Black Dignity and the Dead Sea Scrolls

David Daniels Historian 

The Civil War as a Theological Crisis by Mark Noll 

Jeremiah Chandler: 

Welcome to The Table Podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of theology for everyday life. 

My name is Jeremiah Chandler, and I'm the guest host for today's episode through my internship here at The Hendricks Center. 

Today, we're going to be talking about a topic that you may not be aware of, and that is we're going to talk about black dignity, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. You may be wondering what do those two things have to do with one another? But that's why we have Jamal Hopkins today, Dr. Jamal Hopkins and Kevin are here with me, to discuss this important topic that I think you'll find fascinating. So if it sounds like a weird question or a weird topic, stick with us and you'll find out why it's actually very important, it has to do a lot with Urban Apologetics. 

So joining me today, as I mentioned, I have Dr. Jamal Hopkins, who's an Associate Professor of Christian Scriptures, and he's a Director of Black Church Studies at Baylor University, Truett Theological Seminary. And we have our very own Kevin Hawkins, who's an associate here at The Hendricks Center, and also a VP at Southern Bible Institute. Thank you both for joining me today. 

Kevin Hawkins: 

Thank you for having us. 

Dr. Jamal Hopkins: 

Yeah, great to be here. 

Jeremiah Chandler: 

Before we get into this topic around black dignity and what does that even mean, I also just want to ask, how did you guys get into this topic, and tell us a little bit about yourself as well. We can start with you, Dr. Hopkins. 

Dr. Jamal Hopkins: 

Well, yeah, no, I'm always eager to talk about black dignity, and I think just this conversation we're having today with your community, I'm really glad to be part of and addressing The Table Podcast community. But yeah, I think as we live, as we breathe, as persons of African descent, I think we're always wrestling with the question of black dignity. My area within biblical studies allows me to wrestle with that question, which often and unfortunately finds itself and finds its way in the conversation of what does it mean to be a person of faith, a Christian, and a person of African descent? 

And so oftentimes those conversations are needing to be happened or occur, and so that's been kind of the impetus behind my studies. Probably not directly, because I was mostly interested in study of biblical studies, biblical theology, but just as a person of African descent, you have those conversations and our place within, not just those conversations, but even within the text, we find dignity, we find ourselves, we find value, we find kind of a re-education. I like to use a Bible scholar, the late Cain Hope Felder, kind of a historical recorrection, if you will. Those are kind of the ways that I find myself in this conversation. 

Jeremiah Chandler: 

And what's the work you do at Baylor University or at Truett? 

Dr. Jamal Hopkins: 

So I am the Director of the Black Church Studies program at Baylor University's Truett Theological Seminary. It's a new program, relatively new, but just kind of building out the Black Church Studies program via courses, course study programs, but also programs of events and the like. And I also teach Christian Scriptures primarily New Testament, although my background reaches into Old Testament, Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism, but I mainly teach Bible as associate professor, Christian Scriptures there. 

Jeremiah Chandler: 

Gotcha. Thank you. And Kevin, how about you? 

Kevin Hawkins: 

Yeah, well, for me it was a little bit different than Dr. Hopkins, he's a friend of mine and I appreciate seeing him here today. For me, it hit a little bit different because I grew up right here in Dallas, Texas, born and raised, and my dad's a pastor or a graduate of Dallas Seminary as well. So I'm a PK, and now I'm also pastoring and serving as a vice president over at Southern Bible Institute and College as well. 

And so when I graduated high school, I started first getting some of this pushback on Christianity being a white man's religion, from the conscious community that I encountered at the school that I was attending, whether it was Dallas College, and then for a brief time over at University of Texas in Arlington. So that was kind of my first foray into this kind of conversation. 

And then as I eventually graduated, and undergrad, and came over here to Dallas Seminary and getting back into the world, not having started my work in a academic setting yet, as a pastor and just talking to people, whether it's at my local gym or at the barbershop even, when I had hair. But you would have conversations, you would come in contact with people who were a part of the conscious community within the black community, and they're always trying to challenge the whiteness of Christianity, saying that I belong to a white man's religion. 

And so having those conversations and trying to show that we are part of the story, and we are a part of the story, we are part of the text even. And so we could see that we belong into this narrative of Christianity that at times has been misunderstood within whether it's evangelicalism or within, to be honest with you, the black community or the conscious community of, which is the subset of the black community as a whole. And so having those conversations as a pastor, also got me into this. 

And then as I got into the field of academics, as I graduated my doctoral degree here, and working now over at Southern Bible, these conversations are happening with my students, and how they are to engage within this conversation in this particular area of interest as well. So that's kind of how I got into it. And then the Lord actually blessed me to meet Dr. Hopkins here, and we've become friends. And so he grew up at the church where I'm currently, I'm sorry, his wife grew up at the church where I'm currently pastoring. And so through that connection we have a relationship, and I've been able to bring him into some conferences that I've had, dealing with this particular topic. 

