excerpt from the first three chapters of The Ethiopian’s Place in History. Norris’s goal is to exalt the “African,” also known as the “Negro-Hamite,” to a place of glory and prestige. His specific intent is to illuminate the history of the Negro in order to give young people something to which to aspire, while demonstrating that certain ancient civilizations, such as Egypt, were Hamitic-Negro in origin. He gives particular attention to Nimrod in Chapter II, and he views him as the first great historic figure to give



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John William Norris, The Ethiopians Place in History and His Contributions to the World’s Civilization: The Negro-The Hamite, The Stock, the Stems and the Branches of the Hamitic People (Baltimore: The Afro-American Co., 1916. Reprinted by African Publication Society, London, 1981). *

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. . . Now the earth must be re-peopled; and the sons of Noah were assigned to this great task with their sixteen sons. Now from these three sons this great world with its billions dead, and its billions living, was repeopled with sixteen little branches, in the persons of their sons. And from these have grown many powerful nations in the new world. These three sons left the tower of Babel with a knowledge of the true God, but as they wandered from that religious center they lost sight of him with one exception, and that was Shem, he being chosen as a progenitor-a religions link between the church of the old world and the church of the new world, or the Antedilunian Church and the Jewish Church. But my desire is in this chapter and in this book to pay special attention to the sons of Ham, Cush, Phut, Mizraim and Canaan; since all the ethnologists have paid such little attention to them. After reading carefully books not written by black men, but white men, I have reached the conclusion that the Ethiopian, the Negro, the black man, has an exalted place in history. No race holds larger space in the Holy Bible than the Negro but the Jew. Parley’s History informs us that Shem and descendents distributed themselves over the country near the Euphrates and founded several nations there. Ham took, said he, a westerly direction and proceeded to Africa and settled in Egypt, and laid the foundation of a great nation there. Now notice, great things began in the land and the home of the Negro. The descendents of Japheth proceeded to Europe; and there laid the foundation of several nations. A few people remained in the land of Shinar in the neighborhood of the tower of Babel. Likely these because the ancestors of the Chinese. The Bible informs us that Ashur the grandson of Noah, son of Shem built Nineveth, 60 miles in circumference and surrounded it with a wall a hundred feet high, and it was defended says history, by fifteen hundred towers each two hundred feet height, and three hundred gates as an entrance. At the same time Nimrod the son of Cush, and grandson of Ham and great grandson of Noah, built Babylon the largest and most beautiful city in the world, then and now. This great city was fifty-six miles around with a wall three hundred and seventy-five feet high. It was a city



civilization to the world. Finally, his secondary goal is to dispel the idea that Negroes are cursed because of their ancestral relationship to Canaan and Ham.

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of palaces and swinging gardens high in the air. There was built in it a great temple six hundred feet high. This great man was an African from Hamitic or Negro stock. He was a hunter before the Lord, says the scriptures. He founded the first government known in human history this side of the flood, and likely the first in the world. Hence he was the first to conceive the idea of government and likely the first in the world. In this it seems that the Negro has sprung from a very fertile stock. We say this because of the fact that Nimrod was the son of Cush and was the son of Ham. It must be remembered that Egypt, Ethiopia, and China were great flourishing nations and civilizations. When there was not a monument reared by the hands of the Aryan race, the Negro was associated with those civilizations and formed a very important part of them. The Negro formed the bulk of the Egyptian army, three thousand years before Christ. His name is found on the monuments which is an evidence of his social level then, it not now. The Ethiopians or Negroes helped to build the Pyramids. The one reared above the tomb of Cheops is counted one of the seven wonders of the world; and the Negroes helped to build it. This shows that the Negro had attained to a very high mark in civilization three thousand years before the birth of Christ. Greece was the first European nation to accept civilization and this did not take place for a thousand years after the Pyramids were built. These three brothers left the tower of Babel at the same time on the same day. Each had his own destination in different directions; with their separate tongues, each having their own separated division of the globe. They were all one color when they separated, they were all three brothers; one father’s children. But it seems that the followers of Japheth who are the Aryans so considered by the historians, ethnologists and others, were the last to accept civilization and that ray of civil light came from Africa the home of the hated Negro, who was then highly civilized. It appears as though the followers of Japheth sunk into hopeless savagery where they remained over a thousand years before they saw the light. What light? The light of civilization. It is not the object of this book to take any of the glory due the white man for his improvements on civilization; but to inform him that he never conceived civilization. Let him be just, and give the Hamite, the Cushite, the Negro, credit for conceiving civilization. Give us a place in history, and credit for our contribution. Parley and other historians say that Ham went to Africa, and settled in Egypt and Ethiopia, and laid the foundation of a great nation there. Hence according to the historians the foundation of the first great nation laid this side of the flood was laid on African soil. Therefore the civilization of Africa today is only the reproduction of a wonderful ancient civilization of which there are many evidence. These evidence show that the Ethnologists, and historians have failed to product facts; as those facts



