NEWS FEATURE: New Bibles Reclaiming Heritage of African Biblical Characters

c. 2000 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Biblical characters are a familiar part of the lexicon of American pop culture, surfacing in everything from catch phrases (“What Would Jesus Do”) to animation (Moses in DreamWorks’ “The Prince of Egypt”) to band names (Jesus Jones). Less well known are some other characters from the Bible. African characters. […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Biblical characters are a familiar part of the lexicon of American pop culture, surfacing in everything from catch phrases (“What Would Jesus Do”) to animation (Moses in DreamWorks’ “The Prince of Egypt”) to band names (Jesus Jones).

Less well known are some other characters from the Bible.


African characters.

Like Rahab, who hid the spies Joshua sent into Canaan. He was an ancestor of both King David and Jesus.

Like Apollos, an evangelist who worked alongside Paul in Corinth.

And Hagar, the slave who bore Abraham’s son, Ishmael.

Or Zipporah, the wife of Moses.

“It’s important for blacks to see black culture doesn’t start with the slave trade,” said the Rev. Cain Hope Felder, professor of New Testament language and literature at Howard University School of Divinity in Washington, D.C. “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.

“When women see the bible they just get crazy,” said Banks. “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.

“We’re just now producing African American Bible scholars _ male and female _ who can go to the texts themselves and see how we have been excluded,” said Felder, who earned a doctoral degree in biblical languages and literature at Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary. Felder is also editor of the African American Jubilee Legacy Bible (published by the National Baptist Sunday School Board) which debuts this month. “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.


“In the Jubilee Bible we included articles that correct some of the misinterpretations of Old Testament texts, particular the text of Ham which legitimated for some in the white community the institution of slavery,” said Fred Allen, who helped compile the African American Jubilee Bible. “We included other articles that were about the schisms in the predominately white churches that led to the birth of black denominations. For example, the birth of the AME church came as a result of black people not being allowed a part in the life of the church.”

An article in the Original African Heritage Bible points out that “the ancient land of Canaan was, culturally and geographically, primarily an extension of the African land mass” while another shows that the Hebrew of the Old Testament falls within the same family of ancient languages used in several parts of Africa. Still another article points out that Mary’s “appearance probably approached that of a typical Yemenite, Trinidadian, or African American woman today.”

The Women of Color Bible offers page after page of tidbits about black women in the Bible _ from Asenath, the wife of Joseph, to Abraham’s African wife Keturah. The book also relates the life experiences of biblical women to that of modern women, finding in the stories of women like Rachel and Sarah inspiration for women struggling with infertility. Or, in the story of Dinah, hope for women victimized by rape or other sexual abuse.

“Affirming the presence of Africans in the Bible is not an attempt to elevate Africans above other people. Rather, the purpose is to help correct the distortions, which have occurred over the last three to four hundred years,” wrote Marjorie H. Lawson, general editor of the Women of Color Study Bible in her introduction to the book. “During biblical times, the color of a person’s skin was irrelevant _ a nonissue. If anything, people of African descent were revered _ not because of their color, but because of their abilities. Only during the last three or four centuries have concerted attempts been made to eliminate the presence of people of color from the Bible.”

Bibles such as the Jubilee Bible and the Women of Color Bible not only educate readers about a long-neglected past, they also play an important role in bolstering readers’ sense of self as they encounter a part of African and black American history never taught in the classroom, said Diane Ritzie, editor of the Jubilee Bible.

“We wanted to reconnect today’s young people with the strength and beauty of their foremothers and forefathers,” she said. “This kind of information has really not been disseminated throughout the African American community. The response I’ve gotten from people is that this is information that should have been available a long time ago.”


That new-found sense of self can be a powerful agent of change, said Felder.

“Many people have put down the holy Koran and picked up the Bible because they could see themselves for the first time in the biblical story,” he said.

People of black ancestry are not the only ones who can benefit from discovering the black presence in the Bible, he added.

“This Bible will not just help blacks, but everybody who is ignorant of black culture and civilization,” said Felder. “We want to celebrate the fact that we all have a place in the ancient story.”

DEA END DANCY

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