Category Archives: Book and article Reviews
A Review of Justin M. Reed’s Ph. D. Dissertation Entitled “The Injustice of Noah’s Curse and the Presumption of Canaanite Guilt: A New Reading of Genesis 9:18-29 (submitted to the Faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey, on March 2020)
Reed’s first two chapters and then chapter four seek to discredit interpretations that depict or leave the impression that Canaan was guilty and conversely that Noah’s curse was just. These interpretations, he insists, incorrectly allow their bias of a presumed Canaanite guilt to drive their exegesis rather than let their exegesis lead them, which, if they did, he believes would lead them to the opposite conclusion.
Following chapter three where he details the critical-literary methodology by which he will conduct his exegesis, Reed arrives at chapter five, the heart of his scholarly contribution. The “new reading” that he offers is as follows:
- “Noah… defiled ( וַיָּ֥חֶל ) when he planted ( וַיִּטַּ֖ע )… (v. 20). His bases for the “defiled” reading are (a) חלל is polysemic and can sometimes mean “defile” or “profane” (b) Noah is a failed new Adam (c) Noah is acting as God when he plants since until v. 20 planting had only been associated with God (Gen 2:8)
- Considering that Noah is a failed Adam, אִ֣ישׁ הָֽאֲדָמָ֑ה (v. 20) should be interpreted pejoratively as referring to Noah’s brutish state
- Noah’s drunkenness must be viewed in decidedly negative light when one notes the parallelism between the drinking in v. 21 that serves as a source of Noah’s degraded state and the so-called “fall” of Adam and Eve that was brought about by the pair eating the forbidden fruit
- Noah’s nakedness also in v. 21 must be perceived negatively not only because of the self-humiliation it brought to Noah but also if viewed through the lens of Lam 4:21 where being “stripped naked” is a form of punishment
- The location of Noah’s nakedness, namely, “in his tent” (בְּת֥וֹךְ אָהֳלֹֽה) in v. 21 can carry a negative connotation since the location is tainted by what happened there in the same way that the location where Achan stashed the חֵ֫רֶם in Josh 7: 21 does not sanitize the decision to do so, or that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not any less portentous because it was located in the middle of the garden of Eden (Gen 2:9) or that the cause of Adam’s and Eve’s nakedness was not anything less of an infraction just because the pair were hiding in the middle of the garden (Gen 3:8).
- Ham’s brothers’ action in 9:23 is not necessarily laudable considering (a) they are not the first to cover nakedness in the primeval history (b) their covering of Noah in the aftermath of his disgraced nakedness is as unimpressive as Adam and Eve covering themselves in the aftermath of their nakedness being revealed in Gen 3:7
- Noah knowing what his youngest son had done to him in Gen 9:24 should be understood as (a) ironical since how would he automatically know when God himself had to first subpoena testimony from Adam (Gen 3:11), Eve (Gen 3:13) and Cain (Gen 4:10) (b) similar to the knowledge sought by Adam and Eve with their intention to be like God in Gen 3:4
- Noah’s curse in Gen 9:25 is unjust because (a) whereas God offers a forewarning or proleptic censure to Adam (Gen 2:17) and Cain (Gen 4:7), Noah’s doesn’t which renders the punishment imposed by Noah warrantless at worst and overblown and impetuous at best (b) there is a discrepancy between who acts (Ham) and who is punished (Canaan)
Book Review: David M. Goldenberg, Black and Slave: The Origins and History of the Curse of Ham in Studies in the Bible and Its Reception, Vol 10, Edited by Dale C. Allison, Jr., Christine Helmer, Thomas Romer, Choon-Leong Seow, Barry Dov Walfish, Eric Ziolkowski, 2107, Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Ever wondered about the genesis of the devastating and patently faulty belief that, based on the story of Noah’s curse in Genesis 9, blacks have been afflicted with eternal servitude? Here is a book that ably traces the history and development of the Curse of Ham.