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may apply to the Ethiopians’ or the Negro’s place in history; and as to their contributions to the world’s civilization. We have endeavored to show the place of Nimrod the great hunter before the Lord in history and his contribution to the world’s civilization. He, being the son of Cush and grandson of Ham and great grandson of Noah, the man who conceived and thought out the first civil rule, and formed the first civil government, plants the first civilization. The man was Nimrod, an African. Hence civilization comes from African through Nimrod. The Negro is a descendent of Ham since he is an African, if so then he is human and not an animal, and if he is human and not an animal he belongs to that civilization. A civilization of modern times. It is a known fact that modern civilization is only the reproduction of an ancient civilization; and that civilization was the product of Hamitic or Negro brain. The white man never conceived civilization. He has tried to improve on it; or on Hamitic conception. The people who have not lived on African soil can claim no part in the extinct and ancient African civilization. But the people who are now called Negroes, but who anciently were called Cushites and Ethiopians belong to them. Why boast of the thing I gave you, if you have improved on it? Is there a single structure built by white men in these modern times that will equal the Pyramids in durability? The white man claims superiority in all civilizations, but there is no evidence of it. In this chapter I desire to make special mention of Nimrod, the oldest son of Cush. In the 10th chapter of Gen. 8th and 9th versus, Nimrod is said to be a mighty hunter before the Lord and a mighty one in the earth. Clark and Henry both say he was a prince, and became a great benefactor in his day. If he stood before the Lord in any sense as a ruler and benefactor, he could not have been such a bad man as pictured by the commentators. The comment of both Clark and Henry, is a reflection on the judgment and choice of God. If Nimrod was such a bad man, why did God make choice of him to appear before Him in any sense? Now it is a known fact that Nimrod was the first civilizer and the first dominator, the first to form a kingdom and civil rule this side of the flood. A man so honored to do an act that will give him a first place in history through all time, could not have been such a bad man as the historians have him; and the African people as degraded as they would have them. There is nothing in the Bible to show that. Nimrod was either good or bad. There is noting to justify the acquisitions of the commentators. Hence they are an assumption. There is no doubt that Nimrod was one of the greatest men that ever had the honor of living on this earth. For no man in the Bible has received greater honor than to stand before the Lord. I, for one, am opposed to reflections on my Creator in matter of choice. Because God did not go to Europe to select a man to form the first kingdom, and build the first city and because he made choice of him in Africa, the man selected by God was a bad fellow.



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The very thing the other races of the world are doing to the Negro race is evidence that he belongs to the oldest and one of the greatest races on the earth. . . . It is evident that the Ethiopian people were no mean people. They were the best citizens of the world in their day. Herodotus, was a cultured Greek, and lived before the history of Greece was written. It is thought by many critics that he composed the separate treatise on Assyrian history. This man speaks in praise of the Ethiopians. He was a man of broad learning and knew of the Lybian Kingdom, and of the Babylonians and Assyrians; also the Egyptians. Also the Greek colonies in Northern Africa, and the native Libyan race, and the Scythians. We will accept what he says. These black Ethiopians, Libyans, Lidians and Nubians lived in his day and their place in the world’s history was worthy of his mention and commendation. Has the black boy and girl anything to lean against? Yes, an ancestry. Chapter III: Cush, And His Descendants the Line of Civilization from Cush to Asai We will now notice Cush, Nimrod’s father, and other descendants of Cush. The Ethiopians, included the Nubians; the Libyans, the Lidyans, and the Sabeans, also the Assyrians, and the Babylonians. These were the branches cowing from the Cushite stem, which stem is from the Hamitic stock. In brilliancy, Ham stood head and shoulders above his two brothers, both on the other side of the flood, and on this side of the deluge. The evidence of this fact we will discuss in other chapters. The historians and the commentators have all endeavored to reflect on the character of Ham. We will also discuss these reflections in another chapter. Can truth be buried forever? No, a thousand times no. The Nubians, Libyans, and Lidyans were directly associated with the Egyptian civilization and in fact formed a great part of it. The Negro, and other Hamitic peoples appeared on the Egyptian and Ethiopian monuments, which show that they had attained to an exalted social and official standing and position. It is evident that the Negro, (as he is called in this country) had reached the position of benefactors as the monuments will show. He also held a place among the nobles of the land, even the royal family. The Sabeans were from the same stem, descendants of Cush; the father of Nimrod, and son of Ham. They are said to have been a powerful nation. They are mentioned in Isaiah 45th chapter 14th verse: “Thus saith the Lord. The labor of Egypt, and merchandise of Ethiopia and of the Sabeans, men of statue, shall some ever unto tree.” That is they would seek, and would accept the Christian religion; when that religion into the hands of those who would adhere to the fundamental principle of it; when it comes to those people who have a higher conception of the golden rule as that rule may apply to



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all men, than the present dominant people seem to have; when Christians will treat each other by that rule—or at least treat each other as they would like to be treated. Negroes as well as others of the darker races are wondering if Christianity has demonstrated itself in this exalted sense. Christianity, with its present dominant people, discriminates against blood, color, and previous condition, notwithstanding the fact that the Christian sentiment of the nation was responsible for that previous condition; and God and nature for the blood, and color. It seems that the people of Sabea and Ethiopia were of great statute and they were all Hamitic. This is another line of civilization coming from Africa, through Phut a son of Ham. Isaiah 43rd chapter and 3rd verse. “I gave Egypt for thy ransom; Ethiopia, and Seba for thee.” Every expression here indicates that the Sabeans were Cushites, and Phutites, coming from the Hamitic stock, and stems. It is evident that the Queen of Sheba and her kingdom, were the product of Hamitic or Negro civilization. It is also a fact that before the time of this Queen’s rule Ethiopia was made coordinate with Assyria as a first rate power. Notice Isaiah 20th chapter; you will find the names of Cush and Mizraim, that they are used synonymously. It is evident that this time Egypt, and Ethiopia were two dominant powers in the world. For it is said by a learned writer that fourteen Ethiopian Kings ruled on the Egyptian throne. This would bring to the surface a fact, that the Egyptians, and Ethiopians were dominant powers at the same time. They were, often in war one with the other. First one then the other was victor. The Nubians were another branch of the Cushite and the Phutite families. The exalted social standing of the Nubian branch, is evident in the fact that such an exalted religious, civil, and social character as was Moses, married a Nubian woman, and she was black, a Negro, and this he seemingly did against the will of his brother and sister who objected on the account of her color. The ethnologists and historians have left no clouds unturned to prove that the Negro is not of the Hamitie stock or any of the Hamitic stems; but they fail to tell us from what stock or stem he did come. Men have spent years writing books to prove that the Negro is a descendant from an animal ancestry, but they have never hesitated to bring this so-called animal before the courts of the land for crime committed. From the white man’s treatment of the Negro, he, the white man, does not seem to know whether the Negro is a human being or an animal. If he did he would use the Golden Rule in his dealings with them. The Bible, the inspired book, informs us that Ham settled in Africa. The historians also say the same. The Negro came from Africa. Since he came from African, he must of necessity come from Hamitic stock, stern and branch. This would indicate that the Negro was a part of, and associated with, the greatest civilization known in human history. The Africans led



