No Future for Biblical Studies? Or, Still Living with a Contingent Apocalypse as Biblical Interpretation Turns 25

2018 ◽  
pp. 131-155
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Biblical Studies

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.

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.

Spirit Hermeneutics or Biblical Interpretation by Any Other Name

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 196-212
Author(s):  
Robby Waddell
Keyword(s):  
Significant Contribution ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Theological Seminary ◽  
Biblical Hermeneutics ◽  
A Priority

Within the guild of Pentecostal Studies, few topics have received more attention than biblical hermeneutics. Craig Keener, F.M. and Ada Thompson Professor of Biblical Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary, makes a significant contribution to this discussion with the publication of his book, Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture in the Light of Pentecost. Giving a priority to contextually sensitive, socio-historical methodologies, Keener attempts to define hermeneutics broadly in order to include most confessional perspectives. Indeed, he writes that Spirit Hermeneutics is Christian Hermeneutics. While such an inclusive move is admirable, it begs the question about the existence and viability of a distinctive hermeneutic for Pentecostals and Charismatics. This article reviews Keener’s argument and makes a case for a more distinctive hermeneutical theory.

Epilogue

2019 ◽  
pp. 132-134
Author(s):  
Nyasha Junior
Keyword(s):  
Black Woman ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Reception History ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Cultural Appropriation ◽  
Racial Identification ◽  
The Future ◽  
Potential Benefits ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
Biblical Scholar

The Epilogue offers the author’s reflections on being a Black woman biblical scholar and writing on issues relating to race, gender, and biblical interpretation. It includes the author’s discussion of hopes for the future of biblical studies, including biblical reception history projects on race. It discusses the desires of reading communities to see themselves reflected in biblical texts and to interpret Hagar in ways that resonate with their experiences and concerns. It addresses the potential benefits and drawbacks of the ethnic and racial identification of and cultural appropriation of biblical characters. It concludes that the story of Hagar offers us a unique opportunity to investigate the ways in which we use biblical texts to illustrate how we see ourselves and others.

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.


Intersections between Iconographic and Gendered Approaches to Biblical Interpretation

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 320-341
Author(s):  
Brian Charles DiPalma
Keyword(s):  
Gender Studies ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Near East ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Visual Images

This paper explores the intersections between two approaches to biblical interpretation: iconographic and gendered approaches. Focusing on the ways that visual images from the ancient Near East have been incorporated in studying gender in the Hebrew Bible, I identify four intersections. These examples demonstrate that participating in an iconographic turn is an important way that gender studies in the Hebrew Bible can develop. I also seek to show that the interactions can be mutually fruitful. In other words, including gender as an area of inquiry is a way that the iconographic turn itself can develop in biblical studies.


Biblical Criticism and the Rhetoric of Inquiry

1997 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-159
Author(s):  
R. Barry Matlock
Keyword(s):  
Modern Science ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Biblical Criticism ◽  
Rhetoric Of Inquiry ◽  
Critical Perspectives

AbstractRhetoric has risen once more to academic prominence, an apparently "postmodern" restoration of (part of) its "premodern" status. One aspect of this resurgence is the recently emerging extension of rhetoric known as "rhetoric of inquiry," according to which "rhetoric" is sought and analyzed in places where, putatively, it ought not be: in academic discourse itself (rhetoric thus wreaking vengeance on "modern" science, the instrument of its former decline). The present study introduces this "rhetoric of inquiry" movement, suggesting some of its possibilities for examining the discipline of biblical studies. A hermeneutical application (hermeneutics, a near relation of rhetoric, having experienced a similar restoration) is sketched in criticizing the objectivist and anti-rhetorical conception of inquiry that has characterized modern biblical criticism; in this connection, classic objectivist statements and alternative critical perspectives are sampled. Also, the question of the possible improvement of the academy and inquiry by a self-consciously rhetorical perspective is raised with reference to scholarly biblical interpretation, and it is suggested that such a perspective can assist interpretive dialogue simply by clarifying differences.

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.

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