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The world is increasingly assuming the characteristics of a “global village,” as transportation and information technologies make travel and communications around the globe ever quicker and easier. The world of biblical scholarship has not been immune to such changes. Increasingly, biblical scholars everywhere recognize that they are “reading the Bible in the global village” and that as they do so they must be aware not only of their particular contexts for reading the Bible but also of the relationships and tensions between the global and the local, the general and the particular. This volume, which derives from the 2000 SBL International Meeting in Cape Town, South Africa, presents essays by eight scholars who either come from Africa or have strong interests in African biblical scholarship. Taken together, their work provides a good overview of and introduction to some of the key issues, themes, theories, and practices that are characteristic of the best contemporary biblical study in Africa.

Reading the Bible in the Global Village: Issues and Challenges from African Readings
—Justin S. Ukpong (Professor of New Testament at the Catholic Institute of West Africa, Port Harcourt, Nigeria)

Villagizing, Globalizing, and Biblical Studies
—Musa W. Dube (Senior Lecturer on the New Testament in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Botswana, Gaborone)

Unpacking the Package That Is the Bible in African Biblical Scholarship
—Gerald O. West (Professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament in the School of Theology, University of Natal, South Africa)

Redefining Power: Reading the Bible in Africa from the Peripheral and Central Positions
—Alpheus Masoga (Lecturer on Theology, African Orature, and Moral and Cultural Studies at the University of the North, Qwa Qwa Campus, South Africa)

The Role of Biblical Politics in Contextual Theologies
—Norman K. Gottwald (Adjunct Professor of Old Testament at the Pacific School of Religion and Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at New York Theological Seminary, and a past President of the Society of Biblical Literature)

Towards a Postcolonial Reading of Freedom in Paul
—Jeremy Punt (Lecturer in New Testament at the University of Fort Hare, Alice, South Africa)

What If We Are Mistaken about the Bible and Christianity in Africa
—Tinyiko S. Maluleke (Professor of African Theology and of Missiology in the Departments of Missiology and Systematic Theology, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, University of South Africa, Pretoria)

Response
—Vincent L. Wimbush (Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Union Theological Seminary, New York)