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all the nations of the earth in civilization. The Africans gave civilization to Greece and Rome; and they gave it to the rest of Europe. The Hamite-the Negro-represents the root of the great race tree or civil tree. The life in trees is found in the roots. Therefore it is the historic place of the Negro; the Hamite and Cushite. These people of the human family lay at the root of the racial and civil tree. In fact the Hamite-the Negro is the root. When you move the Hamite, the root of civilization is moved; and the mother of civilization is gone. The Hamitic people with their stocks, stems, and branches are found among all the nations of the earth. Some historians say that Ashur, the son of Shem was the ancestor of the Assyrians, but when you trace them thoroughly they are found to be traceable to Hamitic stock and to two special stems in the persons of Cush and Phut, who were sons of Ham; and grandsons of Noah. Nimrod, the great hunter, was the son of Cush and grandson of Ham, and great grandson of Noah. The two primitive races of the world are without doubt the Mongolians and the Ethiopians-the Negroes. These races use the original root method in speech. Each of them according to our view of the question developed into a very ancient but exalted civilization. The Egyptians, Negroes and Chinese must be the fathers of speech, associated with the Ethiopians. There are many evidences between the lines of history as well as on the lines of history that the Negro had attained, to a very high mark in civilization. According to Charles Morris, the Pyramids have stood five thousand years; looking down on modern civilization. They mark the height to which the Negro attained who helped to build them. This shows that the Negro is a very old race. But in the face of these facts it is voiced to the world, and to all the other races of the earth that the Negro race has accomplished nothing, that is, nothing worthy of special note such as might be put in the public school books, and such as would give inspiration and aspiration to the Negro boy and girl of the Ethiopian, or Negro race. Now since the Negro is considered to be a human being, the same agencies essential to the physical, moral and intellectual development of other races, considered human, are essential for the Negro race. Now this race so much hated, I mean the Negro race, attained to a very high civilized condition in the early history of the world. In fact this race gave the world its first history, by first doing an act, and the first act that gave root to history. The Negro race helped to build the Pyramids, associated with the Sphinx which stands above all modern civilization, and masonry. Associated with these are the Egyptian, and Ethiopian Mummies. It took them seventy days to embalm a Mummy that would be firm from three to five thousand years after embalmment. This is a lost art of the Hamitic people; that no modern nations can reproduce. The black manthe hated Negro-must reproduce it. He laid it aside, he must go back and get it. I want the boys and girls of my race to see behind them a wonderful



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ancestry. See God’s purpose in the preservation of the Pyramids and Sphinx. These wonders have stood from three to five thousand years without being disturbed by any external or internal eruptions of the earth. This is the civilization the Negro was associated with before the European nations were civilized. Therefore you see that the Negro is a human being, though black. Now since he is a human being; he is from human stock, and since he, the Negro, is from Africa, he must necessarily be of the Hamitic stock. For Ham settled in Africa and the Negro is from Africa. If he is not of Hamitic stock; then he was not effected by the fall of Adam, and therefore, the Negro is not a sinner. Hence he came some other way than over the flood. If the Negro passed around the deluge he is most favored of all races. If the Negro has no soul as some men, (I mean white men) have spent years in writing books to prove, then he is an intellectual animal enjoying life and the earth as human beings. Now if the Negro is an intellectual animal he should not be brought before the courts of the land for crime. When did you ever hear of an animal committing a crime? If God has a purpose in the Negro that purpose will some to pass. God makes no blunders, therefore it is evident that God has a purpose, in the black man, in the darker races of the world. These darker races will come to the front in proper time and especially those who are passing through the furnace of persecution and humiliation. When once developed from such an estate they will bring to the world a human condition such as the world has never witnessed. Under these, and by these Christianity will reflect upon the world as never before; under these darker people the moral, and civil conditions will be exalted, the home will be a visible heaven. Under these people justice will be administered to all equally. No man in those days will feel when in court that his color will prevent justice. At times in this country justice seems, before the eye of the Negro, hopeless.

Notes 1. Thank you to Dr. Rachel Vincent-Finley, A’Tousha Ricks, Jacquie Staton, and Kenya Tuttle for their assistance with formatting documents and tracking down authors. 2. It appears that the first section of this chapter actually involves a long quotation of work by a Dr. Wells. We have omitted this section in that much of the same information is repeated later, but with less detailed explication. Although that material, well over 20 manuscript pages, was omitted, we would like to thank Dr. Rachel Vincent-Finley for her hard work in preparing that material. 3. While some of the quotations provided in the Hayne text are scriptural, the source of others are not as easily identified. Because the quotations are important to his argument, we have kept them, although full reference information cannot be provided. 4. This article is from advance sheets of Bishop Tanner’s book, Dispensations in the History of the Church (1898).



