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eunuch; he is an Ethiopian. In Psalm 68:31 it says that Ethiopia will "stretch out her hands to God." This verse also has been fulfilled in the story. Without saying that Psalms also are considered to be fulfilled in the activities in Luke and Acts, Martin expands the intertexture of the story beyond the book of Isaiah to a Psalm that speaks about an Ethiopian. But now we need to know who Ethiopians are. Thus, Martin has found a passageway through intertexture to a context for exploring the ethnographic identity of Ethiopians in Mediterranean antiquity.82 Aided by Frank M. Snowden, Jr.'s studies of blacks in antiquity,83 Martin brings to the reader's attention that "Ethiopians were the yardstick by which antiquity measured colored peoples. The skin of the Ethiopian was black, in fact, blacker, it was noted, than that of any other people."84 In addition, Ethiopians persistently were characterized as having "'puffy' or 'thick' lips, tightly curled or 'wooly' hair, [and] a flat or 'broad' nose."85 Martin works through classical art to Homer, Herodotus, and Seneca to enrich her description of Ethiopians in Mediterranean society and culture.86 When Martin completes her ethnographic analysis and interpretation, she returns to Luke and Acts to exhibit a thicker texture for its ideology of promise and fulfillment. In Luke there is reference to "all flesh" seeing the salvation of God (Luke 3:6), to repentance and forgiveness of sins being preached to "all nations" (Luke 24:47), and to people coming from "east, west, north and south" to sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Luke 13:29). At the beginning of Acts there is a proclamation that the mission in Acts will reach to the "end of the earth" (Acts 1:8c). From this thicker picture of the inner ideology of Luke and Acts, she moves to Mediterranean cultural ideology about "the end of the earth" and concludes, using Homer, Herodotus and Strabo, that Ethiopia lies on the edge of the "Ocean" at the southernmost limit of the world. Her conclusion, in turn, suggests that the identification of the eunuch as Ethiopian should be significant, because in its context of culture87 this baptized Ethiopian is returning to his home at the end of the earth.
From this observation about cultural ideology, Martin returns once again to Luke and Acts and observes that these two volumes participate in a cultural ideology that focuses upon Rome as the center of the Mediterranean world. As a result of this ideology, using the words of Cain Felder, "the darker races outside the Roman orbit are circumstantially marginalized by New Testament authors" and the "socio-political realities" of this "tend to dilute the New Testament vision of racial inclusiveness and universalism."88 When Martin turns to biblical maps for the New Testament to find Ethiopia, she discovers a "politics of omission." Only one map of the Roman World at the Birth of Jesus in The Westminster
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