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The First Gentile Christian was from Africa—Acts 8:26-40

When we think of Christianity in Africa today, we often think of movements that began with the witness of Western missionaries. While this may be true for some parts of Africa, it is certainly not true about all of Africa. For example, Axum in East Africa was already a Christian kingdom from the fourth century. Nubia also was predominantly Christian for roughly a millennium until its conquest and subjugation from the north.

But Christianity in Africa starts even before Christianity in Europe. Showing this requires three points. First, the official was from Africa. Occasionally someone who is exceedingly misinformed will point to sources that refer to a different “Ethiopia”; but while some ancient sources speak of Ethiopians toward the east, the land of the dawn, the land whose queen was titled the Candace was always an African kingdom south of Egypt.

The First Gentile Christian

The other two points invite more detailed comment: was this man a Gentile, and was he a genuine historical figure?

There remains some dispute as to whether this official was a Gentile. This controversy is understandable. The African court official in Acts 8:26-40 was clearly devoted to Israel’s God. Indeed, he had to be to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem; the roundtrip journey from his kingdom would have taken months, and such an extensive leave of absence would have required his queen’s permission.

Nevertheless, while he is more committed to Israel’s God than is Cornelius in the next Gentile conversion narrative (Acts 10:1—11:18), he is not a full proselyte. Luke has already narrated a proselyte even in leadership in Jerusalem’s community of believers (Acts 6:5), so he has little reason to devote such a long section to another one.

Further, while Luke includes the man’s official title once, he underlines his status as a eunuch by repeating that title five times. Male servants of queens were often eunuchs. Although the OT sometimes may use an equivalent label simply for some officials, the Greek term here is clear and Luke’s hearers would assume that the man was a genuine eunuch—a castrated man. The Greek translation of the OT often uses it for clear eunuchs, especially when the person is foreign, and/or working in relation to royal women (as here), and especially in texts closest to Luke’s period (e.g., Sirach; Wisdom of Solomon). Royal eunuchs held high status as servants of the royal house, but ancient Mediterranean society often ridiculed them as merely “half-men” for their involuntary eunuch condition.

Most relevant here was the man’s status vis-à-vis Judaism. A eunuch could not become a proselyte, that is, a full member of Israel (Deut 23:1). That refers only to official status, of course, not to God’s perspective. In the OT, an African “eunuch” becomes one of Jeremiah’s few allies and saves his life (Jer 38:7-13). More importantly, God promised to welcome foreigners and eunuchs (Isa 56:3-5), of which this man becomes the first example. This official is Jewish in faith, but because he cannot officially convert to Judaism, he remains a non-Jew ethnically.

Minimizing this African convert?

Some complain that Luke actually plays down this official’s conversion by contrast with Cornelius, whose conversion story Luke repeats, in part or in full, some three times in Acts. But Cornelius is a step further in the direction of gentiles, and points toward the narrative’s climax in Rome (Acts 28:14-31). Luke’s audience, based in the Roman empire, will naturally have special interest in the good news about Christ reaching Rome. The Cornelius narrative is also important because it signals a shift in the thinking of the Jerusalem church, and was the gentile-conversion account widely known to them. But Luke, who spends time with Philip (21:8), apparently has a less detailed account from Philip himself of a gentile’s conversion before that of Cornelius.

“Ethiopia” was the Greek title for all of Africa south of Egypt, and Greek sources often describe it as the southern “ends of the earth.” The ends of the earth is where the gospel must go (Acts 1:8), so this narrative foreshadows a larger future for the gospel in Africa. The gospel, originating in what the Roman world considered Asia, goes not only west but south. Although this official is a single person, his conversion receives nearly as much space as the preceding Samaritan revival that converted an entire community: it is a major kingdom breakthrough.

A Real Gentile Christian?

The other consideration in establishing that this official is the first gentile Christian is the question that some have raised about whether it is a true story. Most scholars recognize that Luke is writing history, and most scholars who have actually read ancient historiography recognize that historians recounted stories that came to them, rather than inventing stories from whole cloth. Luke clearly believed this story, which presumably goes back to Philip himself.

