Afterword: Pushing the Boundaries of Biblical Interpretation

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-110
Author(s):  
Callie Callon
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Classical Studies

This afterword draws several conclusions about the implications of the essays in this special issue individually as well as discusses the merits of utilizing an interdisciplinary method more generally. The first encourages critical biblical scholarship to engage classical studies in light of the shared geographical, temporal, and cultural context of their ancient subjects. The second proposes that biblical studies embrace a fuller range of evidence by removing the unfortunate interpretative divide often separating “canonical,” “patristic,” and “apocryphal” material into different disciplinary fields.


Returning To China: Biblical Interpretation in Postcolonial Hong Kong

1999 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Archie C.C. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Hybrid Identity ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
New Framework

AbstractThe paper aims to construct a new framework for biblical studies from the context of postcolonial Hong Kong. While present biblical scholarship has largely depended on historical-critical exegesis, biblical scholars of Asia have begun to conceive a different approach to the Bible, because of not only a new context of reading, but also a radically different cultural-political location of the reader. This location, as it is now being formulated, is a reading between East and West, between the dominant interpretation and scholarship of the formerly colonial and Western cultures and the newly arising consciousness of emerging postcolonial identities in the histories and cultures of Asia. After about some 150 years of British colonial rule, the identity of being a people of Hong Kong is highly hybridised. It is a hybrid identity of being cultural Chinese and yet pragmatically British, both a strong sense of identification with China and an unexplainable fear of being national Chinese. Such location of a reader transforms one's understanding of a biblical text such as Isaiah 56-66 and sheds a new light on the meaning of the return in some of its major passages.

Latino/a/x Biblical Interpretation Related to the Hebrew Bible

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 236-262
Author(s):  
Timothy J. Sandoval
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Educational Needs ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Interdisciplinary Studies ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Turn Of The Millennium ◽  
Scholarly Work ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship

Since approximately the turn of the millennium, Latino/a/x biblical scholarship on the Hebrew Bible has focused on: (1) questions of identity—both what constitutes Latino/a/x identity and what sort of scholarly work can be characterized as Latino/a/x biblical scholarship; (2) offering analyses of biblical texts that can serve as theological-ethical resources for exploring contemporary questions of migration; (3) development of Latino/a/x hermeneutic lenses and the reading of scriptures from these perspectives, as well as the development of interdisciplinary studies of the Bible that implicitly and explicitly critique aspects of dominant modes of biblical studies and introject a Latino/a/x presence in biblical studies; and (4) the resourcing of local Latino/a/x communities of faith through the publication of works focused on the educational needs of such local communities. Two or more of these trajectories of Latino/a/x biblical scholarship on the Hebrew Bible are often discernible in single published works of Latino/a/x scholars.

scholarly journals African biblical studies: Illusions, realities and challenges

2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
David T. Adamo
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
African Christianity ◽  
African Worldview ◽  
Africentric Perspective

African Biblical Studies is a biblical interpretation for the purpose of transformation in Africa. It is the biblical interpretation that makes the ‘African social cultural context a subject of interpretation’. It is also the rereading of the Christian Scripture in a premeditatedly Africentric perspective. It means that biblical interpretation is done from the perspective of the African worldview. The purpose of this article is to discuss some illusions or misunderstandings, realities and challenges facing African biblical studies. Some of these illusions are that African Biblical Studies is fetish, syncretistic and primitive, local and not popular or universal. The basic distinctive realities and challenges facing African Biblical Studies are also critically discussed for the purpose of understanding what African Biblical Studies is and to make African Christianity more authentic in Africa.

The Bible in the Twentieth-Century Anglophone World

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark P. Hutchinson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North Carolina ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Public Knowledge ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Billy Graham ◽  
Anglophone World

This chapter looks at the tensions between biblical interpretation and the political, social, and cultural context of dissenting Protestant churches in the twentieth century. It notes that even a fundamental category, such as the ‘inspiration’ of Scripture, shifted across time as the nature of public debates, social and economic structures, and Western definitions of public knowledge shifted. The chapter progresses by looking at a number of examples of key figures (R. J. Campbell, Harry Emerson Fosdick, H. G. Guinness, R. A. Torrey, and R. G. McIntyre among them) who interpreted the Bible for public comment, and their relative positions as the century progressed. Popularization of biblical interpretation along the lines of old, new, and contemporary dissent, is explored through the careers of three near contemporaries: Charles Bradley ‘Chuck’ Templeton (b. 1915, Toronto, Canada), William Franklin ‘Billy’ Graham, Jr (b. 1918, North Carolina), and Oral Roberts (b. 1918, Oklahoma).

Postcolonial Liberation: Decolonizing Biblical Studies in the South African Postcolony

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald O. West
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
The South ◽  
Biblical Hermeneutics ◽  
The Bible ◽  
African Black ◽  
History Of ◽  
Land Economics ◽  
The 1960S

Liberation biblical interpretation and postcolonial biblical interpretation have a long history of mutual constitution. This essay analyzes a particular context in which these discourses and their praxis have forged a third conversation partner: decolonial biblical interpretation. African and specifically South African biblical hermeneutics are the focus of reflections in this essay. The South African postcolony is a “special type” of postcolony, as the South African Communist Party argued in the 1960s. The essay charts the characteristics of the South African postcolony and locates decolonial biblical interpretation within the intersections of these features. Race, culture, land, economics, and the Bible are forged in new ways by contemporary social movements, such as #FeesMustFall. South African biblical studies continues to draw deeply on the legacy of South African black theology, thus reimagining African biblical studies as decolonial African biblical studies—a hybrid of African liberation and African postcolonial biblical interpretation.

Moral Injury and Biblical Studies: An Early Sampling of Research and Emerging Trends

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-144
Author(s):  
Brad E. Kelle
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Moral Injury ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Emerging Trends ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
The World ◽  
Biblical Texts

Moral injury emerged within clinical psychology and related fields to refer to a non-physical wound (psychological and emotional pain and its effects) that results from the violation (by oneself or others) of a person’s deepest moral beliefs (about oneself, others, or the world). Originally conceived in the context of warfare, the notion has now expanded to include the morally damaging impact of various non-war-related experiences and circumstances. Since its inception, moral injury has been an intersectional and cross-disciplinary term and significant work has appeared in psychology, philosophy, medicine, spiritual/pastoral care, chaplaincy, and theology. Since 2015, biblical scholarship has engaged moral injury along two primary trajectories: 1) creative re-readings of biblical stories and characters informed by insights from moral injury; and 2) explorations of the postwar rituals and symbolic practices found in biblical texts and how they might connect to the felt needs of morally injured persons. These trajectories suggest that the engagement between the Bible and moral injury generates a two-way conversation in which moral injury can serve as a heuristic that brings new meanings out of biblical texts, and the critical study of biblical texts can contribute to the attempts to understand, identify, and heal moral injury.

Biblical Interpretation among African-American New Testament Scholars

2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-82
Author(s):  
Larry L. Enis
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Biblical Hermeneutics ◽  
Scholarly Journals ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Epistle Of James

Given the small, but growing, number of ethnic minorities in the field of biblical studies, the issue of African-American biblical hermeneutics has received only marginal attention in scholarly journals. In an effort to discern major themes and objectives among these interpreters, this article surveys published works by African Americans who have attained either a PhD or ThD in the New Testament. In this study, six areas of particular interest emerged: hermeneutics, the black presence in the New Testament, Paul, the Gospels, the epistle of James, and Revelation. Moreover, this investigation will demonstrate that the phenomenon of African-American New Testament hermeneutics is a methodologically diverse one.

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