The race of the Biblical Israelites

(If I say something that is right, then God has inspired me. If I say something that is wrong, then it is my own mistake.)

1. Claims of Biblical Israelites being white or Black.
Over the years, I've come across arguments by certain race-centric fringe groups (among both whites and blacks) attempting to claim the Biblical Israelites as belonging to their respective racial stocks. Such ideas are presented alongside skewed interpretations of scriptures, and made to look like it has some Biblical validity. Two such examples :

And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.
-Revelation 1:15

Now he was ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance
-I Samuel 16:12

There are plenty of other scriptures used by race-centric groups to substantiate their views regarding the racial stock of Biblical Israelites. But I am not about to dissect every one of them and I'm definitely not going to highlight groups propagating race-centric theology. Instead, this thread will try and demonstrate how ideas about Biblical Israelites being white or black stops working when common sense and logic is applied.

Those who propose that the scripture contains references to their race or kind are simply seeing what they believe in the scriptures. They force meanings into the text, which otherwise do not exist. For example, "brass in a furnace" and "ruddiness" are not descriptions of any particular skin type as race-centirc theologians would have you believe. When common sense is applied, we know that "brass in a furnace" has a fiery glow and cannot be a skin color. "Ruddiness" simply means a healthy red color. It has to do with blood rushing to the face, and therefore can apply to any body who is fair skinned, thereby including everyone from the Orientals to Indians to Caucasians to Mexicans to Arabs.


2. What did the Biblical Israelites actually look like?
Now, I am not claiming to know exactly what the Biblical Israelites looked like. But it is possible to guess the racial make up of the Biblical Israelites by referring to the racial features of the people who are presently living in the middle east, i.e - the geographical regions occupied by the Biblical Israelites.

Jordanian man


Egyptian man


Syrian child


Iraqi woman


Lebanese women


We clearly see that people of the Middle east, regardless of their religious beliefs, are not exactly racially homogeneous and that there exists a broad spectrum of features and skin tones. Some tend to look more "white", like the Syrian child and the Lebanese women, while the Egyptian man looks "black". Yet in all cases, they aren't "white" or "black" in the conventional sense, as imagined by whites and blacks subscribing to ideas about Biblical Israelites being of their respective racial stock.

The features of contemporary Middle Eastern people may not give us a 100% accurate portrait of the racial make up of Biblical Israelites who lived 3000 years ago, but it would be a far better approach towards establishing the racial make up of Israelites, than to make arbitrary guesses with skewed interpretations of Biblical verses. The Biblical Israelites were a middle eastern people and would have definitely resembled the middle eastern people of today, not peoples who were native to other continents.

Ideas of the Biblical Israelites being "white" or "black" are rooted not in logic and fact, but rather, the bizarre notions of people fantasizing about belonging to the racial stock of the Biblical Israelites. If anything it all, it simply demonstrates that these race-centric groups place their racial identity above, or on the same level as their religious beliefs / spirituality. Perhaps this attitude stems from a need to assert themselves as being part of the crowd that the Bible was mostly written about, like as if being of the same race as the Biblical Israelites would bring them closer to God. I also suspect that groups who assert that the Biblical Israelites were of their own racial stock subscribe to the theology of Jewish "chosenness", with which comes a sense of being "special".

God knows best!

from what was shown race was thrown into the mix to keep the hate and death moving us up the ladder.

if we can establish the racial make up of the Egyptians of that time then, we can compare it to the racial make up of the hyksos/Israelites...

Also wanted to add this..

George Friedmann in his book, The End of the Jewish People, pointedly states that the Europeans claiming to be Jews, are nothing more then "Hebrew speaking Gentiles." The late president of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, stated on television, "you (the Jews) will never be able to live here in peace, because you left here black but came back white. We cannot except you!

www.thewayofgodchurch.com...

