This book is the second multi-authors volume in the De Gruyter series Handbooks of the Bible and Its Reception. Although the first volume focused on biblical reception among Jewish, European Christian, and Islamic contexts, the second volume considers locations where colonization by Europeans fundamentally shaped Indigenous peoples’ encounters with the Bible. Thus, this volume focuses on Christianity in the Global South but includes experiences of Indigenous peoples and African Americans in North America. As such, it provides readers with original studies of the reception of the Bible in the folklores of different cultures, focusing on biblically derived characters, tales, and motifs, in Asian, African, Oceanic, and American cultures. In each volume, the focus is not on the religions of the peoples but rather with their folkloric use of, or reactions to, the Bible and its contents.
The first two essays are located in Africa. Eric Nii Bortey Anum focuses on Accra, Ghana and an early Moravian translation of the Lord's Prayer from German into the indigenous Ga language. The translation showed some knowledge of Ga culture and paved the way for the translation of the Bible. Isabel Mukonyora examines the Shona prophet Johane Masowe, who was deeply impacted by the Bible in his mother tongue but also created a version of the faith that leaned into a Shona theology of liberation that was truly indigenous, pushing back against colonial versions of Christianity.
The next essays look at peoples in Asia. Herman Tull looks at nineteenth-century attempts by missionaries to draw on local folklore and proverbs in introducing Christianity, a not altogether successful undertaking, given the vast differences between the West and South Asia. John T.P. Lai focuses on public storytelling and Chinese folktales which missionaries and others adapted for communicating the Bible with a largely illiterate public. Christal Whelan examines two Bible-derived folktales in Japan, one on the Virgin Mary and another on Jesus coming to Japan and dying there.
Oceania, a region often overlooked in global overviews, is covered next and is an important contribution to the volume. Jerusha Matsen Neal examines contemporary examples of biblical reception associated with the Methodist Church of Fiji highlighting the land, indigenous perspectives, and the church. M. Luafata Simanu-Klutz shows how the Bible in Samoa is treated as a holy object in the context of song, dance, poetry, and storytelling.
Completing the geographic coverage of the globe, the next four essays look at the Bible's reception in the folklores of the Americas. John Bierhorst frames this from the viewpoint of various Indigenous peoples, starting with the arrival of Columbus, contrasting those in Northern America under Protestant influence with those in the Southern Americas under Catholic influence. Kerry Hull focuses on Indigenous peoples in Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize where “assimilated Bible stories” become part of these peoples’ oral traditions. M. Cooper Harris shows how the Bible became central to the African American tradition despite its role as an oppressive book of the enslavers. Finally, Eric A. Eliason illustrates how the Book of Mormon as “audaciously extra-biblical” becomes “an extension of the Bible's narrative of God's dealings with his chosen people” (334).
The final two essays depart from the geographic coverage to examine the subjects of film and folkloric characters. Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch bridges folklore and media studies by looking into how oral storytelling intersects with a “mass culture in a world saturated with media technology” (340). The volume's editor Eric Ziolkowski offers an integrative study on four biblically derived characters: Elijah, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and the Wandering Jew.
Fittingly these essays are expertly framed in the tension between polygenesis and diffusion. In these ways, this volume intersects closely with the scholars and literature of World Christianity (many of whom are cited throughout this volume). The editor also points out how Gambian history professor Lamin Sanneh's concept of “inherent translatability” provides a backdrop to the essays by framing how effective or ineffective translations were among various peoples. While diffusion of the messages of the Bible might seem adequate to describe the interaction with Indigenous peoples, the editor and various essays emphasize the way in which ideas take root among these peoples that represent their cultures, despite these ideas arriving from foreign lands. Indigenous people have made the Bible their own, adapted it to their context, and filled in their own cultural stories to provide a more complete picture of the Bible in history and society. As Mukonyora observes, “the more global the colonial roots of social changes are that leave many people displaced, poor, or sick, the greater the need is for innovative research on Christian folklore” (92–93).
One of many helpful insights in this volume is the tendency for cultures to fill gaps in the biblical texts with material from their own traditions. Another observation is that of the “centrifugal, global movements” that characterize both the Jewish and Christian scriptures. Included in this is the centrality of migrations (and hence, diasporas) that have been so central to both Judaism and Christianity. Consequently, the encounters of Indigenous peoples with the Bible documented here are often related to the translation of the Bible. Yet, noted throughout the essays, is the disastrous forced migration of Indigenous peoples, especially in North America, both with the mass displacement of Native Americans and the arrival of enslaved Africans.
In the end, the editor and the contributors, should be satisfied that they accomplished what they set out to do, illustrating how “folklore emerges from, is inspired by, reacts against, or elaborates on” the Bible (11).
