Classics 315: Africana Approaches to Biblical Interpretation

This course explores African and Black Diaspora interpretations of biblical literature (including both Hebrew and Greek Testaments). This course begins with a survey of Black Africans’ roles in the Bible, takes note of the early translation of the Bible into Ethiopic in the 4th–5th centuries CE and its associated interpretation in Axumite Ethiopia, follows the movement of biblical interpretation across the Middle Passage, and explores the various intellectual dimensions of Black Diaspora biblical interpretation in contemporary North America and the Caribbean (including various Christian, Jewish, and, to some extent, Muslim approaches). We will use this rich history of interpretation as a springboard for discussions of hermeneutics and reading strategies, of the interplay of colonialist and post-colonialist dynamics of reading, and of the variety of methods of reading texts considered by various religions to be scripture.