Americans. This short work is an attempt to provide a working outline of such a history. Its importance lies in its suggestiveness, its heuristic value, its challenge and inspiration for further serious reflection and research, not its comprehensiveness. It is no more than a summary of what I see as the major types of “readings” of the Bible among African Americans within or in relationship to various “circles” (or shapes and conditions) of social formation from their introduction to it during slavery