But a few scholars have argued that this account sounds more like a novel than a true story. They sometimes argue this because they say that novels liked to celebrate what was foreign and “exotic,” and they so designate this narrative. But comparing Luke’s account with actual ancient novels should quickly dispel the idea that Luke writes novelistically here. The location is not in some distant or mythical land, like in some novels’ “exotic” descriptions, but in the Roman province of Syria, on a real road leading toward old Gaza.

Moreover, unlike mythical “Ethiopians” such as Memnon or Andromeda, the Kandake (in most English translations, Candace) figures in actual historical works. In view of her title, the kingdom in view is the actual ancient Nubian kingdom of Meroë, which was rediscovered in 1722 and identified archaeologically in the early twentieth century.

Nonfiction writers on Meroe sometimes speculated about the location. Some speculations, such as cotton trees, were undoubtedly misplaced (since cotton doesn’t grow on trees). Some assumed that the area was mostly desert, or that, like India, it had rains and crocodiles. A first-century expedition in Nero’s time, however, found more foliage around Meroe, and even elephant and rhinoceros tracks.

Naturally novelists (such as Heliodorus, in his later Ethiopica) had a free hand, inventing what suited them along with a small amount of known information.Others simply made up travel stories, which sometimes fooled even some factual writers who assumed their stories were true.

Thus some supposed that Ethiopians mined metal by pulling it up with magnets. The region hosted a lion’s body with a human face (useful for eating people) and horned, winged horses. Pliny the Elder, who thought he was reporting fact, reported flat-faced, noseless people and people whose king was a dog. While writers knew of forests and crocodiles elsewhere in Africa, they also wrote of people with mouths and eyes on their chests and leather-footed crawling people. Supposedly Ethiopians originated astrology and had to flee from India after murdering King Ganges (the river’s son. They could make trees salute.

Writers told unverifiable stories about other distant lands as well. Thus the Hyperboreans in the distant, frigid north lived so long that finally they tired of living and dove into the sea. Some reported that India hosted water monsters and griffins, and ants as large as foxes that mined gold. Happily the ants retreated underground during midday heat, inadvertently enabling the Indians to steal their gold. Others told stories about Amazons, though they do not appear in non-Greek sources and in recent centuries no one had found them.

Luke’s Plausible Narrative

By contrast, Luke’s details are all plausible, and none of them clearly contradict what we know historically. That means that Luke not only does better than novelists; he does better than many historians whose sources were distorted. Luke may not have many details available from Philip, but the details that he has make sense.

Greeks used the title Kandake for many queen-mothers, some of whom ruled Meroë by themselves. One of those in the first century, for example, possibly around this time, was Queen Nawidemak. (Queen Amanitore was also somewhere around this time.)

Presumably the African official was a person of means to be able to make such a long journey (probably multiple months), traveling by boat down the Nile and then presumably by carriage to Jerusalem. The queen presumably worshiped state deities of Meroe (such as Amun), but the polytheistic nation must have had tolerance for other faiths; a Roman temple also existed on the site.

Meroë’s famous wealth is attested archaeologically and is not surprising. Meroë was ideally positioned for trade between societies to the north and those to their south. Northerners procured much ebony and ivory through them; meanwhile, a bust of Caesar has been found as far south as Tanzania. As a court official of the Candace in charge of her treasure, this traveler undoubtedly had access to considerable means. Only the wealthiest had riding carriages as here in 8:28.

Meroe had its own language, but an educated government official dealing with finance probably was fluent in Greek, since this was the main trade language with the north. Despite continuing use of Egyptian, Greek was the main language of Alexandria, as well as Egypt’s government and trade in this period; Greek was used even in capitals of Egyptian agricultural districts. Luke would quote Isaiah in Greek in any case (since he writes in Greek), but probably the official’s Isaiah scroll in this narrative was in Greek. He could have acquired the scroll in Jerusalem or in Alexandria en route to Jerusalem; the common Greek versions of the Old Testament (notably the family of texts we call the Septuagint) were translated in Alexandria and copies were probably more plentiful there. Even in Jerusalem, many tomb inscriptions (especially of the elite) are in Greek. There is little reason to doubt that the Hellenist Philip, whose primary language was Greek, would have trouble communicating with this official.

