Review of:

Keith Augustus Burton:The Blessing of Africa: The Bible and African Christianity. Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2007. ISBN: 978-0-8308-2762-6. 294 pp. Prize: US$ 20.00.

Dr Keith Augustus Burton is an African American scholar of the Seventh Day Adventist tradition, presently serving as President of Life Heritage Ministries and also as adjunct instructor of religion at Florida Hospital College of Health Sciences. He has previously published books in biblical studies and African American studies. The starting point of the present book is a Western interpretive tradition of Genesis 9, which takes the dark-skinned ‘sons of Ham' as a ‘cursed race'. Against this tradition, the book aims to demonstrate that far from being cursed, the ‘sons of Ham' are blessed through their interaction with the Bible. This interaction is then approached from a chronological perspective following the ‘sons of Ham' throughout three or four millennia, in eighteen chapters and six main parts.

Part 1 defines ‘Biblical Africa', that is the land of Ham according to the Table of nations in Genesis 10; the latter reference leads the author to include also what we today call the Middle East. Part 2 identifies Africans in the Bible, that is (cf Genesis 10) Cush, Canaan and Mizrayim. Part 3 analyses the role of the Bible in Africa, here including Palestine, Egypt/ North Africa and Arabia/Ethiopia. Part 4 surveys the influence of the Bible in Islam and in the Qur'an. Part 5 discusses Western attempts at taking control over the ‘sons of Ham': the crusades, the struggle to colonize the Ethiopian church, and mission and colonization in sub-Saharan Africa. And part 6 discusses the role of the Bible in the liberation of Africa in the latter half of the twentieth century.

In a sum it should be acknowledged that the author has collected a lot of material on the interaction between the ‘sons of Ham' and the Bible. The book represents an important attempt at giving a historical survey of the role of the Bible in Africa (and beyond) and as such it fills a gap in today's literature on the relationship between Africa and the Bible. A more critical remark would address the book's attempt to combine an ancient textual entity as the ‘sons of Ham' and a more modern geographical entity as ‘ Africa'. This is a rather complicated endeavour and the approach that is chosen here is quite confusing; the book title focuses on Africa (in a narrow sense, the continent of Africa) whereas the discussion includes not only Africa but also the (ancient and modern) Near East.

Reviewed 2007-12-21 by Knut Holter, School of Mission and Theology, Misjonsvegen 34, N-4024 Stavanger, Norway. E-mail: knut.holter@mhs.no