Africa and the Bible -- By: William David Spencer

Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 19:3 (Summer 2005)
Article: Africa and the Bible
Author: William David Spencer


Africa and the Bible

Edwin M. Yamauchi

(Baker 2004)

Reviewed by

William David Spencer

William David Spencer edits Priscilla Papers, teaches theology for Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary’s Boston Campus Center for Ministerial Education (CUME) and volunteer pastors Pilgrim Church of Beverly, Mass. His books explore the Trinity (The Global God, The Prayer Life of Jesus, God Through the Looking Glass) and afro-Caribbean issues (Dread Jesus, Chanting Down Babylon: The Rastafari Reader) among other topics.

2006-2007 president of the Evangelical Theological Society and long-time professor of History at Miami University (Ohio), Dr. Edwin Yamauchi is an outstanding scholar who has published extensively on Africa and the Near East, an interest that culminates in this landmark volume.

Following a brief, promotional foreword by noted Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen, and a preface that serves functionally as a helpful introduction, he presents the following topics as organizational guideposts around which he piles a wealth of information: 1) The Curse of Ham; 2) Moses’ Cushite Wife; 3) Solomon and Africa; 4) Tirhakah and Other Cushites [see 2 Kings 19:9; Isa. 37:9]; 5) Rome and Meroe; 6) Why the Ethiopian Eunuch Was Not from Ethiopia; 7) Cyrene in Libya; 8) Afro-centric Biblical Interpretation; and an appendix reviewing the controversy over Martin Bernal’s Black Athena. The book closes with an extensive bibliography, source credits and three indices. A fourth index listing the illustrations is situated helpfully before the foreword and after the table of contents. A reader might imagine this book as a huge motor sales parking lot where one has parked one’s attention at a number pole of interest and gone browsing. When one moves on, one discovers the lot is full of vehicles crowded around each pole marking off each section. In chapter after chapter he has lined up an immense amount of information, 87 fascinating illustrations, with a wealth of citations to satisfy the most ardent student.

Quite remarkable for a book of this nature is the attention he pays from time to time to the human element in his subject, for example, including a poignant description of the plight of the gold miners of Cush from a second century witness, Agatharchides of Cnidus: “It is impossible for an observer to not pity the wretches because of the extremity of their suffering. For they meet with no respite at all, not the sick, the injured, the aged, not a woman by reason of her weakness, but all are compelled by blows to strive at their tasks until, exhausted by the abuse they have suffered, they die in their miseries” (52). One will never again look at an Egyptian gold artifact as an innocent r...

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