To the Ends of the Earth? Minority Biblical Criticism in Motion – They were All Together in One Place? Toward Minority Biblical Criticism – Edited by Randall C. Bailey,Tat‐siong Benny Liew,and Fernando F. Segovia

What is minority biblical criticism? Why do all biblical scholars need to engage with it? Do race and ethnicity, sex and gender, and political and socio‐economic concerns matter in interpreting the Bible? Leading minority scholars of the Bible from African American, Asian American, and Latino/a American communities come together to answer these questions and break grounds for further cooperation and development of this much‐needed hermeneutical strategy. The authors in this volume willfully disobey the rules of objectivity and universality and shatter the pretension of those who claim that one's context has no bearing on their interpretation of the text. They push the boundaries of the discipline of biblical studies and take the interdisciplinary turn in order to create a space in which minority biblical criticism can stand on its own.     

Towards a biblical psychoanalysis: a second look at the first book

Freud's materialistic treatment of religion has discouraged and stigmatised inquiries concerning the potential theoretical and clinical utility that biblical stories could offer to the ongoing development of psychoanalysis. As a result, the historical development of psychoanalysis has been disproportionally influenced by the Hellenic ideals that influenced the German humanistic pedagogical value of Bildung, to which Freud was an ardent disciple. However, since it has consistently been recognised that Western culture has been mutually influenced by both biblical and Hellenistic attitudes, it may be warranted to extend this dialectal interplay into the realm of individual psychology, in the process delimiting a space whereby psychoanalysis and biblical thought can constructively coexist. In this vein, prototypical myths from the Greek and biblical traditions can reliably be situated on a psycho-mythological continuum, with Greek myths representing a less integrated level of ego development and biblical narratives reflecting an unambivalent, higher level of psychological organisation. The Greek mythology of Oedipus and the biblical Binding of Isaac has been chosen to illustrate this dynamic.     

Sacred Violence: the dark side of God

The subject of this essay is the use to which biblical texts which sanction aggression in the name of God have been put by Jews and Christians over the past 2000 years. The divine injunction given to the Israelites to exterminate the Canaanites has been explained in various ways, but without much success. A literal reading of the Hebrew Bible by Jews and Christians, past and present, has led to its exploitation in support of particular ideologies. Given the appalling record of both faith communities in their relationship with those of a different nationality or religious persuasion, it is imperative that the biblical account of the barbarism inflicted by the Israelites on the people of Canaan be subjected to a searching critique.     

Childhood and Age in the Bible

Biblical studies has often avoided the children in the biblical text, to the detriment of the discipline. The topic of childhood in the Bible provides a particular opportunity for dialogue between biblical studies (including historical, theological, and social approaches), psychology of religion, and pastoral psychology. This article examines three biblical stories: Adam and Eve, David, and Jesus. In each case, I inquire about the ages of the characters, the interpretive assumptions at work in biblical studies, and the psychological insights that may be brought to bear on the biblical text.     

THE CRISIS OF HISTORICISM: AND THE PROBLEM OF HISTORICAL MEANING IN NEW TESTAMENT STUDIES

The rapid rise of varieties of historicism in Germany, during the mid‐ to late‐nineteenth century, and subsequently in England and America, resulted in a radical transformation of the principles of coherence and methods of analysis within biblical studies. 1 This paper will argue that the foundational ‘subject/object’ metaphysics of historicism has been subverted over the past century. For this reason, historical positivism should no longer be accorded the status of ‘normative paradigm’ and ‘gatekeeper’ over and against other interpretive approaches. This paper next lays out five principles for a renewed practice of historical inquiry. It argues, first, that historical inquiry continues to serve a vital function within biblical studies in its ability to call attention to historical difference, and, thereby, to contribute to a strategy of resistance to ideology and to totalizing theories; second, that the traditional appeal to historical ‘context’ and ‘author’ in the interpretation of texts continues to be a useful practice – despite the provisional and constructed nature of both – as a way of taking into account extra‐lingual reference and of avoiding presentism; third, that the substitution of new ‘grand narratives’ of Christian origins in place of the (quasi‐theological) ‘historical’ narrative of traditional Christianity – under the claim of historical objectivity – should be abandoned because the very concept of ‘origins’ is the result of a literalizing of a metaphor. Such totalizing narratives always reduce history's inherent polycentricism. Fourth, I will argue that the continued use of historicism in the antiquarian attempt to reconstruct the past, disconnected from both a quest for social justice and a desire for personal self‐creation, represents a form of thought that alienates scholars from themselves and from their real material contexts. Finally, and following on the previous point, this paper submits that the practice of historical analysis has an ethical dimension by virtue of the fact that the personhood of the biblical historian is indissolubly linked to other dimensions of life including the social and ethical aspects of life. These added dimensions complicate the making of choices, which is implicit within all practices of interpretation. These five principles are here suggested as points of departure for the reconceptualization of the scope and function of historical inquiry within the discipline of New Testament studies.     

