Allen Dwight Callahan's The Talking Book: African Americans And The Bible

Allen Dwight Callahan’s The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible connects biblical stories and images to the politics, music and, religion, the book shows how important the Bible is to black culture. African Americans first came to know the Bible because of slavery and at that time the religious groups would read it to them instead of teaching them by letting them encounter it for themselves. Later the Bibles stories became the source of spirituals and songs, and after the Civil War motivation for learning to read. Allen Callahan traces the Bible culture that developed during and following enslavement. He identifies the most important biblical images for African Americans, Exile, Exodus, Ethiopia, and Emmanuel and discusses their recurrence and the relationship they have with African Americans and African American culture. In chapter one Callahan described the ways enslaved African Americans first encountered the bible; he goes on to describe that these encounters with the Bible where facilitated by colonist, the African Americans couldn’t encounter it

Callahan suggest that this prophecy is a major tool for the liberation of slaves he goes on to note, “African Americans interpreted the prophecy in ways that made them more than but players and stage props in the divine drama of human history.” He went on to state “In the mind of some African Americans, however, it also suggested that they would become emancipators.” suggesting that it was not only a means for mental liberation but one that could’ve triggered violent acts for