Historical criticism attempts to read texts in their original situations, informed by literary and cultural conventions reconstructed from comparable texts and artifacts. African American interpretation extends this approach to questions about race and social location for the ancient text, its reception history, and its modern readers. It arose as a corrective and alternative to white supremacist use of the Bible in moral and political arguments regarding race, civil rights, and social justice. Accordingly, African American interpretation has combined the insights of abolitionists and activists with academic tools to demonstrate how biblical interpretation can function as an instrument of oppression, obfuscation, or opportunity. Of course, most of these developments have occurred in the larger framework of American Christianity. Yet, its analyses reach beyond that specific setting, touching on the connections between the Bible and race in public discourse generally, whether in government, academia, or popular culture.

1. A
AFRICAN AMERICAN INTERPRETATION
Historical criticism attempts to read texts in
their original situations, informed by literary and
cultural conventions reconstructed from compara-
ble texts and artifacts. African American interpreta-
tion extends this approach to questions about race
and social location for the ancient text, its reception
history, and its modern readers. It arose as a correc-
tive and alternative to white supremacist use of the
Bible in moral and political arguments regarding
race, civil rights, and social justice. Accordingly,
African American interpretation has combined the
insights of abolitionists and activists with academic
tools to demonstrate how biblical interpretation can
function as an instrument of oppression, obfusca-
tion, or opportunity. Of course, most of these devel-
opments have occurred in the larger framework
of American Christianity. Yet, its analyses reach
beyond that specific setting, touching on the con-
nections between the Bible and race in public dis-
course generally, whether in government, academia,
or popular culture.
White Supremacy, Slavery, and the Bible. The
importance of African American interpretation is
evident when viewed in light of white supremacy’s
development in the United States. When propertied
white men during the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries were deliberating about their freedoms,
they were also creating rationales for not extending
those liberties to others—poorer white men, white
women, indigenous people, and enslaved blacks
from Africa. There were some who saw the hypoc-
risy of such thinking; some even articulated aspira-
tions for a better day, but such hopes for others
were left to the invisible hand of Providence. Mean-
while, their own freedom required immediate pro-
test, collective action, and even war (Fredrickson
2002, pp. 1–47).
Nevertheless, white supremacy did not reach its
zenith in the United States until the period stretch-
ing from the middle of the nineteenth century to the
first half of the twentieth century. This era included
a series of episodes centered on the control of Afri-
can Americans: (a) the debates about slavery before
the Civil War, accompanied by a variety of violent
incidents; (b) the unconscionable carnage of the
Civil War; (c) a hopeful yet eventually ruined Recon-
struction; and (d) a time of unchecked terrorist
violence to enforce de jure and de facto segregation
(Fredrickson 2002, pp. 49–138).
In each episode, the Bible’s interpretation played a
central role in arguments for and protests against
white supremacy. In arguments over slavery, for
instance, defenders and opponents alike confidently
cited the Bible (Noll 2006, pp. 31–50). Slavery’s
1

2. supporters could easily point to multiple passages
where slavery is regulated and slaves are commanded
to submit to their masters (e.g., Exod 21:1–11; Deut
20:10–18; 1 Cor 7:21; Col 3:22; 4:1; 1 Tim 6:1–2; 1 Pet
2:18–25). Thus, for those who considered the Bible a
divinely inspired rule book, slavery was obviously
morally permissible and its opponents possessed
by impiety. Moreover, the belief in black inferiority
blinded many to the immorality of this race-based
system, not to mention its innumerable abuses such
as family breakup and rape.
Conversely, slavery’s opponents contended that
larger biblical principles should guide the reading
of particular passages. These included creation in
God’s image (Gen 1:26), Jesus’s admonitions on
mutuality, love, and care for the vulnerable (Matt
7:12; 22:34–40; 25:31–46), human unity before God
(Acts 17:26), and the absolution of social barriers for
fellow believers in Christ (Gal 3:28). Because of
the self-interests of some, the simple view of the
Bible for many, and the white supremacy of most,
these latter arguments proved unpersuasive. Instead,
the resolution “was left to those consummate theo-
logians, the Reverend Doctors Ulysses S. Grant and
William Tecumseh Sherman, to decide what in fact
the Bible actually means” (Noll 2006, p. 50).
