On the Eirobiblical

2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 469-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Cooper Harriss
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
The Political ◽  
American Slavery ◽  
Critical Engagement ◽  
Considerable Distance ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Antebellum Era ◽  
Chattel Slavery ◽  
Canonical Text ◽  
Biblical Language

The Bible (as it tends to do) supported both the justification of and resistance to American slavery as it was practiced in the antebellum era. Slaveholders and abolitionists alike “re-wrote” the Bible, attempting to bolster the legitimacy of their respective sides. Most scholarly treatments of these biblical interpretations discuss the myriad ways that agents (ranging from the nominally literate to the literary) deploy generally stable readings and reinscriptions of biblical passages as they apply to their contemporary circumstances. Enslaved Americans, however, tended to encounter the Bible orally/aurally as illiterate people, hearing it performed at second- or third-hand and assimilating its language and stories at considerable distance from the canonical “text.” Furthermore, most examples we possess of this language reside in contested documents narrated by the enslaved to problematic scribes. This essay explores how the enslaved wielded the inherent imprecision of their biblical language to articulate coherent, if ironic, biblical worldviews. Assessing the rhetorical and even semiotic distinctions between these two modes of biblical interpretation, I develop a category (“eirobiblical rhetoric”) that facilitates critical engagement with the instabilities that result from such rhetoric as it engages particularly with the political and social exigencies of a religiously ordered (and “justified”) system of chattel slavery. A series of close readings in the 1831 document The Confessions of Nat Turner, an exemplary text of eirobiblical rhetoric, allow for the critical application of this new rhetorical category in a way that offers an unprecedented and liberating interpretation of a troublesome and disputed text.


Nineteenth-Century American Biblical Interpretation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark A. Noll
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Biblical Criticism ◽  
American Experience ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Antebellum Era ◽  
Bible And Slavery

Nineteenth-century interpretation reflected traditional Protestant devotion to scripture and hermeneutical conventions from American experience, especially the democratic empowerment of ordinary people and a republican resentment of intellectual aristocracy. In the antebellum era, interpretations flowed from long-standing Protestant convictions adjusted to republican common sense. Contention over the Bible and slavery generated the sharpest differences. After false starts from Tom Paine in the 1790s and a few New Englanders in the 1840s, modern biblical criticism affected interpretations from the 1870s. In the postbellum era, some Protestants adopted a more liberal understanding of scripture because of the earlier standoffs over slavery. Groups previously marginalized (Catholics, Jews, skeptics, women, African Americans) also became more visible.

scholarly journals The need for a canonical reading of the Exodus narratives in finding its present-day theological significance

2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory C. Pereira
Keyword(s):  
Historical Linguistic ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Critical Method ◽  
Canonical Approach ◽  
Canonical Text ◽  
The Church ◽  
Contemporary Context

This article deals with the approach to exegesis of biblical narrative, especially in Exodus, in finding its theological significance for contemporary and relevant biblical interpretation. It shows that the historical-critical method is unable to span the divide between the original context and our contemporary context, and to provide the present relevance of Scripture. After arguing for the validity of a set canonical text, this article shows that biblical narrative in general, and the Exodus narratives in particular, are best explored theologically by means of a canonical approach. It shows that the theological significance translates more easily into life-application. It demonstrates how the Exodus narratives are employed canonically for its theological significance throughout the Bible. It concludes that the Church needs teachers who recognise their responsibility to accurately interpret their whole Scriptures, the Bible, with the necessary historical, linguistic (rhetorical) and theological considerations, and that this is best done in a canonical context - whether we use a synchronic or a diachronic approach.

Biblical Interpretation, Race, and Union Presbyterian Seminary

2020 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-55
Author(s):  
William B. Sweetser
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Biblical Theology ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Cultural Assumptions ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Chattel Slavery

Chattel slavery in the United States was never foreordained. The deliberate misinterpretation of Scripture predisposed people to accept what the Bible condemned. The development of the Biblical Theology movement, by emphasizing the plain sense of Scripture over cultural assumptions and discredited scientific theories, led Union Presbyterian Seminary to repudiate the immorality that was slavery and segregation.