Jeremiah Chandler: 

Thanks Kevin. And thanks Jamal, Dr. Hopkins. You guys both said a couple of things I want preface for our listeners who may be unaware, Dr. Hopkins, you mentioned this kind of re-education or re-correction. And Kevin, you mentioned the idea of Christianity being the white man's religion. What exactly are we trying to re-correct, and what do we mean when we say Christianity is a white man's religion? 

Kevin Hawkins: 

Yeah. Doc? 

Dr. Jamal Hopkins: 

So the work of the New Testament scholars, if I can kind of set a kind of history with biblical scholarship within an African-American trajectory, if you will. So the first generation of African-American scholars that did Bible, I think of the name of Charles B. Cofer, who was the first black man, black person to finish with a PhD in the Old Testament at Boston University in the 1930s. And so he began to ask the question and wrestle with the question primarily in biblical studies that was predominantly interested in just looking at higher biblical criticisms and historical biblical criticism, but asking the question of the black presence in the Bible, is there a black presence in the Bible? 

And so he began to ask these questions, being an Old Testament scholar looking through the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible text, he began to ask these questions and began to look at the geography of the land, of the people where they come from, and pulling out the very real presence of black, blackness within the text and Africanness within the biblical narratives within the Old Testament. So a second generation of Bible scholars, black biblical scholars, Cain Hope Felder, who was a New Testament professor at Howard University. 

He began to take up this question of the black presence in the Bible, and that kind of spawned the study of the Afrocentric biblical interpretation, Afrocentric biblical hermeneutics. One of his classic texts, Stony the Road We Trod and Troubling Biblical Waters. And so he began to coin and use the term, a corrective historiography. So when you look in the biblical texts, when you find the geographical land of Africa, when you find Ethiopians, when you find Egyptians, we find Africa and persons of African descent within a biblical text. Well, a biblical criticism, primarily within a Eurocentric strand is interested in the historical biblical criticism, and they may not read that or may read past that or diminish that. 

And so Cain Hope Felder's notion of a corrective historiography is about reading the history and correcting the misinterpretations or the ignored history within the biblical text, which includes Africa and people of African descent and blackness. And so that's what this notion of a corrective historiography is. It's not reading into the biblical text, it's not inventing something that's not part of the biblical tradition, but it's just merely reading the biblical text historically as it is, and identifying places of Africa and people of African descent. And that's what we identify as this notion of a corrective historiography that Cain Hope Felder so beautifully I think articulates, and something I think that needs to be part of a conversation within biblical studies to bring that back, if you will. 

Jeremiah Chandler: 

That's good. Kevin, did you have anything to add? Or when people say Christianity is a white man's religion, I think we probably understand what they're trying to say or convey by that, but could you explain to the people listening? 

Kevin Hawkins: 

Sure. Yeah. When I have this conversation, I have a friend I grew up, I've known him since four years old, and he's now an atheist, for some of this very reason. And the interesting thing for me is as I talk to him, and he says he wants to find Africa in the Bible, I often say, "Well, you can't read the Bible without seeing Africa, you can't read the Bible without seeing African people. African people who are part of the story, African people who are very essential to the story as well." 

We look at some of the early disciples, some of them are Africans, and so are people of African descent. We look at even some of, and new things that I've just learned even recently with some of the prophets, would be of African descent. And so now Dr. Jamal has been a very significant help for me within some of this conversation as well in giving me more material, but also too, a person that I read a few years back now, Dr. Esau McCaulley, has been someone that I've appreciated his writing in the book that he has, Reading While Black. 

And you'll see that much of the conversation that I have with people who are challenging this or challenging the whiteness of Christianity, is from a reference point of they don't understand the history or the historical settings of the Bible, or the people that are in the Bible who are of African descent, who have major influence on the scriptures itself. So for me, it's very important to have these conversations and to show why it is important to especially deal with an African-American church that I pastor, African-American students that I lead over at the school at the college. 

And when we're having these discussions, how to, one, defend the texts, not by as Dr. Jamal said, reading into it that it be Isegesis, but from an exegetical point just, "Hey, we're taking what's there in the text and exposing you to an African background that is there, not that we're painting everybody, and the Bible is black, because everybody in the Bible is not black, but be honest about the conversation of where blackness shows up in scripture. 

But in having that conversation, whether it's at the church or especially as I engage younger men and having this conversation with them, it is important for them to be able to, again, like I said earlier, see themselves as a part of the story. Because once they leave high school, it is we're showing that the trends are showing that our people, our children are leaving the church, and part of the reason why they're leaving the church is because of the struggle of black identity, finding, or struggling with black dignity. And they are going into some radical areas. 

