The Color of Solomon

By: Bishop Benjamin Tucker Tanner

Narrated by: Rodney Louis Tompkins

Benjamin Tucker Tanner (1835-1923) was an editor, historian, and prominent theologian of his time who founded The Christian Recorder, an early African American newspaper. In his 1895 book The Color of Solomon, he contends that King Solomon of the Bible did not belong to the white race. Admitting that the subject of King Solomon’s skin color is rather trivial, he nevertheless provides an interesting commentary on the translation of the Song of Solomon 5:10, “[M]y beloved is white and ruddy”. Tanner investigates Solomon’s ancestry, including King David’s Bathsheba and Ruth of Moab, to show that a yellowish brown skin is normative in the Levant; that is the color one ought to picture when engaging with most of the Bible’s narratives.

Public Domain (P)2020 Museum Audiobooks