Blacks living in North America fought on both sides of the American Revolutionary War, though Loyalism proved very appealing to enslaved Blacks who found themselves in a position to choose sides freely. The American Revolution brought abolition to northern states in the new United States, but strengthened slavery in the southern states. The years of the American Revolution brought great material hardship to enslaved people in the British West Indian colonies. The French and Haitian Revolutions produced more than a decade of upheaval in the Caribbean, and their legacies helped change the balance of power between slaves and masters in the three decades that followed Haitian independence. On balance, the Age of Atlantic Revolutions strengthened the hand of Black slaves in the British Caribbean, inspiring the closing of the Atlantic slave trade, the passage of “ameliorative” legislation, and Parliament’s decision to abolish slavery in British America. The American Revolution created a nation split between states that recognized slavery and those that did not, but it also produced an expansive plantation economy that continued to grow and enslave increasing numbers of people until the Civil War ended slavery in the United States.

Like other second-century authors, the author of EpAp combines Johannine incarnational theology with the Lukan miraculous conception account and views the miraculous conception as the means by which the incarnation took place. Unlike the canonical evangelists, this author also provides an account of the pre-existent Jesus’ descent from heaven, adopting angelic disguise. Thus the angel Gabriel in the Lukan annunciation story is here the Son of God in angelic form, who brings about his own incarnation in Mary’s womb without assistance from the Holy Spirit. EpAp thus narrates the entire process of incarnation, following the precedent of the angelic transformation schema depicted in the Ascension of Isaiah. In that text, the event of incarnation appears to take place not at conception but at the birth itself – a point of agreement with an otherwise quite different ‘narrative of incarnation’ in the Protevangelium of James. So-called ‘adoptionist’ christologies may better be understood as attempts to narrate the incarnation, now identified with the descent of the Spirit/Christ at Jesus’ baptism.