Saturday, January 22, 2022

Schade and Bowen on the "Blackness" of the Children of Canaan in Moses 7:8

  

For behold, the Lord shall curse the land with much heat, and the barrenness thereof shall go forth forever; and there was a blackness came upon all the children of Canaan, that they were despised among all people. (Moses 7:8)

 

In the ancient mode of thinking there are multiple ways of expressing “blackness” in reference to demeanors and countenance. They describe a mien or a non-physical aura that a person displays or exudes. These can also include descriptions of wickedness and “’black’ and ‘white’ in Arabic, can be used to refer to levels of moral cleanliness and purity. Such a distinction is found in 3 Enoch 44:6, where Rabbi Ishmael is shown the spirits suffering in Sheol and comments that ‘the faces of the wicked souls were as black as the bottom of a pot, because of the multitude of their wicked deeds’” (Bradshaw and Larsen, In God’s Image, 2:131). The nuances of this ancient text highlight the wickedness of the people in the story and a spiritual type of dark demeanor that had come over those people, rather than a physically dark skin. This contrasts with the passages in scripture describing transfigurations and the countenances of people glowing bright during theophanies. The difference in countenance seems to be the heart of the matter. Joseph Smith never seemed to interject a physical interpretation on the text, nor did ancient societies among whom ethnic diversity existed.

 

While others attempted to claim that dark skin was a curse (and this was a traditional inherited by nineteenth-century America from its Judeo-Christian background over the centuries), Joseph taught that “all spirits are pure that Come from the presence of God” (see “Speech of Elder Orson Hyde,” 30; Kenney, Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, December 25, 1869, 6:511, and Reeve, Religion of a Different Color, 207-8). Illustrating the figurative use of the word blackness from a scriptural context to describe mood, Eliza R. Snow published the following psalm, which has heavy biblical undertones as she describes the wickedness of Missourians against the Saints:

 

Missouri. What aileth thee, oh! Missouri! that thy face should gather blackness, and why are thy features so terribly distorted?
Rottenness has seized upon thy vitals—corruption is preying upon thy inward parts, and the breath of thy lips is full of destructive contagion.
What meaneth thy shaking, and why art thou terrified! Thou hast become like Belshazar. “mene, mene, tekel, upharsin,” is indeed written against thee, but it is the work of thine own hand—the characters upon thy wall, are of thine own inscription, and wherefore dost thou tremble? (History, 1838-1856, volume E-1 [1 July 1843-30 April 1844], p. 1872, The Joseph Smith Papers. Another example of how people conversant with the Bible understood the idea of a figurative blackness comes from a letter asserting that for wicked people “degraded in form and faculties . . . is reserved the blackness of darkness forever Punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power.” Letter from Udney H. Jacob, 6 January 1844, p. [3], The Joseph Smith Papers. A further example comes from an 1829 letter from Jesse Smith that accuses Hyrum Smith of “impos[ing] on the credulity of your Grandfather . . . Blackness of darkness.” Letterbook 2, p. 59, The Joseph Smith Papers)

 

This type of language and interpretation associating “blackness” with wickedness . . . is also found in Bible commentaries of Joseph’s day (see, e.g., Burder, Oriental Customs, 164-65). In this light it is possible that references to blackness in the Book of Moses are to be viewed in the same vein as the biblical texts—namely, their ancient nuances refer not to literal skin color but figuratively to spiritual and emotional demeanors or countenances. Modern interpretation sometimes ignore the nuances of ancient texts, especially when removing those texts from their original context. . . . We must avoid uncritically applying modern lines of thinking to an ancient text that appears to have lacked the overt racial implications sometimes attributed to it. (Aaron P. Schade and Matthew L. Bowen, The Book of Moses: From the Ancient of Days to the Latter Days [Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2021], 292-93)

 

Further Reading

 

Adam Stokes, “The People of Canaan: A New Reading of Moses 7,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 47 (2021): 159-180