Bible

by

Crystal Lucky

• LAST MODIFIED: 25 April 2022
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780190280024-0106

Introduction

The Bible, most often the King James Version, has served as a source of inspiration, spiritual guidance, artistic production, education, and political strategy for Africans in America since their arrival in the New World. White enslavers allowed enslaved black people to attend Christian church services to listen to both white and black preachers admonish obedience to masters, according to the biblical teaching of Ephesians 6:5–8, Colossians 3:22–25, I Timothy 6:1–2, and I Peter 2:18–21. When the preachers chose Ephesians 6 as their biblical text, their sermons always stopped just short of verse 9, which instructs masters not to threaten their servants and to be aware that God is always watching. Abolitionists and fugitive slave narrators used the same Bible to argue for the sinfulness of slavery. Black men and women, inspired to answer “the Call” to preach the Christian gospel, used the Bible as their primary source for inspiration, authority, and confirmation. More than any other source, the Bible has been the foundation upon which Black preachers have built their homiletic arguments —spiritual, social, economic, political, and familial—despite the preacher’s level of literacy. Its stories, doctrines, language, rhythms, and tones have provided the preacher the tools to paint word pictures on a virtually blank and vast canvas for his or her listeners, some of whom could read, many of whom could not prior to the 20th century. Yet all were familiar with the messages of hope the Bible offered. For both early and contemporary African American women who aligned their lives with and even felt led to preach the Christian gospel, the Bible has supported their right to undertake what they believed to be a divine vocation. In the face of resistance from male clerical leaders of mainstream religious denominations, unlicensed black women preachers have systematically read the legitimacy of their ministries through the experiences of both Old and New Testament women, like Deborah, a judge of Israel; Mary Magdalene, the first to spread the news of Jesus’s resurrection when she returned from the tomb after His crucifixion; and Priscilla, the wife of Aquila, who worked with the Apostle Paul to establish the early Christian Church in Europe. From the earliest African American preaching women, like Elizabeth and Jarena Lee, to contemporary Black women preachers like Bishop Vashti McKenzie, the first woman elected bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, the Bible offered indisputable evidence of God’s dispassionate call for laborers to His vineyard and continues to undergird their right to join that labor force. The Bible and the sanctuaries of Black churches served as the manual and meeting space for planning and implementing a successful 20th-century American civil rights movement. The Bible provided the movement’s most prominent leaders, like Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the messages of love, hope, urgency and inspiration they would preach in the face of hatred, despair, complacency, and resistance. Quoting the prophet Isaiah’s inspiriting words, they confidently proclaimed: “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.” (Isaiah 40:4–5) Finally, for scholars of African American life and culture, especially those interested in its religious traditions and forms of spiritual expressivity, the Bible has remained the central text for the study of Black theology, liberation theology, Womanist Theology, and African American Hermeneutics and homiletics.

General Overviews

The works in this section provide overviews and introductions to the Bible as a central element in African American religious life and culture. Wimbush 1993 provides a broad introduction to African American engagement with the Bible. Blount, et al. 2007 and Wimbush 2000 are two major collections of essays by well-known biblical scholars of wide-ranging interests. Wimbush 2003 is a short but foundational treatment of the ways the Bible has helped to shape an African American worldview. McCray 1990a and McCray 1990b outline arguments for an Afrocentric reading of the Bible by defining terms and identifying key individuals for study. Bailey and Grant 1995 and Callahan 2006 take an interdisciplinary approach to understanding biblical influence on Blacks in the United States. Page 2010 and Yamauchi 2004 explore the African roots of the Hebrew Bible.

• Bailey, Randall C., and Jacquelyn Grant, eds. The Recovery of Black Presence: An Interdisciplinary Exploration, Essays in Honor of Dr. Charles B. Copher. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995.

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  Collection of fourteen essays divided into two parts—biblical studies and other theological disciplines—related to pioneering scholar Charles Copher’s broad areas of concerns relative to African American theology and critical race studies. Range of topics includes Old Testament theology, the Gospels, DuBoisian political theory, Toni Morrison and the Bible, slavery, womanist theology, pastoral counseling, and transmission of faith legacy to Black children.

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• Blount, Brian K., Cain Hope Felder, Clarice J. Martin, and Emerson B. Powery, eds. True to Our Native Land: An African American New Testament Commentary. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007.

