The three colors of humanity: Early Jewish race-making in 1 Enoch ’s Animal Apocalypse

Abstract

Over the past several decades since Frank Snowden published his seminal monograph Blacks in Antiquity, scholars have become increasingly interested in understanding the ethnic and racial frameworks deployed by ancient peoples. The intersections of race, color, and ethnicity in classical literature have long been debated, but ancient Jewish texts tend to be left out of these discussions. In this article, I first analyze 1 Enoch’s Animal Apocalypse against the backdrop of Hellenistic-era environmental theory to show that it displays early forms of race-making through its differentiation of colored bulls. Although leading commentaries offered by Nickelsburg and Tiller reject racial readings of the Animal Apocalypse’s colored bulls, Matthew Black’s commentary from the 1980s does not. I show that ancient Hellenistic conceptions of peoples’ color, ethnicity, and behaviors shaped by environmental determinism support Matthew Black’s framework for understanding the Animal Apocalypse’s use of color, namely his equating of Chapter 89’s black bull with Ham, contra Nickelsburg and Tiller. Second, I stress that the Animal Apocalypse’s schema of colored bulls reflects the view that all of humanity derives from white, red, and black ancestors and that this ordering of the three colors constitutes a hierarchal sequencing of humankind, classified into three different types of people in descending order.

Ancient processes of racialization in the Hellenistic Near-East and Mediterranean ¹

After the events of the flood (1 En. 89.1–8), the Animal Apocalypse describes Noah’s family leaving the ark like this: “And that white bull who had become a man emerged from the ark and there were three bulls with him; one of the three bulls was white like that bull and one of them was red like blood, and one was black.” ² In trying to understand the way that color functions within the Animal Apocalypse, scholars have typically turned to allegorical or symbolic interpretations which associate the red bulls with blood or bloodshed, black with impurity, and white with purity. ³ However, in his 1985 commentary on 1 Enoch, Matthew Black suggested that 1 Enoch’s (89.9) discussion of colored bulls signified the origin of three races—red, black, and white. ⁴ Perhaps because he didn’t substantiate this claim, all subsequent commentaries on 1 Enoch and the Animal Apocalypse rejected his framework which equates the black bull with Ham, the red bull with Japheth, and the white bull with Shem. The leading commentary offered by George Nickelsburg specifically links the identity of the black bull to Japheth on the basis that the dark color may represent “the gloom of the north, in which general direction the descendants of Japheth were thought to reside.” ⁵ I counter this claim by grounding the Animal Apocalypse’s use of color within frameworks of ancient environmental determinism, a popular type of racial reasoning in the ancient world. Doing so demonstrates that the Animal Apocalypse’s appeal to these types of racial processes reflects broader trends of Hellenistic scribal organization. Analyzing the Animal Apocalypse within these ancient processes of race-making enables us to see that the assigning of colors was meant to typologize skin color in an effort to explain human diversity. ⁶ I propose the following framework to understand the Animal Apocalypse’s use of color: black is reserved for cursed communities who dwell in hot, southern regions (Ham); red is used to describe hot-headed northerners (Japheth); and white describes God’s elect and those who live in the central and eastern parts of the world (Shem). In addition to accounting for skin color and the dispositions of peoples, this schema explicitly connects blackness with communities commonly understood as cursed or marked in ancient Jewish and Christian traditions (Cainites, Hamites, and Canaanites).

Environmental determinism is a socially constructed framework which suggests that where a person is born influences their appearance, temperament, and internal disposition. ⁷ Ideas such as these have a robust history in ancient Mediterranean literature. Herodotus describes Indians, for example, “having intercourse openly like cattle” and that their proximity to the sun causes their semen to be black (Hdt. 3.101). ⁸ Across Herodotus’ Histories, we find traces of environmental determinism in his comments on different ethnic communities and nations living within and on the fringes of the oikumene. Moreover, the ancient Greek “father of medicine,” Hippocrates, explicitly argues in his treatise Airs, Waters, Places that generally speaking “the constitutions and habits of a people follow the nature of the land where they live” (Aer. 103). ⁹ He hypothesizes that the people living in moderate climates tend to be healthy and exhibit wholesome traits. He contrasts this idea with the environmental conditions of stubborn peoples, who dwell in regions where the air is hot, dry, and stagnant (Aer. 99). Dated roughly to the late fifth-century B.C.E., these attestations in Histories and Airs, Waters, Places show that there was a precedent for this line of thinking during the Hellenistic age. For these ancient authors, the geographic location of a person’s birth manifested in how that person looked and acted. This type of reasoning developed over time as the oikumene spread and eventually it was further “divided into a series of latitudinal bands or zones called ‘klimata’, a method that would last well into the Renaissance, and racial characteristics were eventually attributed to groups living in each zone.” ¹⁰

