Category Archives: Jamaica Theological Seminary

The Liberating Image—The Practical Significance of Being Made in God’s Image

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Back in November 2019, when I was attending the Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting in San Diego, I met up with Jim Stump, vice-president of BioLogos. I’ve known Jim for about five years and he asked if he could interview me for the Language of God podcast series that BioLogos sponsors.

The focus of the interview was a topic dear to my heart—what it means to be made in the image of God (imago Dei).

The podcast page introduces the interview this way:

“We were made in the image of God, but what does that really mean? Whom does that apply to? What does that call us to? The Bible is very central to understanding the answers to these questions, as is cultural context. In this episode, biblical worldview professor, Richard Middleton joins Jim Stump in an attempt to answer some of the questions about human identity through both of those lenses.”

This is some of what Jim Stump said on Facebook about the interview.

“Here we talk about the Bible and science (like what each has to say about Adam and Eve), but mostly focus on his specialty: the image of God. I’m biased and prone to believe what I want to be the case, but I think this is a really interesting conversation.”

You can listen to the full interview here on the BioLogos podcast website.

Although Jim does eventually ask me to speculate on how the imago Dei might relate to the development of Homo sapiens, the interview focuses on what the Bible says about the image in its ancient Near Eastern context and its relevance for living in God’s world. I essentially summarize the main thrust of my book The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1 (Brazos, 2005).

Prior to the book, I had written a programmatic article on the subject, with almost the same title: “The Liberating Image? Interpreting the Imago Dei in Context,” published in Christian Scholar’s Review 24 (1994): 8–25.

Jim Stump is from the Missionary Church, the same denomination that I was a member of as a teen and young adult in Jamaica. I did my undergraduate degree in theology at the Jamaica Theological Seminary, which was founded in 1960 by the Missionary Church Association of Jamaica. It turns out that Jim had spoken at a 2007 commencement ceremony at my seminary.

Although the image of God is the focus of the BioLogos interview, I also talk a bit about what Jamaica is like (in response to Jim’s questions).

If you are interested in further reflections on the applicability of the imago Dei to matters of ethics and justice, you can read the blog post I was invited to write for the Imago Dei Fund. It is called “The Ethical Challenge of the Image of God in the 21st Century – Human Rights and Beyond.”

And if you want to explore a bit more about how the imago Dei (and the Fall) might (I emphasize that word) relate to what we know of the origins of Homo sapiens, I discuss these topics in a presentation I gave for the Canadian and Christian Scientific Affiliation, called “Human Distinctiveness and the Origin of Evil in Biblical and Evolutionary Perspectives.”

Mortimer Planno, Bob Marley, and Rastafari Biblical Interpretation

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In two previous blog posts I reported on the theology conference held at the Jamaica Theological Seminary in Kingston (where I did my formative theological studies many years ago) and the trip some of us took afterwards to two Rastafarian heritage sites.

One of our presenters at the theology conference, who was also on the trip, was a Canadian named Christopher Duncanson-Hales. As a Roman Catholic theologian, Duncanson-Hales may have seemed a bit out of place among a largely Protestant group; but he was very familiar with Jamaican culture, and especially with Rastafari.

From his initial visit to Jamaica as a teenager, when he arrived to work with Father Ho Lung’s ministry in Kingston (called the Missionaries of the Poor), he met up with Rastas and intentionally tried to understand their culture and doctrines.

Later, through an extended stay in Jamaica he was apprenticed to the respected Rastafarian elder Sydney DaSilva (president of the Rastafarian Centralization Organization). His many meetings with Ras DaSilva resulted in research notes that became the basis of his academic career focus on Rastafari.

Besides writing his B.A thesis and M.T.S. thesis on Rastafari, Duncanson-Hales addressed Rastafari in his Ph.D. thesis, entitled “The Full Has Never Been Told: Theology and the Encounter with Globalization” (2011, Saint Paul University, Ottawa, Canada).

After completing his Ph.D., he attended the Rastafari Studies Conference and General Assembly Rastafari, held at the University of the West Indies, in Kingston (2013), where he presented a paper entitled “Naming Jah: Who do InI say InI am?” More recently, his article called “Dread Hermeneutics” was published in the journal Black Theology (2017).

A New Research Project on Rastafari

Duncanson-Hales’s next research project is called Echoes of the Memories: A Hermeneutical Investigation of Rastafari Ethnographic Material in the Smithsonian’s Simpson/Yawney Archives. This project will examine the notes of two important ethnographers, who had significant access to Rastafari “reasoning” sessions, with a view to incorporating their analysis into his own study of Rastafari “productive hermeneutics,” that is, how Rastafarians engage the Bible and the world of oppression to produce an alternative symbolic world of hope, at both the oral and visual levels.

The study will also engage in careful analysis of Ras Mortimer Planno’s famous 1969 handwritten treatise, “The Earth Most Strangest Man: The Rastafarian,” which is the first written Rastafari theological statement, almost 200 pages long (also in the Smithsonian archives).

