The Black church, historically, is the most significant institution in the Black community.

I. History and Development of the Black Church

A. There were differences of opinion with respect to whether slaves should be Christianized.

B. The Christian religion was accepted by the slaves because it offered hope and salvation.

C. Although at first religious instruction was given the slaves, this was later discontinued, then renewed after the Revolutionary War.

D. Three major denominations split over the question of slavery.

E. Independent churches were established by free Negroes in the North.

It has long been the common opinion that the Zealots were the party founded by Judas the Galilean — so Graetz and Jost, for instance, writing in the middle of the past century. Derenbourg, it is true, observed that the term ”Zealots” was not applied to the opponents of the Romans before the revolt, but when he came to the events of the revolt he made a descendant of Judas, Menahem, the leader of the Zealots and so apparently assumed the connection of the party with Judas. Schürer's adherence canonized the common opinion, and also the common description of the Sicarii as a more fanatical fraction of the party — though the sources contain nothing to suggest that the party had split before the Sicarii appeared. Hence, with only minor variations, Eduard Meyer, Bousset, Baron, and Yadin's account of the Zealots in Masada, to name only the largest studies.

Dans un article paru il y a dix-neuf ans, j'ai tenté de prouver que le prétoire où Pilate condamna Jésus doit être cherché dans l'ancien palais d'Hérode, à la limite occidentale de l'antique Jérusalem, près de l'actuelle Porte de Jaffa, plutôt que dans la forteresse de l'Antonia, sise à l'angle nord-ouest de l'enceinte du Temple, aujourd'hui le Haram esh-Sherif. Ma démonstration s'appuyait sur les témoignages littéraires. Dans l'article simultané où il défendait la position contraire, mon vénéré maître le P. Vincent déclarait que “le meilleur, sinon l'unique moyen efficace” de combattre sa théorie serait de “démontrer avec quelque précision technique les erreurs dont (serait entachée son) interprétation des faits archéologiques.”

The Holy Bible represents the literary deposit of the Hebrew people's faith in God's intervention within human history to liberate them and mankind from physical and spiritual bondage. Even though this divine revelation was given to a specific people at a specific time within history, its power and hoped-for fulfillment continues to be the basis of religious faith for Jew and Christian alike. Consequently, the most potent aspect of the Scriptures for the Black community in Africa and the Americas is its present meaning and revelation for us in our struggle today for physical and spiritual liberation. The particularity of the mode of biblical revelation — the witness of a specific people at a particular point in history — suggests that the medium is also the message, namely, that God's word is intended for identifiable situations rather than to be taken as amorphous, generalized truth having little to do with the specifics of the human condition. The American Association of Theological Schools' journal, Theology Today, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Spring, 1970) plus Supplement, turns its attention to this question of the divine revelation and a specific human situation under the title of “The Black Religious Experience and Theological Education.” James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (New York: Lippincott, 1970), offers a forceful argument for the biblical basis of the present black social and spiritual revolution. See also, J. Deotis Roberts, Liberation and Reconciliation: A Black Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1971). However, while the hermeneutical task of proclaiming God's word to contemporary ears is of the greater importance — it is ontologically prior, there is also the necessity — chronologically prior — of adequately describing the Biblical word on the basis of its own setting. Dean Krister Stendahl has given classic statement to the fundamental role of the descriptive process, of what the Bible “meant,” before we take up what it “means,” in his article on “Contemporary Biblical Theology,” Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. I (New York: Abingdon, 1962). Black consciousness is ultimately informed and inspired by the biblical message, but it also has some questions which it would address to Holy Scripture. Among these questions are those concerning the African presence in the Bible and the role of Africa in the period of biblical revelation.

In 1872 F. Overbeck wrote an essay on Justin Martyr and Luke's Acts of the Apostles, stating that the author of Acts was unprincipled when dealing with the law.1 On the one hand, Luke offers justification by faith without the law (i:8f.); on the other, the Jewish Christians are obliged to keep the law unabridged, while gentile Christians have modified freedom from the law. Like Justin, the author of Acts tolerates Jewish Christian adherence to the law, whereas he pretends to regard it as compulsory. Actually Luke merely toys with the problem; the question is of no concern to him.

