Review of:
David Tuesday Adamo: Africa and Africans in the New Testament. Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto, Oxford. University Press of America, 2006. x + 130 pp. ISBN: 0-7618-3302-1. US$ 23.00, pb.
Dr David Tuesday Adamo is Professor and Head of the Department of Religious Studies at Delta State University, Nigeria, and he has in recent years published extensively on African biblical hermeneutics. Dr Adamo is an honest researcher, who makes no efforts at hiding his ideological presuppositions. In reaction to what he describes as as the generally Eurocentric approach reflected in traditional (Western) biblical scholarship, with its – conscious or unconscious – attempts at de-Africanizing the Bible, he offers an alternative, a conscious Afrocentric approach, proceding from and advocating African experiences and concerns.
The 2006 monograph on the role of Africa and Africans in the New Testament follows up his 1998 monograph on the role of Africa and Africans in the Old Testament, and the two show both similarities and differences. The Afrocentric approach is more or less the same in the two monographs, but there is a development as far as methodological and geographical focus is concerned. Adamo's 1998 monograph is basically an analysis of Old Testament references to the African nation of Cush/Ethiopia, ignoring the large number of references to Egypt as well as more general Afrocentric reading strategies. The present study offers a broader perspective in two ways. First, it shows sensitivity to all geographical references that somehow can be linked to the African continent, that is not only Cush/Ethiopia, but also Egypt, Libya, etc. And second, Adamo this time focuses not only on explicit references to Africa, but he also discusses the (possible) African background of New Testament authors (Mark and Matthew, possibly even Paul) and early interpreters (such as Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Athanasius, Augustine and many others).
My guess is that many of Adamo's readers will remain unconvinced by his arguments. Adamo is able to see traces of Africans and African influence even where other scholars definitively will reject the whole idea. Still, Adamo's main concern deserves support. Christianity is indeed an African religion, and the African flavour of Christianity is not something of the 19th and 20th century only, it has been there right from the beginning.
Reviewed 2006-11-27by Knut Holter, School of Mission and Theology, Misjonsvegen 34, N-4024 Stavanger, Norway. E-mail: knut.holter@mhs.no