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5. Speaking of Israel, George Rawlinson says: We use the term Negro instead of Israel, “The Negro’s warfare, his long term of hard service, will assuredly come to an end; he will thoroughly turn to God; and then his iniquity will be pardoned, he will be considered to have suffered enough”—even double. 6. In the powerful quaintness of his utterances, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner says, “We are reaching the place where we are almost becoming to despise the white man’s history and two-thirds of his philosophy. Everything is colored, tinctured, doctored and painted to suit his whims, wishes and would-be’s.” [Letter from the Grand Canary Islands, March 1, 1898]. In this, Bishop Turner but gives expression to the thoughts of all fairly educated Afro-Americans. Not even the sanctity of the Bible escapes the determination of the white man to make his race the representative race of all ages, as it undoubtedly is of the present age. 7. In a letter received from one of the first Christian scholars of the age; he says: Those who question whether the Negro race is Hamitic, I suppose do not feel bound to go to the Bible for their ethnology. They do not regard the Biblical genealogies as historical, but rather as ethnological and, in part, mythical. I do not suppose they believe that the Flood, if there was any, destroyed the human race entirely; and they use the word Hamitic just as we use the word Shemitic, not to denote a lineage which comes from a historical character named Ham or Shem; but to indicate a family of race or language. That is, they would hold that the Biblical account makes no mention of Negroes any more than it does of Chinese, and that they are outside of the account given in the Bible. If they believe in a local Flood they would believe that Negroes and Chinese represent people that were not affected by the flood, and if they regarded the story of the creation of Adam as historical, and that Adam was the father of the human race, they would hold that they are descended equally from Adam, but not from any historical Noah. It is not in their mind at all to deny the equal humanity of all the races, but to discuss simply the ethnological relations. They seem to have reason to believe that certain Hamitic races were white, settled in North Africa, and they would believe that the compilers of the ethnology of Genesis x did not know the Negro races south of North Africa any more than they new the races of India or China east of Elam.



256

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Alter, Robert. Genesis: Translation and Commentary (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1996). Amichai-Hamburger, Yair, and Katelyn Y. Mckenna, “The Contact Hypothesis Reconsidered: Interacting via the Internet,” Journal of Computer Mediated Communication 11.3 (2006): 1–20. Anderson, Bernhard W. Understanding the Old Testament (Upper Saddle, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997). Andrews, Dale P. Practical Theology for Black Churches: Bridging Black Theology and African American Folk Religion (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002). Ariel [Buckner Payne], The Negro, What Is His Ethnological Status? (Cincinnati, OH: Buckner Payne, 1867). Bailey, Randall C., ed. Yet with a Steady Beat: Contemporary U.S. Afrocentric Biblical Interpretation, Semia Studies No. 42 (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003). Baker-Fletcher, Karen. Dancing with God: A Womanist Perspective on the Trinity (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2006). Beckford, Robert. Jesus Is Dread: Black Theology and Black Culture in Britain (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1998). Bekker, Peet, Tertius Geldenhuys, J. J. Joubert, J. P. Swanepoel, S. S. Terblanche, and Steph E. van der Merwe, Criminal Procedure Handbook, 6th edition (Cape Town, MA: Juta, 2003). Benjamin, Jessica. The Bonds of Love (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988). Berry, Mary F., and John W. Blassingame, Long Memory: The Black Experience in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982). Birch, Bruce C. Let Justice Roll Down: The Old Testament, Ethics, and Christian Life (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1991). Blount, Brian K. Can I Get a Witness: Reading Revelation through African American Culture (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005). ———. Cultural Interpretation: Reorienting New Testament Criticism (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995). Borstelmann, Thomas. The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).



Selected Bibl iog raphy

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Cruse, Harold. The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (1967; reprinted New York: Quill, 1984). Daniels, Cora. Black Power Inc.: The New Voice of Success (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2004). Davidson, Basil. The Black Man’s Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation State (New York: Times Books, 1992). Davidson, Robert. Genesis 1–11 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973). DeGrunchy, John W., and Charles Villa-Vicencio, eds. Apartheid Is a Heres (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1983). DuBois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk (1903; reprinted New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1999). Dunne, Robert Allen. “A Protestant Backlash: The American Dream Myth and Marginalized Groups, 1820–1860,” Ph.D. diss. (Lehigh, PA: Lehigh University Press, 1992). Easton, Hosea. A Treatise on the Intellectual Character, and Civil and Political Condition of the Colored People of the U. States and the Prejudice Exercised toward Them (Boston, MA: Isaac Knapp, 1837). Edwards, Jonathan. The Injustice and Impolicy of the Slave Trade and of the Slavery of the Africans Illustrated in a Sermon: Preached before the Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom and the Relief of Persons Unlawfully Holden in Bondage, September 15, 1791 (New Haven, CT: Thomas and Samuel Green, 1791). Egbert Ethelred Brown Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York. Eliade, Mircea. The Myth of the Eternal Return or, Cosmos and History, trans. Willard R. Task (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974). Eliot, T. S. Murder in the Cathedral (Orlando, FL: Harvest Book, 1963). Erikson, Erik H. Childhood and Society (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1963). Fairbairn, W. R. D. Studies of Personality (London: Tavistock Publishing, 1952). Felder, Cane Hope. “Afrocentrism, the Bible, and the Politics of Difference,” Journal of Religious Thought (Fall/Spring 1993–1994): 45–56. ———, ed. Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991). Flournoy, J. J. A Reply to a Pamphlet, Entitled “Bondage, A Moral Institution, Sanctioned by the Scriptures and the Saviour,” So Far as It Attacks the Principles of Expulsion, with No Defence, However, of Abolitionism (Athens, GA: 1838). Floyd-Thomas, Stacey M. Deeper Shades of Purple: Womanism, Religion, and Society (New York: New York University Press, 2006). ———. Mining the Motherlode: Methods in Womanist Ethics (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2006). Fluker, Walter Earl, ed. The Stones That the Builders Rejected: The Development of Ethical Leadership from the Black Church Tradition (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1998). Foner, Eric. The Story of American Freedom (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1998). Foster, S. “Free Agents,” XXL Magazine Vol. 7, No. 57 (2003): 142–146. Franklin, John Hope. George Washington Williams: A Biography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985). ———. From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans, 3rd edition (New York: Vintage Books, 1969). Fredrickson, George M. The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on AfroAmerican Character and Destiny, 1817–1914 (New York: Harper & Row, 1971).





