Kathulos:
The Bible is used to ban only interracial marriages from different tribes outside of Israel, because they had Pagan traditions. Most Hebrews, were Semites, ergo, there was a marriage ban.
Yeah, the Old Testament stresses not marrying someone who's not the same religion, that you shouldn't marry "outside the covenant".
There was that one guy, Shechem, if memory serves me right, who wasn't an Israelite, kidnapped Dinah, raped her, then fell in love and wanted to marry her, and sent his dad to talk to Jacob and his 12 sons about that. The 12 sons said, "Sure, if you get circumcised we'll commingle funds", and he jumped at the chance, and talked all his buds and the rest of the men in the city into doing the same thing. The Bible stresses how honorable he was for agreeing to that (despite his earlier kidnapping/rape) and how deceitful Jacob's other sons were for offering that when they didn't intend to follow through on that promise (not the only time they were jerks, by a long shot).
Take the story of Ruth. Ruth wasn't an Israelite, until she married one, then really cleaved to that. Once her husband died, she choose to stay with her mother-in-law instead of going back to her family. And she didn't just stay with Naomi, "your gods will be my gods, etc." And she was so righteous that the end result was a promise that the Savior would eventually come as one of her descendants.
The Bible pretty clearly stresses that it's not necessarily physical race, as in color (other than that whole mark of Cain/Ham thing that people kept arguing about, and what it really meant), it was all about whether or not your spouse was the same religion. Same religion = shared values and you support each other. Different religion = you'll probably both be pagan in the end.