Abstract
From my own literary and theological position, as a critic grounded in reader response criticism and a theologian working out of a liberation matrix, this volume on African American biblical hermeneutics represents a very timely and welcome addition to the task of biblical analysis and interpretation. Indeed, I see the “stony road” charted in this volume as a road of liberation for the future of the discipline, a future characterized by increasing diversity and pluralism in the reading and interpretation of the Bible. In these critical reflections on the volume, I should like to examine its meaning and implications as follows: first, by situating the volume within the wider course of biblical criticism since the 1970s; then, by engaging in critical dialogue a number of its main points and positions.