CHAPTER II

LESSONS FROM A BLACK SUPERHERO

Genesis 10: 6-12

6And the sons of Ham; Cush, and Miz'ra-iam, and Phut, and Canaan. 7And the sons of Cush; Seba, and Vav'ilah, and Sabtah, and Ra'amah, and Sab'techa: and the sons of Ra'amah; Sheba and Dedan. 8And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. 9He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. 10And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. 11Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nin'eveh, and the city Reho'both, and Calah, 12and Resen between Nin'eveh and Calah: the same is a great city.

Our labor is to introduce you to some of our Black brothers of Biblical History. I labor to establish in our minds and in the minds of any whom will hear these messages, that the bible is defiantly a Black history book. It reveals a God-filled history of God in relationship to man, but most certainly the Black man. In the last chapter, I introduced you to Noah, the Black man who walked with God. But there are others.

Now, I do not want anybody to think for one minute that the Holy Bible is written only for the Black man. No, it is written for all men. But since there seems to have been, on one hand, a deliberate effort to hide the Black man's presence in the scriptures and on the other hand, a misconstrued view of the bible as being the 'white man's bible', I am committed to showing not only the Black man's presence but also providential intentionally to include the Black man in the redemption story and objective.

So, I point us again to the sons of Noah and especially Ham and his descendants. Now, remember that Noah is a Black man. I argued previously that most scholars would credit Ham as being Black and the father of the Black race. In fact the name Ham means "dark-skinned." The name Ham comes from the Egyptian word "Cam", which is the strongest term for black. It means black lamb or black people. The Hebrew word for Ham is Cham; it also means black or Egypt.

Well, if Ham is Noah's Black child, then according to the scientific community, Noah had to be Black. Scientific studies declare emphatically that conception occurs by a male seed, which fertilizes the female egg. This means that the Father's blood, not the mother's, flows through the child's veins. In fact, blood test today will prove whom the father of a child is with from 95% to 99% accuracy. Noah's blood runs through Ham's veins and if Ham is Black, then so is Noah. This means that Japheth and Shem are Black children as well.

G. Campbell Morgan, in his book, An Exposition of the Whole Bible, says "Christian Ethnologist, still claim that all the races of today may be traced back to Noah's three sons."4 These three sons were born of the same father and mother and all of them and their immediate family spoke the same language.

It will be a major task to explain the differences of race without consideration of the millennia of crossbreeding on one hand, curses of God on the other, and the millennia of environmental changes. But after the dispersion of the people at Babel, the three sons of Noah scattered Northward (Japheth), Southward (Ham), and Eastward (Shem) and consequently new tribes and new languages were born.5 (George Lamsa, Old Testament Light, pp 35-36)

Looking again at Ham in our scripture text, verse 6 tells us that Ham had four sons: Cush, Mizraim, Put, and Canaan. We know much of Canaan but consider with me Cush. Verses 7 and 8 list the sons of Cush, but Verse 8 elaborates on one son more than others do. Nimrod