According to the book, the nascence of the belief is two black skin etiologies, one, ark-based (chapters two and three), the other, tent-based (chapter four). Prominent among the ark-based etiologies are the rabbinic etiology and its Muslim derivative. The rabbinic tale, alluded to later by the western scholar Guillaume de Postel but with an added rationale and application to the Ethiopians, claims that during the flood Noah’s son, Ham, was turned black for breaking, alongside the dog and the raven, a divinely installed hiatus on sexual engagement while in the ark. The Muslim derivative similarly depicts black skin as punishment for Ham’s engagement in sexual intercourse with his wife against the intent of the gender apartheid implemented by Noah in the ark. The tent-based etiology finds representation in, among others, Ibn Masud (d. 653): “Noah was bathing and saw his son [Ham] looking at him and said to him, ‘Are you watching me bathe? May God change your color!’ And he is the ancestor of the Sudan (i.e., the blacks).”
Alignment with the biblical story, totally absent in the rabbinic tale (Ham wasn’t the one cursed and the venue of his infraction was not the ark), sort of present in the tent-based etiologies at least in as far as the venue is concerned, is also present to some extent in a 3rd-4th century work (Cave of Treasure) (chapter five) where there is the recognition that it was Canaan who was cursed, not Ham. Cave of Treasures extends the reach of the curse to cover Canaan’s descendants who were thought to include dark skinned Africans. According to Goldenberg, this marks the first time that blackness is explicitly associated with servitude.
The next stage in the development of the Curse of Ham was the introduction of the idea of a dual impact of the curse (aka dual Curse of Ham) resulting in both servitude and blackness (chapter six). The character turned black was Canaan in the case of Christian authors [e.g., Ibn al-Tayyib: He was commenting on the biblical curse of slavery, to which he added that when Noah cursed Canaan with slavery, “Canaan’s body became black”] and Jewish authors [e.g., Yemenis Nathaniel ibn Yesha’ya’s commentary on “And let Canaan be his slave” (Gen 9:26): “They will be black and ugly and God’s presence will not rest on them”] and Ham in the case of Muslim authors [e.g., The Persian Bahr al-favaid speaks of Noah “invoking evil” on Ham “so that his face was blackened”]. According to Goldenberg, the Ham/Canaan dichotomy is explained by the religions’ different bases for the Curse of Ham interpretation. The Jewish and Christian accounts are closely linked to the biblical narrative which names Canaan as the object of Noah’s curse. The Muslim stories, on the other hand, are not linked in these ways to the biblical text, nor were they based on a direct encounter with the Bible, which was considered corrupt.
The Curse of Ham did not appear in Europe in its dual form until the 16th century (chapter eight). Prior to that it showed up in its non-dual form (chapter seven) in, among other writings, Chronicles of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea (1453) and Rabbi Moses Arragel of Castile (1384) who in his comments on Gen 9:25 (And Canaan was a slave of slaves) wrote: “some say these are the Black Moors who are everywhere captives.” Even though the dual curse as it appears in Europe [e.g., Diego de Yepes, a bishop in Spain, wrote that environment is not the cause of the change in color, but Noah’s curse of Ham, which changed him from red to black] resembles Muslim writings in that it is similarly Ham-centric, Goldenberg argues that the vast majority of Europeans writers of the 16th and 17th centuries were not directly influenced by the Muslim Noah narratives, but were reflecting an accepted Christian hermeneutic tradition of the dual Curse of Ham
Beginning in the 1700’s, the curse of Ham of the dual variety, emerged finally and most vociferously in America as justification for the enslavement of blacks (chapter nine). Use of the Curse of Ham to justify black slavery as opposed to explaining dark skin ended up being much greater in America than in Europe
Ham’s Sin and Noah’s Curse and BLESSING UTTERANCES: A Critique of Current Views
About the book
The thesis of this book is threefold. First, contrary to the increasingly popular understanding that the nature of Ham’s offense was sexual, we argue that this offense was nonsexual, despite the presence of the phrase (“to see the nakedness of”) in Genesis 9:22. More specifically, Ham’s offense had less to do with seeing his father naked—the seeing was accidental. Rather, his fault lay with his choice to disclose to his brothers what he had seen as opposed to covering the nakedness of his father. Second, the most probable fulfillment of the Noah’s curse is (1) the servitude of the Gibeonites; (2) the enslavement of the Canaanites following the conquest; or (3) the dominance of Rome and Greece over Tyre and Carthage… read more
Published by
AuthorHouseBooks on Sep 24, 2014
ISBN: 9781496932747
Book tags
Faith & SpiritualityReligionBooksInspirational, ReligionBooksFaith & Spirituality
Book Review: Carroll, Daniel. “Christians at the Border: Immigration, the Church, and the Bible.” Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008.