Mortimer Planno (also known as Kumi) was perhaps the most famous Rastafarian elder throughout the history of the movement. Besides being the spiritual teacher of Bob Marley (both lived in Trench Town), Planno is known for having parted the crowd of Rastas who were dancing and drumming on the tarmac at the Kingston airport, in order to make a path for His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I to exit the plane on his historic visit to Jamaica on April 21, 1966.

My father, Jack Middleton, being at the time the head of Special Branch (in the Jamaica Constabulary Force), was in charge of security for Selassie’s visit. Since he knew that Planno was a respected Rasta elder, he asked him to make a path for His Majesty through the crowd of celebrants who had gathered to greet him.

But first he brought Planno up the steps of the plane to meet Selassie in person. After that Planno proceeded to part the crowd of thousands of Rastas so that Selassie could deplane safely.

Ever since, April 21 has been celebrated as Groundation Day by Rastafarians.

My Involvement in the Rastafari Research Project

Duncanson-Hales’s Rastafari projected research project will also involve analysis of the lyrics of Bob Marley’s songs, as they intersect with the Bible and with Planno’s theology.

Although I am not a formal expert on Rastafari, I had many discussions with Rastas on the streets of New Kingston, when I was a teenager. And I have published an essay on the theological vision of the songs of Bob Marley and the Wailers (many of these songs have contributed to the texture of my own spirituality). Also, whereas Duncanson-Hales is a systematic and historical theologian, I am a biblical scholar by training, and can bring my expertise in Old Testament studies to bear on the project.

Therefore I will be lending my expertise as a collaborator on the overall project and as a co-author for selected parts of the study, especially for a book on Rastafari biblical interpretation that would be part of the overall project (Semeia Studies has indicated interest in publishing this).

We are only just in the brainstorming and planning phases for the idea. Given my own prior commitments to book projects, this particular study may be a bit more far off in the future.

We shall see how it develops, Jah willing.

 

 

 

 

 

A Rastafarian Cultural Journey (What I Did after the Theology Conference in Jamaica)

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In my last blog post I reported on the theology conference on the theme of “Biblical Interpretation for Caribbean Renewal” that I helped organize at the Jamaica Theological Seminary (JTS) in Kingston (September 8-9, 2017).

A Visit to Culture Yard in Trench Town

The conference began Friday night and ended late Saturday afternoon.

Then on Sunday four of us from the conference went  on an informal tour of two famous Rastafari sites. The four were Garnett Roper (the president of JTS), Winston Thompson (vice-president of JTS), Christopher Duncanson-Hales (a presenter from Canada, who had made Rastafari his primary research over the years), and myself.

First, we visited Culture Yard, the heritage site that was the small complex of buildings Bob Marley used to live in when he was just starting out in Kingston. This was the famous “government yard in Trench Town” mentioned in the song “No Woman No Cry.”

One of the rooms around this central open “yard” (courtyard) was the kitchen with Marley’s “single bed” (mentioned in the song “Is This Love“).

Even Marley’s first (well-used) guitar was preserved for visitors to see.

Our tour guide was a Rasta named Stone Man, because of his stone carvings with mystical glyphs and spiritual meanings.

A Journey to the Historic Rastafarian Camp at Pinnacle

After Culture Yard, we journeyed into the Jamaican countryside, to the parish of St. Catherine, to visit Pinnacle, the site of one of the earliest Rastafarian camps in Jamaica.

So named because it is situated on a hilltop, Pinnacle was founded in 1940 by one of the first Rastafarian preachers, Leonard Howell (sometimes called the First Rasta, though he had no dreadlocks).

Pinnacle soon became a model for other Rasta settlements throughout Jamaica, focused on self-sustaining agriculture (which also included ganja cultivation). Partially because of the ganja, but also because of suspicions that Howell was sowing sedition (this was before the wider culture and the police came to understand Rastafari), Pinnacle was raided a number of times by the police in the nineteen forties and fifties. After the final raid, the Rastafarians who lived there dispersed throughout the island.

It has only recently been restored as a Rastafarian Heritage Site and Cultural Centre by the government of Jamaica.

While at Pinnacle, we met the Rasta who takes care of the grounds, including the ruins of the house where Leonard Howell used to live.

He explained to us the history of Pinnacle, including its current use from time to time for Rastafarian meetings with Nyabingi drumming and chanting.

Although Nyabingi is the name of one of the Mansions (groups or denominations) of Rastafari (“In my Father’s house are many mansions”; John 14:2), Nyabingi is also a form of rhythmic drumming and chanting used in Rastafari ceremonies. “Rastaman Chant” by Bob Marley and the Wailers is based on the Nyabingi classic, “Babylon Throne Gone Down.”

In a follow-up post, I describe a research project (and book) on Rastafari that I may be involved in, spearheaded by Christopher Duncanson-Hales, the Canadian presenter at the JTS theology conference who has made Rastafari his major research over the years.