Thursday, April 23, 2026

Who was the "Ethiopian" "Eunuch?"

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Who Was the Ethiopian Eunuch? Rethinking identity, language, and narrative with Mark Wilson (Lauren K. McCormick).
The narrative in Acts is organized around the expansion of Christianity from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria, and ultimately to the “ends of the earth.” The Ethiopian eunuch is geographically distant, socially elevated, and—if Wilson is correct—a Jew open to seeing Jesus as the fulfillment of scripture. In this sense, the Ethiopian eunuch functions as a node within the larger narrative structure of Acts, which is less concerned with individual life stories than with the unstoppable crossing of boundaries that defines its vision of the early Christian movement.
Wilson's BAR article is behind the subscription wall, but this BHD essay gives a summary of it.

A couple of PaleoJudaica posts involving the Ethiopian Eunuch are here and here.

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