The Ethnicity of Abraham and David

Adam, Esau, and David had a distinctive red skin tone. 

That was a genetic trait of the early Nilotic Hebrew (4200-2000 B.C.)

Alice C. Linsley


Abraham, Moses, Samuel, and David were Hebrew. The evidence for this is found in their common marriage and ascendancy pattern. Analysis of the distinctive marriage and ascendancy pattern of their families reveals that their fathers had two wives. Abraham's father was Terah. His name means priest. He had two wives. One wife was the mother of Abraham, and the other wife was the mother of Abraham's half-sister wife, Sarah.

Amram, the father of Moses, had two wives. One was the mother of Moses, and the other wife was the mother of Moses' first wife, his half-sister. She is designated a "Kushite" in Exodus.

Elkanah, the father of Samuel, had two wives. They were name Peninnah and Hannah (1 Sam. 1:2). Samuel anointed David whose father Jesse had two wives. 2 Samuel 23:24 makes this clear. It identifies Abishai, Joab, and Asahel as the sons of Jesse's daughter Zeruiah, David's half-sister. One of Jesse's wives resided in Bethlehem and the other resided in Ramah, Samuel's hometown. That suggests that Jesse ruled over a territory that extended between Bethlehem and Ramah.

Abraham's wives were Sarah and Keturah. They resided in separate settlements on a north-south axis. Sarah resided in Hebron and Keturah resided in Beersheba. The wives' settlements marked the northern and southern boundaries of Abraham's territory which was entirely in the region of Ancient Edom. The Greeks called that region Idumea, meaning "Land of Red People." Edom was one of the ancient seats of wisdom. 

The Hebrew Were a Caste, not an Ethnicity.

At the time that Abraham lived (c.2000 B.C.) there were no nations in the modern sense. There were peoples, clans, and castes. Ethnic identities aligned with the territorial chief. The Hebrew chiefs listed in Genesis 36 are identified with the Horite Hebrew ruler Seir.

Esau is described as have a red skin tone, as is David who became king over Israel.

Originally, the Hebrew were a ruler-priest caste. Long before Judaism emerged as a world religion the Hebrew ruler-priests had dispersed into many areas of the Old World. 

There were Hebrew living in the region of Lake Chad, the Nile Valley, Arabia, Canaan, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and the Zagros Mountains of Western Iran. That is why it is possible to speak of a person as an Egyptian Hebrew, or a Canaanite Hebrew, or an Arabian Hebrew, etc. That also explains why the word Hebrew does not appear in the Genesis 10 Table of Nations.

Related reading: The Hebrew were a Caste; Challenge to Shaye Cohen's Portrayal of Abraham; Ethnic and Cultural Diversity in the Bible; Hebrew Rulers with Two Wives; Territorial Ambitions of the Early Hebrew; Adam was a Red Man