Abstract
In an effort to develop a framework by which to center African American humanist sensibilities, I turned my attention to Nimrod—the great hunter who is famous (or infamous) for the construction of the Tower of Babel.1 Elsewhere, I have suggested that Prometheus has long served as a symbol of human potential and optimism, but those of African descent were not associated with this positive tradition. Rather, their humanity was questioned; their merit denied.
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Notes
See Anthony B. Pinn, African American Humanist Principles: Living and Thinking Like the Children of Nimrod (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
Anthony B. Pinn, African American Humanist Principles: Living and Thinking Like the Children of Nimrod (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 6.
For an interesting interpretation of the story of Babel that takes up this question of God’s intent but offers an alternate, one that justifies God’s actions, see: Leon R. Kass, “What’s Wrong With Babel?” in The New Religious Humanists: A Reader, ed. Georgy Wolfe, (New York: The Free Press, 1997), 60–83.
Frank Burch Brown, Religious Aesthetics: A Theological Study of Making and Meaning (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 131–132.
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© 2008 Anthony B. Pinn and Allen Dwight Callahan
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Pinn, A.B. (2008). God of Restraint: An African American Humanist Interpretation of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel. In: Pinn, A.B., Callahan, A.D. (eds) African American Religious Life and the Story of Nimrod. Black Religion/Womanist Thought/Social Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230610507_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230610507_3
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