Freedman, Jill, and Gene Combs. Narrative Therapy: The Social Construction of Preferred Realties (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1996). Freud, Sigmund. The Future of and Illusion, trans. James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1961). “Garvey as a Moses,” New York Age, March 26, 1921. Genovese, Eugene D. “‘Slavery Ordained of God’: The Southern Slaveholders’ View of Biblical History and Modern Politics,” The 24th Annual Robert Fortenbaugh Memorial Lecture (Gettysburg, PA: Gettysburg College, 1985). Gero, Stephen. “The Legend of the Fourth Son of Noah,” Harvard Theological Review 73 (1980). Gillespie, G. T. A Christian View of Segregation. An Address Made before the Synod of Mississippi of the Presbyterian Church in the US, November 4, 1954 (Greenwood, IN: Association of Citizens’ Councils of Mississippi, 1954). Ginzberg, Louis. The Legends of the Jews, Vol. 1 (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1968). Girard, René. Violence and the Sacred (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977). Glaude, Eddie Is It Nation Time? Contemporary Essays on Black Power and Black Nationalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). Goldenberg, David M. The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003). Gowan, Donald E. From Eden to Babel: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis 1–11 (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1988). Graves, Robert, and Raphael Patai, Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1963). Hagglund, Bengt. History of Theology, trans. Gene J. Lund (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1968). Halley, Henry. Halley’s Bible Handbook (Grand Rapids, MI: Zonderman Publishing House, 1965). Hamerton-Kelly, Robert. Sacred Violence: Paul’s Hermeneutic of the Cross (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992). Handy, Robert T. A History of the Churches in the United States and Canada (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976). Haynes, Stephen R. Noah’s Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). Henry, Matthew. Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume (Peabody, TN: Hendrickson, 1996). Heschel, Abraham J. Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism (New York: Free Press, 1959). Hislop, Alexander. The Two Babylons: Or the Papal Worshiped Proved to Be the Worship of Nimrod and His Wife (New York: Loizeaus Brothers, Bible Truth Depot, 1944). Holly, Alonzo Potter Burgess. God and the Negro: Synopsis of God and the Negro or the Biblical Record of the Race of Ham (Nashville, TN: National Baptist Publishing Board, n.d.). Holy Bible: The African American Jubilee Edition: Contemporary English Version (New York: American Bible Society, 1999). Hood, Robert E. Begrimed and Black: Christian Traditions on Blacks and Blackness (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994). Iredale, Roger O. “Giants and Tyrants in Book Five of The Fairie Queene,” Review of English Studies 17 (1966): 373–381.



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McGray, Walter Arthur. The Black Presence in the Bible and the Table of Nations (Genesis 10:1–32) Vol. 2 (Chicago: Black Light Fellowship, 1990). Miller, Robert. “The Four Horseman of Downsizing and the Tower of Babel,” Journal of Business Ethics 29 (2001): 147–152. Miller, William. A Sermon on the Abolition of the Slave Trade: Delivered in the African Church, New York (New York: John C. Totten, 1810). Morgan, Joan. When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost . . . My Life as a Hip Hop Feminist (New York: Simon & Schuster Press, 1999). Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye (New York: Plum, 2000). Morton, Patricia. Disfigured Images: The Historical Assault on Afro-American Women (New York: Praeger, 1991). Moseley, Romney M. Becoming a Self before God: Critical Transformations (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1991). Moses, Wilson Jeremiah, ed. Classical Black Nationalism: From the American Revolution to Marcus Garvey (New York: New York University Press, 1996). Mumford, Lewis. The City in History (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1961). Murphy, Larry G., ed. Down by the Riverside: Readings in African American Religion (New York: New York University Press, 2000). Nelson, William Stuart, ed. The Christian Way in Race Relations (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1948). Niebuhr, Reinhold. The Nature and Destiny of Man: Volume 1, Human Nature (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1964). Noel, David., ed., The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol. 4 (New York: Doubleday, 1992). Norris, John William. The Ethiopian’s Place in History and His Contribution to the World’s Civilization, the Negro-the Hamite, the Stock, the Stems and the Branches of the Hamitic People (Baltimore, MD: Afro-American Co., 1916). Pennington, James W. C. A Text Book of the Origin and History of the Colored People (Hartford, CT: L. Skinner, 1841). Peters, Ted. Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994). Peterson, Thomas Virgil. Ham and Japheth: The Mythic World of Whites in the Antebellum South (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press and The American Theological Library Association, 1978). Phillips, Ulrich B. “The Plantation as a Civilizing Factor,” Sewanee Review 12 (July 1904): 257–267. Pieterse, Jan N. White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992). Pinn, Anthony B. African American Humanist Principles: Living and Thinking Like the Children of Nimrod (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). ———. Varieties of African American Religious Experience (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1998). Pinn, Anthony B., and Dwight N. Hopkins, eds. Loving the Body: Black Religious Studies and the Erotic (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). Pitzer, Donald, ed., America’s Communal Utopias (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997). Placher, William C. The Domestication of Transcendence: How Modern Thinking about God Went Wrong (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996). Plaut, Gunther W. The Torah: A Modern Commentary (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregation, 1981). Priest, Josiah. Bible Defence of Slavery (Glasgow, KY: W. S. Brown, 1851).