The Use and Misuse of Religious Language: Zionism and the Palestinians

2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Wetherell
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Figurative Language ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Late 19Th Century ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Title Deed ◽  
History Of ◽  
Land Question

Every discipline which deals with the land question in Canaan-Palestine-Israel is afflicted by the problem of specialisation. The political scientist and historian usually discuss the issue of land in Israel purely in terms of interethnic and international relations, biblical scholars concentrate on the historical and archaeological question with virtually no reference to ethics, and scholars of human rights usually evade the question of God. What follows is an attempt, through theology and political history, to understand the history of the Israel-Palestine land question in a way which respects the complexity of the question. From a scrutiny of the language used in the Bible to the development of political Zionism from the late 19th century it is possible to see the way in which a secular movement mobilised the figurative language of religion into a literal ‘title deed’ to the land of Palestine signed by God.

Biblical Interpretation in the Majority World

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. K. Yeo
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Majority World ◽  
Multiple Contexts ◽  
Spirit World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Bible Reading

This chapter challenges the ‘received’ view that traces the expansion of the dominant theologies of the European and North American colonial powers and their missionaries into the Majority World. When they arrived, these Westerners found ancient Christian traditions and pre-existing spiritualities, linguistic and cultural forms, which questioned their Eurocentric presumptions, and energized new approaches to interpreting the sacred texts of Christianity. The emergence of ‘creative tensions’ in global encounters are a mechanism for expressing (D)issent against attempts to close down or normalize local Bible-reading traditions. This chapter points to the elements which establish a creative tension between indigenizing Majority World approaches to the Bible and those described in the ‘orthodox’ narrative, including: self-theologizing and communal readings; concepts of the Spirit world and human flourishing; the impact of multiple contexts, vernacular languages, sociopolitical and ethno-national identities, and power/marginalization structures; and ‘framing’ public and ecological issues.

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).

Moral Victories

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Clear Understanding ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Humanitarian Interventions ◽  
Theory Of War ◽  
Military Relations

What does it mean to win a moral victory? In the history, practice, and theory of war, this question yields few clear answers. Wars often begin with ideals about just and decisive triumphs but descend into quagmires. In the just war and strategic studies traditions, assumptions about victory underpin legitimations for war but become problematic in discussions about its conduct and conclusion. After centuries of conflict, we still lack a clear understanding of victory or reliable resources for discerning its moral status, its implications for conduct in war, or its relationship to changing ways of war. This book brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to tackle such issues. It is organized in two parts. After a synoptic introduction, Part I, ‘Traditions: The Changing Character of Victory’, charts the historically variable notion of victory and the dialogues and fissures this opens in the just war and strategic canons. Individual chapters analyse the importance of victory in the Bible, Clausewitz’s strategy, the political uses of defeat, arguments for unlimited war, revisionist just war theory, and contemporary norms against fights to the finish. Part II, ‘Challenges: The Problem of Victory in Contemporary Warfare’, shows how changing security contexts exacerbate these issues. Individual chapters discuss ethics in unwinnable wars, the political scars of victory, whether we can ‘win’ humanitarian interventions, contemporary civil–military relations, victory in privatized war, and operations short of war. In both parts, contributors work towards a clearer understanding of victory, forwarding several shared themes discussed in a critical conclusion.

Receptions of Rome in Debates on Slavery in the U.S.A.

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Malamud
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
American Slavery ◽  
Roman Society ◽  
Chattel Slavery ◽  
Black Struggle ◽  
Roman Antiquity ◽  
Intense Debate

American abolitionists not only invoked the Roman allusions and comparisons employed by the revolutionary generation’s fight for liberty from the British crown, but also adapted or subverted them in service of the black struggle for freedom. Rather than rejecting Roman society outright because it was a slaveholding society—the primal “Roman error” from their perspective—many abolitionists instead deployed figures and images from Roman antiquity in their own struggles against the despotism of chattel slavery. Supporters of emancipation and black civil rights, this chapter shows, thus engaged in an intense debate over the correct reception of ancient Rome with proslavery Southerners, who argued that slavery in both Rome and America enabled liberty and civilization. Bringing the discussion into the present day, this chapter offers a contemporary example of arguments over the correct reception of ancient Rome in relation to American slavery and the American Civil War.

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.

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