Who was the 1st Black Man to see Jesus?

Who was the 1st Black Man to see Jesus?


We all know the long held belief amongst many African Americans that Jesus was a black man?

But was he?

That’s a conversation for another day; but Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr., discusses the first black man who may have seen Jesus; and the presence of other blacks in the Bible.

Check out an excerpt of the piece here:

The New Testament refers to a number of black people as well, including Simon of Cyrene, who carried Jesus’ cross (Matthew 27:32), and the Ethiopian eunuch, the emissary of Queen Kandake (or Candace), who is thought to be one of the first non-Jewish people baptized (Acts 8:26-40) after Jesus’ crucifixion. (Ethiopia is referred to about 40 times in the Bible, by the way.)

But the first black person thought to have seen Jesus didn’t become “black” in pictorial representations until late in the Middle Ages.

Read more at The Root


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