The Ethiopian Bride
In Numbers 12:1, Moses, one of the pillars of Judeo-Christian religion,
marries an Ethiopian woman, causing his brother and sister, Aaron and
Miriam, to speak against Moses.3 God—not Moses—responds to their
complaints by cursing Miriam, appropriately or ironically turning Miriam’s skin white with leprosy.4
A great deal of both ancient and modern ink has been spilled attempting
to explain how this union either does not constitute interracial marriage or
does not result in miscegenation. Some commentators claim that the Ethiopian woman was actually white.5 Others claim that Moses never actually
slept with her, so he and the lineage remained “pure.” The Hellenistic Jewish historiographer Artapanus, believed to have lived in the third or second
century BCE, catalogues Moses’s time in Ethiopia but does not mention his
marriage to an Ethiopian woman. In the first century CE, Romano-Jewish
historian Flavius Josephus incorporates Artapanus’s Ethiopian history into
his own work but adds a story already familiar to ancient Greek writers:
the betrayal of a besieged city by a royal daughter who falls in love with the
leader of the attacking forces. In this case Tharbis, the daughter of the king
of Ethiopia, watches Moses from the ramparts and falls in love with him
due to his military prowess. She proposes marriage by way of a messenger,
and he accepts, provided that she surrender the town. In Josephus’s text,
the nuptials are celebrated and Tharbis returns with Moses to Egypt.6
By about the tenth century, the love story has an important new twist.
In the medieval Hebrew text The Chronicles of Moses, Moses stays in Ethiopia but never consummates his marriage with the Ethiopian woman:
proof
Moses captured the city and was placed upon the throne of the kingdom. . . . They also gave him the Cushite wife of the late Monarch.
But Moses, fearing the God of his Fathers, did not approach her. . . .
In the fortieth year of his reign . . . the queen said to the princes:
“Behold now, during the whole of the forty years . . . he has not once
approached me.”7
At least in this version, the Ethiopian woman is seen to be an unacceptable
bride for Moses, and she herself announces that the marriage has never
been consummated.
Debates about the identity—and more obsessively the race—of Moses’s
wife continue to this day. A basic online search for “Moses wife” will bring
up a variety of long discussions about Zipporah or Moses’s wife, and the
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Black Legacies
meaning of “Ethiopian” and “Cushite,” along with their historical derivations and potential usages. These modern commentaries echo the long
ancient and medieval commentary tradition for the very brief mention of
this marriage.
One of the most interesting modern interpretations of Moses’s Ethiopian bride is the 2005 semihistorical biography by Marek Halter, a FrenchJewish author living in Paris. The book, Zipporah, is part of a series on biblical women, which also includes Lilah, Sarah, and Mary of Nazareth.8 The
author made race the central aspect of Zipporah’s life story, casting her as
an adopted Cushite who is unmarriageable because she is black. Tellingly,
the cover art for different editions reflects the continuing debate over Zipporah’s identity as an Ethiopian and/or a Cushite.9 The international edition shows a dark woman with wide nose and full lips, stretched earlobes
and close-cropped hair (fig. 3.1, left). The North American edition shows
her as a lighter-skinned, long-haired woman dressed in typical “Middle
proof
Figure 3.1. Cover illustrations for Marek Halter, Zipporah, Wife of Moses: A Novel. Left, international edition; right, North American edition. Random House Books.
Biblical Race
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Eastern” garb (fig. 3.1, right). Evidently different modern audiences demand different cover images for the wife of Moses; not much seems to
have changed from the medieval controversies over Moses’s wife’s body.
Ham’s Curse
Ironically, the story in Genesis 9 that is most often pointed to as describing the origin of blackness, Ham’s curse, does not actually speak of
blackness at all:
And Noe, a husbandman, began to till the ground, and planted a
vineyard. / And drinking of the wine was made drunk, and was uncovered in his tent. / Which when Cham the father of Chanaan had
seen, to wit, that his father’s nakedness was uncovered, he told it to
his two brethren without. / But Sem and Japheth put a cloak upon
their shoulders, and going backward, covered the nakedness of their
father: and their faces were turned away, and they saw not their father’s nakedness. / And Noe awaking from the wine, when he had
learned what his younger son had done to him, / He said: Cursed be
Chanaan, a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.10
proof
Interpretation of the biblical account generally follows this line: After the
Flood, Noah gets drunk one evening and needs the help of his children.
His son Ham does not avert his eyes but rather sees his father’s nakedness.
Presumably for this reason, Noah curses Ham and banishes him. Part of
the curse is written on his body to remind him and others of his misdoing—his skin is turned black and he will be the father of the race of Cush.
Yet blackness is not mentioned in the biblical story. So at what point did
Ham turn black?
Historian David Goldenberg has written a fascinating and wide-ranging study of the phenomenon by which the Ham of the Bible was blackened and made the forebear of black Africans, thereby justifying their
slavery in biblical terms. Goldenberg’s focus is on the Hebrew Bible and
the origins and meaning of blackness in that tradition, along with its development through the ancient and medieval periods. He does not offer
an exact date, but he finds a reference to Ham being blackened for his misdeed and passing that black skin along to his children in a ninth-century
text.11 It is clear that the transformation had taken place by the medieval
period in Christian, Jewish, and Muslim sources.
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Black Legacies