Some of them are, whether it's a Hebrew Israelite or a Nation of Islam, and there they find black dignity, there they find black identity. I'm saying, "No, no, no, you can find black identity, black dignity in the scriptures, and you'll see that no dignity is really solid unless it's apart from Jesus Christ anyway." So I'm showing how they can tie that to the Christian narrative and the redemptive grace that we find within the scriptures that is sufficient, not just for white evangelicals, but we're all made in the image of God. So this isn't a imago dei issue that is at the heart of this for me. And so I am sharing with them and talking to them about that part and seeing themselves in the story. 

Jeremiah Chandler: 

Right. That's good. I think you both brought up really good points, and I think for our listener out there, for you listening, I want you guys to hear what Kevin and what Dr. Jamal are saying. It's not about us, like you said, trying to paint everything black, but what we are trying to say is, "Hey, we are seeing ourselves in the story, and we would just want to expose and highlight that fact, rather than thinking we had nothing to do with it, this religion really has nothing to do with me, and I can't see myself in it." Because when people believe that, like Kevin said, people are running off to other places that do affirm their identity, do give them dignity, and one, we just think that's sad because you can't find your identity outside of Christ, but also you're going for false reasons because you do play a role in that story. 

Kevin Hawkins: 

Correct. 

Jeremiah Chandler: 

That's good. Dr. Hopkins… Oh yeah, go ahead. 

Dr. Jamal Hopkins: 

Something Dr. Kevin said, and I think this is really important to continue to bring out, and it's true, if one wants to find one's African heritage, one just simply needs to engage the biblical text, engage the Bible, read the Bible. And so I think there are these myths, these notions out there, the Bible, and Christianity is a white man's religion or the white man's book. And I think those are simply statements by those who have not read the Bible, or have explored Christianity. 

And so I think of one particular text, this is a trilogy, Thomas Oden, who was a late and former professor at Drew University, who wrote a trilogy on the African, how Christianity was birthed out of an African seedbed. So essentially where his story, his theory picks up. So when you take the gospels, the canonical Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Mark, we understand as being the first gospel because it's the shortest, and it's the oldest preserved manuscripts. 

And so of course we don't have any autographed copies of any biblical texts, so there's no original writings that have been preserved. But we have manuscript, we have copies, and copies presuppose an autograph. Well, the earliest copies or earliest manuscripts of a gospel is Mark's gospel. And so within biblical studies, within gospel studies that suggest that there's a Mark and priority. So Mark comes first and Mark is a source in all of the material, within Mark's gospel we find in Luke and or Matthew. 

And so that suggest that Mark is a source. So if Mark is a source, Mark is earliest, the manuscript, but we don't know who Mark is. And so when you begin to look at Markan studies, you ask the question, who is the author or the redactor? Redactor is just simply an editor, one who compiles or takes a number of sources and compiles a literary text, if you will, together. And that's what we have with the authors of the Gospels. And so Mark, we ask the question, who is Mark? 

And so within Markan studies, and I take my students through this, and there are at least five or six different theories on who Mark could be. However, left out of that conversation and left out of that examination, is the African memory of Mark, that Mark, there is a tradition that suggested Mark was a patron saint of Northern Africa, born in Alexandria, or I'm sorry, born in Carinae or Libya, if you will, and died in Alexandria. 

And there's this tradition, Tom Oden's text, the InterVarsity Christian Press publishing, of the African memory of Mark, talks about this, talks about the tradition of Mark being African-born and African-died in Alexandria. And how if this is the mark that is responsible for the first gospel, that means you have an African stamp upon the story of Jesus and the Gospels, that the other Gospels use as a source, and that even Paul and the New Testament writings use as a source. 

And so his idea and his theory that there's an African memory of Mark and that Christianity was birthed out of an African seedbed, that deserves serious consideration, that deserves serious study, and serious exploration, that unfortunately we talk about black dignity. Unfortunately, it's been left out of a biblical scholarship in Christian studies, and that's a shame, that's a travesty, and that should be an indictment within a larger Western biblical theological scholarship. 

Jeremiah Chandler: 

Dr. Hopkins. Can you tell us a little bit more about your research with the Dead Sea Scrolls, and then how does that relate to this conversation around black dignity? 

Dr. Jamal Hopkins: 

So yeah, I'm so glad you asked that. So talked about Mark or Oden, by Tom Oden's theory. Tom Oden was a theologian, and he looks at early African Christianity. So his conversation starts with the Gospels and kind of moves up into the formation of early Christianity. Well, it's where that study begins. My study kind of ends or has an overlap because I go backwards within and into within the Judaic period. And within that Judaic period, I say this kind of nice neat bridge between the testaments, between the Old Testament and the New Testament we find the Dead Sea Scrolls, which is a body of literature that's preserved during the late second Temple period. 