Benjamin Isaac identifies these clusters of ethnic generalizations based on geographic location as “proto-racisms”: “the term proto-racism . . . may be used when Greek and Latin sources attribute to groups of people common characteristics considered to be unalterable because they are determined by external factors or hereditary.” ¹¹ While I agree with Isaac that looking at the racial and ethnic frameworks of the Greco-Roman world can help us better understand the developments of race over time, the purpose of this paper is not to trace a genealogical line of racism from the ancient world to present. Rather, instead, its purpose is to acknowledge and analyze ancient Jewish emic formulations and systemizations of race and ethnicity during the Hellenistic age to emphasize the constructedness of racial categories and differentiation. Discussions of race in antiquity are fraught, especially because of modern scholars’ reliance upon scientific somatic-centric approaches which often dismiss ancient and early modern processes of racialization or race-making. ¹² Similar to my own construal, Isaac points to the work of Herodotus (fifth century B.C.E.) as one of the decisive sources for the creation of these proto-racisms. At the onset of the Hellenistic age, ancient authors had mechanisms in place to understand ethnic difference according to geographical location. ¹³

While the books that later comprise the Hebrew Bible contain evidence for the Othering of ethnic communities, they do not use environmental determinism in ways consistent with later Hellenistic Jewish literature. Genesis, with its many etiologies, provides us with explicit examples of a type of ethnic Othering. In Genesis, we often see that biblical figures’ names reflect their situations, personalities, and core values. Jacob’s name, for example, meaning “deceiver,” functions well within the patriarchal narratives because deception is one of Jacob’s identifying markers. The patriarchs of Genesis, though all related, are each understood as the progenitors of different groups of people despite their shared ancestry (Cainites, Sethites, Ishmaelites, Shemites, Edomites, etc.). To call on Jacob’s narrative again, Genesis emphasizes that these two men represent related but decidedly different types of people. God tells Rebekah that two “nations” are growing inside her womb (ויאמר יהוה לה שני גיים בבטנך‎) (Gen. 25:23). Even more striking is Genesis’ detailed description of Esau’s appearance; “the first one came out red all over like a hairy fur coat and they called him Esau” (Gen. 25:24). Through this type of ethnic differentiation, the explanation for diversity is explained by developing narratives and associations using key terms. Genesis links Esau with the land of Edom as “Edom” ĕḏōm (אדום‎) and “red” ’aḏmōnî (אדמוני‎) share the same Semitic root. Genesis’ emphasis on Esau’s hairiness, sēʿār (שער‎), alludes to the city of Edom, Seir. Genesis stresses the similarity between the terms for Edomites, redness, and hair, not their physical characteristics. Furthermore, Genesis 10’s Table of Nations, as a type of universalizing ethnography, traces a wide range of different peoples to one of Noah’s three sons, but provides little to no information about how the environment influences their descendants. We can infer from Genesis 10 that Japheth’s descendants dwelled in the north and Ham’s the south, but Genesis does not provide any awareness or engagement with environmental theory as we see with later texts like the Animal Apocalypse and the Book of Jubilees.

Although texts of the Hebrew Bible, especially Genesis, often display efforts to differentiate between various ethnic communities, the incorporation of temperature and moral assumptions based on skin color that is later attested in the Animal Apocalypse is specific to the Hellenistic age. During the Hellenistic age, Jewish scribes of the Near-East became increasingly interested in not only the distant past, ¹⁴ having generated large quantities of vibrant narratives about Moses, Enoch, Abraham, and other patriarchs, but also in the systemization of written knowledge. ¹⁵ As a genre of literature centered on origins and bygone ages, the writings which developed engage Genesis traditions in ways that seek to explain the breadth of human diversity. The Animal Apocalypse reflects these scribal interests in its universalizing organization of knowledge through its animal metaphor and use of color.

