Quick Take
- Narration: Rodney Louis Tompkins reads Morrisey’s 1915 scholarship with the gravity and care it deserves, treating this as serious theological and historical work rather than a period curiosity, which is exactly the right approach.
- Themes: Black biblical identity, scripture as historical record, spiritual reclamation
- Mood: Dignified and deliberate, with the cadence of a sermon backed by rigorous textual research
- Verdict: A short, dense work of African-American biblical scholarship that repays close listening, the argument that scripture places Black people among the foundational figures of Judeo-Christian history is made from the text itself, with care and conviction.
At three hours and thirty-one minutes, Bible History of the Negro is one of those audiobooks that ends before you’ve fully settled into it, and then you find yourself sitting with it for considerably longer than the runtime suggests. I came to it late on a weekday evening, working through a sequence of African history titles and wanting something that approached the subject from a completely different angle. What Reverend R. A. Morrisey published in 1915, a systematic compilation of every reference to Black people in scripture, turned out to be both an unusual historical document and a surprisingly moving piece of intellectual work.
Morrisey was an African-American Doctor of Divinity and pastor whose explicit purpose was to provide Black readers with a biblical genealogy, to demonstrate that the Bible was not, as it had so often been wielded, a text that erased or condemned Black people, but one that recorded their presence among the foundational figures of Judeo-Christian history. Writing in 1915, just fifty years after emancipation and during the height of Jim Crow, Morrisey was making an argument that was simultaneously theological, historical, and political, even if his language throughout remains scrupulously within the conventions of biblical scholarship rather than activism.
What Morrisey Actually Argues, Figure by Figure
The book moves through figures identified as Black by virtue of their geographic origins, lineage, or explicit scriptural description: Ham, son of Noah; Nimrod; Hagar and Ishmael; Rahab; Bathsheba; Simon the Cyrenian; and Candace, queen of Ethiopia, among others. For each figure, Morrisey provides the relevant verses, a genealogical argument for their African or Black identity, and a brief account of their significance within the biblical narrative. The methodology is entirely text-based, he is not making archaeological or genetic arguments, but rather reading the Bible on its own terms and asking what it actually says about the people described as dwelling in Egypt, Ethiopia, Canaan, and the surrounding regions.
One reviewer noted that after engaging with this book, passages encountered many times before suddenly became visible in a new way, not because Morrisey introduces obscure scholarship, but because he directs attention to things that were always there and had been systematically overlooked. That is perhaps the most accurate description of what Morrisey achieves: not revelation so much as reorientation.
The 1915 Date as Context, Not Caveat
Some listeners approach texts of this vintage expecting dated language or frameworks requiring constant mental adjustment. Morrisey’s writing does carry the formal register of early twentieth-century religious scholarship, and his assumptions about audience, devout, biblically literate, African-American, are specific to his time and community. But the core argument has aged remarkably well precisely because it is so rigorously scriptural. He does not rely on arguments that subsequent scholarship has invalidated. He relies on the text itself, which has not changed.
Rodney Louis Tompkins’s narration maintains the appropriate register throughout. This is not a text that benefits from dramatic performance or emotional coloring, and Tompkins seems to understand that fully. He reads with the measured authority of someone who respects the material and trusts it to carry its own weight. At 762 ratings and 4.5 stars, this edition has found and consistently satisfied a specific audience.
The Pastoral and Scholarly Held Together
One reviewer mentioned wanting to use the book’s material in sermons, and this points to something real about how the text functions. Bible History of the Negro occupies a productive middle ground between devotional and scholarly, it is rigorous enough to withstand examination, but it is also animated by genuine pastoral concern. Morrisey was not writing for academics. He was writing for congregation members who needed to hear, in 1915, that their presence in sacred history was not incidental. That urgency does not diminish with time.
Who Should Listen / Who Should Skip
Listeners with interest in African-American religious history, the use of scripture in Black theological identity, or the intellectual history of the early twentieth century will find this a valuable and relatively quick listen. Secular readers or those who need a contextual argument beyond the biblical text may find it narrow in scope. The runtime asks for less than four hours; the questions it raises are not so quickly resolved.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Morrisey’s 1915 scholarship hold up against modern biblical archaeology and scholarship?
Morrisey’s methodology is entirely text-based, he reads the Bible itself and maps geographic and genealogical references to African or Black identity, rather than making archaeological claims. That approach means his arguments do not depend on empirical claims that later evidence might overturn. Modern scholars would situate his work within the longer tradition of Ethiopianist and Afrocentric biblical interpretation, but the core textual readings remain defensible.
Is this book explicitly theological in its approach, or does it function as secular historical scholarship?
It is explicitly theological. Morrisey was a Baptist pastor writing for a religious community, and he frames the project in terms of faith and spiritual pride rather than secular historical inquiry. Listeners approaching it purely as historical scholarship will need to adjust expectations, this is primarily an act of theological and spiritual reclamation.
How does Bible History of the Negro relate to later traditions of Afrocentric biblical scholarship?
Morrisey’s 1915 work predates much of the explicitly Afrocentric tradition that emerged more prominently in the latter half of the twentieth century. He can be read as an early and important precursor, using scripture rather than Egyptian archaeology as his primary source, but motivated by the same core project of establishing Black people’s central role in sacred and civilizational history.
At just over three hours, is this audiobook a complete text or an abridgement of a longer work?
The original 1915 print text was itself relatively short, Morrisey wrote a focused scholarly treatise rather than an expansive book. The three-and-a-half-hour runtime reflects the actual length of the source material rather than any editorial cutting.
