Many blacks have long believed they have been born with no significant history traceable back to biblical days, but black civilization goes all the way back to ancient Greece, ancient Rome and the ancient Nile valley. We're a part of the biblical story. In the past year and a half, three Bibles highlighting the role of Africans in biblical history have hit bookstores the African American Jubilee Bible, the Children of Color Storybook Bible, and, most recently, the Women of Color Study Bible released in January. Readers are thirsty for more, said Mel Banks, founder and president of Nia Publishing, which co-published the Women of Color Study Bible along with World Bible Publishers. Women feel they have been neglected in Scripture for so long preachers usually talk about the men in the Bible.
Women are happy to finally see themselves represented.
Those three works joined a growing field of Bibles shining the spotlight on the black presence in biblical history. The African American Heritage Family Bible appeared in 1996, following The Children of Color Holy Bible, the African-American Devotional Bible, and The Original African Heritage Study Bible. If a person wants a story told they have to tell it themselves. We ourselves had to right the scholarly literature. Weaving lessons in ancient and modern black history among Scripture, the Bibles are as much historical education as spiritual edification, offering maps of biblical Africa and articles written by both black and white scholars on a range of topics from the history of black denominations to the martyrdom of ancient African Christians and stories of black women who preached in the United States and Europe during slavery.