Because when you look at the biblical story, we have the first temple with David and Solomon, constructing and merged. That temple is destroyed during the Babylonian captivity. And we have a second temple that's emerging after the Babylonian captives are reemerging within Palestine in the emergence of a second temple. And so within the second temple or the late second temple period, which the New Testament gospels are a part, because the second temple is not destroyed until about 70 AD, or 70 Common Era. 

So we have this late second temple period from about 100 before Christ to about 100 or 100 or 70, 68, after Christ where we find the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Dead Sea Scrolls preserve a literature from one of the Jewish sectarian communities that exist alongside and was contemporaneous with the Pharisees, the Sadducees that we read about in the New Testament. Well, there were another group that Jewish historians talk about called the Essenes. And the Essenes are the ones responsible for the writings of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Dead Sea Scrolls preserves Bible material, primarily Old Testament, nothing in the New Testament is preserved within the Dead Sea Scrolls. 

So Bible material. We have pseudepigrapha material, which is kind of material that's falsely ascribed to older periods like Enochian literature, if you will. It's Second Temple writing, but it purports to be older. So that's, pseudepigrapha material was found within the Dead Sea Scrolls. And then you have sectarian writings like Calendrical documents, legal documents, how the community related to the Dead Sea Scrolls is to live and to govern themselves as a priestly community. And so that's essentially the makeup of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which was found in the 20th century, 1947 to 1956, out of 11 caves. 

And if you hear even today in the news, as of late of 2021 there were potentially a 12 cave found, which was some maybe blank manuscripts or blank fragments and maybe some small fragments and some Hebrew Bible materials. Nothing significant, nothing significantly conclusive, but there's still archaeological searches and things like that for additional caves and additional material. But that's essentially what the Dead Sea Scrolls are. They're called Dead Sea Scrolls because they're in caves overlooking the Dead Sea in the Judean Desert or the Judean wilderness. Interestingly enough, the same Judean desert and wilderness that John the Baptist was baptizing people, as we read in the New Testament. 

And so that's essentially the Dead Sea Scrolls. And so I got interested in that, honestly, just simply because I just fell in love with biblical Greek and biblical Hebrew and wanted to learn to read the Bible deeper. And the best way to read the Bible in a more deeper way is to be able to engage them in their biblical languages, Greek and Hebrew. And so that's how I kind of found my way into the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and of course, being a person of African descent, and this notion of black dignity, I'm asking certain questions that most non-black scholars are not asking. And so that kind of drove my interest into looking and exploring conversations, and what the contents of the Dead Sea Scrolls says about black presence and black dignity. 

Jeremiah Chandler: 

Thank you. That's good. Kevin, real quick, I wanted to circle back to some of the questions you said you are facing when you're doing this kind of work in urban apologetics in this kind of sphere. What are some of the reasons that people are struggling with their identity as a black person within the context of Christianity? 

Kevin Hawkins: 

One of the things we're facing, you hear the word deconstruction happening within Christianity, and so it's happening within white and black Christians. People are leaving the church after they graduate high school, and it's happening within the Christian circles. So we have fewer Christians today than we did 10 years ago. As a church planner I've learned these things. 

But one of the things that for me in having this conversation as to why, is being confronted and being challenged to sometimes things that you'll find that I would say are in the weeds of Christian scriptures. But people are asking these questions based upon other conversations that they're having as to it was, for instance, an example of it is, you'll say that the white slave owner forced you to become a Christian, without understanding that Christianity was within Africa, 15, 1600 years before it came to America. 

And you'll find that many people who came here as slaves came here as believers already. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons why you had some of the slave revolts was because of the fact that they also felt that they were made in the image of God and they had this black dignity, and being a Christian being made in the image of God, and also using some of the legal language of the day that was during the 16, 1700s, 1800s, and is the reason why you saw that people were having certain slave revolts because they would even use a language that said, "If you are Christian, then you should not be held in captivity." 

And so using even some of that language of the day because they claimed Christ, and they claimed Christ as they came here on the slave ships even. So we have that conversation, we have that understanding, and many people don't know, because many people think that over in Africa they worship the ancestors, and I'm not saying none of those things were possible and none of those things happened, but there were quite a significant number of slaves that were brought from Africa on the transatlantic slave ships, and they came here as believers already. 

And some of the rebellion that took place was a result of their understanding of who they are in Christ, that they are made in the image of God. And so that led to some of that, not all of it, but that led to some of the reasons why they had to revolt. So as I'm engaging younger men who are struggling with this identity issue, they don't know that, they know what they've been told by meaning of the conscious community, that it was the slave owners who beat Christianity into us. And I'm not saying none of that happened, and sometimes Christianity had been used with slave Bibles that had been used to keep people in subjection. 

So some of that is true, I'm not denying any of that. But to also know a fuller and a broader story that we also came here, because you could find that Christianity was, as far as the Congo, it was in West Africa, Ethiopia, and in some of the Bantu tribes. And so you see that there was Christianity that had already spread throughout the African continent long before it came to the Americas. And so when we came here, we came here having already heard the message of Christ, and coming here was a part of that dignity transported over here that sometimes we're missing today. And so you don't hear that story. 

