Morgan, Douglas

English

Andrews University

273Book reviewSIslamic eschatology will show the great dissimilarity with the glorious second coming of  Christ in the Bible.The authors have carefully compared main Christian doctrines with corresponding Islamic beliefs. It would have been helpful also to have compared the most important Seventh-day Adventist beliefs with corresponding Islamic doctrines. There are interesting similarities, but also significant contrasting points here.Christentum begegnet dem Islam is not written for missionaries to Muslim fields, although it would also be useful for them to be acquainted with the approaches suggested. Essentially, the book is written for Europeans, or more specifically German-speaking Seventh-day Adventists facing the massive immigration and growth of  Muslims in their countries. Still, it has a message for Christians anywhere in the world where such immigration takes place. Christentum begegnet dem Islam, therefore, should be translated into English and other languages.Historisches Archiv der Siebenten-   Borge SchantzTags-Adventisten in Europa  Bern, SwitzerlandJones, R. Clifford. James K. Humphrey and the Sabbath-Day Adventists. Jackson: University Press of  Mississippi, 2007.  250 pp. Cloth, $50.00.R. Clifford Jones’s study of  James K. Humphrey and the relatively small, short-lived United Sabbath-Day Adventist denomination is at the same time the best academic monograph to date on the Black Seventh-day Adventist experience. For until the events of  1929-1930, which precipitated the organization of  the United Sabbath-Day Adventist Church, Humphrey had been the foremost Black Seventh-day Adventist minister. The 900-member Harlem congregation that he founded and pastored was the denomination’s largest urban congregation in America, and his break with the denomination would prove to be a stimulus of  critical importance in shaping the larger body’s response to the racial dilemma.Humphrey’s story began to make its way into the historiography of  Adventism during the late twentieth century, primarily through Joe Mesar and Tom Dybdahl’s article, “The Utopia Park Affair and the Rise of  Northern Black Adventists,” published in 1974. Yet, says Jones, Humphrey remains “largely unknown,” usually referred to in passing as a divisive and ultimately recalcitrant opponent of  the Seventh-day Adventist organization (11). Thus the need for a thorough, fair-minded, and contextualized study, which Jones admirably provides. He portrays Humphrey and his movement as part of  the African-American struggle for “freedom, empowerment, and self-determination.” Within that general setting, Jones expertly navigates the reader through the more specific forces shaping Humphrey’s world—the varying strategies of  African-American religious leaders, the Black urban religious movements of  the early-to-mid twentieth century, the Harlem Renaissance, 274 Seminary StudieS 46 (autumn 2008)and the intraracial dynamics involving American-born Blacks and those of  West Indian origin.A Baptist minister from Jamaica, Humphrey accepted the Adventist message in 1901 while visiting New York, where he remained based until his death in 1952. In addition to his Harlem congregation, Humphrey, by the early 1920s, was supervising three additional Black churches in New York. Then, in 1924, with the Harlem congregation outgrowing its facilities, Harlem No. 2 Church was organized with 108 members, and Matthew C. Strachan was called from Florida to be its pastor.Thus Humphrey represented a large segment of  both the membership and financial support of  the Greater New York Conference. But while he had a voice on the conference executive committee, Humphrey became increasingly frustrated by the control of  White administrators over church funds, combined with the racial discrimination permeating the denomination’s health and educational institutions. In return for their tithes, offerings, and support for the various fund-raising campaigns for the denomination’s centralized system, the Black faithful seemed to receive little more than their minister’s minimal salary. Humphrey began devoting his considerable skills as visionary leader and fund raiser to an ambitious plan for Black social and economic development—the Utopia Park Benevolent Association. White church leaders found his insistence on keeping the initiative independent of  conference control intolerable, leading to the revocation of  his ministerial credentials and the expulsion of  Harlem No. 1 Church from the Greater New York Conference in 1930.This study does not shed a great deal of  new light on the Utopia Park episode itself, but breaks new ground in interpreting the significance of  Humphrey’s work for the history of  race relations in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and in giving a fascinating history of  the United Sabbath-Day Adventist organization on its own terms as a Black urban movement addressing the impulses for racial liberation that found expression in the Harlem of  the 1920s and 1930s.Jones devotes a full chapter and portions of  others to the complex and at times contradictory forces shaping the history of  race relations in the Adventist Church. In the 1890s, Adventism began to catch on with a relatively small but steadily growing number of  African Americans, attracted by its message of  apocalyptic hope amidst desperate circumstances, as well as the uplifting potential of  its emphases on health and education. As racial repression deepened around the turn of  the century, the church, as counseled by Ellen White, adopted racial separation where deemed necessary as a measure of  expedience, and discouraged agitation for racial equality. A pattern of  racial segregation and inequality began to settle in as a norm, and Jones shows how this led two leading lights contemporary with Humphrey in Black Adventist ministry—L. C. Sheafe and J. W. Manns—to separate from the Seventh-day Adventist organization while retaining its basic doctrines.Humphrey resisted pressure to do likewise for over two decades, but the denomination failed to come to terms with its structural inequities, which in some ways worsened. Humphrey’s break was the most consequential of  the 275Book reviewSthree, not only because it involved larger numbers, but because Humphrey was more successful in establishing a separate organizational network. Drawing on invaluable interviews with now elderly members and on United