As is the case with Hoffmeier (the author of “The Immigration Crisis”), Daniel Carroll likewise meets the preliminary bipartite credibility test of any discusser of the topic of immigration: at one point he made abroad his abode for a sizable amount of time and has had close social intercourse with immigrants. As a minor he together with his family spent lots of summers immersed in the culture of Guatemala—the birthplace of his mother. Upon graduation from seminary this part Latino and his wife headed back to his “motherland” where he taught at El Seminario Teologico Centroamericano and did not return to Denver Seminary until fifteen years later. His interaction with Hispanics did not stop with his return to Denver. There he helped establish a Spanish-speaking training. He attends Hispanic services and has served on the board of the Alianza Ministerial Hispana.
The target audience of the book are Christians from both the majority and minority culture. The goal of the book is to attempt to offer the divine viewpoint on immigration. The heart of the book is chapters two, three, and four, to which we now turn.
In chapter two, Carroll contends that folks from elsewhere who are abroad with the intent to stay and members of the host country alike are people first and then immigrants or citizens. People are made in the image of God, which means that both the immigrants and the citizens are bearers of God’s image. The implications of this observation in Carrol’s opinion are as follows:
(a) Immigrant have an essential value and possess the potential to contribute to society through their presence, work, and ideas. There would not be a David without Ruth the immigrant. Joseph ended up saving the whole of Egypt from famine
(b) Irrespective of whether they are here with or without the documents the government might mandate, to turn them away or to treat them badly is ultimately a violation against God. Egypt didn’t turn away the migrant patriarch and his family. On the contrary, she was charitable and willing to meet their needs.
(c) One way those of the majority culture can reflect the divine image is to demonstrate compassion for others the same way that God is portrayed as compassion not only toward His own people, but also to those beyond the community of faith.
(d) Immigrants should value the people of this country as those made in God’s image.
Chapter three opens with a brief exploration of the ethics of hospitality in ancient Israel. Hospitality extended to strangers by the likes of Abraham (Gen 18), Laban (Gen 24), Ruel (Exod 2), the concubine’s father (Judges 19), the Shunammite woman (2 Kings 4), the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17), Job (31:32) serve as a model to the majority culture in the manner in which it treats (Hispanic) Immigrants. It then surveys Old Testament laws concerning immigrants and other foreigners.
Part of chapter three analyzes the four terms (nokri, zar ger and toshav) used in the Old Testament to refer to outsiders. Accordant with Hoffmeier, Carroll concludes that nokri (including (nekhar and its feminine form) and zar refer to a foreigners in Israel who either have not been in the land very long (e.g., Ittai in 2 Sam 15:19; Ruth) or have not integrated themselves fully into Israelite life. The Law prohibits this kind of foreigner from becoming king (Deut 17:15) and from participating in some of Israel’s rituals (Exod 12:43; Ezek 44:7, 9; Lev 22:25). The third term, toshav, is akin to the previous two in the sense that it refers to foreigners who are similarly not assmiliated. (ger/toshav) To Carroll, the last term in the list of four ger, is not so much a designation of legal status (contra Hoffmeier) as it is an indication of itinerancy; thus his preference for the translation “sojourner.” The “sojourner” unlike the nokri, zar and toshav exhibited a high degree of assimiliation in the spheres of religion, language, law. It is Carroll’s opinion that just as the biblical imperative of caring for the sojourner is binding to the host culture, there exists a scriptural expectation that the sojourner learns the ways, language of the adopted country.