And oftentimes in having conversations, you're hearing people who are uninformed about the historical Christian seedbed of Africa, a African seedbed that Dr. Jamal talked about so eloquently. And so those are the conversations I'm having with younger men, and particularly who I think are the biggest group of people within the African community that are struggling with black identity and black dignity. And so helping them understand that story, helping them understand a little bit more of their origins, I think would help bring them back to understanding a healthy view of themselves and who they truly are in Christ, as they see themselves historically coming over here from Africa and historically finding themselves again in the biblical narrative. 

Jeremiah Chandler: 

Right. That's good. And I think, Kevin, you're making a lot of good points that I want to draw out for you listening, because what you're saying is the response, or this is a topic because there was some type of lack in these people when they're experiencing a certain kind of Christianity, and they're not recognizing themselves and the story, or whether because they're uninformed, or what I think too, it's how it's being packaged to them. They're not rejecting Christianity I think they're just rejecting how it's being presented, and how it's presented to them is, "I'm not included in this story." 

Kevin Hawkins: 

Correct. Yeah. And you can go to, we were renting when I planted the church over in Lancaster over 20 years ago. We were renting from at First Baptist Church Lancaster, and they were wonderful people, and I enjoyed the time, we had joint services from time to time. But in the baptistry, there is this picture of a white Jesus. And I often hear people get caught up into the fact that, "Well, what color? I mean, what does it matter what color he was?" And oftentimes in the black community, we'll say, "Well, it doesn't really matter." And then you hear people say that in the white community as well. But if it doesn't matter, why do we constantly see a photo of a white Jesus? 

I shared this at a conference here recently that Dr. Jamal was at, several years ago on when she was working at Fox News, Megyn kelly, made the comment, she was talking about Santa Claus being a white man. And then she said in the same breath that Jesus is a historical man as well who was also a white man. Well, if you, either one of two things is true about that conversation, about this statement. Either she's ignorant or she's lying. And that may be a strong statement, a strong word to say. But the reason why I say that's important is because of the fact that she was promoting this same historical narrative that we've had in the West within Western Christianity for so long that Jesus is a white man. 

And she reported that to be a true statement. And this is why it is significant for us to understand that what she said was historically and factually wrong. And again, I would attribute it to her ignorance of that. I don't know her, I've never met her. I'm not trying to say she was a evil person in saying that, but she was wrong factually. But that narrative is out there. Fox News is one of the biggest news giants in the industry. And so that narrative went forward. And you have a lot of people who would identify as Christians who would say she's right. And I'm saying just look at the historical fact, where was Israel located? 

It's not located in Europe. It's located on the northeastern portion of Africa. And in between that and Egypt, another historically black nation. And so you have to deal with those conversations and that reality that many of our people are hearing consistently that, and they see consistently this image of Jesus Christ being a European or a Caucasian man. And we have to set the record straight in that conversation. One of the things that Dr. Hopkins brought up when I first met him was, back to the Dead Sea Scrolls, was even how they were buried was influenced by an African heritage and African root. Am I correct in saying that, doctor? 

Dr. Jamal Hopkins: 

Oh, yeah. 

Kevin Hawkins: 

And so I appreciated that. That was the first time I had ever heard that. And so he and I connected from that day when I had him actually do this at our church. So if you would elaborate on that some, doc. 

Dr. Jamal Hopkins: 

So when you look at the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls or the related site where the Dead Sea Scrolls are found, a site called Khirbet Qumran, the area of Qumran, which overlooks, well the caves overlook the site where the people were believed to have been related to the content was found in the caves, the Dead Sea Scrolls. And so as we look at the site, Qumran, and we look at what arcaeology has revealed within their cemeteries, we see that those cemetery remains, the skeletal remains are buried in such a way where they're covered with rocks. 

So if you look at kind of Jewish history and the way persons were buried, they were buried within tombs, and they were buried within, so they would be laid in a stone box, a sepulture or something like that, and placed within a tomb where you could lay an entire family, and you walk out of that tomb and you cover it with a rock. So if you go to Israel, you'll see these tombs. If you go to Greece, if you go to the ancient Nereids, you see these kinds of tombs. Well, within Northern Africa, particularly with Egypt, the way they buried bodies, if it wasn't a Pharaoh, they would bury them, cover them with rocks, not with dirt, but they would lay the body and then they would cover that body with rocks. That was very distinctive Egyptian, common burial custom. 

And that's what you find at Qumran among the people that are believed to have been related to the Dead Sea Scrolls, which suggests that there is an influence, an Egyptian or a Northern African influence here at Qumran with these people and within the Dead Sea Scrolls. And or you have Egyptians possibly at Qumran. And the reason why I say Egyptians possibly at Qumran, because when you look at the story and you look at the history, the way that the people of the Dead Sea Scrolls describe themselves, they describe themselves as the sons of Zadok, B'nei Zadakim, Hebrew. Sons of Zadok. Zadok was the priest during the time of Solomon. David, King Solomon. 

