Deuteronomy in African American Christianity
Africans in America have been interpreting Deuteronomy since kidnapped Africans first reached Jamestown in 1619. This chapter recovers precritical or pastoral interpretations of Deuteronomy by people from Africa and the African diaspora. This interpretation of their freedom narratives explores the language of Deuteronomy. Already in the 1990s, black theology understood the importance of these once-named “slave narratives” and precritical biblical interpretation and theology, but now even mainstream biblical criticism recognizes their importance. The use of Deuteronomy in the Harlem Renaissance by Zora Neale Hurston and in the civil rights movement by Martin Luther King Jr. picks up more on its narrative plot rather than its poetics. Recent readings by Harold V. Bennett and my own work focus on the historical and close reading of the Hebrew text.