Asia of course plays a key role in the Bible: by Greek definitions, the holy land was part of Asia, and right on the boundary of Africa. The first followers of Jesus therefore were from Western Asia, from the Middle East, more specifically from Galilee and Judea and then Samaria. But the first non-Jewish follower of Jesus (ethnically speaking) was from Africa. But the message going to the ends of the earth means that it is for all humanity, whatever continent or culture or language. From the beginning, God cared about all peoples.

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Against the grain—the prophet Jeremiah

Many people thought that Jeremiah was a stick in the mud, a contrarian, and certainly unpatriotic. He went against the mood of his culture. Jeremiah was summoning Judah back to the values of God’s covenant with them, but they didn’t think that they had strayed. Most of the common people couldn’t read Scripture, so they depended on what their preachers taught them.

And most of their preachers assured them that God was with them. After all, they were his chosen people, and they alone of all peoples worshiped God. These preachers remembered part of the covenant message. But over generations they had also adapted it—keeping up with the times, so to speak. Jeremiah likewise recognized that some particulars of God’s message might vary from one generation to another depending on the setting of God’s people: that’s why judgment was sometimes the right message. But the leaders’ “progressive” adjustments rested not on what God was really saying but on what seemed good to them, which was shaped by generations of tradition and by the climate of public opinion. They could overlook some immorality; after all, God loved his people and some of the supposed immoralities were being committed by the preachers themselves.

Yet God told Jeremiah, “I did not send these prophets, but they ran. I did not speak to them, but they prophesied. But if they had stood in My council, then they would have announced My words to My people, and would have turned them back from their evil way and from the evil of their deeds” (Jer 23:21-22, NASB).

It was like a century earlier, when the more openly idolatrous northern kingdom of Israel could cry out, “My God, we of Israel know you!” (Hos 8:2)—even while continuing to honor golden calves at Dan and Bethel. Now, in Jeremiah’s day, priests and prophets were still telling God’s people how much God delighted in them without warning them of judgment to come.

It was indeed true that God loved them. But the God who loves us comes to transform us and invite us into relationship with him, not to leave us wallowing in de facto rebellion against him. Judgments on societies are sometimes wakeup calls because God loves us too much to let us continue to be deceived. They come when more direct means of admonition have failed—when people do not listen to God’s message through the prophets, or when the prophets fail to speak the full truth of God’s message.

The prophets of Jeremiah’s day fixed on the covenant blessings, and took encouragement from one another’s prophecies (cf. 23:30) that they were saying the right thing. Who was Jeremiah to think that he alone was hearing from God? (Still, he may have had some sympathizers at some point. The extrabiblical Lachish letters from this time may suggest that some Judahite prophets were not being as “patriotic” and encouraging of the war effort as Judahite military leaders thought they should be.) How could Jeremiah dare to prophesy one thing when everybody else was prophesying something different? And something that nobody wanted to hear! Yet the majority of the prophets proved wrong about the big picture.

Jeremiah was often discouraged about his mission. To whom could he speak, when the people were closed to his message (Jer 6:10)? Yet he was full of God’s wrath; he could not hold it inside any longer, and had to speak (6:11). The prophets and priests had healed his people’s wound only superficially, promising them well-being (6:14); but they needed to return to the ancient covenant, to God’s Word that he had given long ago (6:16). Listening to the consensus of preachers is no substitute for going back to the Scriptures ourselves. Most Judahites were illiterate and lacked this option, but no one who’s able to read this post has such an excuse.

God explained that his people did not know him (8:7), despite their insistence: “How can you say, ‘We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us,’ when, in fact, the false pen of the scribes has made it into a lie? The wise shall be put to shame, they shall be dismayed and taken; since they have rejected the word of the LORD, what wisdom is in them?” (8:8-9, NRSV). From prophet to priest, eager for popularity, the leaders had been assuring God’s people that all would be well, but it was not what God was saying (8:10-11).

