Annie Tinsley is an Assistant Professor of New Testament at Shaw University Divinity School

The turn towards postcolonial hermeneutics has gathered apace in more recent times and this important book adds to this fine tradition. Tinsley has crafted an incisive and challenging text that brings African American experiences into a critical conversation with Colossians, giving voice to previously silenced communities that are situated behind and in front of the text. This is an impressive first and is a must read. - Anthony G. Reddie, Editor, Black Theology: An International Journal , Author, SCM Core Text: Black Theology. For those who continue to search for insight into the meaning to the initial audiences of the various New Testament books, this work on the letter to the Colossians by Annie Tinsley is a most welcome resource. By engaging a postcolonial African perspective, she brings fresh insight into the text's meaning by hearing voices silenced through oppression: those impacted by colonization in the first century, as well as the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. - Randall J. Pannell, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, Regent University, US

• General Introduction PART I: THE PEOPLE OF COLOSSAE 1. Contemporaries of Laodicea and Hierapolis 2. Generations of belief in Mysteries and Mythological Cults 3. Jews 4. Subjects of Greco-Roman Empire PART II: IDENTITY - PEOPLE OF AFRICA 5. African Traditional Religion PART III: IDENTITY - ENSLAVED AFRICANS IN NORTH AMERICA 6. Identity through the Language of Enslavers 7. Identity through the Language of Enslaved PART IV: TOWARDS A RE-READING OF COLOSSIANS 8. The Epistle to the Colossians 9. Colossians One 10. Colossians Two 11. Colossians Three 12. Colossians Four General Conclusions