04028nas#a2200145ucc4500 0079005 20260801081156.0 0020-9643 Union Presbyterian Seminary Interpretation the bible and slavery Nr. 1 January 75(2021) 75,H.1 Los Angeles, Calif. [u.a.] Sage 2021 3 Contributors 4 Editorial Samuel L. Adams 6 Mary’s Slave Song: The Tensions and Turnarounds of Faithfully Reading Doule in the Magnificat Raquel S. Lettsome This article traces the enduring legacy of slavery in the United States and its biblical foundations that create interpretive tension around the Greek words doulos/doule for readers and translators. Following Clarice Martin’s lead, I advocate for a faithful reading of doule as “slave” in Luke 1:38, 48 and draw parallels between African-American slave songs and Mary’s Magnificat. I then explicate the tensions inherent in reading Mary as “the slave of the Lord” and “his [God’s] slave” against the socio-historical backdrop of U.S. slavery and explore how Mary’s slave song and narrative depiction by Luke “turns around” Mary’s slave language by reversing Orlando Patterson’s three constituent elements of slavery. When using this model, Luke transforms Mary’s slave language into a homeopathic practice and Mary into the embodiment of an African- American woman’s slave song. 19 Slave Christologies: Augustine and the Enduring Trouble with the “Form of a Slave” (Phil 2:5–7) Matthew Elia This essay finds in the thought of Augustine of Hippo a key moment in the development of a strand of the Western theological tradition I will call slave Christologies: theological accounts of the person and work of Jesus Christ that, drawing from the Philippians hymn (Phil 2:5–11), symbolically identify his body with the body of the enslaved, and in so doing, weave the order of slaveholding into the texture of Christian thought. I approach the political and theological implications of this tradition under the pressure of a twofold haunting: of the perennial, if hard to specify, interplay between ideas and forms of life, between the symbolic and the social; and of the contingent, specific historical afterlife of racial slavery which provides the conditions for contemporary Christian thought. 33 How to Rename a Campus Building in Just A Quarter Century: Benjamin Morgan Palmer, Rhodes College, and Palmer Hall Stephen R. Haynes Benjamin Morgan Palmer (1818–1902) was one of the leading voices in the Southern Presbyterian Church between the 1850s and his death in 1902. Part of Palmer’s “principal legacy” was his career-long commitment to interpreting Genesis 9–11 in a way that endorsed racial hierarchy and Black subordination. Nevertheless, it has been far from easy to repudiate Palmer’s legacy in the institutions that honor him. 44 Biblical Interpretation, Race, and Union Presbyterian Seminary William B. Sweetser, Jr. Chattel slavery in the United States was never foreordained. The deliberate misinterpretation of Scripture predisposed people to accept what the Bible condemned. The development of the Biblical Theology movement, by emphasizing the plain sense of Scripture over cultural assumptions and discredited scientific theories, led Union Presbyterian Seminary to repudiate the immorality that was slavery and segregation. Between Text and Sermon 56 Exodus 20:1–17 Sunggu Yang 59 Romans 6:12–23 Emerson B. Powery Major Reviews 62 Cut in Stone: Confederate Monuments and Theological Disruption by Ryan Andrew Newson Christine Luckritz Marquis 64 Knowing Christ Crucified: The Witness of African American Religious Experience by M. Shawn Copeland Roger J. Gench 66 The Internal Conversation of the Old Testament by Mark McEntire Kandy Queen-Sutherland 69 A New Testament Theology by Craig L. Blomberg Frank J. Matera 72 Shorter Reviews 90 Book Notes 0030026 Interpretation 63675 63675 0 0 0 0 AWMBIB AWMBIB ZSAB 2021-03-25 0.00 0 Interpretation 01198232 2026-07-31 22:45:29 2026-07-31 ZSR