Vincent L. Wimbush

Wimbush received a BA in philosophy from Morehouse College (1975), an M.Div. (1978) from Yale Divinity School, and an AM (1981) and Ph.D. (1983) from Harvard University in the study of religions, with a focus on the New Testament. He taught at a number of institutions, including Union Theological Seminary (1991–2003) and Claremont Graduate University (2003–2014).[1][2] He is the founding director of the Institute for Signifying Scriptures.[3]

In 2010, Wimbush was the president of the Society of Biblical Literature.[1]

Wimbush is a pioneer in the field of African-American biblical hermeneutics. He has argued for a need to challenge a Eurocentric understanding of biblical studies. Instead, scholars are to refocus the discipline within the context of North America, with a particular emphasis on the African-American experience.[4] This would result in a hermeneutic that is much more informed by "marginality, liminality, exile, pain, trauma."[5]

• Vaage, Leif E.; Wimbush, Vincent L., eds. (2002). Asceticism and the New Testament. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-96224-1.
• Wimbush, Vincent L. (2003). The Bible and African Americans: A Brief History. Fortress Press. ISBN 978-1-4514-1944-3.
• Wimbush, Vincent L. (2008). Theorizing Scriptures: New Critical Orientations to a Cultural Phenomenon. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-4203-4.
• Wimbush, Vincent L. (2012). Paul, the Worldly Ascetic: Response to the World and Self-Understanding according to I Corinthians 7. Wipf and Stock Publishers. ISBN 978-1-61097-963-4.
• Wimbush, Vincent L. (2014). White Men's Magic: Scripturalization As Slavery. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-934439-0.