The Original African Heritage Study Bible

The Original African Heritage Study Bible was introduced in 1993 by James C. Winston Publishing Company, and intended to interpret the Bible as it relates to persons of African descent, hoping to foster an appreciation of the multiculturalism inherent in the Bible.

Based on the King James Version, the Original African Heritage Study Bible highlights the central role of African people in God’s salvation history. Believing that most Bible translations fail to give appropriate credit for the contributions of African people to Christianity, James W. Peebles, president of Winston-Derek Publishing House, gathered an ecumenical panel of scholars from a wide range of Christian denominations to author articles supplementing the KJV text on topics ranging from multiculturalism in Scripture to the martyrdom of African Christians to African women and Scripture. Included are 24 songs out of the African slave experience in the United States, as well as photographs and paintings of Africans dressed as Bible characters.

In textual notes and appended articles, attention is drawn to Africa as the site of the earliest human civilization, pointing out that the boundaries of the Garden of Eden stretched into what is now Ethiopia. Adam and Eve are identified as African/Edenic peoples, and notes attached to the genealogy in the Gospel of Matthew connect Jesus to the Hamitic line through Rahab.

While offering a corrective to the Euro-centric biases of many modern translations, the Original African Heritage Study Bible substitutes one bias for another, sometimes exaggerating the relationships between ancient Africans and the ancient Israelites. It does, however, offer an alternative.