For generations, the Bible has been read, taught, illustrated, and imagined through a European lens.

From Renaissance art to modern films, biblical figures such as Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, and the apostles have often been portrayed as white, while the actual role of European peoples within the biblical story has received surprisingly little critical examination.

In White Presence in the Bible: How the Biblical Jews Perceived, Understood, and Interacted with Caucasian Peoples, Theron D. Williams challenges conventional assumptions by tracing the historical development of the term Gentile from Genesis through the New Testament.

Drawing upon the Bible, the Apocrypha, Jewish history, and contemporary scholarship, Williams argues that by the Intertestamental and New Testament periods, the term had become closely associated with the Greeks and Romans—the European powers that dominated and oppressed Israel. Provocative, thought-provoking, and deeply researched, this book invites readers to reconsider long-held beliefs about ethnicity, identity, power, and the place of Europeans within the biblical narrative.