When the Apostle Paul came to Corinth, probably in the year 50, the Roman colony Laus Iulia Corinthiensis was a flourishing center of trade and industry and a vital link of communication between Italy and the eastern provinces of the empire. It was still in the process of rebuilding after the thorough destruction by the Romans in 146 B.C., followed by a century of virtual abandonment. The Isthmian Games, which the Sikyonians had taken over and had presumably transferred to Sikyon, were again celebrated on the site where they had been held for more than a half millennium. Since Paul remained in Corinth for eighteen months on his first visit, he would have been there in the spring of 51, when the games were held at Isthmia. If, as I believe, the biennial Isthmian festival played a contributing, if not decisive, role in his choice of Corinth as the chief base of his missionary work in Greece, he would have come to the Isthmus for the occasion, and this gave him the opportunity to become familiar at first hand with the pagan rites that formed an integral part of the festival.

This essay is an analysis of the natural law theory of one of the most important of the seventeenth-century Puritan philosophers and theologians, William Ames (1576-1633). Ames' theory of natural law has historical importance because of its contribution to the formulation of fundamental doctrines upon which modern democratic institutions were raised — such doctrines as the duties and inalienable rights of individual citizens, the social contract or government by consent of the people, and the right of resistance when a government exceeds the bounds of its authority. For although Ames spent his life in England and Holland, and although he died in the midst of his preparations to emigrate to America from Holland, his greatest impact and predominating influence were in the New World, He has justifiably been called ”the spiritual father of the New England churches,” ”the favorite theologian of early New England,” and ”the father of American theology.”

W. E. B. DuBois was right when he said, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” That is to say, regardless of your own definition of your own being, you fall into one of four racial groups, namely, yellow, black, white, and red. But you cannot stand in or belong to more than one racial group. But history shows us that some racial groups have been victimized by another or other groups. But I am not interested in what happened in history in human relations — of all racial groups. I am particularly interested in the conditions of my Black existence under the most barbaric and inhuman system of man's inhumanity to man. That is to say, I would like to examine the conditions of my being which is oppressed by another kind of racial group — called “white.” The nature of my oppression is also shared by my brother, Ho Chi Minh, when he said, “It is well known that the black race is the most exploited and most oppressed of the human family.”

The major thrust of this paper is that changing historical configurations are not without their effect on the attempts to articulate and interpret the faith principles of a religion which claims allegiance to the Lord of History. If one starts, not with God but with man and his predicament, as does John Macquarrie, how does one ignore some of the most significant changes that have occurred in recent history which have helped to contribute to the precariousness of “Western man”?

In 1963 a bronze statuette was acquired by the Museo Arqueológico de Sevilla. It portrays a naked goddess with a modified Ḥatḥor hair style. She is seated, her feet resting on a pedestal which is inscribed with five lines of old Phoenician writing. The writing surface on the pedestal measures only 4.1 × 2.8 cm. and unhappily is marred by bronze disease, that is, by corrosion which swells and flakes. The figurine with its inscription was published by J. M. Solá-Solé in 1966 in an excellent paper which correctly dated the inscription (and the statuette) in the first half of the eighth century B.C. and went far in deciphering the difficult text. In figure 1 we have attempted to draw a facsimile of the statue pedestal based on the published photographs.

Exegetes are probably no less prone than anybody else to long for something mathematical, something clearly right or wrong, in their discipline. It is thus hardly surprising that in recent years at least two attempts have been made to examine, on a purely objective statistical basis, the disputed question of synoptic relationships.1 It is our intention in this paper to comment briefly on these two studies and to add new figures to the discussion.

In any discussion of the origins of Christian ”anti-Semitism,” among a number of New Testament passages that can be adduced, i Thessalonians 2:14-16 will inevitably be brought to the fore. The purpose of this article is not per se to contribute to the current Jewish-Christian ”dialog,” but to discuss historically and exegetically this important passage in Thessalonians. (Such a study, of course, will not be completely irrelevant to the contemporary theological scene.)

