You know that thing when one of the books you are reading quotes from the other?
I'm currently devouring @esaumccaulley's "Reading While Black" in the midst of rereading Richard Bauckham's "Jesus & the Eyewitnesses."
If you're not familiar with Bauckham's book, he advances a brilliant argument that the Gospels are based on eyewitness testimony from named individuals. (In the case of John, he concludes, "very unfashionably, that an eyewitness wrote it." Gotta love that line.)
One of Bauckham's arguments is that people are named in the Gospels in particular ways. e.g, Simon of Cyrene, who is forced to carry Jesus's cross, is identified as "the father of Rufus & Alexander" (Mark 15:21) Why? Simon was a very common name, but "of Cyrene would identify him
Bauckham argues that his sons are mentioned because they were known in the early church & guaranteed their father's testimony. @esaumccaulley cites Bauckham on this & points out that Cyrene was a city in North Africa, in what we now call Libya.
Add these insights together & we can conclude that two of the eyewitness sources for the earliest Gospel were black believers. Boom.
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