Cracking a Conundrum: Christian Origins in Egypt

The biblical conquest account in Joshua 1–12 raises questions about the hermeneutical and ethical challenges of the biblical textual tradition. While these texts may be sought to be better understood on the background of Ancient Near Eastern cultural and literary conventions, this does not relieve interpreters of the problem that these texts support the extermination of the inhabitants of the captured cities. Since these texts are not just products of past cultures but are still accorded authority and, in some cases, actively used to support discreet programs of action and to justify violence, the challenge of the place of the biblical texts needs to be faced by biblical scholars, theologians, and leaders in contemporary society alike. This article raises and explores some of these questions.     

Beyond the “Critical” Curtain: Community‐based Service Learning in an African Context

Abstract. A case of community‐based service learning in the School of Theology at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa is analyzed for what it means to teach biblical studies in an African context where biblical scholarship is partially constituted by ordinary African readers of the Bible and where context is a central pedagogical concept. Reflecting on a series of experiments over the past ten years in two second‐year University level modules, the article analyzes the contours of a partnership between the academy and local communities of the poor, working‐class, and marginalized through community‐based service learning. This partnership provides a form of contextualization that enables students to integrate the forms of engagement with the Bible they bring to their formal theological studies and the forms of critical distance that characterize the discipline of biblical studies.     

How We Teach Introductory Bible Courses: A Comparative and Historical Sampling

This study identifies the dominant modes of biblical interpretation being taught in introductory Bible courses through a qualitative analysis of course syllabi from three institutional contexts: evangelical Christian colleges, private colleges, and public universities. Despite a proliferation of methods and scholarly approaches to the Bible, this study reveals that historical‐critical approaches continue to predominate in pedagogical contexts, especially private colleges and public universities. In Christian colleges, theological approaches appear more frequently, usually alongside historical criticism and rarely supplanting it. The study also shows that teachers have been deploying social scientific and ideological approaches with increasing frequency over the past decade. Additionally, the study tracked instruments of student assessment in these courses. Public universities showed a particularly high level of pedagogical conservatism in this regard, while Christian colleges exhibit the greatest diversity with respect to course assignments and evaluations. See also “ Response to ‘How We Teach Introductory Bible Courses’ ” by Caryn A. Reeder, Tat‐siong Benny Liew, Jane S. Webster, Alicia J. Batten, and Chris Frilingos, published in this issue of the journal. The complete data set is included in an extended Appendix at the end of the article, and is also available electronically on the “Supporting Information” tab of the article's webpage and at the Wabash Center ( http://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/pdfs/AppendixCornellandLeMon.pdf ).     

WHAT DOES HERMENEUTICS HAVE TO DO WITH BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION?

In common usage, ‘hermeneutics’ is a word often used interchangeably with ‘interpretation’. This has especially become so in biblical studies, but a review of how the word ‘hermeneutics’ came to prominence in biblical scholarship suggests that there is value in continuing to keep it as a concept distinguishable from interpretation. The omnipresence of the word in contemporary biblical studies obscures some of the specific roles that hermeneutics is well suited to perform. The potential benefits of hermeneutics in this more limited sense for biblical interpretation are discussed with respect to the two main hermeneutical theorists of the late twentieth century: Hans‐Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur.     