In chapter four, Carroll brings the New Testament to bear on the subject of immigration. While acknowledging that the Gospels are void of explicit teachings on immigration, Carroll argues for the existence of relevant passages. The story of Jesus’ flight to Egypt most certainly resonates with immigrants who have had to flee their homes for fear of their lives. Assuming that the “stranger” in Matt 25:35 refers to a disciple who goes to another land for ministry, the Son of Man and the Father will demand an accounting of the actions of Christians composing a host country towards Christian immigrants.
Moving on to the Epistle of 1 Peter Carroll hypothesizes that besides the accepted perspective that Christians are aliens and strangers in the world because of their faith, they were aliens and strangers in a concrete sense.
Carroll culminates his discussion of immigration vis-à-vis the New Testament with a look at Rom 13. In his opinion, if the Government laws, such as American Immigration Laws, are problematic theologically, humanely, and/or pragmatically, heeding those laws is tantamount to allowing oneself to be shaped by the “pattern of this world” (cf Rom 12:1).
Robert B. Chisholm Jr. “The Ethical challenge of Jephthah’s Fulfilled Vow.” Bibliotheca Sacra 167 (October-December 2010): 404-422.
A REVIEW
Chisholm frames the discussion on the ethicalness or un-ethicalness of Jephthah’s fulfilled vow as a Q & A of sorts– he poses and then offers his response to five questions. The first question he puts forth is whether or not Jephthah actually offered his daughter as a human sacrifice. According to Chisholm the wording of the vow’s apodosis (Judges 11:31) may not be conclusive that human sacrifice was intended but it does allow for it. The substantive masculine singular participle (“the one going out”) refers elsewhere to persons (Num 22:11; Deut 2:23; Josh 5:4; 1 Sam 17:20; 1 kings 8:19; Jer 5:6; Jer 21:9) and inanimate objects (Num 21:13; 32:24; Deut 14:22). The infinitive “to meet” can refer to people (Gen 14:17; 19:1), animals (Job 39:21) or inanimate beings (Isa. 14:9). To the view that argues that the mention of the virginity of Jephthah’s daughter implies that Jephthah did not sacrifice his daughter, but instead devoted her to a life of celibacy as a servant of the Lord, Chisholm counters that the syntax does not support the reading “He will belong to the Lord, or I will offer him up as a burn sacrifice.” When the verbal sequence used here (a conjunction plus a perfect verbal form followed by another conjunction plus a perfect verbal form) appears elsewhere in Joshua, Judges, and Samuel, the second verb never gives an alternative to the first verb. This, according to Chisholm, strongly suggests that Jephthah’s daughter became the Lord’s by being sacrificed to Him as a whole burnt offering or that she was formally declared to be the Lord’s and then as a consequence was sacrificed to Him.
The second question is whether or not Jephthah’s vow can be attributed to divine prompting. Here Chisholm’s concurs with Webb’s conclusion, namely, in marking the vow (vv 30-31) as an interruption, the text’s structure indicates that while victory is casually related to Jephthah’s endowment with the Spirit it is only incidentally related to the vow.
The third question has to do with whether or not God really expected Jephthah to fulfill this grisly vow? In other words, having made his vow, did Jephthah have any option other than to fulfill it? Chisholm disagrees with Block about the applicability of Lev 27:1-8 to Jephthah’s situation. Leviticus 27:1-8 regulates cases in which one person vows another, that is, devotes a person to the sanctuary for sacred services and then for reasons unspecified finds it impossible or impractical to fulfill the vow. Chisholm also disagrees with Niditch about the applicability of the vow of herem (Num 21:2-3, cf Lev 27:28-29) because the word herem does not appear in Jepththah’s vow. Instead,Chisholm sides with Janzen’s explanation: the deuteronomistic history makes it clear that “obeying is better than sacrifice.” Against the background of the deuteronomistic law, the question of child sacrifice is hardly a borderline issue (cf Deut 12:29-31; 18:10)
The fourth question is: Does the narrator’s icy reportorial style, devoid of editorializing, suggest that he justified Jephthah or worse yet, placed the blame for this tragedy on Jephthah’s daughter? Chisholm’s response is that because of the narrator’s focus of interest is Jephthah, the seemingly objective perceptual perspective actually reflects a father’s perspective.
