Teaching & Learning Guide for: The Changing Significance of Race: African Americans and the Hebrew Bible
Authors: Reid Stephen Breck 
Published: November 2009

Author’s Introduction

African American interpretation and use of the Hebrew Bible have shifted as the understandings of race have adjusted in the last 30 years. Therefore, African American biblical studies cannot be appreciated with a linear presentation. A more helpful approach examines the impact of generational studies as used by Neil Howe and William Strauss. Each generation of scholars are shaped by events in the civil rights struggle that then informs the perspective they bring to the reading of the Hebrew Bible.

Background Reading

Neil Strauss and William Howe bring the developmental theory of Erik Erikson to a broader view of historiography. Each generation is shaped by certain event that occurs in the watersheds of human development that orients the generations approach to the world. This article argues that the best way to understand the development of African American studies of the Hebrew Bible is well served by such an approach. Williams describes the shifting terrain of race in North America. This is all the more in the United States when some claim that this is a so‐called post‐racial era.

West provides a typology of responses to racism that forms the background for the article.

Strauss, W. and Howe, N. 1991, Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584 to 2069, Perennial: New York.

West, C. 1982, Prophesy Deliverance: An Afro‐American Revolutionary Christianity, Westminster Press: Philadelphia.

William J. W. 1980, The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions, Second Edition, University of Chicago Press: Chicago.

Erikson, E. 1986, “Eight Ages of Man,” in Childhood and Society, W.W. Norton: New York, pp. 247–74.

Sample Syllabus

1. Recovery of Black Biblical Presence: G.I./Silent Generation: A Modern Alternative to “Jim Crow”

People, Concepts, and Questions:

What is “Jim Crow”?

How did it create a cultural context for African American scholars coming of age during this period?

What was the curse of Ham and how did it provide a biblical buttress to the enslavement of Africans?

Charles Copher

John Waters

Cain Hope Felder

Reading

Copher, C.B. 1991, “The Black Presence in the Old Testament,” in Stony the Road We Trod, C.H. Felder ed. Augsburg Fortress, Minneapolis, pp. 146–64.

Copher, C.B. 1988, “The Bible and the African Experience: The Biblical Period,”The Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center, 13, pp. 32–50.

Felder, C.H. 1991, “Race, Racism, and the Biblical Narratives,” in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation, ed. Cain Hope, Felder Augsburg Fortress, Minneapolis, pp. 127–40.

Felder, C.H. 1989, Troubling Biblical Waters: Race, Class, and Family, Orbis: Maryknoll.

Online Resources

http://www.uwmc.uwc.edu/psychology/history_3.htm

Marlowe C. Embree “A generational Analysis/Critique of Erikson’s Theory”

2. Recovery of Black Biblical Presence: Baby Boomers

People, Concepts, and Questions

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Lyndon Baines Johnson

Randall C. Bailey

Brown vs. Board of Education

Civil Rights legislation

How the exceptionalist response to racism was replaced with the humanist response to racism?

Reading

Bailey, R.C. 1995a, “Is that any name for a nice Hebrew boy?” Exodus 2:1–10: The De‐Africanization of an Israelite Hero,” in The Recovery of the Black Presence: An Interdisciplinary Exploration, Randall C. Bailey and Jacquelyn Grant, eds. Abingdon: Nashville, pp. 25–36.

Bailey, R. C. 1995b, “They are Nothing but Incestuous Bastards: The Polemic Use of Sex and Sexuality in Hebrew Canon Narratives,” in Reading from This Place: Social Location and Biblical Interaction in the United States, Fernando F. Segovia and Mary Ann Talbert, eds. Augsburg Fortress Minneapolis, pp. 122.

Bailey, R. C. 2000, “Academic Biblical Interpretation among African Americans in the United States,” in African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Structures, V. L. Wimbush ed. Continuum: New York, pp. 696–711.

Bailey, R. C. 2004, “For and With Whom are You Reading? Who’s Pregnant and Who’s Passionate?”Pregnant Passion: Gender, Sex, and Violence in the Bible, C. A. Kirk‐Duggan, ed. E.J. Brill: Leiden, pp. 85–91.

3. Recovery of Black Biblical Presence: GenXers

People, Concepts, and Questions

Rodney Steven Sadler, Jr.

Is this a return to exceptionalism?

Reading

Sadler, Rodney Steven, Jr. 2005, Can a Cushite change his skin? An Examination of Race, Ethnicity, and Othering in the Hebrew Bible, Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies, 425, T&T Clark: London.

4. The Hebrew Bible as ecclesial and cultural object in the life of the African American community: G.I./Silent Generation

People, Concepts, and Questions

David Shannon

John Waters

Robert A. Bennett

How does Shannon embody an exceptionalist or humanist cultural criticism?

How does Waters depict the relationship between African American biblical scholarship and the African American church?

Reading

Bennett, R. A. Jan 1971, “Black Experience and the Bible”Theology Today, 27, pp.422–33.

Shannon, D. T. 1991, “‘An Ante‐Bellum Sermon’ A Resource for An African American Hermeneutic,” in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation ed. Cain Hope Felder, Augsburg Fortress: Minneapolis, pp. 98–126.

Waters, J.W. 1991, “Who is Hagar?” in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation ed. Cain Hope Felder, Augsburg Fortress: Minneapolis, pp. 187–145.

Waters, J. W. 1995, “When the Vultures Are Finished, Can There Be Life? The Valley of Dry Bones and the Future of the Black Church,” in The Recovery of Black Presence: An Interdisciplinary Exploration, R. C. Bailey and J. Grant, eds. Abingdon: Nashville, pp. 95–106.

