Blackening of the Bible: The Aims of African American Biblical Scholarship

(Paperback)

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Michael Brown offers an overview of the history of the development of African American and Afrocentric biblical interpretation. He then discusses how such scholarship began as an attempt to correct the biases African Americans perceived to be manifest in European and Euro-American biblical scholarship. This corrective, he says, quickly developed a life of its own, and Afrocentric biblical interpretation developed its own interpretive voice and style. Brown also examines Afrocentrism and the "blackening of the Bible," offering a critique of the color politics of Afrocentric criticism. He examines the evolution of womanism as a method of biblical interpretation, and explores and criticizes the ways that ideological and postcolonial criticism has contributed to Afrocentric biblical criticism. Finally, he presents the challenges he thinks confront the practice of such criticism, and he advances a new paradigm for the project that will put it in conversation with a wider audience of biblical scholars, classicists, historians, and theologians.

Reviews

"Blackening of the Bible gives readers an overview of the various modes of engagement used by African American biblical scholars. Brown establishes the groundwork for this important and unique area of biblical criticism and presents questions and challenges for biblical scholars, classicists, historians, and theologians. He also brings a fresh perspective to the task that allows readers unacquainted with African America readings of the Bible to see it in a nonpartisan light." -Sirreadalot.org, 1/15/05
"Michael J. Brown's Blackening of the Bible has the privilege of being the first text to critically assess and evaluate some of the leading voices and differing perspectives within the emerging field of black biblical hermeneutics. While this text is not intended to be exhaustive, it does present to the reader a lucid and engaging introduction to the primary aims of the young discipline. This book could easily serve as a main textbook or as a supplementary text for the increasing number of courses being offered in colleges and seminaries that seek to address and include marginalized voices and perspectives within biblical studies. I highly recommend it." --Demetrius Williams, Director, Religious Studies Program, Tulane University -- Demetrius Williams * Blurb from reviewer *
"This book ably fulfills its mission of providing an introduction to African American biblical interpretation. Dr. Brown presents a useful digest of African American scholarly engagements with Scripture. The assemblage of diverse perspectives in one volume invites persons from many cultural backgrounds to investigate the expanding discipline of African American biblical hermeneutics." -Brad R. Braxton, Associate Professor of Homiletics and New Testament, Vanderbilt University. -- Brad R. Braxton * Blurb from reviewer *
"This book is the first of its kind in that it outlines the evolution of African American biblical hermeneutics, an academic enterprise that has its roots in the black theology movement of the 1960s...this book is consequential because it compiles [African American scholars'] work into a single volume. Brown is to be commended for his careful summation and critique of their contributions. Given its emphasis on interpretation theory, this work can be of use in seminary classrooms and congregational settings. Its detailed analysis of various interpretive strategies welcomes even the non-specialist to glean from the methodologically diverse procedures outlined therein." - Interpretation, January 2006 * Interpretation *
"Each of Brown's chapter's is well organized, offering readers an introduction to various modes of thought, as well as an effective critique of and commentary on each approach. Furthermore, in outlining these varied and sometimes conflicting approaches, he proved a helpful corrective to these who would assume there is a single African American' approach to the biblical text. In this was, in spite of the exclusion of ordinary' voices, Brown is successful in demonstrating the diversity of possible readings to which the theorists in his introduction allude."- Danielle Brune Sigler, Journal of Biblical Literature * Journal of Biblical Literature *

Author Bio

Michael Joseph Brown is Assistant Professor of New Testament, Candler School of Theology, Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He is the author of What They Don't Tell You: A Survivor's Guide to Academic Biblical Studies.