What Does the Torah Say About Black People?

The Torah says nothing negative—or specifically categorizing—about Black people as a racial group. This is a point worth stating plainly, because a long history of misreading has suggested otherwise.

The most notorious misreading is the so-called "Curse of Ham" (Genesis 9:20–27), where Noah curses Canaan, Ham's son, to be a servant. Medieval commentators—and later, pro-slavery apologists in the 17th–19th centuries—invented the claim that Ham's descendants were Black Africans and that this curse justified racial slavery. Scholars like David Goldenberg, whose 2003 work The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is the definitive study, demonstrate that this racial reading has no basis in the Hebrew text or in early rabbinic interpretation. The curse is geographical and tribal, not racial.

The Mishnah itself uses the word "black" (שְׁחוֹרָה) purely as a descriptive physical term in legal contexts—for instance, in Nedarim 9:10, where a man who vowed not to marry a woman he called "black" is released from his vow if she is actually fair-skinned, because the vow was simply mistaken from the outset Mishnah Nedarim 9:10. There's no moral weight attached to skin color here whatsoever.

Torah law extends protections to all people residing among Israel: "No person among you shall partake of blood, nor shall the stranger who resides among you" Leviticus 17:12—the stranger (ger) receives the same legal standing in many contexts as the native Israelite. Rabbi Akiva famously taught that "love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18) is the great principle of the Torah, and the Talmud grounds human dignity in the single origin of all humanity from Adam.

To be direct: the Torah does not rank, condemn, or diminish people based on skin color. Any claim that it does reflects later interpretive distortion, not the text itself.

The Christian Bible—including both the Old and New Testaments—contains no teaching that Black people are inferior, cursed, or spiritually lesser. The New Testament's single use of the word "black" in a racial-adjacent context is entirely mundane: Matthew 5:36 notes that a person can't make a single hair "white or black" Matthew 5:36, illustrating human powerlessness, not racial commentary.

The "Curse of Ham" misreading (discussed under Judaism) was adopted enthusiastically by American and European pro-slavery theologians from the 17th century onward. Figures like Thornton Stringfellow argued in the 1850s that Genesis 9 sanctioned racial slavery. This interpretation was contested even in its own era—abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and theologians like Charles Hodge challenged it on both exegetical and moral grounds—and is today universally rejected by mainstream biblical scholarship.

Paul's declaration in Galatians 3:28 that "there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free" is the New Testament's clearest statement on human equality before God. Acts 8 depicts Philip baptizing an Ethiopian official without hesitation, a passage many scholars read as a deliberate signal of the gospel's racial inclusivity.

It's worth being honest: Christianity has a deeply troubled racial history. The same scriptures that contain no racial hierarchy were weaponized for centuries to justify slavery and segregation. That's a historical fact the tradition must reckon with. But the texts themselves don't support those uses.

The Quran contains no racial hierarchy. Surah 40:31 explicitly states that "Allah willeth no injustice for (His) slaves" Quran 40:31—a principle that Muslim scholars have consistently applied universally across all peoples and ethnicities.

The most cited Quranic verse on human diversity is 49:13: "O mankind, We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you." This verse is widely understood as a direct repudiation of racial pride. The Prophet Muhammad's Farewell Sermon is also frequently quoted: "An Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab, nor a non-Arab over an Arab; a white has no superiority over a black, nor a black over a white—except by piety and good action."

Bilal ibn Rabah, an enslaved Black African man, was one of the Prophet's closest companions and the first muezzin (caller to prayer) in Islam—a position of enormous honor. This historical fact is central to how Muslims understand their tradition's stance on race.

That said, anti-Black racism has existed within Muslim-majority societies historically, and scholars like Bernard Lewis (Race and Slavery in the Middle East, 1990) have documented this tension between Islamic ideals and social practice. The Quran's own text, however, does not endorse racial discrimination.

Within the Torah’s legal framing, the text binds both the Israelite and the resident stranger (ger) to core commandments (for example, the prohibition on eating blood), which addresses communal practice rather than racial groupings Leviticus 17:12. A key early rabbinic discussion (Mishnah) treats “black/white” as ordinary descriptors within laws of vows: if someone’s vow relied on a mistaken description (calling a woman “black” when she is white, or vice versa), the vow is null because it was made in error, indicating the terms function descriptively, not as moral categories Mishnah Nedarim 9:10. Later rabbinic teaching also emphasizes that moral reward and atonement turn on deeds and commandments, not on physical traits, underscoring ethical action over inherited or outward features Mishnah Makkot 3:15.

In the New Testament, Jesus forbids swearing oaths by one’s own head because a person can’t control whether a single hair becomes white or black, using color neutrally to illustrate human limits rather than to mark a racial group Matthew 5:36. Christians also read the Torah, where legal concern extends to the resident stranger in Israelite society, a communal emphasis rather than a racial taxonomy Leviticus 17:12.

Not applicable. Concerns Torah/Old Testament interpretation; no direct Islamic-scripture counterpart is required for this question.