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Article: The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible.(Book review)
- Article from:
- Church History
- Article date:
- June 1, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 American Society of Church History. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible. By Allen Dwight Callahan. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006. xiv + 287 pp. $30.00 cloth.
Allen Dwight Callahan opens his book with the following words: "African Americans are the children of slavery in America. And the Bible, as no other book, is the book of slavery's children" (xi). He finds evidence of the influence, language, and imagery of the Bible throughout African American culture. The book argues that the language and imagery of the Bible have saturated the imagination of African Americans.
Callahan attributes the peculiar appeal of the Bible to black Americans to blacks' heritage ...