Antebellum Ancestors. One development, how-
ever, would have lasting, constructive conse-
quences: the emergence of African American
interpretation of the Bible in disputes about
their humanity and societal standing (Noll 2006,
pp. 64–72). In 1810 Daniel Coker, a founding minis-
ter of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, pub-
lished A Dialogue between a Virginian and an African
Minister, where he set forth seven arguments from
the Bible against slavery. In 1813 Lemuel Haynes, a
Congregationalist minister in Vermont, pointed out
the contradictions between the outrage over the
forced service of American sailors in the War of
1812 and the quiet acceptance of slavery’s injustices.
David Walker published his famous Appeal in 1829,
where he argued passionately against slavery on
biblical, moral, and historical grounds. Preferring
their exegetical arguments, Mark Noll, a historian
and an evangelical, concludes that Coker and
Haynes “demonstrated that African American bibli-
cal reasoning could match in theological acumen
the most profound arguments that any white put
forward in that period” (p. 73).
Frederick Douglass, marching to the beat of
a different drum, mustered unequalled eloquence
against biblical and theological defenses of slavery.
Although he taught himself and others literacy with
the Bible, Douglass understood that it was a treach-
erous tool of oppression in the hands of racist,
pro-slavery whites. So much so that Douglass once
publicly argued against raising money for smuggling
Bibles to Southern slaves (Callahan 2006, pp. 21–26).
“He knew that some people reading the Bible under
the slave regime remained tone-deaf to its message
of justice” (p. 24). Thus, he found pro-slavery use of
the Bible simply loathsome. Indeed, he refused to
“play the game” of so-called civil debate. Douglass
concluded that the obvious duplicity of slavery’s
defenders must only be met with derision.
It would be insulting to Common Sense, an outrage
upon all right feeling, for us, who have worn the heavy
chain and felt the biting lash to consent to argue with
Ecclesiastical Sneaks who are thus prostituting their
Religion and Bible to the base uses of popular and
profitable iniquity. They don’t need light, but the sting
of honest rebuke. They are of their father the Devil,
and his works they do, not because they are ignorant,
but because they are base. (Noll 2006, p. 66)
Still, Douglass did not advocate slave revolt. Other
African Americans, however, were unwilling to limit
their protests to advocacy in activism, oratory, and
print. In 1810, slave brothers in Virginia, Gabriel and
Martin, orchestrated a revolt before it was discov-
ered and stopped. Trial testimony indicates that the
Bible was a fundamental inspiration for them. In the
neighboring state of South Carolina, moved by Bible
reading among black Methodists, Denmark Vesey
planned a slave revolt on Bastille Day, 14 July 1822.
His plot was foiled, and he and thirty-six others were
executed. Nine years later in August 1831, back in
Virginia, Nat Turner’s revolt killed sixty whites, and
nearly as many blacks were executed for that upris-
ing. In the aftermath, several states passed laws
2 AFRICAN AMERICAN INTERPRETATION

3. not only prohibiting African American education
but severely restricting unsupervised gatherings.
Obviously, when these African Americans consid-
ered their circumstances, they did not perceive the
Bible as pointing to their perpetual compliance.
Instead, they saw themselves as similar to the Isra-
elites in Egypt, awaiting emancipation, and like the
Maccabees under Seleucid rule, they considered
human agency a legitimate means of freedom (Call-
ahan 2006, pp. 6–10).
Of course, these men were not alone in their pro-
tests and revolts against slavery. African American
women also resisted the repeated denial of their
humanity. Instead of viewing the Bible as a hand-
book for hierarchy, many of these women saw lib-
erty in its pages. In the latter half of the eighteenth
century, Phillis Wheatley, the first African American
woman to publish a book of poetry, foresaw
redemption in biblical references to salvation for
Ethiopia (e.g., Ps 68:31; Callahan 2006, p. 141). Harriet
Tubman, who escaped from slavery, was inspired by
the account of Israel’s exodus from Egypt and was
called “Moses” for her work in the Underground
Railroad (Callahan pp. 94, 121, 189). Sojourner
Truth, a former slave and, later, an abolitionist and
advocate for women’s rights, contended for the sim-
ple truth that she, too, was a woman, worthy of the
same recognition given to others. Thus, like Tubman,
she anticipated God saving American slaves similar
to the stories of deliverances in the Bible (p. 122).