How could Jeremiah challenge the consensus of the appointed leaders of his people? Yet God’s word within him could not remain silent. His voice for God incurred his rivals’ hatred. “Alas, my mother, that you gave me birth,a man with whom the whole land strives and contends!I have neither lent nor borrowed, yet everyone curses me” (15:10, NIV). “I never sat in the company of revelers, never made merry with them; I sat alone because your hand was on me and you had filled me with indignation. Why is my pain unending and my wound grievous and incurable? You are to me like a deceptive brook, like a spring that fails” (15:17-18 NIV). God did not even allow Jeremiah to have a family—and in his case it was mercy, to protect him from the coming grief (16:1-3). Jeremiah was not allowed to join others in mourning or feasting (16:5-9); God had set him apart to show his people what was coming.

In some spheres, it looks like everything will be well. And maybe in those spheres it really will be well for a time. Readers of these blogs live in many nations and many situations. When the consensus is all one direction, it is easy to regard one’s own spiritual sense as unduly shaped by natural optimism or natural pessimism, and we must be open to that possibility too. What matters, though, is not our natural disposition but what we are hearing from God when we listen, and especially when we go back to God’s heart in Scripture and weigh popular opinion by that.

Granted, we know in part and prophesy in part (1 Cor 13:9), so different ones of us may hear different parts of God’s message. But if the word of the Lord that we hear consistently and urgently calls God’s people to awaken, to turn more wholeheartedly to him, how can we hold that inside? May God grant us both courage and wisdom to serve and shepherd his people wisely.

Jeremiah’s generation didn’t listen to him, but his message turned out to be true. And while Jeremiah himself did not live to see it in this life, the next generation affirmed his message (2 Chron 36:22; Ezra 1:1; Dan 9:2). Together with the exile, Jeremiah’s message from God ultimately brought a paradigm shift among his people. God’s time is not our time, but he calls us to be faithful even in the face of opposition. It is not what our culture thinks. It is not whatever seems good in our own eyes. It is the word of the Lord to which we must look.

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God’s amazing love—1 John 3:1

1 John 3:1 (ESV): “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.”

1 John 3:16 (NIV): “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.”

1 John 4:8-11: “Whoever doesn’t love doesn’t know God, because God is love.This is how God showed his love among us: God sent his one, special Son into the world so that we might live through him.In this is love: not that we came to love God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to atone for our sins. My loved ones: since God loved us in this way, we also must love one another”

1 John 4:16: “… God is love, and whoever stays in love stays in God, and God in him:

1 John 4:19: “We love, because he first loved us”

We may be accustomed to such emphatic language of love, which offers an explicit perspective on the implicit depiction of Christ’s sacrificial compassion in the Gospels and God putting up with his people for so long in both the OT and NT.

But it would have struck people as more distinctive in the first century. Granted, people envisioned patron deities, who had their favorite mortals or peoples. But a God who was reaching out to people of all ethnicities, whose love was so great that he sacrificed his Son, was quite different from typical ancient religious imagination.

Even today, a message of a God who loves all people, whoever will enter covenant with him, is unbelievably good news. It was an idea with which I originally struggled as a new convert; because I lacked analogies, it seemed too good to be true. But it is true—and it is good. And it invites us to love in turn others whom God also loves.

This is not simply the idiosyncratic perspective of one disciple. Rather, it reflects the meditation of Jesus’s early followers on who he is and what he has done for is. To give some samples from Paul alone:

Rom 5:5: “God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us”

Rom 8:35, 37, 39: “Who can sever us from Christ’s love? …in all these hardships we utterly prevail through the one who loved us. For nothing … will be able to sever us from God’s love that’s encountered in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

2 Cor 5:14: “For Christ’s love compels us, knowing this, that one died for all …”

Gal 2:20: “God’s Son, who loved me and surrendered himself on my behalf”

Eph 1:4-5: “… In love he set us apart beforehand to adopt us as children for himself through Jesus Christ”

Eph 2:4-5, 7: “Because of his great love by which he loved us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive in Christ … so that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable wealth of his graciousness by his kindness to us in Christ Jesus”

Eph 3:19: “to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowing …”

Eph 5:2: “behave in love, just as Christ loved us and surrendered himself on our behalf …”

Or Rev 1:5: “to the who loved us,” etc.