Colored complexions and toned temperaments in the Animal Apocalypse and other Hellenistic literature

The Animal Apocalypse, the second of 1 Enoch’s Dream Visions, is commonly dated to the Maccabean crisis of the second-century B.C.E. ¹⁶ It depicts ancient Israelite history from the creation of Adam to an imagined eschatological divine judgment using an animal metaphor. The text narrates world events happening within animal pens, the Israelites as white bulls and sheep, Egyptians as wolves, and the Ishmaelites as wild asses. In the 1980s, Matthew Black controversially suggested that the discussion of colored bulls in the Animal Apocalypse (1 En. 89.9) reflected the origin of three races (red, black, and white), specifically associating the black bull with Ham. ¹⁷ Both Nickelsburg ¹⁸ and Tiller, ¹⁹ in their respective commentaries, contrarily link Japheth, not Ham, to the identity of the black bull. Nickelsburg unpersuasively likens the color black to the gloomy weather conditions of the North, a meteorological phenomenon that it is by no means clear that the scribes who produced the Animal Apocalypse would have known about; Tiller argues that there is no way to decisively distinguish which of Noah’s sons, Ham or Japheth, is the black bull. ²⁰ I agree with Black’s framework and suggest that color is deployed in the Animal Apocalypse to gauge not only behavior and moral character, but its framework also implies that all peoples derive from red, black, or white ancestors. This feature of the Animal Apocalypse fits within broader Hellenistic Near Eastern trends which evidence scribes systematizing and categorizing the world around them in the centuries after the successful Hellenic takeover of the Near-East. ²¹ Building off Black’s claim, I propose the following extended hierarchal framework, which accounts for the text’s use of environmental theory, to understand the Animal Apocalypse’s use of color: white describes God’s elect and those who live in the central and eastern parts of the world (Shem); red is used to describe hot-headed northerners (Japheth); and black is reserved for cursed communities who dwell in hot, southern regions. The text equates each of these three colors to one of Noah’s three sons.

The Animal Apocalypse includes two instances of bulls being differentiated by color, each representing a different anthropological system. Chapter 85 describes the creation of Adam, Eve, and their children (red, black, and white bulls are all introduced). Chapter 89 narrates the events also recounted in Genesis 9 and 10 with Noah and his three sons leaving the ark after the flood (red, black, and white bulls are similarly reintroduced). Both instances of color differentiation occur within passages concerning creation and the populating of the earth. Enoch’s vision of the Animal Apocalypse begins in Chapter 85 with Enoch relaying his dream to his son, Methuselah:

A bull came forth from the earth, and that bull was white. And after it, a young heifer came forth. And with her two bull calves came forth; one of them was black, and one was red. And that black calf struck the red one and pursued it over the earth . . . and the female calf . . . mourned greatly over it and searched for it . . . After this, she bore another white bull, and after she bore many black bulls and cows. (1 En. 85.3–8)

3. . . . Lahm: waḍ’a: ’em-medr: wa-kona: zeku: lāhm: ṣa‘adā: wa-’em-dexrēhu: waḍ’at: ṭā‘ewā: ānestāyt: ’aḥatti: wa-meslēhā: waḍ’u: kel’ētu: ṭā‘ewā: wa- ’aḥadu: ’em-menēhomu: kona: ṣallima: wa- ’aḥadu qayḥa :: 4. Wa-g^wad’o: zeku: ṣallim: ṭā‘ewā: la-qayih: wa-talawwo: westa: medr . . . 6. . . . ’eg^walt: ’anestāyt . . . wa-’awyawat: xabēhu: ’awyāta: ‘abiyāta . . . :: 8. Wa-’em-dexra-ze: waladat: kāle’a: lāhma: ṣa‘adā: wa-’em-dexrēhu: waladat: ’alhemta: bezuxāna: wa-eg^walta: ṣallimāna ::

