religions+view+race

There are many different beliefs on where racial differences originated from, some believe it came from a gods chariot flying across the sky, while others have more scientific beliefs such as the skin pigmentation differences of Adam and Eve.
 * View Points of Race's Origin**

One of the first civilizations that noticed the differences in skin tone were the Egyptians, from their book called the Book of Gates. This book classified the population of the world into four races known as the Egyptians, Asiatic, Libyans, and the Nubians. Below is a picture of the book of gates; it depicts pictures of many people of different skin colors and race.
 * Egyptian**

This is a picture from the Egyptian Book of Gates showing a variety of races from their time

The Genesis divides race into four categories; the sons of Noah; Shem, Ham, and Japheth Although the bible separates people into these "races" it does not describe anybody as being white or black
 * Genesis**
 * Japheth was the ancestor of the Indo-European and the Central Asian people
 * This includes the Germans, Greeks, Spaniards, Persians, Kurds, Uzbek, Afghans, Tibetans, Pakistanis, Bengals, and Northern Indians
 * Ham was the ancestor of the Afro-Asiatic's
 * This includes Black Africans, Chinese, and Native Americans
 * Shem is the ancestor of Hebrews and Arabs
 * This includes Hebrews and Arabs

Another aspect of a religions opinion on race is the Islamic race. Although the islamic religion was multi-racial from the beginning, the idea of race never spread through the regions where the religion was used. Instead the Islamic religion used different words that mean race. These word were "Jins" or "Genus". An example of how these words were used in the religon is the following statement from Kitab al-Mabsut: "The free and the slave are of one genus. As far as his origin is concerned, the human being is free. Slavery intervenes as an accident... So slavery does not bring about a change in genus."([]) THIS LINK DOES NOT WORK FOR ME In this statement the speaker is saying that we are all of one race, or genus, and the only thing that intervines in our oppinions of one another is the "accident" of slavery. Even this does not change what we actually are and that we are still all one genus. Another example of this is from the Quran 39:13 where Fakhr ad-DIn ar-Razi says, "people are equal insofar as they are irreligious and impious, what makes them different is the content of their moral character." This line is saying that people are all equal from their physical appearance, the only thing that seperates them is how they act. Al-Razi also says, "We have created you from male and female" meaning that everyone is from a common couple, Adam and Eve, and there is no reason for descriminating agains race because we are all from the same ancestry.([])
 * Islamic**

In the Christian religion there is the idea that every man and women originated from a common ancestry, Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were given eternal life in a mythalogical place called the Garden of Eden. The couple was told that they should live happily together and they could do what ever they wished in the whole garden, except for picking fruit off of one tree called the Tree of Wisdom. Of course the two were now very anxious to see what would happen if they broke that one rule, and it ended up that the couple was sent to earth to be mortal. After this they began to grow and make the human population. Going back to this an interesting fact was found. The reason for different skin pigmentations is that there are different types of skin cells of which AA skin cells would mean that the skin would be completely black, while BB would make the skin completely white. So if Adam and Eve were both AA or BB then there would have to be only one color of people on earth. However, since there isn't then this would mean that Adam and Eve were a mixture of the two which allowed for the great genetic variation in our society. (For more information look at Alex K.'s wiki on "Where did race originate")
 * Christian**

From Greek Mythology, race originated from a story about the sun god Helio's. Helio's rides around the sky in a flying chariot. One day he let his son Phaethon try to ride the chariot. When driving the chariot; however, he couldn't control his horses and in some areas dipped too low to the ground, while in others he flew too high to the sky. In the area's where he flew to close the people got darker colored from the heat. In the areas where he got too high they got lighter from the cold. (For more information look at Alex K.'s wiki on "Where did race originate")
 * Greek**

The picture above is of a pot found in ancient Greece of the sun god Helios, the actual date is unknown

Tying in with the Genesis, the Jewish religion has some mentions of raceism in very early history. One of these mentions is of when Noah was drunk and stripped naked, all of his sons; including Japheth and Shem both took effort and covered Noah with cloths. However, his one son, Ham, did not help and stood there watching. Noah became disappointed and cursed him to become dark skinned. This would make sense because all of Ham's children from the Genesis were black.
 * Jewish**

In the future I would like to look into more about what eastern cultures thought of as the origin of race. I really found the greeks and the Islamic stand points to be very intreiguing. I would probably looking in further, maybe at the Oriental(Asian) viewpoint of race's origin. It would be interesting to see what they believed since the Chinese nation is one of the oldest in the world. The Asian population is also also a population in which there is very little skin color differencial.
 * Where will we go now?**

Anbibtouzov