This is no minor theme, yet sometimes in our commendable focus on details we miss the big picture. God saved us because he loves us. And nothing makes him happier than when we, as agents of his heart, show that same gracious and patient love for one another. Indeed, “behold what sort of love the Father has given us” (1 John 3:1)! As Charles Wesley put it, “Amazing love, how can it be? That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me!”

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Polarized thinking: your friend is my enemy

“It is to one’s honor to avoid strife,

but every fool is quick to quarrel” (Proverbs 20:3, NIV)

While on some issues there may be just two sides (e.g., Luke 9:50), people often hold a range of views on different subjects, so classifying everyone in terms of their view on a single issue doesn’t always work.

On a popular level, though, we often think in binary terms, often “us” versus “them.” It’s the easiest way to think, since it can go with the flow and not have to juggle multiple issues or questions.

Thus in the church and in society, conversations can quickly become polarized. My country (the U.S.) has a two-party system, so many people gravitate toward one party’s platform or the other, rather than thinking issue by issue. In a two-party system with winner-take-all, this approach may well be politically effective. Ideally, however, those with biblically- and socially-informed ethics should not simply buy a party line on every point without prior consideration. They may want to help shape their party’s platform for greater justice and/or bring reasonable arguments to the public forum (whichever party or person dominates). They can find common ground on various issues with people with whom they may disagree on other issues, showing mutual respect and kindness.

That’s not quite what society looks like right now, but it’s something that we as Christians can model. The temptation when slammed is to slam someone back, but Jesus teaches, “if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also … Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:39, 44, NRSV) Paul apparently knew and certainly endorsed Jesus’s teaching: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse” (Rom 12:14, NASB); “Never pay back evil for evil to anyone” (Rom 12:17, NASB). And Jesus modeled this: “To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps … When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats” (1 Pet 2:21, 23, NIV).

In places where Christians suffer persecution and have to stick together, they may be surprised to learn that in places with too much leisure on their hands even the church can become polarized. On the internet today one finds those who regard as theological enemies those who don’t check all the right boxes. They may, for example, regard with suspicion all charismatics, those who affirm women in ministry, those who believe the universe is billions of years old, and the like. Others have different, and sometimes opposite checklists. For someone who feels marginalized for one of these issues, that may become for them the dividing issue, and unless they resist the pressure to think in binary terms, they may struggle not to regard as enemies those who marginalized them. It feels much harder to stay in the conversation once you are deemed the “enemy.” Yet the way of Jesus is always the best way for us his followers, and humbling ourselves before one another, and thus before the sovereign Lord (1 Pet 5:5-6), becomes a spiritual discipline.

Similarly, there was a time when I thought that theological conservatives affirmed Jesus’s bodily resurrection, the reality of miracles, and that Moses wrote Deuteronomy and Paul wrote Ephesians. I assumed that liberals were those who denied such matters. When I studied with scholars who denied those authorship claims yet affirmed Jesus’s resurrection and the reality of miracles, my binary mental chart required adjustment.

We should avoid foolish arguments, and normally we should be gentle even with those who oppose the gospel:

“But refuse foolish and ignorant questionings, knowing that they generate strife. The Lord’s servant must not quarrel, but be gentle towards all, able to teach, patient, in gentleness correcting those who oppose him: perhaps God may give them repentance leading to a full knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim 2:23-25, WEB)

Unless we belong to a church that sees itself as the only true church and way of salvation, we recognize that we have brothers and sisters in Christ with some different beliefs in some different Christian movements. The ideal of agreeing on every point will surely be achieved when our faith becomes sight and we see the Lord face to face, but in the meantime, unity in Christ should take precedence over our differences.

We can disagree, but on ordinary issues it should not be in a hostile, polarized way. Unless Christ alone is the defining issue, we will have far more than two sides to choose among, for there are far more than two issues being debated. Obviously allegiance to Christ has additional implications, but we need to think those through clearly. And when another believer assaults us verbally for something we believe, in ordinary situations it seems best to seek to “deescalate” the anger (cf. Prov 15:1). Who knows: a conversation with give and take might actually get somewhere.