ABSTRACT
There is no one narrative as regards our responses to our experiences of enslavement. As Callahan argues in his provocative book, The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible,1 there were those who viewed the Bible as ‘The Good Book’, while there were others who viewed it as ‘The Poison Book’. Similarly there were those who fought and rebelled against enslavement, while there were others who accommodated it and identified with their enslavers. By the same token, there were attempts to use the language world of the bible to fight for manumission, while there were those who decried any allegiance or use of the biblical materials in the struggles for freedom.2
