Abstract
The summum bonum of Jesus’ teaching as reported by Matthew is strict obedience to a new ethic embodied in what is commonly referred to as “The Sermon on the Mount” (Mt. 5-7). We are familiar with the setting. Jesus is teaching a large crowd along with his disciples and in concluding his discourse he uses a building metaphor to depict two classes of disciples (hearers), as they respond to his teaching. Those who, on the one hand, become exemplars of what he exhorts them to do, he likens to wise builders whose houses have a rocky foundation to withstand storms (Mt.7:24f.). Those who, on the other, fail to make hearing issue forth into fundamental change for a more ethical society, Jesus compares to foolish builders who erect their houses on poor foundation, that of sand (Mt. 7:26). I find this similitude quite an appropriate backdrop against which we might address the present state of black biblical Hermeneutics in general and its application by African Americans in particular. Appropriate, because biblical Hermeneutics has to proceed with certain fundamental presuppositions that we might call the foundation of the biblical hermeneutics “house,” and the methods employed in the construction of that foundation we call the tools.