These passages depict Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel as colored bulls. Being familiar with the events of Genesis 1–4, we can confidently identify Adam and Seth as the white bulls, Abel as red, and Cain as black. Unambiguous, the above passages leave little room for interpretation in terms of identifying the bulls. Sethites (white) and Cainites (black) populate the earth separately. Interestingly, the Animal Apocalypse shows clear anxiety about the mixing of Cainite and Sethite peoples—a trope not usually associated with Second Temple literature. The descendants of the black and white bulls do not mix, existing within distinct animal pens until a star (an angel) falls from heaven in Chapter 86. Because Cain murders Abel, red bulls are absent from the metaphor until they are reincorporated after the flood in Chapter 89. The Animal Apocalypse contains two layers of identity construction and boundary setting—these antediluvian generations are both animalized as bulls and further assigned differing colors, as discussed below. The text’s characterization of antediluvian peoples as bulls most likely symbolizes their high sacrificial value within the cultic system of the temple. ²²

Chapter 86 introduces the watchers, paralleling the events of Genesis and 1 Enoch 6. One fallen star, probably Asael, ²³ descends to the earth and transforms into a bull. Enoch claims,

. . . I saw heaven above, and look, a star fell from heaven, and it arose and was eating and pasturing among those cattle. Then I saw those large and black cattle, and look, all of them exchanged their pens and their pastures and their calves, and they began to moan yaʿāwyyewu (የዓውይዉ) one after the other. (1 En. 86.1–2)

1. . . . Wa-re’iku: samāya: mal‘elta: wa-nawā: kokab: ’aḥadu: wadqa: ’em-samāy: wa-yetlē‘‘al: wa-yeballe‘: wa-yetra‘ay: mā’kala: ’ellektu: ’alhemt :: 2. Wa-’emze: re’iku: ’alhemta: ‘abiyāna: ṣallimāna: wa-nāhu: k^wellomu: wallaṭu: me‘eyāmomu: wa-mer‘āyomu: wa-’aṭ‘awāhomu: wa- ’aḥazu: ya ʿāwyyewu: ’aḥadu: la-kālle’u ::

This passage suggests that the star’s fall to earth catalyzed intermingling between black and white bulls. Given the chaos that ensues when the rest of the stars-turned-bulls fall (i.e., cannibalistic elephants and the proliferation of wickedness on earth), the text’s inclusion of these two distinct communities mingling together signals this act as a problem. The red bulls are not involved, in contrast to the antediluvian black and white bulls. If we trust the text’s narrative and metaphorical continuity, the Animal Apocalypse here shows clear anxiety about the blurring of Cainite and Sethite communities, which, according to this narrative, was offset by the watchers’ fall to earth. Even if we were not thinking about Sethites and Cainites as different “races,” per se, it was common to understand them as two different types of human beings that should not mix. Ephrem of Nisibus, for example, a Syrian Christian writing in the fourth-century C.E., condemns the mixing of these two communities in his Commentary on Genesis. ²⁴ Ephrem blames the earth’s corruption on the abandonment of modesty after the Sethites—who he identifies as the sons of God in Genesis 6—took Cainite women for their wives ²⁵ ; “Although this thing [the earth’s descent into wickedness] began because of the licentious and poor men . . . the entire tribe of Seth followed suit and was stirred to a frenzy (ܫܓܫ) over them” (Comm. on Gen. 6.3.2). ²⁶

In their understandings of the events leading up to the flood, the Animal Apocalypse (1 En. 86.1–2) and Ephrem’s Commentary on Genesis 6.3.2 both indicate that the Sethites were distressed by the presence of Cainites, whether they were “stirred to a frenzy” or that “they began to moan” one after another after the communities mixed. Among critical editions and commentaries, this verb የዓውይዉ, to cry out or moan, has traditionally been regarded as a text-critical crux and is typically emended. Despite only being preserved in one Ethiopic manuscript (g), Charles opts for the word የሐይዉ, “to live,” in his rendering of the Ethiopic text. Charles notes that most of Ethiopic manuscripts he’s using contain variations of የዓውይዉ, meaning to cry or lament, but does not think that “lamentation” fits within the narrative context. ²⁷ Ultimately, he suggests that both የሐይዉ and የዓውይዉ are corruptions of the verb የሐይዱ (yaḥayyedu), meaning to plunder or violently rob. Charles’ proposed solution would read like this: “Then I saw those large and black cattle, and look, all of them exchanged their pens and their pastures and their calves, and they began to plunder one another.” Charles’ reading is certainly possible, but the moaning word, የዓውይዉ, is not only more common across Ethiopic manuscripts, but offers a plausible option for understanding the earth’s corruption within an Enochic context because the cows “moaning” or “crying out” may allude to sexual transgression—one of the Book of Watchers’ two distinctive motifs, the other being that of illicit knowledge. I disagree, then, with Charles’ emendation given that የዓውይዉ can also denote “moan,” ²⁸ which fits well within later Christian reception of Genesis 6, particularly Ephrem’s Commentary on Genesis. Moaning, in this context, would denote a sense of crying out or some type of sexual expression—maybe even an onomatopoeic “moo.” ²⁹ Approaching this word as an indicator of participation in illicit sexual activity expresses the Sethite descent into depravity which catalyzed the need for the flood. It is compelling that each of these narratives about the events leading up to the flood include a word of distress or crying out after Cainites marry into Sethite families. Although the trope of Sethite/Cainite tensions is prevalent among early Christians, it is not typically found in Hellenistic Jewish literature. That the Animal Apocalypse casts the mixing of these two groups in such negative light is likely an early attestation of the dichotomy of Sethites and Cainites. It could also likely suggest that Ephrem was using older traditions attested in the Animal Apocalypse.