And so they describe themselves as the sons of Zadok, the priests during the Biblical times. And so we find a community of Zadok priests and a Zadok temple in Northern Africa around the late, I'd say mid to late second century, around 150, 160. And so you begin to pull all this together. We go back to Matthew chapter two when Jesus, his father Joseph in the dream, Herod wants to destroy these Jewish male-born children, two years old and under. The angel of the Lord tells Joseph to go to Africa, to Egypt, to hide from Herod. Well, if you're going somewhere to hide, then there likely is a community there to receive you. It just kind of makes sense. 

Well, it just so happens, the fact is there is a Jewish community within Northern Africa, within Egypt, and there is a temple that was found archaeologically unearthed in Leontopolis, Egypt, which is the northern part of Egypt. Likely this is the same community that remnants of were interacted with are known to Jesus and Joseph's father. So there's these connections here, and I think archaeology kind of bears that out and makes these connections and points these dots. So as we're reading the biblical texts, we have a kind of three-dimensional reality of putting the history together with the archeology, with the practices and the customs of the people. 

And like Dr. Kevin said, we look at the proximity, geographic proximity from Israel, Jerusalem, Palestine to Egypt. It's very close, much closer than Egypt, Palestine is to Europe. So the question, is the Bible, is Christianity, or is even Judaism white men's religion? Well, I think we have to not just read the biblical text, but also look at the geographic area in the land and the spatial, the dispositional space, if you will. So those are important factors when I think when reading the question and forming and when one forms one's theology to really be well-informed, just kind of all around. 

Jeremiah Chandler: 

Right. That's good. And I want to go back to what you had mentioned, Kevin, about kind of just how Christianity is presented or Jesus specifically portrayed in the media. And I think what happens is it gets, because I want to say there's nothing wrong with you having a white Jesus as long as you're not trying to pose this as a historical fact or historical truth. But I want to also say, because I think there is in different traditions in history, there's depictions of Jesus in different ethnicities. 

So it's not the white Jesus per se, but it's the fact that he gets lumped into ideas of racism in this country and that ideas of black, that blackness was associated with something negative, and degrading and demeaning. And so what I say is, white Jesus, nothing wrong with it if that's what you want to have, but it's been used as a tool. And so if you don't acknowledge it as it's a tool of weaponization or white supremacy or however you want to depict it. 

But I want to get back into something, Dr. Hopkins, you had mentioned too when it comes to this idea around black dignity is because it gets lumped into this idea of when you see a white Jesus or when you see, you don't see yourself, it reinforces some of those negative stereotypes. And we know about the curse of ham, Dr. Hopkins, you talk about how can these negative depictions or ideas of when we don't see ourselves, things like the Curse of Ham, and then Psalm 1: 5, how do those things impact our dignity as black people? 

Dr. Jamal Hopkins: 

Yeah, well, just kind of going back with the depiction of Jesus as white, I think there's a theological statement being made with that portrayal. And this is something that Kevin talked about. I think that's important, and I'm hoping that he can flesh it out, because I love the way that he talks and has this conversation with this Megyn Kelly, which is interesting, if you look at a, I think it's a 1972 clip of All in the Family, the television series, All in the Family, where George Jefferson's brother is having a conversation with Archie Bunker, Archie Bunker makes the statement that Jesus is white, oh, that Santa is white, and that Jesus is white, and Archie Bunker's brothers. So it's this beautiful conversation where he's correcting this corrective historiography there. 

But this idea that a white Jesus, a white Christ, what kind of theological statement is that making a whiteness, blackness within American, within Western context is social cultural? Could it be that the theological statement that's being made with the white depiction of Christ is that one's theology is informed socially, culturally. Socially, culturally, politically, so that the theology that we're getting is really kind of a social, cultural, political presentation, passed off as theology. So if the depiction, and I love the way you talked about that, Kevin, where the rejoinder is is that, well, why should it matter the color? Well, yeah, well, why should it matter the color? If it doesn't matter, then why are you continuing to present him as white? So I love that response. But yeah, I mean I love the way you fleshed that out. 

Kevin Hawkins: 

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. And there is something that he said at the conference that I had back in March, I think it was, in some of his other work, where when we see these images of Jesus depicted as a white man in media and where there's news or cinematography, there is a suturing effect that he used. I love that word, doc. So I've borrowed that word since then, but there's a suturing to the mind that happens. And maybe that's the reason why you have movements like Christian nationalism, which is Christian, but it is promoted that way. 

