Transatlantic Roundtable on Religion and Race »

Gosnell L. Yorke, Ph.D.

- Gosnell L. Yorke, Ph.D.'s details
  - Country: South Africa
  - Region: Pietermaritzburg
  - University: University of KwaZulu-Natal
  - Email: yorke@ukzn.ac.za
- Gosnell L. Yorke, Ph.D.'s presentations
  - Plenary Panel 1: Pan-African Christianity and the Enduring Significance of Race
Dr. Gosnell L. Yorke, is a naturalized citizen of both Canada and South Africa. In 1989, he was ordained to the Gospel Ministry in the Quebec Conference, Canada.

Already, he has lived, studied, worked and/or travelled extensively not only in North America but throughout Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean as well-especially Africa. From 2003 to the present, he has been serving as Professor Extraordinarius (Adjunct Professor) in the College of Human Sciences, Department of New Testament, at the University of South Africa (Unisa) for which he has also served as an External Examiner at the postgraduate level. He has successfully supervised a doctoral student from Jamaica for Unisa dealing with the possible linguistic and lexical links between the New Testament and Rastafarianism.  In 2010, the doctoral thesis of his former Unisa student (now Dr. Delano Palmer, Academic Dean at the Jamaica Theological Seminary) was published by the University Press of America.

So far, Prof. Yorke has already spent fifteen and a half (15 ½) years in Africa (1991-2007), the first five of which (1991-1996) were spent lecturing in, and chairing the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at our Adventist university in Kenya. He also did some lecturing at the postgraduate level for Andrews University in Nigeria and Zimbabwe –and served, in 1992, as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Religious Studies, Classics and Philosophy at the University of Zimbabwe.

Currently, Prof. Yorke is serving as one of the resource persons for the ongoing translation of the New Testament into the Jamaican language which is being spearheaded by the Bible Society of the West Indies and which is to be completed to coincide with the 50^th anniversary of Jamaica’s independence from British rule in 2012.

And finally: among others, Prof. Yorke has published two books, has co-edited one and has contributed various book chapters to others. His articles and/or critical book reviews have appeared in the following journals: Andrews University Seminary Studies, Journal for the Society of Biblical Literature, Journal for the Study of the New Testament (Sheffield, UK), Journal of Religious Thought (Howard University, USA), Religion and Theology and Missionalia (University of South Africa), The Bible Translator: Technical and Practical Papers (United Bible Societies), Journal of Ecumenical Studies (Temple University, USA),  The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Quarterly Review: An Ecumenical Witness (USA), Black Theology: An International Journal (formerly, Black Theology in Britain: A Journal in Contextual Praxis); and Journal of Adventist Thought in Africa—for which he served as the Editor-in-Chief of the inaugural volume in November 1995.

He is the father of three Canadian-born and university-graduated young working adults—two girls and one boy.

For ten years (1996-2006), Prof. Yorke was seconded by the General Conference to serve the United Bible Societies as a Translation Consultant both as the first ordained Adventist minister to do so worldwide as well as the first (and still the only) Translation Consultant hailing not only from the Caribbean but from the African diaspora as a whole. He was based in South Africa at the time and was responsible for mentoring African translators and monitoring the translation of the Bible, from its original languages of Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, into various indigenous African languages in the Lusophone (Portuguese-speaking) countries of Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique– plus the Anglophone (English-speaking) countries of Botswana and Zimbabwe.  He also worked briefly in the Spanish-speaking country of Equatorial Guinea in West Africa and in French-speaking Africa—mainly Cameroon and Ivory Coast.

Prof. Yorke is fluent in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese, with a working knowledge of Kiswahili (East Africa), more than a “nodding acquaintance” with various South African languages, a reading knowledge of German, and has taught both Hellenistic Greek and Classical Hebrew at the tertiary level for a number of years. For example, he taught the latter here at NCU in the School of Religion and Theology. In addition, he has taught at Canadian University College for four years—1981-1985–as well as at Atlantic Union College in the USA for two—1989-1991.

Committed to embarking on and spearheading (with other “afro-scholars” from around the world, including the Caribbean—both women and men) the first-ever multi-year re-translation of the complete Bible for “afro-consumption” and from an entirely Africa-centred perspective, he is a contributor to the forthcoming and first-ever Encyclopaedia  of Caribbean Religions (Illinois University Press) which is being edited by Barbadian-born, Prof. Patrick Taylor, York University, Toronto, Canada.

In 2001, Prof. Yorke was invited, as the first person of Caribbean origin, to give the prestigious Founders’ Day Guest Lectures at the United Theological College of the West Indies (UWI, Mona) for which, since 2010, he has been serving as an External Examiner at the postgraduate level as well. In 2008, he was invited by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, CARICOM Affairs and International Trade of the Government of St.Kitts-Nevis to deliver the inaugural Emancipation Day Public Lecture.  Title of lecture: “Africa and the Caribbean: A Case for Learning, Sharing and Engaging.” In 2009, he served both as one of the featured guest speakers at the Fifth International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Education, Labor and Emancipation in Bahia, Brazil, and as deliverer of the 19^th Norman H. Darlington Founders’ Day Lecture at Shortwood Teachers’ College (Kingston). This is a Lecture Series in which others like Prof. Verene Shepherd (UWI), the late Honourable Michael Manley and the late Honourable Prof. Rex Nettleford have served as guest lecturers. Most recently (March 2011), he was invited to serve as a member of the Advisory Board for the recently established Center for Spirituality and Professionalism at the University of the Virgin Islands (UVI). He was also invited to be one of the Keynote speakers for the Symposium at which the Center was officially launched at UVI (April 18, 2011).

He has earned the following degrees: BA in Theology (University of the Southern Caribbean, Trinidad—magna cum laude–1976); MA in Biblical and Cognate Languages (Andrews University, Michigan, USA—magna cum laude–1977); and STM (Master’s of Sacred Theology—Biblical studies) and Ph.D. in Biblical studies with an emphasis in New Testament studies (McGill University, Canada—1979 and 1987 respectively). In addition, he successfully completed a post-doctoral programme in African Languages and Linguistics at the University of South Africa (Unisa) in 1999.

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