The Emergence of Monotheism in Ancient Israel: A Survey of Recent Scholarship

Contemporary biblical scholars envision the emergence of monotheism in ancient Israel to be a later, more gradual phenomenon than heretofore has been assumed. This new view has emerged as a result of recent archaeological discoveries and a reassessment of the testimony of the biblical text. Only a small minority of pre-exilic Israelites were developing monotheistic ideas, and they probably went through several stages of evolution until they became consistent monotheists in the Babylonian Exile. Some critical scholars suspect that this evolution may have been a totally post-exilic phenomenon. This essay attempts to review the positions of various scholars in this debate.     

The story of Joseph in the Qur'an and the old testament

The story of Joseph in the Qur'an has been approached by many non‐Muslim writers1 who were content to list which details of the biblical story have been missed out from the biblical story and which points have been added, maintaining that these had their origins in biblical or other Jewish sources. Our treatment here concentrates on the texts of the story in the Qur'an and the Old Testament, attempting to identify the differing functions and preoccupations of the two accounts in their respective contexts, to show how this difference affects the choice of material and the treatment given to it. This article concludes that the two versions should be approached by readers, Muslims and non‐Muslims, with this difference in mind in order to appreciate the message and the qualities of each.     

Student Learning Outcomes for Biblical Studies in the Liberal Arts

What is the role of biblical studies in a liberal arts curriculum? At the 2009 North American Society of Biblical Literature conference, a panel of seven Bible scholars provided brief analyses and arguments about the appropriate goals of teaching biblical studies in undergraduate contexts in this historical moment. They consider and critique the notion of specific Student Learning Outcomes or Objectives (SLOs) for courses about the Bible. In the process they address questions such as: what is the relative importance of “coverage” (biblical literacy, disciplinary knowledge and methods, and the historical creation of the biblical texts) versus modern and historical reception and uses of these texts? In their contributions, the authors analyze ways that a biblical studies course can develop the critical reading and writing skills that are the hallmark of undergraduate education. Some authors find these skills furthered by not bracketing from study the normative truth claims in the texts and instead strategically and critically encouraging the identity work and religious seeking associated with religious uses of these texts. Others call attention to the institutional and classroom power dynamics which inform and are constituted by the current student learning outcomes movement.     

A Mimetic Reading of Deuteronomy 21:18-21

The problematic assumption that biblical purity thematically represents life and death is commonly held within modern biblical studies. Building upon this assumption, many scholars have attempted to explain the treatment of the ṣāraʿat patient in Leviticus 13:1-46 as a symbolic banishment of death. However, the current paper attempts to move beyond this reading towards a method of reconstructing the evolution of biblical rituals and practices. Through the utilisation of René Girard’s four scapegoat stereotypes, the current paper identifies the scapegoat mechanism in Leviticus 13:1-46, and reconstructs a proposed evolution of this ritual. This paper suggests that the ritual presented in Leviticus 13:1-46 may have evolved from an earlier tradition, in which ṣāraʿat patients were executed to halt a mimetic crisis.     

TEXTURED SPATIALITY AND THE ART OF INTERPRETATION

In the twentieth century one interpretative perspective is curiously and strikingly absent: spatiality of narrative. Philosophical thought saw fundamental ontology as founded on temporality with space as decoration. Johannine inquiry has tended to follow in philosophy's temporal footsteps. However, it is plausible to assume that New Testament writers were spatially oriented while modern interpreters have been ensconced in temporal consciousness. Furthermore, as anthropology has long recognized, conceptions of space and place are central to any culture's sense of self. The undue hermeneutic privileging of linearity and causality may have forced biblical texts into a temporal mode of reading that their original authors may not have intended. In understanding biblical worlds it is necessary to again explore spatiality. This essay will introduce textured spatiality as it applies to John 9. It will briefly review temporal thought and consciousness and explain how visual imagery is an essential component to the transmission and preservation of tradition. Textuality will also be used to tell the tale of the man born blind. Using the nature of Shabbat as a pivot, and a narrative juxtaposition of two contrasting Sabbath spaces, the paper will point to a possible Urcarnivalesque element in the chapter.     