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Volf, Maroslav. Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1996). von Rad, Gerhard. Genesis, trans. John H. Marks (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1961). Walker, Clarence E. Deromanticizing Black History: Critical Essays and Reappraisals (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1991). ———. We Can’t Go Home Again: An Argument about Afrocentrism (Oxford: University Press, 2001). Walker, David. Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular and Very Expressly, to Those of The United States of America, 3rd edition (David Walker, 1830, reprinted New York: Hill and Wang, 1965; 26th printing, 1996). Wallace, Patricia. The Psychology of the Internet (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Walvoord, J. F., and R. B. Zuck. The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985). Warrior, Robert Allen. “Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians: Deliverance, Conquest, and Liberation Theology Today,” Christianity and Crisis (September 1989): 261–265. Wasserman, Herman. “Between the Local and the Global: South African languages and the Internet,” African and Asian Studies, Leiden 1.4 (2002). Weber, Max. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (Vol. 1 of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft), trans. A. R. Henderson and Talcott Parsons, rev. and ed., with an introduction by Talcott Parsons (London: W. Hodge, 1947). Wells, Spencer. The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002). West, Cornel. Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight against Imperialism (New York: Penguin, 2004). ———. Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America (New York: Routledge, 1993). ———. “Marxist Theory and the Specificity of Afro-American Oppression,” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988). ———. Prophetic Reflections: Notes on Race and Power in America (Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1990). West, Cornel, and Eddie Glaude Jr., eds. African American Religious Thought (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003). Westermann, Claus. Genesis I–II: A Commentary, trans. John J. Scullion (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1984). ———. Handbook to the Old Testament, trans. Robert H. Boyd (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1967). Wiersbe, Warren W. Wiersbe’s Expository Outlines on the Old Testament (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1993). Wilkins, John. “Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the New Creationism,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 79.2 (2001). Williams, Demetrius K. An End to This Strife: The Politics of Gender in African American Churches (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2004). Williams, Jay G. “Nimrod,” Theology Today 50.1 (April 1993): 117–120. Wilmore, Gayraud, ed. African American Religious Studies: An Interdisciplinary Anthology, ed. Gayraud Wilmore (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1989). Wilson, W. J. When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Knopf, 1996). Wimberly, Edward P. African American Pastoral Care and Counseling as Political Processes (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2006).



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Wimbush, Vincent. African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures (New York: Continuum, 2000). Winchell, Alexander. Preadamites (Chicago: Griggs, 1890). Wink, Walter. Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992). Wittenberg, Gunther. “‘Let Canaan Be His Slave’ (Genesis 9:26) Is Ham also Cursed?” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa No. 74 (March 1991): 46–56. Wolfe, Georgy, ed. The New Religious Humanists: A Reader (New York: Free Press, 1997).







Abraham, 2, 17–19, 24–5, 54–7, 82, 88–9, 150, 156, 164, 237 Africa, 3–7, 25, 37, 62–5, 73, 78, 97–8, 104, 121, 123, 134–8, 142, 196, 202, 204, 217, 225, 233, 236–8, 242–9, 250–5, 293 North, 256 northern, 98, 217, 252 South, 8, 97, 103, 121, 124–31 African American Christian, 4, 24, 28, 136, 179, 180, 200, 203 Culture, 1, 4, 6, 7, 16, 24, 133–4 Emigration, 4 Humanism, 6, 27–34, 42, 157–9 humanist tradition, 27–8 Women, 3, 92, 93, 94 African American Humanist Principles, 90, 159 see also Pinn, Anthony Allport, Gordon W., 187 Alter, Robert, 152, 153 American Colonization Society, 202 Anderson, Victor, 60 anthropomorphism, 138 Aristotelian ethics, 43 astrology, 22, 23 Attucks, Crispus, 139 Augustine, 17, 81, 101, 122, 148, 166–7 Avotri, Solomon, 55 Babel, 20, 24, 82, 100–2, 123–4, 135, 140, 147–9, 155, 156–60,

166, 168, 171, 175, 182, 198, 224–5, 228, 236 city of, 19, 165 tower of, 6, 9, 19, 21, 27, 40–1, 50, 53–7, 59, 66, 75, 82, 85–9, 94, 99, 135, 147–8, 151–8, 160, 165, 168, 169, 174–5, 180, 182–8, 193, 196, 203–4, 208, 209, 223, 226, 230, 239, 241, 249–50 Babylon, 9, 50, 81, 98, 102, 105, 122, 134–42, 149, 153, 155, 164, 166, 173, 203, 224–30, 232–3, 236, 249 Baldwin, James, 7 Barrett, Leonard, 62 Basic Conditions of Employment Act, 29 Bax, Douglas, 171 Bell, Derek, 35 bell, hooks, 35 Bible, 1–9, 15, 24, 25, 37, 40, 42, 49, 69, 71–6, 87, 101, 113, 148, 152–3, 157, 165, 167, 170, 173, 175, 180–2, 184, 217, 221, 236, 237, 239, 240, 241, 242, 245, 246–9, 251, 253, 256 African Characters, 1 biblical narrative, 25, 37, 40, 53, 57, 59, 111–13, 150, 153, 163, 169, 217 black bodies, 42, 47, 71 sexuality, 47



In dex

INDEX

Bloom, Harold, 151 Blount, Brian K., 112, 188 Bluest Eye, The, 35, 38 see also Morrison, Toni Blyden, Edward Wilmot, 5 Boston Massacre, 139 Brent, George Wilson, 236 Brockett, Joshua A., 222 Brown, Frank, 30 Butler, Lee, 9 Canaan, 5, 28, 29, 40, 42, 48, 71, 73–6, 80, 83, 98–9, 103, 104, 181, 182, 195, 199, 202, 216–20, 237, 238, 244, 249 Canaanites, 72, 79, 83, 104, 189, 196, 198, 202, 212, 217, 219, 220, 239, 241 Cartwright, Samuel A., 72 Chadwick, H. Munro, 216 chosenness, 206, 209 Civil War, 3, 5, 72, 199–200 Clarke, John Henrik, 61 cognitive dissonance, 39 COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program), 56 communalism, 19–21, 44–6, 49, 60 Copher, Charles, 5, 42, 180–2, 188 Criminal Law Amendment Act, 126 Cush, 5, 7, 15, 18, 40–2, 47, 48, 53, 75–6, 81, 97–103, 113, 123, 135, 148, 153, 163, 182, 202–3, 215–18, 227, 228, 236, 237–8, 244, 245, 248–54 Cushite, 113, 115, 163, 217, 237, 245, 250–4 Dead Prez, 9, 111–19 deluge, the, 100, 123, 148, 163, 222–3, 226, 227, 236, 242, 252, 255 DeMille, Cecil B., 160 Douglass, Frederick, 222