These women and men saw through the preva-
lent self-serving use of the Bible by the privileged
whites of their day. Life experience and keen obser-
vation apparently taught them the importance of
social location for how one interpreted the Bible.
They discerned the interpretive double standard:
one approach applied to one set of human beings
for the sake of “inalienable rights” and state sover-
eignty. Yet, a different approach applied to this
other set, those deemed subhuman due to skin
pigmentation, and whose labor had become essen-
tial for the others’ economic gain.
Despite learned sophistry to the contrary, these
antebellum African Americans knew they were
deserving of the same respect as any other human
being. For a minister like Coker, a doctorate was not
required to understand that more learned theolo-
gians like Moses Stuart and James Henley Thornwell
were obfuscating the clear meaning of Matt 7:12 in
the King James Version: “Therefore all things what-
soever ye would that men should do to you, do ye
even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets”
(Noll 2006, pp. 56–64, 66). Indeed, three decades
before the Civil War, David Walker asked a pointed
rhetorical question: “Now, Americans! I ask you
candidly, was your sufferings [sic] under Great
Britain, one hundredth part as cruel and tyrannical
as you have rendered ours under you?” (p. 68).
Yet, the resistance of these men and women is
only part of the larger picture. The Bible was more
than a site of contest in arguments about slavery.
African Americans in this era also employed the
Bible in creative ways for religious encouragement
in song and sermon (Callahan 2006, pp. 10–20). Its
language and symbolism were pervasive, providing
the threads with which various tapestries were
woven as expressions of weal and woe:
African Americans found the Bible to be both healing
balm and poison book. They could not lay claim to
the balm without braving the poison. The same book
was both medicine and malediction. To afford them-
selves its healing properties, African Americans
resolved to treat scripture with scripture, much like
a homeopathic remedy. . . . Their cure for the toxicity
of pernicious scripture was more scripture. The anti-
dote to hostile texts of the Bible was more Bible,
homeopathically administered to counteract toxins
of the text. (p. 40)
There were also African Americans in this period
who did not subscribe to the sentiments of David
Walker, Frederick Douglass, or Harriet Tubman.
Some heard and understood the Bible in the terms
provided by their masters. They were willing to
consider that it was indeed their lot to be slaves in
submission to a divinely sanctioned system. Perhaps
some who took this position were simply looking
out for their self-interests, knowing that rebellion
was risky, preferring the known over the unknown.
Still, whatever their motivations, whether sincere or
AFRICAN AMERICAN INTERPRETATION 3

4. cynical, some conducted themselves as if they did
indeed believe that the Pauline commands of obe-
dience applied directly to them.
In fact, some slaves were so committed to the
status quo that they were informants on others
plotting insurgence. In one infamous example, sev-
eral slaves subverted the Stono Rebellion of South
Carolina in 1739. One slave named July was so
important in stopping that rebellion that he was
commended by the state legislature and emanci-
pated with clothes and shoes. Likewise, a house
slave named Peter Prioleau helped squelch Den-
mark Vesey’s revolt in 1822. Prioleau was emanci-
pated on Christmas and given an annual pension,
which he used for slave purchase (Kennedy 2008,
pp. 32–37). These examples illustrate why someone
like Douglass was unwilling to raise funds for con-
traband Bibles sent to Southern slaves. He
lamented, “I have met many religious colored people,
at the South, who are under the delusion that God
requires them to submit to slavery and to wear
chains with meekness and humility” (Callahan, p. 23).