The role of the psychologist in crisis/hostage negotiations

Over the past three decades, there has been a noted increase in hostage and barricade incidents involving perpetrators with a variety of emotional, economic, and political motives. A hostage incident may be defined as an incident in which (a) perpetrator(s) hold(s) one or more persons against their will in a location known to police. A barricade incident, on the other hand, is an incident without hostages in which a perpetrator is barricaded, also in a location known to police and refusing to surrender. Approximately 25 years ago, a theory of crisis/hostage negotiations was developed which has been continuously refined in field applications. This article will define the goal of crisis/hostage negotiation, review the history of hostage taking from biblical times to the present, review the utilization of psychologists and other mental health consultants by police crisis/hostage negotiation teams, and discuss the four roles and related functions of psychologists on crisis/hostage negotiation teams. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Soul and Psyche: A Critical Assessment

Wayne G. Rollins has been the key organizer of the Psychology and Biblical Studies program unit of the Society of Biblical Literature, where on numerous occasions I have observed the gentle kindness and buoyant enthusiasm with which he has hosted and moderated the meetings. I have also benefitted from personal and professional conversations with him. Consequently, it is an honor, and more than a little daunting, to respond to his book. Rollins has three goals for this volume: to provide a history of the discipline he calls psychological biblical criticism, to define this academic field, and to propose an agenda for this field as applied to biblical exegesis and hermeneutics. Rollins hopes for a rapprochement between the historical and psychological approaches to biblical studies.     

Tsunami and Theology

This essay attempts first to understand some aspects of public reactions in Norway and Scandinavia to the tsunami catastrophe in the Indian Ocean on December 26, 2004. Secondly, it takes this understanding as a hermeneutical resource for reading the Book of Job. As a biblical scholar, I can only hope that the cultural analysis in the first part is not too aberrant to be considered relevant, at least in its major line of reasoning. My hope for the second part would be that it makes a case for developing additional paradigms for doing biblical studies.     

The Arts,Midrash, and Biblical Teaching

Abstract. Biblical texts have been handed on to us through a long history of interpretation. Awareness of this rich but complex process is one of the goals of biblical teaching. Since the earliest centuries of the church there has been a parallel history of artistic interaction with the biblical text. These artistic treatments of biblical subjects have had a great cultural impact and have deeply influenced public perceptions and understandings of the Bible. Unfortunately, seldom does this history of artistic interpretation become a part of Bible courses. In this paper, I reflect on learnings from a serious effort to take artistic resources and methodologies into account in teaching Hebrew Bible in a theological school. My most successful efforts have employed the ancient Jewish interpretive method of midrash. Use of midrash opens new, imaginative possibilities that can enliven and extend our usual exegesis of texts. More specifically, midrash provides the ideal category for understanding artistic interactions with biblical texts. Through midrash students can understand artists to be both profound respecters of the power and integrity of biblical texts, while at the same time extending and entering into imaginative encounter with those texts. This article will appear as a chapter in the forthcoming book Arts, Theology, and the Church: New Intersections.     

Beyond the Biblical Impasse: Homosexuality Through the Lens of Theological Anthropology

Abstract: What does the Bible say about homosexuality? The argument developed in this article demonstrates that the five biblical texts often cited as “proof” that the Bible condemns homosexuality reflect a theological anthropology that is challenged within Scripture itself and that has been determined by the church to be contextual rather than binding in relation to other debated issues. By bringing the theological anthropology reflected in the five texts into conversation with contrasting biblical anthropologies, it becomes possible to re‐frame the contemporary conversation on homosexuality in terms of discerning which biblical theological anthropology will be considered authoritative for the church in the 21^st century.     

Bio-necro-biblio-politics? Restaging feminist intersections and queer exceptions

This response to Jasbir Puar's Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (2007. Durham, NC: Duke University Press) proposes that, although it might seem a bit far afield for scholars within biblical studies, a range of conceptual interventions from this work could make striking contributions to this sub-discipline. Through further interaction with both exceptionalisms and intersectionalities, this response demonstrates the way that feminist, postcolonial and queer interrogations of biblical argumentation can also intervene, extend or reorient practices within cultural studies. The recurrence of exceptionalism reframes religious groups' claims to openness, while concerns over the deployment of intersectionality enable critical reflections on interdisciplinary projects such as religious studies and biblical studies as disciplines.