Chapters 85.1–89.8 of 1 Enoch describe the events and peoples of the antediluvian age using a bipartite anthropology. After Cain (black) murders Abel (red), Eve gave birth to Seth (white). The descendants of these black and white bulls then populate the earth as red bulls are absent from the metaphor. After the flood, however, the Animal Apocalypse begins utilizing a tripartite anthropology when it reintroduces the colored bulls. It describes Noah and his sons exiting the ark:

And that white bull who had become a man emerged from the ark and there were three bulls with him; one of the three bulls was white like that bull and one of them was red like blood, and one was black, and that white bull departed from them. (1 En. 89.9)

9. Wa-we’etu: lāhm: ṣa‘adā: za-kona: be’esē: waṣ’a: ’em-zeku: masqar: wa-śalastu-’alhemt: meslēhu: wa-kona: ’aḥadu ’em-zeku: śalastu: ’alhemt: ṣa‘adā: yemasselo: la-zeku: lāhm: wa-’aḥadu: ’em-menēhomu: qayḥ: kama: dam: wa-’aḥadu: ṣallim: wa-we’etu: zeku: lahm: ṣa‘adā: xalafa: ’em-menēhomu ::

For the first time since Abel’s murder, red bulls are reincorporated into the animal metaphor within a tripartite anthropology. Red bulls are reintroduced because these scenes parallel the first creation account. Because the antediluvian world ended in chaos and wickedness, Noah and his three sons’ repopulation of the earth constitutes a second divinely orchestrated creation. At the start of this new age, these three bulls of differing colors are tasked with repopulating the world in a manner very similar to what is proposed in Genesis 10. Accordingly, every type of ethnic community stems from one of these bulls. Thus, Japheth, Shem, and Ham’s descendants range from colored bulls to leopards, or, outside of the animal metaphor, from Shemites, Hamites, and Japhethites to Syrians. Scholars unanimously agree that the white bulls represent Noah and Shem, but the identities of the red and black bulls remain contested. Nickelsburg, Mermelstein, ³⁰ and Tiller argue that the identity of the black bull is likely Japheth, but this association is incongruous with the first bipartite anthropology which links Cain to the identity of the first black bull. For instance, this assigning of colors begs the question: what do Cain and Japheth have in common in terms of symbolic association? Given this text’s first mention of the black bulls (the mark of Cain), I suggest we understand this black bull as Ham.

If we assign the identity of the black bull to Ham, it enables us to further identify a Sethite/Cainite affinity within the Animal Apocalypse’s use of color and environmental theory. In both instances of black bulls being introduced (chapters 85 and 89), each patriarch, Cain and Ham, is cursed or marked. Cain is marked after his murder of Abel in Gen 4:11–16 and Canaan, Ham’s son, is cursed after Ham saw Noah’s nakedness in Genesis 9. By equating Ham with the black bull in Chapter 89, it becomes clear that the Animal Apocalypse associates cursed communities with blackness (Cainites, Hamites, and Canaanites). ³¹ Much like other ancient Jewish texts, the Animal Apocalypse makes a point to disparage the Canaanites in an effort to legitimize Israel’s own claims to the land of Canaan. ³² The Animal Apocalypse accomplishes this by stressing that Canaanites were cursed long before Israel was promised the land through Abraham several generations after Noah. Blackness as a representation of cursed communities, in this way, stands in contrast to the election of Israelites which is signified by the white color of the bull symbolizing Shem. According to this schema, then, Shem’s descendants are white, Ham’s black, ³³ and Japheth’s red.

