BS2615-1-WI10

So what do you think of postcolonial criticism, given that the Bible is the product of people living under different imperial regimes (Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek or Roman)?  Has Christendom, often alligned with imperialism and colonial expansion, missed the critique of Empire found in the Bible in the Exodus, the call to justice in the prophets, the message of the kingdom of God or the confession that Jesus (not Caesar) is Lord and Savior?

It places the reality and ramifications of imperial-colonial frameworks and relations at the centre of biblical criticism.

They show, among other things, how texts and interpretations construct and/or relate to their respective imperial-colonial contexts

Postcolonial biblical critics use a multilayered biblical hermeneutic, one that emphasizes "the demythologization of the biblical authority, the demystification of the use of the Bible, and the construction of new models of interpretation of the Bible" (Kwok 1995, 30). Fernando Segovia, a postcolonial New Testament scholar, for example, argues that there are three different and equally important worlds that readers of the Bible should investigate and analyze: the world of the text, the world of modernity, and the world of today (Segovia 2002, 119-132).

Questions about culture, ideology, and power are sine qua non (quibus, really) for understanding the text.

Postcolonial biblical criticism can best be described as a variety of hermeneutical approaches characterised by their political nature and ideological agenda, and whose textual politics ultimately concerns both a hermeneutic of suspicion and hermeneutic of retrieval or restoration. It interacts with colonial history and its aftermath(s), which concerns both a history of repression and of repudiation, but it also deals with exposé and with restoration and transformation.

They examine how various empires such as the Persian and Roman affected the narratives of the Bible, and how different biblical writers of the Hebrew scriptures, and others such as Paul, Matthew and Mark handled the challenges of empire. They also include illuminating examples of the practical application of postcolonial criticism to biblical texts, and explore issues which have emerged in the aftermath of colonialism such as diaspora, race, representation and territory.

Western colonial governments and missionary movements over centuries brought the gospel of Jesus Christ to many parts of the world. At the turn of this new century, with most African, Asian, and South American countries having gained independence from their former colonists, Third World Christians struggle with a heritage of Western theology, expectations, and abuses. New generations in a maturing church are questioning the need for Christ's message to be filtered through, and approved by, Western scholarship. With some sense of hurt and resentment, yet with a desire to effectively bring the gospel to their own peoples, Third World theologians support creative biblical hermeneutics that fit their cultures. This book is a collection of thirty-four writings by authors from twenty-two countries.

Many writers want to interpret Christ in ways that honor ancient, rich cultures that may have been crushed by colonization or rejected as evil by early missionaries. Others simply want the message of the Bible to be embraced by needy people of their country: the overwhelming theme of the book is that our God notices, loves, and defends the marginalized - that is, poor, oppressed, and powerless people.

During the late 1970s and 1980s, reader-response criticism, influenced in part by trends in other disciplines, especially psychology and psychoanalytical theories, expanded to include a study of the reader as subject, a combination of various social practices, defined and positioned socially by his or her environment. This shift from the relationship between reader and text, and their mutual impact, to a focus on self-knowledge and observation has been summarized in anthologies, including Jane Tompkins's Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Poststructuralism (1980).