DuBois, W. E. B. (see Souls of Black Folk), 35, 57 see also Souls of Black Folk Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 61 Easton, Hosea, 222 Egypt, 3, 4, 5, 9, 40, 42, 57, 72, 98–9, 135, 136, 160, 203, 217, 219, 226, 233, 235–8, 241–5, 248–50, 252–3 Egyptian Book of the Dead, 241 Employment Equity Act, 129 Epiphanius, 15 Erikson, Erik, 186 eros, 183, 184 Ethiopia, 4, 57, 72, 74, 80, 148, 203, 217, 237, 244, 245, 250, 252–3 Ethiopian, 4–5, 9, 15, 25, 102, 113, 237–8, 243, 245, 249, 252–4 Fanon, Frantz, 58, 67 fantasy, 158, 181–3, 188 Farisani, Dorothy, 9 Farisani, Elelwani B., 9 Felder, Cain Hope, 180–2, 188 Floyd-Thomas, J. M., 9 Floyd-Thomas, Stacy, 9 Freedmen’s Aid and Southern Education Society, 204, 205 Freeman, J. M., 239 Freud, 86 see also Future of an Illusion, The see also Oedipus Future of an Illusion, The, 86 see also Freud Garden of Eden, 28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 54, 82, 227 Garnet, Henry Highland, 4 Garvey, Marcus, 9, 53, 59–60, 63–7, 78 see also UNIA Gilgamesh, 149, 155 Gliddon, George R., 70, 73



268

INDEX

Hagar, 2–5, 9, 16, 25 Ham, 18–20, 27–8, 38, 40, 41, 46, 47, 50, 53, 69, 71–4, 79, 81, 83, 87, 97–107, 121–8, 135, 148, 151, 163, 179–82, 185–9, 193–210, 215–18, 220, 221, 225, 228, 236–47, 249–56 curse of, 71, 87, 97, 104, 106, 121, 124, 135, 179–82, 185, 193, 200, 207, 210, 239 Hamilton, J. W., 204 Harlem, 7, 9, 59–63, 66–7, 143 Hayes, Diana L., 16 Hayes, Isaac, 143 Hayne, Joseph E., 227 hermeneutics, 36 biblical, 194, 206 cultural, 205, 206 of displacement, 25 of redemption, 9, 35–51 Heschel, Abraham, 168 hip hop, 39, 112–13, 117 Homes, Nehemiah, 1 Hood, J. W., 222 Hopkins, Pauline, 222 hospitality, 150, 159 Hoyt, Thomas, 181–2, 184 Hugo, Victor, 247 humanistic hermeneutic, 28 Hurlbut, J. L., 239 Hurston, Zora Neale, 7

Hussein, Saddam, 174 imagination, 21, 30, 37, 57, 61, 122, 127, 153, 158, 181, 182–5, 234 Janssen Symphony of Los Angeles, 154 Jefferson, Thomas, 199 Jesus Christ, 5, 237 Gospel of, 4 Johnson, Edward A., 222 Johnson, Harvey, 222 Johnson, James Weldon, 60, 68 Johnson, Sylvester, 79, 198, 199–200, 203 Jones, William, 86 Katrina (Hurricane), 208 King, Martin Luther Jr., 1, 48, 50, 92, 122, 130, 209, 213, 261 Kreitzer, Larry, 111 Ku Klux Klan, 63 Labor Relations Act, 129 Lang, Fritz, 152 Lewis, Edmonia, 2 Lewis, Robert Benjamin, 72, 76, 222 Lincoln, C. Eric, 4, 62 Long, Charles H., 1, 216, 218 Luther, Martin, 122 Mamiya, Lawrence, 62 Marable, Manning, 174 Marduk, 151 McKay, Claude, 61 Mesopotamia, 5, 74, 81, 135, 149, 163, 167, 168, 182, 228 metaphysics, 29 Miller, Robert, 85 Milton, John, 20 see also Paradise Lost mimetic desire, 88 Morris, Charles, 254



God, 1–4, 6, 11, 16–24, 28–34, 36–9, 41, 43, 46, 48, 50, 53–6, 59, 64, 67, 73–7, 81–2, 86, 88–91, 94, 99–103, 106, 114–16, 121–7, 135–8, 140, 142, 148, 150–1, 155–9, 163–76, 182–5, 187–8, 195–7, 199–210, 217–20, 226, 229, 237, 238, 242–51, 253, 255–6 restraint as, 30–4 Gordon, Lewis R., 58, 187 Gowan, Donald, 167, 170, 172 Greek mythology, 156–8

