The Old Testament offers many more examples of interethnic marriage than the New Testament does. Since many major figures of the New Testament were either unmarried (like John the Baptist, Jesus, and Paul) or married locally (like Peter), most of the New Testament examples are comments on Old Testament figures (e.g., Matt 1:3-6; Acts 7:29), though the New Testament offers an example of a mixed-race minister (Acts 16: 1-3).
For the sake of precision, I should point out that our source material in Scripture addresses marriages that were mostly “interethnic” rather than “interracial” in the common sense of the term in US history. It was primarily slavery that made “interracial” unions a problematic issue in US history; the traditional racial categories usually employed today (which do not even correspond precisely to complexion) arose through historical circumstances, not because of clear-cut biological or genetic boundaries. The dominant ethnic division addressed in the New Testament is between Jew and gentile. How Scripture addresses this dominant division offers us models for crossing such barriers today. If God summons us to surmount a barrier that he himself established, how much more would he summon us to surmount all other barriers?
Interethnic marriages in Scripture not only challenge traditional prejudices in many cultures, but also offer encouragement to those who are interethnically married.
This content is by Craig Keener, but edited and posted by Defenders Media.
For more, please check out Dr. Keener’s Between History and Spirit.
