y useful in a Black church is FelderÆs Troubling Biblical Waters, which relates current mainstream scholarship to relevant social problems in an extremely balanced manner, and draws out the multiracial background of the Bible among its writers, contents, and setting. It could be used with an adult study group as a useful text and resource.
It is hard for Americans of any background to grasp the fact that there was almost no racial prejudice of the kind Americans know all too well in the ancient world of the Bible. It is said that in the USA if you are black you are poor, but in some Central American countries where virtually everybody is of mixed European, Native American, and African background, the social rule instead is that if you are rich you are white, and if you are poor you are black--it doesnÆt actually have a thing to do with oneÆs skin color. The ancient world was something like that.
There slavery was an economic institution, not a moral condition of the slave. It was known tha
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