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  Comprehensive collection of essays on African American biblical interpretation, including essays on slavery in the early church, images of Africa in the Bible, womanist biblical interpretation, African American preaching and the Bible, and African American art and the Bible. Second half includes biblical commentary on each book of the Bible. Useful appendix listing African American New Testament scholars holding doctorates.

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• Callahan, Allen Dwight. The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.

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  Takes as its premise the ubiquitous nature of biblical influence in African American life and culture, including religion, visual art forms, music, folk medicine, alternative ‘non-Christian’ belief systems, literature, and resistance. Wrestles with the complexities of the trope of the ‘talking book’ as both poison and good. Includes both subject and Scripture indexes.

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• McCray, Walter Arthur. The Black Presence in the Bible: Discovering the Black and African Identity of Biblical Persons and Nations. Vol. I, Teacher’s Guide. Chicago: Black Light Fellowship, 1990a.

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  Offers a methodology for studying Black peoples written about in the Bible. Focuses on Genesis 10 to analyze the Hamitic/African genealogical line to include Hamitic, non-Hamitic, and Cushite peoples. Includes maps and biblical index.

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• McCray, Walter Arthur. The Black Presence in the Bible and the Table of Nations. Vol. 2. Chicago: Black Light Fellowship, 1990b.

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  Follow-up study from Volume I that focuses on Genesis 10 to construct a Table of Nations descending from Ham, Noah’s second oldest son, and to identify a Black biblical presence. Empirical analysis of the table, including ten histories of Genesis, charts, and illustrations.

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• Page, Hugh R., Jr., ed. The Africana Bible: Reading Israel’s Scriptures from Africa and the African Diaspora. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010.

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  Collection of essays on every aspect of the Hebrew Bible relative to the African Diasporic experience. Includes at least one essay on every Old Testament book, divided canonically. Includes maps, images, and index of scriptures.

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• Wimbush, Vincent L. “African American Tradition and the Bible.” In Oxford Companion to the Bible. Edited by Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan, 12–15. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

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  Traces broadly the history of African Americans’ engagement with the Bible as dynamic and reflective of their collective and diverse social, economic, political, and spiritual positions in American society. Offers five historically situated readings: Awe and Fear: Initial Negotiation of the Bible and the New World; Critique and Accommodation; Critique from the Margins; Leaving Race Behind; and Women’s Reading.

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• Wimbush, Vincent L., ed. African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures. Originally Presented at an International Conference at Union Theological Seminary in New York, April 1999. New York: Continuum, 2000.

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  Collection of sixty-four essays organized to explore hermeneutical, historical-comparative, ethnographic, and literary contexts of African Americans’ relationships to the Bible and biblical studies. Includes major scholars from a wide range of American institutions. Divided into three major sections and further subsections. Extensive bibliography with Scripture, name, and subject indexes.

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• Wimbush, Vincent L. The Bible and African Americans: A Brief History. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003.

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  Analyzes African Americans’ encounter with the Bible and the ways it has shaped a Black American cosmology. Considers African spiritualities and their early influence on Africans brought to America during the transatlantic slave trade. Short, broad treatment.

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• Yamauchi, Edwin M. Africa and the Bible. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004.

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  Explores the historical and archaeological background of biblical texts relative to Africa and the Bible. Examines the commonly accepted exegesis of the texts and traces the ramifications of their later interpretations and misinterpretations. Explores the curse of Ham, Moses’ wife—Zipporah, Solomon, the Ethiopian Eunuch, Simon of Cyrene, and Afrocentric biblical interpretation. Includes extensive bibliography and Scripture, author, and subject indexes.

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African American Hermeneutics

The texts in this section consider the history of African American investigation and interpretation of biblical text. Brown 2004 and Felder 1991 offer overviews of African American biblical interpretation and trace the history of its scholarship. Page 2010 provides comprehensive exegetical commentary on the African experience relative to the Hebrew scriptures. Jackson 1994 provides both exegetical and homiletical analysis of nine biblical figures read as Black in the Hebrew scriptures. Clardy 2011 traces the development of a theology of defiance. St. Clair 2011 links sociological and theological questions of effectiveness in preaching. Blount 2001 integrates biblical ethics, hermeneutics, and cultural interpretation to reveal messages of liberation in the synoptic gospels, the Book of John, the Pauline Epistles, and Revelation. Witvliet 1987 and Hopkins 1989 explore transcontinental notions of biblical liberation theology relative to Black American liberation. Terrell 1998 analyzes the symbol of the Cross through the lens of Black biblical theology and womanist theology.