And for me, and I know that we all bring something to the table, we all bring a little bit of our background to the table as well, and we are shaped, we're informed by our background, but as best we can, it should always be submitted to the Lordship of Christ, and look at the beauty that's within creation, within all of the ethnic groups, and recognize that that's a part of God's creative work. But never was one group supposed to be superior to the other. So when you go back to the question about the Curse of Ham, well, Noah, this is a misnomer. Noah didn't curse Ham, he cursed Canaan. 

And so when we see that, now you can talk about how that was carried out within the Canaanites and all of that, and that whole relationship with Israel. But when we look at Cush and who many would say is kind of the father of black people, we would recognize that he's not a part of that curse. And on top of that, I love this too, that in Christ, all curses have been removed anyway, right? He was the curse for sin upon Calvary's cross. And so therefore, I'm looking at a person here and here, that we're all redeemed in the individuals, because we believe in Jesus Christ. So there is no curse that I'm up under. 

Even the curse of sin has no impact on my life in such a way that I'm going to be eternally bound by it. We don't have to get into the flesh and all that. But the fact is that because of Christ I am a redeemed person, and that goes beyond skin color. But just know that, and it was being promoted for a long time, even here in America, that that was this curse of Ham, and therefore all black people are cursed. And that's just factually untrue again. I mean, that's not even in the text. Again, Noah cursed Canaan, not Ham. 

And so it's just having that understanding I think also helps to rescue black men and young women who are in search of an identity, who are in search of their dignity. And again, I bring it back to that narrative that you are in the story. You are part of the story, not to exclude anyone else, but I'm saying. But you have an inheritance, a very rich inheritance right here that is found in the person in the work of Jesus Christ. And you see that right there in the biblical story that you can be proud of. And so you don't have to go in search of dignity and false movements, you can find your dignity right there in the scriptures right there, and in the person in the work of Jesus Christ. 

Jeremiah Chandler: 

Amen. Dr. Hopkins, did you have anything you wanted to add to that? 

Dr. Jamal Hopkins: 

Yeah, so there's a couple of sources I think that are helpful. So David Daniels, who's been featured on the June 3 podcast, but he's a historian at McCormick Theological Seminary. He talks about, because I think it's important that the connection is made that you have persons of African descent in West Africa because those are predominantly the communities that came from Africa over to the new world, that were enslaved. 

And so he makes some of these connections of those who were Christian, those who had Judeo-Christian identity within West Africa, because early African Christianity deals primarily Eastern Africa and Northern Africa. And so getting that Judeo-Christian faith community and the migration towards the west, whether you have the people of Western Africa now going over to the Americas, what is their faith? Well, David Daniels, Dr. David Daniels, he does some really important work in that area, looking at the kind of modern, kind of church historical, Western Africa Christian sensibility. 

So I think that's a great resource to follow up, looking for works that David Daniels has done. Another source, evangelical historian, Mark Noll, I think about his classic work, Civil War as a Theological Crisis. I believe it was InterVarsity Press, Civil War as Theological Crisis. He talks about, because when you talk about the curse of Ham, the so-called Curse of Ham, I call it the Noahaic, a curse, because it was Noah who cursed. 

And so Mark Knoll Noll talks about in his work Civil War as a Theological Crisis that as much as slavery was about economics, and it was more important about who controlled the meaning of the Bible and pulpits across America. One of the sources that was used in perpetuating the myth of black curse and black kind of servitude was, and he mentions this rabbi, Rabbi Rafal, who was going around throughout America, proclaiming and reinterpreting or conflating, the Genesis 9: 18-27, talking about the so-called Curse of Ham. 

And so when I say conflation, biblical conflation is within this idea of biblical criticism that says, or that takes one particular biblical passage, which has its own context that deserves to be fleshed out, but it takes this one passage and marries it with another passage and creates a whole new context, kind of ignoring the context that these passages have in themselves. And that's biblical conflation. And so this whole curse of blackness and Curse of Ham is part of this biblical conflation, because nowhere within the curse does it mention color, but somehow and the way, and now we're having, and we're bringing in rabbinic literature. Rabbinic literature, whether it be Mishnah, the Tannaitic literature from the Amoraic period, Jewish rabbinic literature, legal tech, they're attempting to try to fill in the gaps. 

They're attempting to try to interpret, answer questions that may be out there that the biblical text doesn't explicitly deal with. And so these rabbinic writings, when they take this Genesis 9: 18-27, there's where you begin to see kind of this Curse on Ham, but they also add this kind of blackness because now within the Genesis 9: 18-27 interpretation, Genesis 4 is kind of merged or conflated with this within the rabbinic writings, and blackness is now married with Cain, who murdered his son, Abel. 

And the curse that was placed upon Cain, according to these rabbinic writings and these rabbinic reinterpretations, the curse and the mark that was placed upon Cain was a blackening of the skin. This is what these Genesis rabbinic commentaries talk about, these rabbinic writings talk about, talking about how when Cain realized that he was cursed, he looked up to the sky, and hell and rain beat upon his face and blackened his skin. This is what the rabbinic writings say, interpreting Genesis 9 and Genesis 4. But they also says, because Ham twisted his neck to look upon my misfortune, I shall twist his hair in kinks. 