The Bible’s interpretation among African Ameri-
cans before the Civil War demonstrates how thor-
oughly so many of them understood the importance
of social location. Many of the best black thinkers in
this period were creative and critical “masters of
suspicion” in their scrutiny of the complex relation-
ship between text, reader, and community. They
modeled what would become the subject of aca-
demic debate decades later: the Bible (like any
text) does not necessarily have a definitive, discern-
able meaning, which is universally accessible and
applicable. Rather, its meaning is largely determined
by a community of interpreters who are morally
accountable for how they arrange and apply that
interpretation. This is particularly the case with an
anthology of discrete books like the Bible, whose
texts do not literally speak without the agency of
human interpreters. Thus, appeal to the text as an
independent authority is simply a way of obscuring,
intentionally or unintentionally, the decisive role of
interpreters. Long before literary theorists like Stan-
ley Fish were raising critical questions about the
role of interpretive communities in determining
textual meaning (Fish 1982), African Americans
were asking, “Is there a text on this plantation?”
Social Location after Slavery. This stance of sus-
picion toward the predominate interpretation of the
Bible continued as racism became worse and more
violent in the first half of the twentieth century.
After the Civil War, white terrorism included the
lynching of more than 3,400 African Americans
from 1882 to 1944 (Dray 2002). In addition, as
Douglas Blackmon argued in his Pulitzer Prize–
winning book Slavery by Another Name (2008), in
many respects slavery did not cease with the war in
1865. Instead, a vast public/private system was
orchestrated to virtually re-enslave a significant seg-
ment of African American men. Blackmon concludes
that slavery was not effectively over until the 1940s.
In fact, after the celebrated struggles and suc-
cesses of the civil rights movement, culminating
with landmark legislation in 1964–1965, the power
of racism over the lives of African Americans still
did not come to an end. It did become more oblique,
however. This shows up in paradoxical develop-
ments after that pivotal period. On the one hand,
American society has made tremendous progress in
reducing societal impediments based on race. The
opportunities that became available for African
Americans have been significant and should not be
minimized. This progress recently reached a sym-
bolic plateau unforeseen by many with the election
in 2008 and re-election in 2012 of Barack Obama,
the first African American president.
On the other hand, these strides were often
marked by setbacks. The setbacks were, in fact,
reactions to the progress. In response to employ-
ment gains for African Americans in government,
educational, and privates sectors, for instance, there
was a significant controversy around affirmative-
action policies, a related rise in resentments by
whites, and concomitant complaints by African
Americans about subtle racial bias among profes-
sionals and police. These tensions set the stage for
momentous turmoil in the 1990s, as seen in the riots
that occurred in Los Angeles in 1992 after police
were acquitted of criminal charges despite video
recording of their beating of Rodney King. Likewise,
4 AFRICAN AMERICAN INTERPRETATION

5. substantial racial strife arose after O.J. Simpson was
acquitted in 1995, also in Los Angeles. These racially
tinged events in the American West some three
decades after the civil rights movement led one
white biblical scholar to write a brief critique of
racism. In his judgment, “The O.J. trial . . . exploded
the myth that racism in America is confined to the
South. And the truth is that his trial is only the most
public example of the racism and racial division that
exist nationwide” (McKenzie 1997, p. vii).
The conflicting perceptions around the presiden-
tial election in 2008 also illustrate the dilemma of
racial progress. Many political observers contend
that reactions to that presidential campaign were
clearly imbued with overt racism and indirect racial
bias. Further, some argue that President Obama’s
racial identity has actually made it more difficult
for him to address race-related issues. Thus, even
an event of this magnitude becomes a two-edged
sword, revealing stirring progress and persistent
prejudice, simultaneously (Kennedy 2011).
This dynamic is not limited to political elections,
either. In other areas, it is actually more troubling
and consequential but admittedly more difficult to
discern. For one willing to look closely, though,
one can observe how social policies significantly
affecting urban areas after the late 1960s were reac-
tions to the gains of the civil rights movement.
These urban centers, such as Detroit, Cleveland,
and, again, parts of Los Angeles, have become
more dilapidated and dysfunctional, with the influx
of illegal drugs, a corresponding increase in prison
sentencing for drug-related crimes, and an extensive
exodus in jobs and taxes by middle-class whites and
blacks.