• Blount, Brian K. Then the Whisper Put on Flesh: New Testament Ethics in an African American Context. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001.

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  Offers readings of the New Testament from the perspective of an enslaved African American to reveal messages of liberation in the text. Employs the lenses of liberation theology, biblical ethics, and cultural interpretation to reconsider the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke); John; the Apostle Paul; and the book of Revelation.

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• Brown, Michael Joseph. Blackening the Bible: The Aims of African American Biblical Scholarship. New York: Trinity Press International, 2004.

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  Introduces the topic of African American biblical hermeneutics and explores the arc of scholarship to include the ways African Americans have engaged biblical text historically. Focuses on African American biblical scholars to include African American womanist scholars. Offers four critiques of academic African American biblical interpretation and four proposals for future interpreters.

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• Clardy, Brian K. “Deconstructing a Theology of Defiance: Black Preaching and the Politics of Racial Identity.” Journal of Church and State 53.2 (Spring 2011): 203–221.

  DOI: 10.1093/jcs/csq116Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Analyzes the theological constructs that helped to form Black biblical preaching and worship styles. Traces the development of Black sacred rhetoric as both descriptive and proscriptive and adopts a defiant posture that both expresses a reverence for the divine and sacred text and is critical of White power structures. Defines Black defiance theology and offers examples of its practitioners.

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• Felder, Cain Hope, ed. Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991.

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  Collection of essays focused on African American hermeneutics, divided into four sections: “Relevance of Biblical Scholarship and the Authority of the Bible”; “African American Sources for Enhancing Biblical Interpretation” (Blacks in the Bible, sermons as primary sources); “Race and Ancient Black Africa in the Bible”; and “Reinterpreting Biblical Texts” (re-reading biblical figures). Includes index of ancient sources.

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• Hopkins, Dwight N. Black Theology USA and South Africa: Politics, Culture, and Liberation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989.

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  Explores the American civil rights movement and South African civil disobedience to Apartheid as foundation for a common connection to a Black theological hermeneutics of liberation. Analyzes the major themes undertaken in the work of sixteen major black theologians in the United States and South Africa. Includes interviews with the author and scholars.

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• Jackson, Alvin A. Examining the Record: An Exegetical and Homiletical Study of Blacks in the Bible. New York: Peter Lang, 1994.

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  Study divided into two parts. Offers nine exegetical studies of Blacks referenced in the Bible, including Ham, Hagar, Zipporah, the Queen of Sheba, Simon of Cyrene, and the Ethiopian Eunuch. Provides thirteen brief treatments as suggested sermon topics.

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• Page, Hugh R. Jr., ed. The Africana Bible: Reading Israel’s Scriptures from Africa and the African Diaspora. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010.

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  Major essay collection offering exegetical commentary on the Africana experience relative to the Hebrew scriptures or Old Testament. Divided into five parts, including an introduction or rationale for each section: “Reading the Hebrew Bible”; “Torah”; “Prophet”; “Writings”; and the “Deuterocanonical and Pseudepigraphic Writings.” Overview includes a range of topics from the Bible in the 21st century to women and the Bible to the Hebrew Bible in Africana art, music, and popular culture.

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• St. Clair, Raquel A. “So What Does the Bible Say About This . . . ? Context, Questions, and Correspondence as a Means of Refracting a Cultural Lens for African American Biblical Interpretation.” Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 65.3 (July 2011): 276–285.

  DOI: 10.1177/002096431106500305Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Argues for the necessity of linking the sociological “so what” with the hermeneutical “what” in African American biblical preaching to connect African American experience and biblical exegesis. Outlines the challenges of successful generational preaching.

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• Terrell, JoAnne Marie. Power in the Blood? The Cross in the African American Experience. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998.

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  Explores the ways Black theology and womanist theology “have been informed by and contribute to African Americans’ understanding of the central cultic symbol of Christianity, the cross” (p. 7). Tackles the hermeneutics of sacrifice in biblical and historical perspective and the complexities of intersecting womanist and black Christology.