5. Baby Boomers: The Hebrew Bible as a Dangerous and Cultural Object

Persons, Concepts, and Questions

W.E.B. DuBois

Womanist interpretation

Randall C. Bailey

Sheila Briggs

Stephen Breck Reid

Renita J. Weems

How would you characterize this as emerging cultural criticism of these writers?

Reading

Bailey, R. C. 2000, “Academic Biblical Interpretation among African Americans in the United States,” in African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Structures, V. L. Wimbush ed. Continuum: New York, pp. 696–711.

Bailey, R. C. 2004, “For and With Whom are You Reading? Who’s Pregnant and Who’s Passionate?”Pregnant Passion: Gender, Sex, and Violence in the Bible ed. C. A. Kirk‐Duggan, E.J. Brill: Leiden, pp. 85–91.

Briggs, S., 1989, “Can an Enslaved God Liberate? Hermeneutical Reflections on Philipians 2:6–11,”Semeia 47139.

Reid, S. B. 1995a “The Role of Reading in Multicultural Exegesis,” in Text & Experience: Towards a Cultural Exegesis of the Bible, Daniel Smith‐Christopher ed. The Biblical Seminar 35 Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield, pp. 210–24.

Reid, S. B. 1995b “The Theology of the Book of Daniel and the Political Theory of W.E.B. Du Bois,” in The Recovery of Black Presence: An Interdisciplinary Exploration, R. C. Bailey and J. Grant, eds. Abingdon: Nashville. pp. 37–50.

Reid, S. B. 1990, Experience and Tradition: A Primer in Black biblical Hermeneutics, Abingdon: Nashville.

Reid, S. B.1997, Listening In: A Multicultural Reading of the Psalms Abingdon: Nashville.

Weems, R. J. 1991, “Reading Her Way through the Struggle: African American Women and the Bible” in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation ed. Cain Hope Felder Augsburg Fortress: Minneapolis.

Weems, R. J. 1988, Just a Sister Away: A Womanist Vision of Women’s Relationships in the Bible, San Diego: LauraMedia.

6. GenX scholarship on the Hebrew Bible and African American Culture

People, Concepts, and Questions

Wilma Ann Bailey

Valerie C. Cooper

Cheryl Kirk‐Duggan

Hugh Rowland Page Jr.

Harold V. Bennett

How can you describe the horizon of gender, culture and race?

Reading

Bailey, W. A. 2003, “The Sorrow Songs: Laments from Ancient Israel and the African American Diaspora,” in Yet with a Steady Beat: Contemporary U.S. Afrocentric Biblical Interpretation, R. Bailey ed. Semeia Studies 42, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, pp. 61–83.

Bennett, H. V. 2003 “Triennial Tithes and the Underdog: A Revisionist Reading of Deuteronomy 14:22–29 and 26:12–15,” in Yet with a Steady Beat: Contemporary U.S. Afrocentric Biblical Interpretation, R. Bailey ed. Semeia Studies 42, Society of Biblical Literature: Atlanta, pp. 7–18.

Cooper, V. C. 2004, “Some Place to Cry: Jephthah’s Daughter and the Double Dilemma of Black Women in America,” in Pregnant Passion: Gender, Sex, and Violence in the Bible, C. A. Kirk‐Duggan ed. Semeia Studies: E.J. Brill, Leiden, pp. 181–2.

Kirk‐Duggan, C. A. 2000, “Hot Buttered Soulful Tunes and Cold Icy Passionate Truths: The Hermeneutics of Biblicao Interpolation in R & B (Rhythm and Blues),” in African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Structures, V. L. Wimbush ed. Continuum, New York, pp. 782–803.

Kirk‐Duggan, C. A. 2003, “Let my People Go! Threads of Exodus in African American Narratives,” in R. Bailey, ed. Yet with a Steady Beat: Contemporary U.S. Afrocentric Biblical Interpretation Semeia Studies 42, Society of Biblical Literature, Atlanta, pp. 123–43.

Page, H. R. 1996, The Myth of Cosmic Rebellion: A Study of Its Reflexes in Ugaritic and Biblical Literature, Vetus Testamentum, Supplement, vol. 65. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

7. Gender, African American Women and the Hebrew Bible

Person, Concepts, and Questions

Cheryl Anderson

Mignon Jacobs

Madeline McClenney‐Sadler

Renita Weems

How has womanist readings developed over the years?

Reading

Anderson, C. B. 2004, Women Ideology and Violence: Critical Theory and the construction of Gender in the Book of the Covenant and Deuteronomic Law, T & T Clark: London.

Jacobs, M. R. 2004, “Love, Honor, and Violence: Socioconceptual Matrix in Genesis 34” in Pregnant Passion: Gender, Sex, and Violence in the Bible ed. Cheryl Kirk‐Duggan Semeia 44, E. J. Brill: Leiden, pp. 11–35.

Jacobs, M. R. 2007, Gender, Power, and Persuasion: The Genesis Narratives and Contemporary Portraits, Baker: Grand Rapids.

McClenney‐Sadler, M. 2004, “Cry Witch! The Embers Still Burn,” in Pregnant Passion: Gender, Sex, and Violence in the Bible ed. Cheryl Kirk‐Duggan Semeia 44, Leiden: E. J. Brill, pp. 117–41.

Weems, R. J. 1991, “Reading Her Way through the Struggle: African American Women and the Bible,” in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation ed. Cain Hope Felder, Augsburg Fortress: Minneapolis.

Weems, R. J. 1988, Just a Sister Away: A Womanist Vision of Women’s Relationships in the Bible, San Diego, LauraMedia.