Sabbath-Day Adventist literature, Jones provides the first historical account ever of  an alternative denomination that at its peak in the 1930s included fifteen congregations and missions in cities throughout the United States and Jamaica, including Chicago, Boston, St. Louis, Omaha, Milwaukee, Newark, and Kingston.A prevailing mode of  Black independent achievement and self-determination pervaded the New York of  the 1920s and 1930s, as variously manifest in Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, the Abyssinian Baptist Church under the leadership of  Adam Clayton Powell Sr. and Jr., and more flamboyant alternatives offered by Father Divine and Sweet Daddy Grace. In this setting, Humphrey set forth a prophetic version of  sabbatarian Adventism that spoke more directly to the social and economic aspirations of  an oppressed people than did organized Seventh-day Adventism.Jones observes that Humphrey “had no doctrinal disputation with the Seventh-day Adventists,” though his position on Ellen White was unclear (181). Yet Jones does comment on one United Sabbath-Day Adventist theological innovation that invites further exploration. In keeping with prevailing currents of  Ethiopianism, Humphrey taught that the White race (termed “Gentiles”) had in its racism forfeited leadership in proclaiming a true and purified gospel to the world in preparation for the return of  Christ. While White people by all means remained eligible for salvation, because of  their prejudice and racial hatred, the “Gentiles” time had been fulfilled, and now, at “the eleventh hour” of  history, a new era had dawned in which “the call of  the hour is to Negroes to preach the gospel to the world” (143-144, 186).By the 1930s, however, the United Sabbath-Day Adventist Church was already beginning to decline. In discussing these developments, as well as the 1929-1930 break with the Seventh-day Adventist organization, Jones avoids making a villain of  either Humphrey or his adversaries. He carefully examines and gives some credence to charges that Humphrey’s course was in part driven by “megalomania.” He credits the White Adventist leaders with at least attempting to dialogue with Humphrey. Yet in the end he concludes that if  these leaders had even “hinted of  a desire to redress the injustices meted out to Blacks,” they would likely have found Humphrey eager to pursue reconciliation (181).As it happened, the Humphrey “schism,” combined with ongoing pressure from Black Seventh-day Adventist leaders, conspired with events to bring the denominational leadership to the point of  seeing the necessity of  change. The regional conferences implemented in the 1940s retained a structure of  racial separatism, but provided for a large measure of  the opportunity for self-determination and achievement through Black initiative for which Sheafe, Manns, and Humphrey had pled all along. Humphrey claimed vindication when the regional conferences were agreed upon in 1944, and Jones seems, tacitly at least, to support the United Sabbath-Day Adventist claim that its withdrawal in protest from the Seventh-day Adventist 276 Seminary StudieS 46 (autumn 2008)organization was a major factor behind advances toward racial justice in the denomination that eventually did come about. While only a small remnant of  the United Sabbath-Day Adventist movement remains, Jones points out that it occupies the only church building ever built by Black Adventists in New York City, which “stands as a monument to the refusal of  African Americans to accept discriminatory practices” (186).For its part, James K. Humphrey and the Sabbath-Day Adventists stands as a sign of  the potential for historical study—thorough, disciplined, empathic to all, yet honest and unflinching—in helping to heal the remaining wounds of  racial injustice in the Seventh-day Adventist movement.Columbia Union College douglaS morganTakoma Park, MarylandJoüon, Paul, and T. Muraoka. A Grammar of  Biblical Hebrew, 2d ed. Subsidia Biblica, 27. Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2006. xlvi + 772 pp. Cloth, $100.00.The first edition of  A Grammar of  Biblical Hebrew (Studia Biblica 14; Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1991) was a translation and revision/expansion by T. Muraoka of  the 1923 French grammar by Paul Joüon. Though intended as an intermediate grammar, it was also one of  the most comprehensive and up-to-date reference grammars of  Biblical Hebrew. The current edition under review was motivated by an attempt to make corrections and incorporate suggestions from reviewers, as well as to acknowledge the many recent studies on Biblical Hebrew grammar that have appeared in the last decade and a half.The new edition contains many improvements over the previous one. It combines the previous two paperback volumes into one hardbound volume. There are minor layout and typesetting changes, such as placing notes at the bottom of  the page instead of  at the end of  the paragraph. Since the previous edition distinguished the main text from Muraoka’s additional notes, it could have given some readers the false impression that the main text was an exact translation of  Joüon’s original French text, though in reality the main text already included many small revisions. The layout of  the present edition blurs any distinction between Muraoka’s and Joüon’s writing, thus correcting that false impression. There are also slight improvements in wording, usually resulting in more precision. For example, in paragraph 118u, the first edition contained the sentence, “This misuse has worn the form out and, together with the influence of  Aramaic, has doubtless contributed to its demise,” which is replaced in the present edition by, “This misuse has led to the form falling into desuetude, a development which was no doubt reinforced by the influence of  Aramaic.”  Throughout the book, earlier references to, for instance, “our languages” are replaced by “Indo-European languages” (e.g., paragraph 111b) or “some non-Semitic languages” (e.g., paragraph 122c). Other changes include numerous additions and deletions of  biblical references cited as examples. For instance, paragraph 79o states that the 

James K. Humphrey and the Sabbath-Day Adventists [review] / R. Clifford Jones

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James K. Humphrey and the Sabbath-Day Adventists [review] / R. Clifford Jones

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