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• Witvliet, Theo. The Way of the Black Messiah: The Hermeneutical Challenge of Black Theology as a Theology of Liberation. Oak Park, IL: Meyer Stone Books, 1987.

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  Written by a Dutch liberation theologian seeking to expand the boundaries of hermeneutics to include the historical and social context in which texts are framed and relate to each other. Provides a theoretical basis for engaging with Black theology, outlines its history, and seeks to advance the question of Black theology relative to liberation theology and racial ideology.

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Womanist Theology

The texts in this section use womanist theology as a lens for biblical analysis. Grounded in the concept of womanism, first introduced by black feminist writer Alice Walker, womanist theology emerged as its own field in the mid-1980s. The term was first used by Delores S. Williams in her formative essay of the same name. Williams 2013 and Cannon 1996 provide historical context to bridge the fields of Black feminism and Black feminist theology. Junior 2015 provides essential historical background for contemporary readers and outlines current scholarship in the field. Byron and Lovelace 2016 and Smith 2015 offer a range of essays on womanist approaches to biblical hermeneutics. Gafney 2017 and St. Clair 2008 offer close readings of both Old Testament and New Testament women. Dube 2000 reads both ancient and modern scriptural texts in terms of empire.

• Byron, Gay, and Vanessa Lovelace, eds. Womanist Interpretations of the Bible: Expanding the Discourse. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016.

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  Collection of seventeen essays on womanist approaches to biblical hermeneutics, with an introduction by the volume’s editors. Provides a useful history of womanist theological discourse on the early individuals who formed the contours of the field and its tasks. Divided into five parts, the book’s essays illuminate areas of biblical text where women are often overlooked, including Numbers 30, Acts 12, Job, and Isaiah. Includes an index of ancient sources.

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• Cannon, Katie Geneva. Katie’s Canon: Womanism and the Soul of the Black Community. New York: Continuum, 1996.

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  Defining study of womanist theology in thirteen essays written over the course of ten years. Essays trace the development of the field and its contribution to the wider field of Black theology. Outlines the emergence of a Black feminist consciousness and considers the work of African American literary, cultural, and religious traditions relative to biblical interpretation. Offers strategies for teaching womanist ethics, including examples of teaching assignments.

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• Dube, Musa W. Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible. St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2000.

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  Defines the postcolonial condition relative to biblical interpretation and a multilayered understanding of feminism. Reads both ancient and modern texts in terms of empire. Reconsiders both the Great Commission of Matthew 28 and the account of the Syro-Phoenician woman in Matthew 15.

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• Gafney, Wilda C. Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and the Throne. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017.

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  Employs the metaphor of the southern family supper table to invite multicultural readers and critics to explore an expansive notion of biblical interpretation the author terms “womanist midrash.” The term is defined as a “set of interpretative practices, including translation, exegesis, and biblical interpretation” (p. 3). Study divided in two parts focused on marginalized biblical characters in the first five books of the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament queens.

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• Junior, Nyasha. An Introduction to Womanist Biblical Interpretation. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015.

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  Part 1 provides key historical background on the development of the feminist and womanist movements as the foundation for womanist theology. Focuses on the early efforts of the Grimké sisters, Harriet Livermore, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton as first-wave feminists and Jarena Lee, Elizabeth, Maria Stewart, and Anna Julia Cooper as early African American women interpreters of the Bible. Part I2 highlights the work of key contemporary womanist scholars.

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• Smith, Mitzi J., ed. I Found God in Me: A Womanist Biblical Hermeneutics Reader. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2015.

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  Collection of sixteen essays with an introduction, divided into two parts: Alice Walker’s Womanist and Womanist Interpretive Theory; and Reading the Bible as a Womanist Biblical Scholar. Conceived as an “attempt to fill a pedagogical, political and spiritual void” in the field of womanist biblical interpretation. Focus includes liberation, activism, postcoloniality, and women of the Bible. Does not include index.

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• St. Clair, Raquel A. Call and Consequences: A Womanist Reading of Mark. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008.

  DOI: 10.2307/j.ctv1hqdh8qSave Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Womanist reading of the biblical book of Mark that places the Cross as a complex symbol of both suffering and redemption in the center of the racialized and gendered analysis. Begins with an overview of womanist theology; acknowledges the importance of the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) to womanist biblical interpretation; provides analysis of Markan scholarship on suffering; and outlines a close reading of Mark 8:31–37.

