Reclaiming the Narrative
What Ancient Lineages Reveal About Race, Memory & Power
The Book of Genesis is often treated as ancient spiritual literature—distant, symbolic, and disconnected from modern questions of race and identity. But when you read it closely, follow the genealogies, examine the cultural context, and compare it with broader ancient Near Eastern history, a different lens comes into focus. One that challenges long-held assumptions about whom the people of Scripture actually were.
Many communities have long held that the peoples of the early biblical world—including the line of Shem, the ancestors of Abraham, and the Israelites themselves—were part of the African and Afro-Asiatic cultural sphere. For centuries, this was neither controversial nor unusual. Only in later European interpretations did these identities become whitened, sanitized, or reshaped to fit political, theological, and cultural agendas.
Today, as more people revisit the sources with fresh eyes, a larger truth is re-emerging: historical memory is never neutral, and erased identities can be restored.
Tracing the Line of Shem: A Forgotten Context
Genesis 11:10 introduces the genealogy of Shem. In many traditional interpretations, Shem is placed as the ancestor of the peoples of the Near East—regions overlapping with northeastern Africa and the Afro-Asiatic world.
In early Christian, Jewish, and Islamic scholarship, Shem was not depicted as “European.” Those categories didn’t exist yet. Instead, these lineages were understood as emerging from a cultural belt stretching from the Nile Valley, across the Red Sea region, into Mesopotamia.
So when oral traditions, Afro-diaspora scholarship, and historical readings argue:
“Shem was connected to African heritage,”
they are speaking from a framework older than colonial rewritings—one grounded in proximity, culture, and shared environments
Abraham and the African World
Genesis 14:13 introduces Abram—later Abraham—stepping into the narrative. Abraham descends from Shem. In many African-centered biblical interpretations, this matters because:
Abraham was born in a region ruled by Nimrod, a figure long associated with Kushite and African identity.
Nimrod is presented as the grandson of Ham (or Kam), the ancestor traditionally connected to African peoples.
Abraham’s world was not a European world.
It was an Afro-Asiatic, North-East African, and Semitic world.
You don’t have to force this into modern racial categories to recognize a simple truth: the people of this region were people of color—deeply connected to the African continent and its civilizations.
This framing does not diminish the spiritual meaning of the stories. It simply places them back where they belong—geographically and historically.
The Children of Israel: A Lineage Rooted in Africa
Abraham fathers Isaac.
Isaac fathers Jacob.
Jacob fathers the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
These tribes emerge, develop, and struggle in lands that border Africa. When famine hits, they migrate to Egypt—a Black civilization in the ancient world, especially prior to the large-scale invasions of later centuries.
This brings us to Moses.
Moses in an African Empire
According to Genesis 10, Egyptians descend from Ham. For more than a thousand years, the visual imagery, inscriptions, and culture of Ancient Egypt depicted a Black civilization rooted in the Nile Valley.
Moses is raised in Pharaoh’s court for 40 years.
This raises a simple historical observation:
If Moses grew up as the adopted grandson of Pharaoh,
And if Pharaoh was an African ruler in an African dynasty,
Then Moses had to resemble the people around him closely enough to be accepted as kin.
This is not a political statement.
It’s a contextual one.
The early Israelites and the early Egyptians were not racially opposite peoples. They lived in the same climate, traded, intermarried, fought, and shared cultural ties. Their identities overlapped far more than later art—and later politics—suggest.
Why This History Was Changed
Here is where the conversation shifts from ancient history to modern power.
Western art, scholarship, and theology—the kind produced from the Renaissance through the colonial era—did not simply “interpret” Scripture. They reconstructed it visually and racially to match:
European political structures
European religious goals
European cultural ideals
Whitewashing biblical figures was not an accident.
It was ideological.
It allowed enslavers to claim divine sanction.
Not only that, but it allowed colonial powers to imagine themselves as “chosen.”
It allowed racial hierarchies to pretend they were historical.
But memory pushes back.
Communities push back.
Genealogy pushes back.
And the text itself—when read without filters—pushes back.
Knowledge as Restoration, Not Rebellion
When people reclaim these historical truths, some react with discomfort or dismissal. But reinserting Africa into the biblical story is not revisionism.
It is correction.
For centuries, stereotypes, false imagery, and distorted education have replaced curiosity with caricature. That is why recovering these narratives matters—not to divide—but to heal identity.
When people understand their ancient legacy, when they see themselves in the stories of faith rather than erased from them, something powerful happens:
Dignity is restored, curiosity awakens, and history becomes whole again.
This is not softness.
This is not myth making.
This is truth-seeking
And truth has always been a force stronger than war.
Reflection
To understand the ancient world, we must loosen the grip of modern assumptions. We must question the images we were handed. And we must allow the text, archaeology, geography, and historical context to speak without interference.
When we do, a fuller picture emerges—a picture where the earliest peoples of Scripture lived in an Afro-Asiatic world deeply tied to Africa, shaped by Africa, and inseparable from Africa.
A picture where identity is not erased but remembered.
A picture where knowledge becomes liberation.
“What was forgotten can be remembered. What was distorted can be restored. Truth waits beneath the layers others place upon it. Seek it with courage, and you reclaim not only history—you reclaim yourself.”
— Adapted in the spirit of Marcus Aurelius