Nickelsburg argues that “if we follow the order of Noah’s sons in Gen . . . the bull here described as ‘red as blood’ represents Ham.” ³⁴ Nickelsburg’s suggestion makes sense if we only adhere to the order of Noah’s sons given in Gen 5:32, 6:10, and 7:13. But the shared literary relationship between the Animal Apocalypse and Jubilees dismantles Nickelsburg’s suggestion to only rely on the birth order documented in Genesis. Throughout Genesis, the birth order of Noah’s children appears to be Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Jubilees 8, however, lists the allotment order as Shem, Japheth, and Ham, consistent with the Animal Apocalypse. The Animal Apocalypse and Jubilees share other commonalities as well. For example, they both describe seven sluices opening to flood the earth (1 En. 89.2//Jub. 5.24). ³⁵

In addition to Jubilees attesting the same birth order that we see in the Animal Apocalypse, associating the black bull with Ham as opposed to Japheth better reflects Hellenistic Near-Eastern and Mediterranean conceptions of environmental determinism as I will now show.

Jubilees, much like Genesis, believes Ham’s descendants to dwell in the hot, southern regions of the world. In Jubilees, Noah allots Shem the central and eastern sections of the earth, Ham the area south of the Gihon which extends to the fiery mountains, and Japheth the northern regions of the earth. The regions sanctioned to each of Noah’s sons are characterized by temperature; Japheth’s region is cold, Ham’s is hot, and Shem’s is “neither hot nor cold because it is a mixture of cold and heat” (Jub. 8:30). To Ham, Noah issues

the area beyond the Gihon to the south, on the right side of the garden. It goes south and continues to all the mountains of fire. It goes westward to the Atel Sea and continues west until it reaches the Mauq Sea, in which everything that descends into it is destroyed. It continues northward to the boundary of Gadir and goes on the shore of the waters of the sea, to the waters of the Great Sea, until it reaches the Gihon River. The Gihon River continues until it reaches the right side of the Garden of Eden. (Jub. 8:22–24) ³⁶

It becomes apparent that Jubilees is referencing the geographical regions of Africa, even without the subsequent passages which explicitly name Ham’s decedents as Mizraim and Put, if we turn to the edenic scenes of Genesis which describe the Gihon river as running through the entirety of the land of Cush (Gen 2:13). ³⁷ Furthermore, the Ethiopic manuscripts of Jubilees preserve the term “‘Afrā” () in their description of the borders of Shem’s allotment. ³⁸ Greek and Roman sources claim that black peoples, particularly those living in the regions south of Egypt, were black because of their proximity to the sun. According to this line of environmental reasoning, black peoples’ skin was, quite literally, burnt. ³⁹ The color black as it relates to the geographic location of communities would thus be associated with those living south of Shem’s allotment working within frameworks of environmental theory.

Further, within Greek literature, there is ample evidence that people understood those with red or ruddy complexions to dwell in the north. Hippocrates describes the northern Scythians as “red-headed and red-faced” not “because of the sun’s fierce heat [but because] the cold burns their faces and turns them red” (Aer. 20). Herodotus recounts that one of the tribes living in the northern Asian plateau of Scythia, the Budini, is a “great and numerous nation; the eyes of all of them are very bright and they are ruddy” (Hdt. 6.108). In his Physiognomics, Aristotle expresses that those with red complexions “are of bad character . . . because all parts of the body grow red when they are heated by movement” (Phgn. 812). ⁴⁰ In this way, Japheth’s descendants are red, barbaric northerners. If we analyze the Animal Apocalypse’s use of color alongside broader Hellenistic frameworks of color and temperature theory, it becomes evident that the common impulse to assign Japheth black status because of his northern descendants’ dwellings does not quite hit the mark.