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• Williams, Delores. Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013.

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  Builds on author’s early essay “Womanist Theology,” which identified the sources and methods of the newly developed area of theological inquiry. Part 1 employs the biblical figure of Hagar to consider the Black female presence in the Bible and wider American society as agents of resistance, victims of oppression, and symbols of social and political significance. Part 2 analyzes “Womanist God-Talk” in relation to Black liberation theology, feminism, and the Black church. Originally published in 1993.

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African American Preaching Women and Spiritual Narrative

The following texts place African American pious and preaching women at the center of African American biblical studies to reframe scholars’ understanding of the field. Mitchell 1985, Andrews 1986, Riggs 1997, Collier-Thomas 1998, and Lucky 2016 recover the autobiographies and sermons of 19th- and 20th-century Black preaching women to place their lived experiences and accomplishments alongside those of their male counterparts. Moody 2001, Haywood 2003, Bassard 2010, and Cooper 2011 analyze the work of various spiritual and preaching women to place their writing within the wider scope of theological and literary critical study.

• Andrews, William, ed. Sisters of the Spirit: Three Black Women’s Autobiographies of the Nineteenth Century. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1986.

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  Foundational collection of the autobiographies of Jarena Lee, the first African American woman preacher of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and Zilpha Elaw and Julia Foote. Women preachers employed extensive biblical text in their autobiographies to justify their call to preach the Christian gospel. Includes 19th-century, African American literary examples of biblical exegesis.

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• Bassard, Katherine Clay. Transforming Scriptures: African American Women Writers and the Bible. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2010.

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  Takes up the call in the author’s Spiritual Interrogrations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999) to explore African American women’s literary theology. Divided into two parts. Part 1 analyzes both the hermeneutics of Black women’s biblical autobiographical writing and the biblical apologetics of slavery. Part 2 offers close readings of three 19th-century Black women’s texts and two 20th-century texts. Includes excellent index and matrix of scriptural references.

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• Collier-Thomas, Bettye, ed. Daughters of Thunder: Black Women Preachers and Their Sermons, 1850–1979. San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998.

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  Collection of sermons reproduced by fifteen 19th- and 20th-century Black American preaching women, each preceded by a short biographical essay. Sermons indexed thematically with an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources.

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• Cooper, Valerie C. Word Like Fire: Maria Stewart, the Bible and the Rights of African Americans. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011.

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  Analyzes the writings of Maria Stewart by employing the lenses of political ideology, nation building, feminism, and biblical hermeneutics. Extensive subject and biblical indexes.

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• Haywood, Chanta M. Prophesying Daughters: Black Women Preachers and the Word, 1823–1913. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003.

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  Analyzes the role of biblical interpretation in the narratives of Jarena Lee, Julia Foote, Maria Stewart, and Frances Gaudet. Argues that the authors’ act of writing serves as a type of prophesying and a means to consider speech, travel, and social activism.

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• Lucky, Crystal J., ed. A Mysterious Life and Calling: From Slavery to Ministry in South Carolina. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2016.

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  Autobiography of the Rev. Charlotte Riley, the first licensed woman preacher in the South Carolina Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. Employs extensive biblical text to justify her call to preach the Christian gospel. Riley’s narrative, first published in the early twentieth century, recounts her lived experiences during the nineteenth century and serves as a literary example of biblical exegesis. Extensive footnotes contextualizing scriptural usage.

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• Mitchell, Ella Pearson, ed. Those Preachin’ Women: Sermons by Black Women Preachers. Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1985.

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  Collection of sermons reproduced by fourteen 20th-century black American preaching women, with short biographical sketches. Introduction focuses on women in the ministry.

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• Moody, Joycelyn. Sentimental Confessions: Spiritual Narratives of Nineteenth-Century African American Women. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2001.

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  Analyzes the spiritual and theological underpinnings of the narratives of Maria Stewart, Jarena Lee, Zilpha Elaw, Nancy Prince, Mattie J. Jackson, and Julia Foote. Explores the writers’ usage of white-sanctioned literary conventions to express their spiritual experiences in the face of poverty and enslavement.

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• Riggs, Marcia Y., ed. Can I Get a Witness? Prophetic Religious Voices of African American Women, An Anthology. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997.

