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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