Good scholarship has traced the descendants of Israel and Judah (not to say the Jews), and those descendants are now scattered in Europe, central Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Some are white, some are black, and some are as the OP asserts. However, the tribes and nationalities which have mixed the LEAST with other groups of people, are WHITE, or Caucasian. When we are dealing with such issues, the facts are almost always more complex than what is offered by the proponents of White Israel, Black Israel, or otherwise.

The race of the Biblical Israelites

Well .. technically there are only three races of humans ... caucasian, asian, negroid.
So I guess the Israelites would fit in the caucasian.
Distant mulatto with the Africans perhaps but still, of the three choices, I'd go with caucasian.
The ancient Israelites probably looked a lot they do now.
Maybe a bit dustier because of the lack of of running water for showers,
and a bit thinner because of not as much food at their disposal.
But probably pretty much the same ... (that's just a guess of course).

From my studies I lean strongly towards the possibility that there was an actual mixture of races in that group.

Extensive global trade networks existed at the time so I don't see any real barriers to such a possibility.

Egypt/Kemet was actually an empire so to speak, so people from all sorts of groups were assimilated into it over time (and broke away etc).

Funnily, when I read the thread title, I pictured a bunch of old guys with beards and white flowing robes running.

But on topic, I think they were likely brown skinned due to the climate

How do I know they were probably composed of a mixture of all races?

Because these groups of "Jews" are authentic and verified legit.

Kaifeng Jews of China

According to historical records, a Jewish community with a synagogue built in 1163 existed at Kaifeng from at least the Southern Song Dynasty until the late nineteenth century. A stone monument in the city suggests that they were there since at least 231 BC.

231 BC should set off some alarm bells.

And don't forget the Lemba peoples

The Lemba people (Vhalemba) from Southern Africa claim to be descendants of several Jewish men who traveled from what is now Yemen to Africa in search of gold, where they took wives and established new communities.[22][23][24] DNA testing has genetically linked the Lemba with modern Jews and Muslim Semites.[25][26]

There are tons of people from all colors who claim to be descent from these tribes of Israel.
Check out a short list of some of them here at this Wiki: Ten Lost Tribes

reply to post by Lazarus Short


reply to post by muzzleflash




The thing with the Israelites is that they have taken on the physical characteristics of the people they dwelled among. Which explains why we have white Jews, Black Jews, Asian Jews, Indian Jews and so on.

Either the Israelites (ancestors of the Jews) have mixed with the locals to the point that they now resemble them... or the gentiles who the Israelites dwelled with converted to the religion of the Israelites..... NOT because the Israelites themselves were white or black or Asian.

For example, look at these Asian looking Jews . Are they native to the middle east? Would it make sense to say that since we have Asian looking Jews, the original Israelites were of the same race as Asians.

The original Israelites were Middle Easterners, and could have only resembled the peoples who were native to that region. They could have been "white" or "black", but only in the context of middle eastern people.

Originally posted by sk0rpi0n

The thing with the Israelites is that they have taken on the physical characteristics of the people they dwelled among. Which explains why we have white Jews, Black Jews, Asian Jews, Indian Jews and so on.

Either the Israelites (ancestors of the Jews) have mixed with the locals to the point that they now resemble them... or the gentiles who the Israelites dwelled with converted to the religion of the Israelites..... NOT because the Israelites themselves were white or black or Asian.

You actually don't know that.
None of us do for sure, thus the debate still rages on.

You assume they mixed with the "other groups" they moved in with....
But in reality most Jewish families are highly exclusive and in the majority of cases only marry with other Jewish families. Of course that doesn't always happen, but it's a common enough event to slow down your "interbreeding" theory by a large factor.

We would need to conduct more research about the Kaifeng and their legends/stories in order to determine what it is they believe specifically about "race" and how much they have mixed with surrounding cultures.

It is not required however, they could have come from Egypt looking very much like Chinese.
Of course this may seem like blasphemy to those who think they already know what happened and refuse to consider alternatives.