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  Collection of excerpted autobiographical and biographical works by and about 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century African American women who operated in the religious, civic, and political public sectors. Includes biographical sketches and primary source material for twenty-eight women.

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Race, Racism and Slavery

The texts in this section explore the ways black theological inquiry employs the Bible to consider problems of racism, power, oppression, and political movements. Wilmore 1998 offers an extensive discussion on the Bible in the development of the Black Christian religious experience. Felder 1989 and Nash 2003 explore the foundations of racial determinism supported by the Bible and the emergence of race as a formal category. Sadler 2005, Goldenberg 2003, and Felder 2002 analyze misinterpretations and misuses of biblical themes to enforce theologically racist ideologies. Powery and Sadler 2016 considers the adoption of Christianity as a viable belief system for enslaved Africans in America. Cone 1997 offers a seminal hermeneutical study of the emergence of Black power ideology during the civil rights and Black power movements. Koffi 2005 examines racial bias in biblical translations and Study Bible notes. Braxton 2002 places the biblical book of Galatians in the center of an analysis of Black American liberation.

• Braxton, Brad R. No Longer Slaves: Galatians and African American Experience. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2002.

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  Offers a strategy for reading the biblical book of Galatians chapter by chapter to place the struggle for Black American liberation within a biblical, historical, racial, and gendered context.

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• Cone, James H. Black Theology and Black Power. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997 (1969).

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  Originally published in 1969 (New York: Seabury Press), seminal text written in response to the Black power and civil rights movements of the 1960s. Seeks to identify liberation as the heart of the Christian gospel and blackness as the expression of God’s presence. Considers differences in Black and White church theologies to outline a black theology of liberation.

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• Felder, Cain Hope. Troubling Biblical Waters: Race, Class, and Family. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1989.

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  Examines Black heritage in biblical antiquity and contemporary social applications. Employs identity markers of race, class, and family to explore the ways biblical scholarship expanded after 1960.

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• Felder, Cain Hope. Race, Racism, and the Biblical Narratives. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002.

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  Essay published as short book. Argues that both Old and New Testament biblical texts have been misused to enslave and oppress Black people in America and subsequently dismiss their contributions. Challenges Eurocentric theological traditions.

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• Goldenberg, David. The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003.

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  Argues that the biblical story of Ham in Genesis 9:18–25 has served as the “greatest justification for Black slavery for more than a thousand years” (p. 1). Attempts to explain the interpretation by exploring the historical perspectives of Jews, Christians, and Muslims on black Africans. Analyzes the link between skin color and slavery in biblical and postbiblical contexts. Includes indexes of ancient sources and modern scholars.

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• Koffi, Ettien. “Theologizing About Race in Study Bible Notes: The Case of Amos 9:7.” Journal of Religious Though 57–58.Part 2/1–2 (2005): 157–167.

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  Considers the intersection of theology, race, and biblical translation. Traces the history of biblical translation and written Study Bible notes. Analyzes the notes from several biblical translations in English and Spanish attached to Amos 9:7 as an example of racial bias.

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• Nash, Peter T. Reading Race, Reading the Bible. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003.

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  Considers the emergence of race as a formal category, the ways the Bible addresses racial difference, African roots of Old Testament peoples, and the necessity of deconstructing accepted racial categories as natural in the ancient world. Short, broad treatment of subject matter.

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• Powery, Emerson B., and Rodney S. Sadler, Jr. The Genesis of Liberation: Biblical Interpretation in the Antebellum Narratives of the Enslaved. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016.

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  Considers why enslaved Africans would have embraced the religion of their captors who used the Bible to justify slavery. Explores the Freedom or slave narrative as form and relates it to the Bible and the Sabbath. Especially noteworthy are chapter 4’s rereading of the “curse of Ham” myth in the narratives of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and William and Ellen Craft and the excursus following chapter 5.

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• Sadler, Rodney S., Jr. Can a Cushite Change His Skin? An Examination of Race, Ethnicity, and Othering in the Hebrew Bible. New York: T & T Clark International, 2005.

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  In depth biblical and exegetical analysis of Cush, the oldest son of Ham and grandson of the biblical patriarch, Noah. Provides close readings in the biblical books of Genesis, Numbers, Judges, 2 Samuel, 2 Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Nahum, and Zephaniah to consider notions of race, the racialized other, and the development of racial thought from the 10th century to the post-Exilic period.