These debilitating aspects have had a dispropor-
tionate impact on poorer African Americans who
inhabit these spaces. Several social scientists, in
fact, contend that these dysfunctional sites are the
outgrowth of a segregationist past coupled with the
evolution of a nuanced racial stigma, now aug-
mented and diffused by socioeconomic class.
Incomparable incarceration rates for African Amer-
ican men demonstrate the depth of these deleterious
factors. The numbers have skyrocketed since the
civil rights movement, the Black Power movement,
and the race riots in the late 1960s. “The US prison
population is larger than at any time in the history
of the penitentiary anywhere in the world. Nearly
half of the more than two million Americans behind
bars are African Americans, and an unprecedented
number of black men will likely go to prison during
the course of their lives” (Muhammad 2010, p. 1).
Inheritance in the Academy. These larger socio-
historical developments provide the setting for aca-
demic interpretation of the Bible among African
Americans. Yet, no African American held a doctor-
ate in biblical studies before World War II. In 1945,
though, Leon Edward Wright became the first Afri-
can American to earn a PhD in New Testament from
Harvard. He went on to serve as a professor for more
than thirty years at Howard University in Washing-
ton, D.C. Two years later, Charles B. Copher earned
a PhD in Hebrew Bible from Boston University. He
joined the faculty at the Interdenominational Theo-
logical Center (ITC) in Atlanta, teaching there for
more than five decades. In 1953 Joseph A. Johnson
was the first African American student in the Van-
derbilt Divinity School in Nashville and received his
PhD in NT five years later, the third African Amer-
ican to earn a doctorate in biblical studies. Johnson
also taught at ITC, later becoming president of its
Christian Methodist institution, Phillips School of
Theology (Wimbush 2010, p. 8, n. 4).
As these pioneers instructed seminarians at his-
torically black institutions in the 1960s, they wit-
nessed young African Americans moving away
from the integrationist emphasis of the civil rights
movement. Instead, there was a turn to Black
Nationalism, which included a focus on the contri-
butions of African Americans, an affirmation of
physical blackness, and a celebration of origins in
Africa. During this time, many African American
Christians were criticized heavily by other African
Americans and often told that their religion was
“the white man’s religion.” This accusation came
from Black Nationalists generally and from the
Nation of Islam in particular, perhaps most power-
fully expressed by Malcolm X before his split with
Elijah Muhammad.
AFRICAN AMERICAN INTERPRETATION 5

6. James Cone articulated a response with the pub-
lication of Black Theology and Black Power in 1969
and A Black Theology of Liberation in 1970. Cone
created a theological approach that addressed
African Americans and their societal concerns. He
emphasized “black theology” as an affirmation of
black suffering and in opposition to white oppres-
sion. This blackness was not just about skin color; it
was about a condition in a society still characterized
by white supremacy despite premature self-congra-
tulations after the civil rights movement. This was a
theology of “blackness” in terms of the downtrod-
den, those left to languish in cities wrecked by riots
just a few years earlier. Accordingly, there would be
no salvation for white American Christians until
they rejected the privilege of whiteness and identi-
fied with blackness instead. For Cone, that is the
meaning of the Christian cross at that particular
moment in American history.
Black biblical scholars began to argue for a “black
presence” in the Bible as a complement to and
support for the aims of black theology. Moreover,
in the larger setting of Black Nationalism, African
Americans sought to identify black heroes as a
source of pride as well as a counter to claims of
inferiority. In this logic, if black people are equal,
then history should be replete with examples of
black greatness, examples that have been denied,
suppressed, or stolen by a distorted history. Given
the place of the Bible in American religion and
culture, it became an important site of contest
about race and misrepresentations. To a certain
degree, this was entirely appropriate given the per-
vasiveness of white images in biblically focused
movies, books, and art. Too often, Jesus looked like
a man from Norway rather than from Nazareth
(Blum and Harvey 2012).