The Middle Bronze I period, ca. 2150–1900 B.C., has been regarded until recently as something of a “Dark Age” in the history of Palestine. That this period has yielded so slowly and stubbornly to the probings of the archaeologist now appears to have been due to its basic character: it represents a largely non-urban, transitional culture which (taken together with “EB IV”) spans the interlude of several centuries between the great urban eras of the Early Bronze and the Middle Bronze Ages. Semi-nomads and transitory settlers leave frustratingly few traces for the archaeologist. Nevertheless, intensive research in recent years enables us finally to draw a provisional picture of the material culture of MB I in Palestine (see the sketch in Section B).

Our study criticizes the respective theodicies and methodologies of Joseph Washington, James Cone, and Albert Cleage. Our argument is reducible to the following propositions. (1) On the basis of their own presuppositions, the point of departure for black theology must be the question: Is God a white racist? (2) Accordingly, a viable theodicy, one which refutes the charge of divine racism, must be the foundation for the edifice of black theology. (3) The theodicies of the above theologians leave the issue of God's racism essentially unresolved. Consequently, the remainder of the theological system lacks adequate support.

Modern discussion of the enigmatic οὐχ ⋯ρπαγμ⋯ν ⋯γ⋯σατο τ⋯ εἶναι ἶσα θεῷ of Phil. 2:6 received its most significant contribution from Werner Jaeger in a notable article published half a century ago. Jaeger contended that this much-disputed phrase belongs to a cluster of idiomatic expressions in which literal notions of robbery or violent seizure are not present. These idiomatic expressions feature double accusative constructions in which ἃρπαγμα as well as ἒρμαιον, εὔρημα and εὐτύχημα regularly appear with such verbs as ⋯γείσθαι, ποιείσθαι and τίθεσθαι with the meaning, ”to regard something as a stroke of luck, a windfall, a piece of good fortune,” etc.2 When it occurs in such a construction ἃρπαγμα is to be understood as a synonym of the above-mentioned nouns (”Studie,” pp. 548-49)—a judgment which Jaeger believed is most patently indicated in Heliodorus, Aethiopica VII.20, since there both ἅρπαγμα and ⋯ρμαιον occur in the same phrase: οὐχ ἃραγμα οὐδ⋯ ἒρμαιον ποιείται τ⋯ πράγμα

For some decades blacks have been taking a new look at themselves. In the language of black preachers, leaders, and educators, they are discovering what Martin L. King, Jr., calls their “some-bodiness.” This is not to say the phenomenon is entirely new. There have always been brave and hardy spirits who transcended their existential situation. Racism, colonialism, imperialism, and every machination of man's inhumanity to man could not crush their spirit. They dared, they dreamed, they acted.

A good deal of information is being collected about the potter's craft in many parts of the world. Some work has been done on the analysis of potmaking in antiquity, but as far as the present writer knows, the importance of this type of analysis for archaeological studies has not been critically investigated. This paper intends to present the reader with the results of research into the methods of potmaking in two cultural periods in Palestine, as well as with some of the problems that came up during this research. The two periods concerned are the Early Iron Age (ca. 1200–1000 B.C.) and the Medieval period from the beginning of the Islamic conquest to ca. 1500 A.D.

Is. 33:8 is a difficult verse standing in a difficult context, but recent lines of evidence converge to make the meaning of this verse clear, and to show that we have here another instance of a newly identified Hebrew word. As it stands in the Masoretic Text, the verse reads: nāšammû mĕsillôt šābat ‘ōbēr’ ōraḥ hēpēr bĕrît mā'as ‘ārîmlō' ḥāšab’nôš. A literal rendering will serve to make the difficulties clear: “Highways are desolate. No traveller passes by. He has broken the covenant, rejected the cities. He has not regarded man.”

There are, notoriously, a number of general literary observations on the large number of Christians in Caesar's household and in Caesar's employ in the late second and in the third centuries A.D. but there are remarkably few particular examples to substantiate these general claims. Particularly rare (for reasons of security?) are traces of such individual Christians outside the literary remains. C.I.L. 6.8987 (= Diehl I.L.C.V. 3872) would appear to be an exception and to record two such Christians of Caesar's household. It thus provides welcome attestation, though, curiously, the inscription has seldom been exploited for this information.