The way I see it is that the answers everyone tossed around for too long have been incomplete at best, and failed to solve the question. So I am willing to look beyond that for an inclusive solution (also it's nice if it comes with a big bang).

reply to post by sk0rpi0n


With all the god approved wars, and the order to keep the women and children (to be impregnated at some point) I wouldn't be surprised if the Jews of today are not of the pure Jew DNA of way back when.

Remember the stories about "Solomon"? They claimed he adopted wives from all the kingdoms around the world and also adopted their idols and practices etc.

If this story has any validity in historical terms at all, it explains that a working travel network existed and was able to navigate great distances safely and apparently rather quickly.

There are other examples predating that such as the Lapis Lazuli trade networks.

I don't know why these explanations aren't more often considered because they sure do fill in the puzzle pieces to a lot of my questions.

To answer this question we have to resolve the presumption that "Judaism is a race" because actually it's controversial due to the counter-assertion that it's a religion and cultural tradition.

If Jew= Race, than is it the human race because we have Jews of all colors??

We have far too many examples of common misuse of terminology and ignorance to even really grapple with such topics to be honest.

We have to fix our vocabulary but I am afraid there is a "political correctness" pervasive in our society that ignorantly refuses to face the topic in a mature intelligent way. (Meaning you could be verbally attacked as 'racist' for even questioning such a notion in the first place).

People from the Middle East are Caucasians and are considered white.

Originally posted by sk0rpi0n
reply to post by Lazarus Short

 

reply to post by muzzleflash

 

The thing with the Israelites is that they have taken on the physical characteristics of the people they dwelled among. Which explains why we have white Jews, Black Jews, Asian Jews, Indian Jews and so on.

Either the Israelites (ancestors of the Jews) have mixed with the locals to the point that they now resemble them... or the gentiles who the Israelites dwelled with converted to the religion of the Israelites..... NOT because the Israelites themselves were white or black or Asian.

For example, look at these Asian looking Jews . Are they native to the middle east? Would it make sense to say that since we have Asian looking Jews, the original Israelites were of the same race as Asians.

The original Israelites were Middle Easterners, and could have only resembled the peoples who were native to that region. They could have been "white" or "black", but only in the context of middle eastern people.

edit on 2-8-2013 by sk0rpi0n because: (no reason given)

Let me say it once again: when I refer to Israel, I am NOT including the Jews, or at least to most of them. The Ashkenazic Jews are of Turkic/Kazar origin, and not even descendants of Shem, or even Eber. The Sephardic Jews are of Israel, but comprise only ~10% of the world's Jews. They are also of mixed ancestry, notably by way of the Edomites. The OP has opened a can of worms which will never be resolved on ATS, for the questions are just too complex.

reply to post by beatbox


Tutankhamun dna proof of european lineage half of males in europe. Most of the oldest mummies found in the mideast have red hair.

reply to post by sk0rpi0n


Most of the Jews in Israel today are of the Ashkenazi Jews of Russian converts of the 7th century.

Originally posted by muzzleflash
Remember the stories about "Solomon"? They claimed he adopted wives from all the kingdoms around the world and also adopted their idols and practices etc.

If this story has any validity in historical terms at all, it explains that a working travel network existed and was able to navigate great distances safely and apparently rather quickly.

There are other examples predating that such as the Lapis Lazuli trade networks.

I don't know why these explanations aren't more often considered because they sure do fill in the puzzle pieces to a lot of my questions.

edit on 2-8-2013 by muzzleflash because: (no reason given)

now compare that to unas. the sphinx is the portal the flesh of their gods is the destination

It is a moot point.The Israelites were not a "race" and what is referred to as "Jews" were not called Israelites but were called Judah and were from the tribe of Judah, Benjamin and Levi and whomever joined with them when the 12(or 13 depending on how you count) Israel tribes split around 600 BCE.The other 10 tribes of Israel were referred to as Israel and were dispersed an assimilated almost 3 thousand years ago.There are no genetic markers to distinguish an Israelite nor a Jew.What is very clear is a Jew today is not an Israelite and has not been for millenniums.Modern day Israel is more accurately Judah not Israel.