The final question is: If God did not demand this holocaust from Jephthah how then could He let such a thing happen in his name? Do not His inactivity and silence suggest complicity in the crime? According to Chisholm, God’s silence, while puzzling and even disturbing, need not be interpreted in some fatalistic manner to mean that He required fulfillment of the vow or approved of the sacrifice. The reality is that God grants humans the freedom to act against His antecedent or moral will.
Oden, Thomas C. “Early Libyan Christianity.” In W. H. Griffith Thomas Lectureship. Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas, 2009.
A review
To the African mind that contends that Christianity is a recently spotted UFO (un-African Foreign Object) and therefore deserving of rejection, incline thine ear to this quotation:
“Too many scholars of African culture trained in the West have regrettably acquired from the West a persistent hypermodern habit of assuming that Christianity began in Africa only a couple of centuries ago. The myth is that Christianity was imported from Europe and America. However, the evidence is much stronger to the contrary—that Europe and America learned from Africa much of their earliest layers of scriptural interpretation and consensus formation.”
The source of the above quotation is Thomas C. Oden, the Henry Anson Buttz Professor of Theology Emeritus at Drew University (Madison, New Jersey). A year ago (in 2009), Oden delivered the annual W. H. Griffith Thomas Lectureship at my alma mater, Dallas Theological Seminary. Initially entitled “Early Libyan Christianity,” the discourse was later repackaged as a four-part article that appeared in the Seminary journal between January and December 2010.
Granted, Oden’s focus is early Christianity in Libya. But who is to argue that Libya is not part of Africa. Liberal historical scholarship has insisted on excising Egypt from Africa. Libya, however, has not really been subject to detachment from Africa and reattachment to the Middle East.
Obliviousness of early Christianity in Libya specifically and North Africa in general is attributable to several factors according to Oden: (a) Little archaeological excavation or architectural analysis despite the fact that the remnants of early Christian history have lain silent in an almost pristine state without having layer after layer of urban sprawl built on top of them (b) Systematic abstention by the tourist industry from pointing out the religious importance of cities such as Cyrene and Leptis magna. The standard travel literature emphasizes the Greco-Roman ruins rather than the later Paleo-Christian and Byzantine remains and their accompanying centuries of Christian history (c) Ignorance by contemporary African Christian theology or indigenous Africans of the intellectual textual contributions by Christians in pre-AD 643 Africa. Such contributors include Tertullian, Cyprian, Clement, Origen, Athanasius, Didymus the Blind, Augustine, and Fulgentius (d) The physical geography of the continent shaped the fact that African Christianity found its way first to the north of the Sahara in the first millennium, and only in its second millennium did it reach the south
Lest one confound ignorance of a matter with lack of the matter, Oden painstakingly uncovers for his readers evidence of early Christianity in Libya. Irenaeus (A.D. 120-202), he notes, gives us the first documented written testimony of early Christianity in Libya before A.D. 180 in his Adversus haereses (written between A.D 182 and 189). Mention of Cyrene in the gospels (Mark 15:21; Acts 2:10; 6:9; 13:1) suggests that Libyan Christianity dates back to the first century. The African Pope, Victor (186-197), most probably hailed from Leptis Magna in Libya. Bishops from Libya were present at the Ecumenical Councils of Nicea (325) and Ephesus (431) (e.g., the bishop of ancient Olbia, now Qsar Libya) and the 363 council of Antioch (e.g., Serias of Paraetonium, Stephen of Ptolemais, Pollux of Libya Inferior, etc). Libya (Libu) is mentioned in the OT (1 Chron 1:8; 2 chron 12:3; Nah 3:9; Dan 11:43; Gen 10:6; Isa. 66:19; Jer 46:9; Ezek 27:10; 30:5; 38:5). The remains of five basilicas (western basilica, central basilica, eastern basilica, the chapel in the Byzantine ducal palace, and a triconchstyle cemetery basilica) serve as further evidence of the presence of Christianity in 5th and 6th century Libya.
