Review of:

Allen Dwight Callahan: The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2006. ISBN-10: 0-300-10936-9. xiv + 286 pp. Hb. US$ 19.80.

In the contemporary flood of studies of African American biblical interpretation, the present book sticks out as particularly valuable; it is my guess that it will soon be referred to along with classics such as C.H. Felder’s (ed.) Troubling Biblical Water (1989) and Stony the Road We Trod (1991), or more recent contributions like V.L. Wimbush (ed.), African Americans and the Bible (2000) and R.C. Bailey (ed.), Yet With a Steady Beat (2003). The author, Dr Allen Dwight Callahan, is an internationally recognized biblical scholar of North American – that is African American – background. He has previously published a couple of academic monographs in New Testament studies (Embassy of Onesimus: The Letter of Paul to Philemon, 1997, and A Love Supreme: The History of the Johannine Tradition, 2005), and he co-edited the Semeia volume (83/84) on Slavery in Text and Interpretation (1998). At present Dr Callahan serves as Professor of New Testament at the Séminario Teológico Batista do Nordeste, Brazil, and he has previously taught at several colleges and at Harvard Divinity School.

The book is divided into seven chapters, in addition to a prologue and a postscript. The three first chapters offer three distinct perspectives on African American experiences with the Bible. First, the ‘talking book’ discusses the roles of reading and writing versus listening; many West African slaves were literate Muslims. Second, the ‘poison book’ discusses how certain interpretative traditions were used to oppress black people; such as the Old Testament ‘curse of Ham’ and the New Testament slavery texts. And third, the ‘good book’ discusses empowering aspects of the African American experiences with the Bible. The four latter chapters analyse four major motifs in African American biblical interpretation. One is the ‘exile’ motif, where the slaves interpret their experiences in the light of the biblical narratives about surviving in ‘a strange land’. Another is the ‘exodus’ motif, where the Old Testament exodus narrative is read into the African American situation, with clear identifications of the various actors. A third is the ‘ Ethiopia’ motif, where the biblical tradition about the political and spiritual strength of Ethiopia is interpreted as a pattern for Africans and African Americans. And a fourth is the ‘Emmanuel’ motif, emphasizing the central role of Jesus is African American biblical interpretation. For obvious reasons, Dr Callahan’s material not least consists of traditional songs; still, also a great variety of other textual genres – such as narratives and sermons, that somehow have been kept from disappearing – are included in the analysis.

The relationship to contemporary African biblical interpretation lies outside Dr Callahan’s interests. Still, there are obvious points of contact, such as for example his focus on popular interpretation as it is reflected in sermons and songs. This is an area where African colleagues have hardly taken out the potentials of their material. In a sum, the book is a low-voiced contribution allowing central voices of the African American tradition to be heard clearly. And it is a contribution well worth to listen to!

Reviewed 2008-02-20 by Knut Holter, School of Mission and Theology, Misjonsvegen 34, N-4024 Stavanger, Norway. E-mail: knut.holter@mhs.no