And so you have all of these colorful interpretations that the rabbinic writings are attempting to talk, or to try to make sense of Genesis 9: 18-17. But when you ask the question, where does rabbinic literature come? It comes from the 3rd to about 5th, the 8th century after Christ. So it stands outside of the biblical witness, the biblical tradition. We talk about the biblical tradition, we talk about the biblical books from the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, from the New Testament. And the New Testament writings roughly end around the first century, 90 if we're talking about Johannine epistles or the Gospel of John, extending out that long. 

And so we have within this first century, after Christ where the New Testament writings end. Well, rabbinic literature picks up some two centuries after. And so their interpretations aren't authoritative in a sense that the biblical text is authoritative. Well, the Dead Sea Scrolls, which is contemporaneous with the New Testament and the biblical text, because it roughly ends around 70 AD. So it's squarely within the biblical period of its writing. Within one of the pseudepigrapha writings from the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Book of Jubilees, it talks about the narrative of the Noahic curse. 

And in one particular passage, it talks about how when Ham found out what his father, Noah, had done in cursing Canaan, it disgusted him. This is what the narrative says, the Dead Sea Scrolls speaking on Genesis 9: 18-27. And it says when Ham found out that his father cursed his son, he took his son and departed and left his father. Well, then there's another passage within the Book of Jubilees, a pseudepigraphal writing from the Dead Sea Scrolls, that talked about when Noah found out what had happened, he could not curse Ham because God had already blessed the sons of Noah. So now we get into this whole blessing and curse principle, "Whom God blesses no one can curse." 

And so Ham is not cursed. Ham could never be cursed because God had already blessed the sons of Noah. So that's what the Dead Sea Scrolls affords, and speaking about this Genesis 9 interpretation, which is very vastly different from the rabbinic interpretations of the later periods, third century, that stand outside of the biblical text. And so the Dead Sea Scrolls supports the biblical witness, supports the biblical interpretation of who was cursed. 

And so it very much supports and suggests that Ham was not only not cursed, Ham was blessed because God blessed him. And that's according to the biblical text, and it's also according to a book of Jubilees, which is pseudepigrapha, which is the Dead Sea Scrolls, which is contemporaneous with the biblical writing. And so that's what makes the Dead Sea Scrolls very important when you're reading this alongside, and to really try to make sense of helping us to understand really what took place. Because if we have a community of the scenes, and they're interpreting or they're writing these, it means that there is a tradition that's understood. 

We're so many centuries and generations away from the biblical text, we just take stabs and we're guessing, and I think that's no less the tradition we find within the rabbinic writings as well. They're taking a stab, they're taking a guess. But the Dead Sea Scrolls, they're not necessarily taking a stab or guess because they're very present, they're contemporaneous with what's going on during the period of biblical witness. So Dead Sea Scrolls are very important, in a number of other ways as well, because they also preserve the oldest Bible, the oldest Hebrew Bible version that exists on the planet. 

Jeremiah Chandler: 

That's good. Thanks Dr. Hopkins. We're about out of time, but I just want to kind of summarize what I've been hearing in this conversation when it comes to the black dignity, and I think you tied it in well to the Dead Sea Scrolls, is that outside the Christian tradition, but also within sometimes the Christian tradition, there's this notion of, like you said, blackness is associated with cursing, associated with being inferior, servitude, and all the things of that nature. 

And so the reason we have to talk about black dignity and point out our presence in the Bible, point out some of the contributions we made, point out Christianity's, that role Africa played is because of all those things you just mentioned, like Curse of ham and the portrayal of white Jesus, and what are the underlying assumptions that go into those kinds of ideas? And I think conversations like this help people of African descent, black people see, "Hey, I don't have to believe I'm inferior, I don't have to believe I don't have a role in this story. I can look at myself and also affirm people of all ethnicities and all nations, but also can say, hey, I have a role in this too." 

And thus providing the imago dei. Because I think you hit the nail on the head, Kevin, this is an imago dei issue, this isn't a black issue, this isn't a white issue, this is about us affirming people made in the image of God. And so for you listening, I want you to take away from this conversation, not merely our emphasis on blackness and the role we play, but hey, there's people made in the image of God that have been made to believe that they are less than that. 

Kevin Hawkins: 

That's right. 

Jeremiah Chandler: 

So Dr. Hopkins, Kevin, thank you guys for joining me for this conversation. 

Kevin Hawkins: 

Thank you for having us. 

Dr. Jamal Hopkins: 

Thank you very much. Thanks. 

Jeremiah Chandler: 

Thank you guys. And thank you, our listener, for being with us. 

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