New Testament in Color: a new book worth getting

From my Goodreads review: Perhaps you’ve read a familiar scripture verse or passage and had it mean something new to you—because you’re in a new stage in life like dating, marriage, divorce, widow-hood, being a child of a parent and now a parent, early career versus late career or retirement, migration from rural to urban or vice versa. Similarly, if you have a different familial history or geographic origin than the majority culture, the scripture passages might appear differently to you. Thus we can learn much from the contributors to the “New Testament in Color.” They provide a commentary on each of the books of the New Testament (Greek scriptures) as well as several other essays. The introduction to the Gospel of Mark is worth the price of the whole book. They do not exegete each verse but provide a minority perspective on the theme(s) of a passage throughout the book(s). We get to read insights from Black (African American), Asian American, First Nation, Hispanic (Latino/a), minority female scholars and more.

They acknowledge that they are approaching this as North American residents, some from many generations on the margin, sometimes 2nd generation immigrants or transplants from another country. Thus, their perspective is somewhat limited by the time lapse from their family’s original culture. Still these commentaries are scholarly, personal and insightful. For example, though outside the scope of this work, one contributor illuminates the coldness of First Nations people to embrace easily the Israelites crossing the Jordan—as perhaps an act of colonization—to displace the current inhabitants of Canaan.

There were a few places I thought a more non-European perspective could be expressed but wasn’t: the jailer’s household being baptized because of the patriarch’s experience with Paul and Silas; the silent conflict of Philip (one of the original apostles) warning Paul on his return to Jerusalem because Paul is ignoring the elders of the community; the provoking of anger perhaps when Jesus praises the centurion’s faith over his own disciples’, the crowd’s, his mother Mary’s and the baptized John’s. And there were a few where better insights are given. Such as Peter’s vision in Acts 10 and being told to eat unclean food just before being summoned to a Roman centurion’s household: most interpreters focus purely on the cultural challenge—one Peter has already faced—while this book’s interpreter here focuses on the socioeconomic power clash between Peter, a poor Jew, and Cornelius. Like the power conflict between an urban Black and White metro law enforcement officer, who’s been taught that blacks are criminals and it may be the only portion of that group they’ve interacted with. Both would be totally unfamiliar with each other except as powerful/powerless, oppressive/rebellious stereotypes.. The centurion would have been educated that the Israelites were kicked out of Egypt so many generations ago so that their diseases (aka the plagues) wouldn’t contaminate the Egyptian populace. The centurion then wouldn’t have wanted to engage much with the “slum-dwelling” Jewish inhabitants, and yet kneels contritely before Peter.

If you’ve never been challenged to ask different questions when you read scripture—like you haven’t read this book or “Misreading Scripture Through Western Eyes”—then you really need to pick up this commentary.

I’m thankful for the publisher allowing me to see an early copy.