Charles Copher can be identified as “the parent of
modern day scholarly study of ‘Blacks in the Bible’”
(Bailey 2000, p. 697). Writing in the 1970s and under
the influence of John Bright’s historiography,
Copher assumed a general reliability for the biblical
accounts, beginning with the list of nations in Gen-
esis 10. He endeavored to show that several of the
places mentioned there and in the rest of the Bible
could be identified as locations in Africa and thus
the inhabitants should be considered black. In
ironic contrast to the disparaging deployment of
Ham by white supremacists, Copher identified
Ham in Genesis 10:6–14 as a black African, and the
sons of Ham delineated there—Egypt, Cush, Put, and
Canaan—were also black. Thus, blacks were not
cursed for slavery but were important, respected,
and valued (Bailey 2000, pp. 697–698; Brown 2004,
pp. 24–34).
Cain Hope Felder employed a similar approach
in the 1980s and 1990s, noting that Southwest Asia
and North Africa are generally populated by people
of color, however dark or light in complexion. The
people who lived in those areas were not white
Europeans. Thus, the Egyptians with their great
accomplishments should be understood as people
of color (Felder 1989). Similarly, the Ethiopian queen
and her official mentioned in Acts 8:26, for instance,
were people of color. When Joseph, Mary, and
Jesus had to flee for safety, they fled to Egypt in
North Africa (pp. 12–14). Again and again, one can
see the presence and importance of people of color
in the Bible.
Felder’s approach dovetailed nicely with an
emphasis on multiculturalism in education during
the 1990s. As he traveled and explained these issues,
he often found receptive audiences; his success was
complemented by editing an important collection of
essays by African American scholars (Felder, 1991).
In addition, Felder published The Original African
Heritage Study Bible (KJV) in 1993, with annotations
addressing the black presence in the Bible.
The impact of this study Bible was as much about
psychological uplift as it was about scholarly spe-
cifics. To be sure, Felder could argue his point. Yet,
in some respects, that was not the most important
effect, at least not on a sociocultural level. African
Americans had seen nothing but images of whites in
biblical depictions for centuries. Now, finally, cre-
dentialed scholars were saying that such a picture
was incomplete at best, and racist at worse. Felder’s
Afrocentric approach resonated and provided a
helpful psychosocial defense against persistently
negative images of African Americans. Understood
6 AFRICAN AMERICAN INTERPRETATION

7. in these terms, one can appreciate the efforts
of Felder, and of Copher before him. In retrospect,
one can also recognize legitimate criticisms
and preferable alternatives (Bailey 2000, pp. 698;
Brown 2004, pp. 35–53).
For African American scholars entering biblical
studies in the 1990s and since, the conversation has
changed significantly. For one, it was important to
extend the conversation beyond a male-centered
one on race and identity. A full picture of how the
biblical text has been and can be employed must
address gender as well as race and interrogate how
gender and race may be intertwined or separated to
different effects. This applies to the ancient biblical
text as well as its interpretation by modern men and
women. Attempting to take account of these com-
plexities is one distinctive aspect of womanist inter-
pretation compared to feminist criticism (Martin,
1991; Weems, 1991).
African American biblical scholars are also asking
larger historical and cultural questions about the
function of the Bible in diverse black communities,
past and present. How has the Bible functioned? To
what effect? To whose benefit? Moreover, does the
Bible even deserve its sacred standing? Randall Bai-
ley, Hugh Page, Brian Blount, and Vincent Wimbush
have consistently pressed these and other questions.
Besides their individual publications, each of these
scholars has edited an impressive collection of
essays on African American biblical interpretation.
Each collection pushes past traditional conceptions
of what constitutes biblical scholarship. In chapter
after chapter in these edited volumes, biblical inter-
pretation is engaged alongside literature, art, poli-
tics, music, and larger sociopolitical issues.
Brian Blount has also published several books on
biblical interpretation and the African American
church (1998; 2001; 2005). In addition, he is now
the first African American president of Union Theo-
logical Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. In 2010
Vincent Wimbush became the first African Ameri-
can to serve as president of the Society of Biblical
Literature. Characteristically, he pressed the guild
“to start and to sustain ‘talkin’ ‘bout somethin’”
(2010, p. 9).
The Contribution of African American Interpre-
tation. In sum, contemporary African American
scholars of the Bible have adapted their antebellum
inheritance in diverse ways, while remaining faithful
to key aspects of it. They continue to employ biblical
interpretation as a community-centered counter
to various forms of bias and marginalization.
