Yale University Library Research Guides: New Testament Studies: Race & Ethnicity

Introduction to Race & Ethnicity Studies

Experience and Tradition by Stephen Breck Reid Introduces a method of interpreting the Bible in the black church. Focuses on how NT may be used to understand and interrogate black identity.
Racializing Jesus by Shawn Kelley Traces how racially-grounded thinking has influenced modern biblical scholarship.
The Genesis of Liberation: Biblical Interpretation in the Antebellum Narratives of the Enslaved by Emerson B. Powery; Rodney S. Sadler Jr. Explores how the NT became a source of liberation for enslaved African Americans in pre-Civil War freedom narratives.

Prejudice and Christian Beginnings: Investigating Race, Gender, and Ethnicity in Early Christian Studies by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza; Laura Nasrallah; Laura Salah Nasrallah Highly attuned to questions of social location and interpretive method, these essays push against the marginalization of race and ethnicity studies and put the received wisdom of New Testament studies squarely in the foreground.
True to Our Native Land: An African American New Testament Commentary by Brian K. Blount; Cain Hope Felder; Clarice J. Martin; Emerson B. Powery Commentary in the context of African American experience, including churches. Themes of ethnicity, class, slavery, and African heritage. Questions traditional canons of NT criticism.

Can I Get a Witness?: Reading Revelation through African American Culture by Brian K. Blount Reads Revelation through the lens of African American culture. Applies African American social, political, and religious experience as an interpretive cipher for the book's complicated imagery.
The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity by Benjamin Isaac Refutes the belief that ancient Greeks and Romans harbored "ethnic and cultural," but not racial, prejudice. Systematic analysis of ancient social prejudices and stereotypes. Last chapter concerns anti-Semitism. Online available.
Why This New Race: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity by Denise Kimber Buell Origins of Christian identity as not a religion that transcended ethnic and racial distinctions. Reveals centrality of race / ethnicity in early definitions of Christianity and "ethnic reasoning." Christians positioned themselves as members of an ethnos or genos distinct from Jews, Romans, and Greeks.