Besides being concretely evidential in as far as the presence of early Christianity in Libya, Oden’s lecture could be characterized in other ways. It is proudful of Africa’s maturity, antiquity, and influence as far as the history of Christianity is concerned. Christianity in North Africa, he argues, has a much longer history than its European and American expressions. North American Christianity has survived a scant five hundred years since 1492, and in the United States since 1776, a little over two centuries. Libyan Christianity, on the other hand, is still alive after two millennia. Regarding influence World Christian orthodoxy is significantly shaped by the North African imagination spawned indigenously on North African soil.
It is castigatory. It is castigatory of the West. The most practiced European intellectual habit of the last five centuries is that of ignoring North African history. European history often proceeds as if Africa did not exist, at least in a way pertinent to Europe. It is castigatory of the African scholars. It is absurd for Africans to disown their own illustrious exegetical brilliance and theological roots that came out of African soil. It is especially vexing to misconceive this denial as if it were a true defense of African identity
It is prescriptive. The remedy to the lack of awareness by African scholars who have learned much of their history from Euro-American elitists who have little or no interest in African patristic sources is improved historical research and textual analysis. The narrow definition by many modern anthropologists of African traditional religions as to rule out the great written traditions produced on the continent of Africa must be countered by a broader definition of African traditional religion that adequately assesses the artifacts of African Christian history from the fourth to the eighth centuries
Lastly, it is commissionary. It remains the task of future scholars, many of them from Africa, to restudy the rising tide of ideas flowing from Africa to Europe in the third century, and to better describe their wide dissemination and impact.
Kimuhu, Johnson M. Leviticus: The Priestly Laws and Prohibitions from the Perspective of Ancient Near East and Africa. Vol. 115. Studies in Biblical Literature, ed. Hemchand Gossai. New York: Peter Lang, 2008.
This dissertation-now-turned-publication is primarily an in-depth study of the family laws and prohibitions in Leviticus 18. Specifically the study explores the origin and composition of the passage, wonders aloud as to why the author of the passage singled out the Egyptians and the Canaanites for condemnation, and offers an understanding of the laws from the perspective of oral traditions in Africa.
In regard to the origin of the text, Kimuhu considers it rash, and certainly unfruitful, to seek the origin of the prohibitions of chapter 18 in the patriarchal narrative or even in the ancestors of Israel in general. Instead he prefers to envision dependency by the composer of chapter 18 on the Hittite Laws (HL). This is not say that the composer may not have relied on other biblical codes such as the Holiness Code (H) itself, the Covenant Code, or the book of Deuteronomy in general. Nevertheless the composer seems to exhibit greater dependency on HL. As a matter of fact all the laws in HL are found in Lev 18 except the law on father’s union with his daughter and the law of the crime committed by a slave girl.
Concerning the condemnation of the Egyptians and the Canaanites, Kimuhu considers such censure problematic considering that there is little evidence in the ANE that indicates that the prohibited sexual relationships and marriages were practiced outside the royal family (there are cases of half-brother and father-daughter marriages in the Pharaonic times) and the family of deities (in the Ugaritic texts we do not have cases of incest outside the Baal-Anat circles). According to Kimuhu, the only viable explanation for the condemnation is either that the Priestly laws in Leviticus reflect the incestuous practices in the Graeco-Roman periods or that a redactor schooled in the theology of Dtr is responsible for the addition of verses 1-5 which house the condemnation. Both explanations indicate that Kimuhu adopts a late (exilic) date for Lev 18.
Milton-Edwards, Beverley, and Peter Hinchcliffe. Conflicts in the Middle East since 1945. 3d ed. The Making of the Contemporary World, ed. Eric J. Evans and Ruth Henig. New York: Routledge, 2008.