Accordingly, they have resisted the strictures of
so-called mainstream scholarship and its definition
of what constitutes valuable contributions. They
have repeatedly demonstrated an awareness of and
some allegiance to the pressing needs and concerns
of the African American communities that pro-
duced them. They have understood that calls from
the guild to do “typical” scholarship certainly have
their place, especially for professional advancement
and security. Yet, such calls can also come from
privilege and detachment, luxuries that many Afri-
can American scholars feel they cannot afford.
[See also African Biblical Interpretation; Asian
American Biblical Interpretation; Class Criticism;
Cross-Cultural Exegesis; Cultural Studies; Race,
Ethnicity, and Biblical Criticism; and Womanist
Interpretation]
B I B L I O G R A P H Y
Bailey, Randall C. “Academic Biblical Interpretation
among African Americans in the United States.” In
African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and
Social Textures, edited by Vincent Wimbush,
696–711. New York: Continuum, 2000.
Bailey, Randall C. “Beyond Identification: The Use of
Africans in Old Testament Poetry and Narratives.”
In Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical
Interpretation, edited by Cain Hope Felder, 165–184.
Minneapolis, D.C.: Fortress, 1991.
Bailey, Randall C., Tat-siong Benny Liew, and Fernando
F. Segovia, eds. They Were All Together in One Place?
Toward Minority Biblical Criticism. Atlanta: Society of
Biblical Literature, 2009.
Blackmon, Douglas A. Slavery by Another Name: The
Re-Enslavement of Black America from the Civil War
to World War II. New York: Doubleday, 2008.
Blount, Brian K. Can I Get a Witness?: Reading Revelation
through African American Culture. Louisville, KY.:
Westminster/John Knox, 2005.
Blount, Brian K. Cultural Interpretation: Reorienting New
Testament Criticism. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995.
AFRICAN AMERICAN INTERPRETATION 7

8. Blount, Brian K. Go Preach!: Mark’s Kingdom Message
and the Black Church Today. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis,
1998.
Blount, Brian K. Revelation: A Commentary. The New
Testament Library. Louisville, KY.: Westminster/
John Knox, 2009.
Blount, Brian K. Then the Whisper Put on Flesh: New
Testament Ethics in an African American Context.
Nashville: Abingdon, 2001.
Blount, Brian K., ed. True to Our Native Land: An African
American New Testament Commentary. Minneapolis:
Fortress, 2007.
Blum, Edward J., and Paul Harvey. The Color of Christ:
The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012.
Brown, Michael Joseph. Blackening of the Bible: The Aims
of African American Biblical Scholarship. New York:
Trinity Press International, 2004.
Callahan, Allen Dwight. The Talking Book: African Amer-
icans and the Bible. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press, 2006.
Dray, Philip. At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The
Lynching of Black America. New York: Random
House, 2002.
Felder, Cain Hope, ed. Stony the Road We Trod:
African American Biblical Interpretation. Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1991.
Felder, Cain Hope. Troubling Biblical Waters: Race, Class,
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Joseph Scrivner
AFRICAN BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION
African biblical interpretation is a thriving enter-
prise in and out of the academy, from the ancient
past to contemporary times and is best articulated
in the volumes edited by West and Dube (2000),
Dube (2001), and Dube, Mbuvi, and Mbuwayesango
(2012) that largely inform all the sections of this
article. From the earliest Bible translations, such as
the Septuagint/LXX of Alexandria (ca. third century
B.C.E.) and the Ethiopian Ge0
ez Bible of the fourth
century C.E., to multiple biblical translations of
modern times attest that the Bible has been read
and interpreted in the African continent in various
frameworks as Christianity continues to grow.
While we are yet to fully capture all the frameworks
of African biblical interpretations, some of its char-
acteristics include: (1) reading the Bible with and
through African cultural perspectives; (2) reading
the Bible for liberation; (3) reading the Bible within
the African context and addressing the communal
issues of well-being; (4) studying various Bible
readers for possible frameworks of interpretation;
8 AFRICAN AMERICAN INTERPRETATION