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• Wilmore, Gayraud S. Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious History of African Americans. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998.

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  Extensive discussion on the Bible in the development of the Black Christian religious experience, including Ethiopian orthodoxy, African traditional religions, Judaism in Africa, Christianity in Ethiopia, Islam in Africa, and missionizing efforts in Africa. Considers Blacks’ reinvention of “white Christianity” throughout the duration of American slavery and throughout the 20th century to “produce an indigenous faith that emphasized dignity, freedom, and human welfare” (p. 25).

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African American Literature

The texts in this section employ a biblical lens to explore a myriad of African American authored fictional and autobiographical texts. Hubbard 1994 serves as a foundational text in African American literary critical and biblical studies. Coleman 2000 employs Black theology, hermeneutics, and African American mythmaking to unpack the creation of an African American narrative form. Caron 1996 considers Richard Wright’s conflicted relationship with Christianity and the Bible. Benet-Goodman 1999, Seward and Tally 2014, Mitchell 1991 and Stave 2006 offer extended treatments of Toni Morrison’s engagement with the Bible. Coleman 2006 analyzes some of the most important writers of the 20th century and their attempt to represent the sacred and spiritual in African American literature. Gallagher 1994 employs the lens of postcoloniality to consider literature and the Bible. Wimbush 2012 provides an in-depth exploration of the autobiographical narrative of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavas Vassa, and his engagement with biblical form.

• Benet-Goodman, Helen. “Sula and the Destabilisations of Apocalypse.” Literature & Theology 13.1 (March 1999): 76–87.

  DOI: 10.1093/litthe/13.1.76Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Explores Toni Morrison’s use of three notions of the apocalyptic in Sula — the biblical, the African American, and the postmodern. Focuses on the biblical book of Daniel to read the character Shadrack.

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• Caron, Timothy B. “‘The Reds are in the Bible Room’: Political Activism and the Bible in Richard Wright’s Uncle Tom’s Children.” Studies in American Fiction 24.1 (Spring 1996): 45–64.

  DOI: 10.1353/saf.1996.0000Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Reads Wright’s exploration of biblical themes and Marxist ideology through the lens of his religious background.

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• Coleman, Will. Tribal Talk: Black Theology, Hermeneutics, and African/American Ways of “Telling the Story.” University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000.

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  Organized in two parts, explores the relationship among Black theology, hermeneutics, and narrative forms for expressing the Black experience in America. Begins with West African folklore, considering the ways religious practices and narratives evolved through the Middle Passage. Moves on to examine how American slaves blended African and New World cosmologies to employ new interpretative strategies, produce slave narratives, and adopt revised forms of Black theology and liberation hermeneutics.

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• Coleman, James W. Faithful Vision: Treatments of the Sacred, Spiritual, and Supernatural in Twentieth-Century African American Fiction. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006.

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  Analyzes the treatment of the Bible and the Christian faith in the novels of James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, Ishmael Reed, Ellease Southerland, Alice Walker, John Edgar Wideman, and Richard Wright. Defines and employs the term “faithful vision” to encompass the sacred, spiritual, and supernatural agency that accounts for African American suffering, oppression, survival, and salvation.

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• Gallagher, Susan VanZanten, ed. Postcolonial Literature and the Biblical Call for Justice. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1994.

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  Collection of essays on literary critical engagement with postcolonial theory, the Bible, and postcolonial literature. Broad gathering of writers, including Frantz Fanon, Chinua Achebe, and Ngugi wa Thiongo.

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• Hubbard, Dolan. The Sermon and the African American Literary Imagination. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1994.

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  Engages 19th-century African American slave narratives and fiction and five major 20th-century African American novels to argue that the Black sermon functions as the “heroic voice of black America.” It serves as the foundation upon which African American writers engage in a practice similar to Black preachers to create communion between the writer and readership and to release readers from the “tyranny of the everyday.”

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• Mitchell, Carolyn A. “‘I Love to Tell the Story’: Biblical Revisions in Beloved.” Religion & Literature 23.3 (Autumn 1991): Reconstructing the Word: Spirituality in Women’s Writing, 27–42.

