The Creation of Adam and the Biblical Origins of Race in The Slave’s Friend (1836–1838)

Kerry M Sonia

doi:10.3390/rel12100860

Abstract

The creation of Adam out of dust is a familiar tradition from the Book of Genesis. In abolitionist literature of the nineteenth century, this biblical narrative became the basis for a theory about the origins of race, arguing that because Adam was formed from red clay, neither he nor his descendants were white. This interpretation of Genesis underscored the value of non-white ancestors both in the biblical narrative and in human history and undermined popular theological arguments that upheld color-based racial hierarchies that privileged whiteness in the United States. This article examines the creation of Adam in Genesis 2 and its use in racial theory and abolitionist rhetoric, focusing on the children’s anti-slavery periodical The Slave’s Friend, published from 1836 to 1838.

Highlights

Examines the creation of Adam in Genesis 2 and its focUuSsiVng onSythmebcohlildrMena’csroan(st)i-slavery periodical The use in Slave’s
The red clay of Adam’s creation is a generative metaphor, one that helps construct a taxonomy of race that de-centers whiteness in the biblical narrative and supports the emancipation of enslaved persons in the United States
Albert Harrill characterizes the emerging biblical hermeneutics of nineteenth-century writers as follows: American literary studies, undergoing professionalization, was moving toward a critical hermeneutics that aimed at recovery of the author’s intended meaning as a norm for validating conflicting readings of a text and aimed to complete and develop what the author had only sketched and suggested—a task that inevitably carried the critic beyond the author’s intention into a hermeneutics of moral intuition. (Harrill 2000, p. 150). This reading strategy characterizes the biblical interpretation found in The Slave’s Friend, the use of the Bible to confront the modern category of race

Summary

Introduction

Examines the creation of Adam in Genesis 2 and its focUuSsiVng onSythmebcohlildrMena’csroan(st)i-slavery periodical The use in Slave’s. This essay examines the interpretation of the02cCrDeationof Ada\mtexitnloGwmeancersoins 2 and its use in nineteenth-century racial theory and abolitionist rhetoric, foc\utesxintmgacornontbheelocwhildren’s anti-slavery periodical The Slave’s Friend.

Results

Conclusion