269

INDEX

Morrison, Toni, 35, 155 see also Bluest Eye, The Morton, Samuel George, 70, 73 Moses, 25, 221, 223, 224, 225, 228, 237–8, 242, 246–8, 253 Mumford, Lewis, 149 mythicization, 215–18, 220 Native Labor Settlement of Disputes Act, 126 Nazism, 174 Nebuchadnezzar, 229, 232, 233 New England Puritans, 174, 175 Nieburh, Reinhold, 8, 172 Nimrod as Black, 163, 182 “factor”, 54, 55 hunting songs, 23 legend, 5–9, 15–17, 20, 22, 24–5, 83, 100, 102, 113, 117–18, 123, 133, 157, 158, 160, 193, 194, 196, 198, 200–3, 205, 206–10 offspring of, 148, 165 Qur’an’s version, 150 religious leader, 16, 22 Noah, 8, 18, 20, 29, 40–1, 46–7, 50, 75, 79, 82, 97–8, 102–6, 121–4, 148, 156, 163, 168, 173, 182–3, 195–204, 215–18, 220–6, 236, 240–2, 245–9, 251, 254, 256 Norris, John, 203–4, 248, 249 Nott, Joseph, 70 Nott, Josiah, 73 Oberlin College, 3 Oedipus, 87, 91 see also Freud orientation, 6, 70, 216–19 Paradise Lost, 20–1 see also Milton, John Paul, Apostle, 2, 248 Payne, Buckner, 71, 73–4

Payne, Daniel Alexander, 6, 239, 248 Pennington, James W. C., 72–3, 76, 123 Pinn, Anthony, 5–6, 42, 90, 115, 156–8, 181–4 Pitzer, Donald, 60 Posttraumatic Slave Syndrome, 87 Priest, Josiah, 71, 75, 194, 195, 196, 197, 201 Priestly Source, 160 Prometheus, 7, 27, 90, 156–60 Prosser, Gabriel, 19 Pyramids (Egyptian), 160, 239, 241, 250–1, 254–5 Queen of Sheba, 237, 253 Raboteau, Albert, 200 racism, 58, 61, 63, 71, 72, 87, 138, 181–2, 185, 186, 193, 194, 198, 200, 202, 206 as religion, 138 Roman Catholic Church, 198 Ross, Michael J., 187 Sandell, J. W., 123 September 11, 2001, 140, 208 sexual organs, 47, 72 signification, 8, 218 Simon of Cyrene, 25, 236 Smith, Abraham, 9, 10 Social Darwinism, 71, 73, 75–8 see also Spencer, Herbert social location, 134, 188 Souls of Black Folk, 35, 43, 57 see also DuBois, W. E. B. Spanish Golden Haggadah, 152 Spencer, Herbert, 71 see also Social Darwinism Sphinx, 57, 237, 254, 255 Steward, Theophilus Gould, 222–3, 227 Sumner, William Graham, 71



270

Tanner, Benjamin, 202, 227, 238–9 Taylor, Caesar A. A., 222 terror, 103, 139–40, 154 Theology, 194, 205–6, 210, 219, 239 black, 183–4 pastoral, 179–88 Womanist, 1 Thomas Hobbes, 153 Tillich, Paul, 56, 183 Tubman, Harriet, 1 Turner, Bishop Henry McNeal, 205, 256 Turner, Nat, 19, 194 UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Association), 63–7 see also Garvey, Marcus Vesey, Denmark, 19, 227 Vincent, John H., 239 von Rad, Gerhard, 147, 149

271

Walker, David, 199 Walker, Theodore Jr., 8 Weems, Renita, 39 West, Cornel, 45, 76, 161 Westermann, Claus, 167, 169, 170, 172 White supremacy, 63, 78, 136, 138, 141, 142 Williams, Delores, 1, 3, 10, 16 Williams, George Washington, 9, 69–70, 73–6 Williams, James, 86, 87, 88, 89 Williams, Jay G., 114, 117 Williams, Robert, 1 Wimberley, Edward, 8 Yahwist, 2, 6, 54–5, 57, 59, 67, 81, 151, 153, 155–6, 158–60 Youngblood, Johnny Ray, 1 Zoroaster, 22



INDEX

African American religious life and the story of Nimrod

African-American Religious Leaders

Homecoming: The Story of African-American Farmers

African American Religious Leaders (Black Stars)

African American Religious Cultures (2 Vol. Set)

African-American Religion (Religion in American Life)

The African American Predicament

Negroes With Guns (African American Life Series)

George Russell: The Story of an American Composer (African American Cultural Theory and Heritage)

The Story Of Your Life

The Story Of Your Life

Evolution : The Story of Life

Evolution : The Story of Life

The Story Of Your Life

The Story Of My Life

The Story Of Your Life

The Story of My Life

Evolution - the story of life

The Story Of Your Life

Life After Violence: A People's Story of Burundi (African Arguments)

The Religious Life Of The Negro

Story of My Life

The African-American Travel Guide (African American Travel Guide)

Encyclopedia of American Religious History

American Religious Leaders (American Biographies)

Story of My Life

Religious Life of Samuel Johnson

Story of My Life

Landmarks of African American History (American Landmarks)

Encyclopedia of African-American Education

Encyclopedia Of African American Culture And History

African American religious life and the story of Nimrod

African-American Religious Leaders

Homecoming: The Story of African-American Farmers

African American Religious Leaders (Black Stars)

African American Religious Cultures (2 Vol. Set)

African-American Religion (Religion in American Life)

The African American Predicament

Negroes With Guns (African American Life Series)

George Russell: The Story of an American Composer (African American Cultural Theory and Heritage)

The Story Of Your Life

The Story Of Your Life

Evolution : The Story of Life

Evolution : The Story of Life

The Story Of Your Life

The Story Of My Life

The Story Of Your Life

The Story of My Life

Evolution - the story of life

The Story Of Your Life

Life After Violence: A People's Story of Burundi (African Arguments)

The Religious Life Of The Negro

Story of My Life

The African-American Travel Guide (African American Travel Guide)

Encyclopedia of American Religious History

American Religious Leaders (American Biographies)

Story of My Life

Religious Life of Samuel Johnson

Story of My Life

Landmarks of African American History (American Landmarks)

Encyclopedia of African-American Education

Encyclopedia Of African American Culture And History

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