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  Reads three scenes in Toni Morrison’s Beloved to explore African American spirituality, Christianity, and religion: the discovery of the tree on Sethe’s back by Paul D., the brief relationship between Sethe and Amy Denver, and the calling of Baby Suggs to preach.

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• Seward, Adrienne Lanier, and Justine Tally, eds. Toni Morrison: Memory and Meaning. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014.

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  Collection of essays that explores questions of personal memory and scholarly meaning in the works of Toni Morrison. Includes three essays on biblical themes in Part 3: “Her garden was not Eden; it was so much more than that” by Shirley A. Stave, and essays by Katherine Clay Bassard and Justine Tally.

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• Stave, Shirley A., ed. Toni Morrison and the Bible: Contested Intertextualities. New York: Peter Lang, 2006.

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  Collection of essays that explores the myriad ways Morrison’s novels engage with the Bible. Includes exposition on The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Beloved, Jazz, Paradise, and Love.

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• Wimbush, Vincent L. White Men’s Magic: Scripturalization as Slavery. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

  DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199873579.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Analyzes The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano to consider the confrontation of the dominant West with the “race-d” Other. Argues that the author “makes his story about the phenomenon of the Bible as part of the construction of the world of dominants, with the focus on the British.” Adopts the term “scripturalization” as a “social-psychological-political” structure for the narrative and as “white men’s magic” (p. 1).

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Translations and Electronic Resources

The sources in this section are electronic resources that focus on blacks and the Bible and various translations of the Bible with commentary focused on African American readers. Felder 1999 in American Bible Society: Resources focuses on blacks in the Bible, broadly. The New American Bible (NAB) translation of the African American Catholic Youth Bible 2015 and the King James Version (KJV) and New International Version (NIV) of My Holy Bible for African American Children 2010 are designed to capture the attention of African American youth and offer commentary and illustrations specific to that audience. The African American Devotional Bible 1997; the King James Version (KJV) and the Contemporary English Version (CEV) of Holy Bible: African American Jubilee Edition 1999; and the Original African Heritage Study Bible 2007 offer devotional meditations and commentary focused on topics of interest to African American readers. The Today’s New International Version (TNIV) of The Bible Experience 2006 is an audio version of the Bible read by major African American actors, musicians, clergy, and personalities.

• The African American Devotional Bible. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1997.

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  Print version of the Bible from the Congress of National Black Churches, King James Version, including 260 weekday and fifty-two weekend devotional meditations that address a wide range of topics relative to African American lived experience, history, and culture, including heritage, economic empowerment, racism, family life, community, justice, marriage, and stewardship.

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• The African American Catholic Youth Bible. Winona, MN: St. Mary’s Press, 2015.

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  Print version of the Catholic Bible, New American Bible version, designed to address African American youth by the National Black Catholic Congress. Includes Black art, commentary on African American historical events, and a listing of major events in African American Catholic Church history.

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• Felder, Cain Hope. “Blacks in Biblical Antiquity.” In American Bible Society: Resources, 1999.

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  Excerpt from a longer article that argues that Eurocentric interpretations of Africa and the Africanist presence in the Bible need reevaluation. Includes list of Old and New Testament examples of Black identified individuals.

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• Holy Bible: African American Jubilee Edition. New York: American Bible Society, 1999.

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  Print versions of the Bible by the American Bible Society, including three hundred pages of commentary on biblical history, culture, and religion related to African American history, culture, and religion. Explores the Africanist presence in the Bible. Includes fifty illustrations.

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• Inspired By Media Group. The Bible Experience. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006.

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  Audiobook version of the Bible in the Today’s New International Version performed by major African American actors, musicians, clergy, and personalities, including Samuel L. Jackson, Blair Underwood, Yolanda Adams, and Cuba Gooding, Jr. Reenacts the Old and New Testament biblical passages. Winner of the 2007 Audiobook of the Year award.

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• My Holy Bible for African American Children. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010.

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  Print version of the Bible, King James Version and New International Version, designed to address African American children. Includes simple biblical answers to complex questions facing children, illustrations by African American artists, song lyrics, and biographies of African American historical figures.

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• Original African Heritage Study Bible. Edited by Cain Hope Felder. King of Prussia, PA: Judson Press, 2007.

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  Print version of the Bible, King James version, including commentary on African contributions to Judaic and Christian history.

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