Race-making during the Hellenistic age

Taking the Animal Apocalypse and Jubilees’ treatments of Genesis together, scholars can trace the incorporation and development of environmental determinism within ancient Jewish literature. Jewish scribes included frameworks comprised of color and temperature in their writings as a way to fashion identity and reinforce divisions of ethnic difference within their Hellenistic context. The Animal Apocalypse shows that Hellenistic Jews associated the color black with cursed communities and those living in southern regions; red with hot-headed, barbaric northerners; and white with God’s elect living in the central portions of the world. For ancient readers, the colors used within the Animal Apocalypse’s animal metaphor signaled many things not limited to skin color, temperament, and geographical origin for specific groups of people. Clusters of generalizations such as these during the Hellenistic and Roman eras have led scholars to describe these descriptions and associations as “proto-racisms.” ⁴¹ Scholarship on racism in antiquity tends to not incorporate Jewish literature into their analyses because Second Temple texts are often overshadowed by earlier “biblical” traditions which, as I’ve emphasized, are representative of earlier ethnic formulations that did not yet use environmental determinism. Indeed, the texts of the Hebrew Bible contain little evidence of racialized generalizations of ethnic communities, but Second Temple texts, as products of the Hellenistic age, display familiarity and engagement with these racial frameworks and should thus be included in these debates about ancient race. Doing so allows scholars to analyze, contextualize, and better understand how constructions of race and ethnic difference were developed and understood in the ancient world.

It makes sense that Hellenistic Jewish scribes would develop and contour ideas of race and ethnicity within traditions of Genesis because of its emphasis on origins. During the Hellenistic age, indigenous scribes of the Near-East became immensely interested in the distant past. Berossus and Manetho, a Babylonian and Egyptian priest, respectively, each wrote expansive, chronological histories of their countries to emphasize their antiquity. ⁴² Jewish scribes similarly turned to their origin stories contained within Genesis, re-working and expanding them in ways to stress their own ancientness as a people through written systemization. ⁴³ Over the last decade or so, there has been a shift in Second Temple studies away from focusing on locating the origins of apocalypses in Hellenistic Jewish literature to appreciating other intellectual contexts of text production. Reed’s recent book, Demons, Angels, and Writing in Ancient Judaism, epitomizes this shift with its synchronic analysis of third-century B.C.E. Aramaic scribalism. ⁴⁴ There is discernible interest in the organization and systemization of written information which should be understood as part of the Hellenistic trope to universalize knowledge.

The expansiveness of the Hellenistic world after Alexander’s eastward conquests catalyzed indigenous scribes embracing taxonomic modes of writing. Genesis, as a sort of anthological genre of origins, was central to these modes of scribal organization for Jews. The Animal Apocalypse creates one linear timeline harmonizing two different anthropological systems (the bipartite Seth/Cain and tripartite Shem/Ham/Japheth) while hierarchizing human difference through its use of color. The white bulls (Shemites) sit at the top as God’s elect, the black bulls (Hamites/Canaanites) are cursed peoples at the bottom, and the red bulls (Japhethites) are middle rung, neither cursed nor God’s elect. In African American Religions, Johnson incorporates the work of Geraldine Heng into his analysis of the United States’ racialization of Islam in the twentieth century. Crucial to Heng and Johnson’s understanding of race-making is hierarchization: “race-making . . . operates at specific historical occasions in which strategic essentialisms are posited and assigned through a variety of practices and pressures, so as to construct a hierarchy of peoples for differential treatment. My understanding, thus, is that race is a structural relationship for the articulation and management of human differences, rather than a substantive content.” ⁴⁵ If we understand the Animal Apocalypse’s efforts to incorporate its animal metaphor and use of color as part of this process to classify and hierarchize peoples, it can be reasonably understood as a kind of race-making. Thus, the Animal Apocalypse engaged these forms of written taxonomy and hierarchization to make comprehensive claims about how to understand human diversity.

In summary, my point in examining the race-making processes within the Animal Apocalypse is not to draw continuous lines of racial claims from antiquity to the present nor give them any sort of credence, but to contextualize the intellectual environments in which its racial constructions were developed. Ideas consistent with environmental theory were ubiquitous in the ancient Mediterranean—so much so that they have been preserved in texts ranging from Herodotus’ Histories to the writings of Aristotle and Hippocrates. Amid these racial ideas, claims, and generalizations, Jewish scribes similarly appealed to and utilized these systems of ethnic differentiation within their own texts.