At this moment and time, the news outlets have it that Israel has commenced its ground assault against Gaza. To all who are curious about the genesis of the Israeli-Palestinian hostilities, here is a book that will offer you a detailed historical account of not just the Palestinian conflicts, but those of the whole Middle East which is loosely defined to include Egypt.
The book is divided into ten chapters. Chapter one addresses the history of the wider Arab-Israel conflict—a conflict that was triggered by a surge of immigration of Israelis back to Palestine and the false promises of the Balfour Declaration to the Arab leadership (that Arabs would control much of the region following the defeat of the Ottomans) and the Zionists (that the British would support the establishment of a Jewish national home in Arab Palestine). Five wars are recounted: (a) the 1948 war that pitted a newly constituted state of Israel against the triumvirate of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria (backed by forces from Lebanon and Iraq); (b) the 1967 war that saw Israel expand its territorial jurisdiction to include the Gaza strip (formerly under Egyptian control), the West Bank (formerly under Jordanian control) and the Golan Heights (formerly under Syria); (c) 1973 war involving Israel and Egypt; (d) 1982 invasion of Lebanon by Israel for the purposes of routing out PLO; and (e) 2006 war between Israel and Hizballah. Chapter two zeroes in on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict with special attention to the two intifadas of 1987 and 2000 respectively. Chapter three sheds light on the role of Russia and the US in the Middle East conflicts. Jihad is the subject of chapter four. The next four chapters address conflicts that featured middle- eastern countries and peoples other than Israel and Palestine. Chapter five concerns itself with Lebanon’s sectarian conflict. Chapter six is about the ethnic conflict involving the Kurds. The Iran-Iraq war is described in chapter seven. Chapter eight covers Iraq’s invasion of Kuwaiti. The last two chapters dedicate themselves to the failed peacemaking attempts and America’s attack of Iraq.
The Blessing of Africa: The Bible and African Christianity, by Keith Augustus Burton, InterVarsity Press, 2007
The hallmark of this book is two-fold: (a) its redefinition of what territorially constitutes “biblical Africa” and (b) its identification of Put with sub-Saharan Africa. Capitalizing on the tendency to equate Ham(ites) with Africa(ns) as evidenced by the common misconception that Noah’s curse targeted Ham and thus the Africans, the author proposes that his readers consider the equation of “biblical Africa” with the “land of Ham.” Understood as such, “biblical Africa” would therefore encompass all the territories traditionally associated with the descendants of Ham as reflected in the “Table of Nations.” These regions include Saudi Arabia (associated with Seba, Sabteca, Sabtah, Dedan and Havilah), Yemen (associated with Sheba and Raamah), Iraq (associated with Babylon, Erech, Akkad, Calneh, Assyria), Egypt/Sudan (associated with Misrayim), Ethiopia (associated with with Cush), Libya (associated with the Lehabites, Naphtuhites, Pathrusites), Crete (associated with Caphtorites), Israel/Palestine (associated with Canaan), Lebanon (associated with Sidon, Hivites, Arkites), Turkey (associated with Hittites), Jordan (associated with Amorites), and Syria (associated with Arvadites). In other words, an equation of “biblical Africa” with the “land of Ham” expands the definition of what encompasses Africa and who constitutes an African to include not just the continent of Africa and its dwellers, but parts of the Middle East and their respective citizens.
Having argued for a broader definition of “biblical Africa” (part one, chapters 1-4) and catalogued the Africans in the Bible assuming the broader definition (part two, chapters 5-7), the book takes and maintains to the very end a historical slant during which the following historical topics are discussed: (a) the development of Christianity in biblical Africa (part three, chapters 8-10), (b) the growth of Islam in biblical Africa (part four, chapters 11-12), (c) the impact of European colonialism on biblical Africa (part five. Chapters 13-15) and (d) the place of the Bible in present-day biblical Africa (part six, chapters 16-18).
Even if the reader does not buy into the author’s attempt to promote a broad definition of what geographically constitutes biblical Africa and consequently who composes an African biblically, this book remains a wonderful resource to students of church history and students of the Bible in general.
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