Postcolonial Biblical Studies

Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of double-voicedness and James Scott’s theory of public and hidden transcripts, this essay investigates the colonial context of Romans 13:1–7 with particular attention to the Roman imperial cult. It is my contention that Paul attempts to persuade the audience to resist the imperial cult, whilst negotiating colonial power and authority. It is assumed that colonial discourse is, by nature, a double-voiced discourse in that the public transcript of the dominant and the hidden transcript of the suppressed coexist in a continued state of internal tension and conflict. Seen in this light, Paul as a colonised subject parodies the public transcript of the elites in his own hidden transcript. However, Paul’s doubled-voiced discourse finally turns out to be subversive against the dominant culture by suggesting that ultimate honour, fear, and authority should not be due to the rulers of the Roman Empire but to God.

Onesimus has so far remained a colonized or marginalized other in the text and history of reception across historical and cultural constraints. In contrast to this colonizing strategy of reading, the thesis of this paper is that Onesimus, as a minor character, plays a major role in liberating himself from the bondage of slavery’s hierarchical structures within the context of Roman imperial rule. There is a commonly held consensus among most, though not all, Western interpreters that Philemon is the letter to Philemon written by Paul on behalf of Onesimus as the other who is marginalized. That is, a “reading for” Onesimus as the other is ultimately doomed to a reading of marginalizing Onesimus as the colonized other. Ironically, such a “reading for” Onesimus has looked down on his agency in the process of interpretation in the fullest sense. Rather, my reading leans towards a “reading with” Onesimus as a subversive character to regain his long-suppressed voice. Toward this end, I propose reading the letter to Philemon from the marginalized perspective of Onesimus rather than from the central perspective of Paul or Philemon. To do so, I first foreground a postcolonial reading strategy as a critical angle of inquiry alongside narrative and deconstructive criticisms. I then reconstruct Onesimus in terms of plot and characterization through a postcolonial lens. Finally, I deconstruct the hierarchy of social structures inherent in the story of Philemon through a postcolonial optic.

In this book, Sung Uk Lim examines the narrative construction of identity and otherness through ongoing interactions between Jesus and the so-called others as represented by the minor characters in the Gospel of John. This study reconfigures the otherness of the minor characters in order to reconstruct the identity of Jesus beyond the exclusive binary of identity and otherness. The recent trends in Johannine scholarship are deeply entrenched in a dialectical framework of inclusion and exclusion, perpetuating positive portrayals of Jesus and negative portrayals of the minor characters. Read in this light, Jesus is portrayed as a superior, omniscient, and omnipotent character, whereas minor characters are depicted as inferior, uncomprehending, and powerless. At the root of such portrayals lies the belief that the Johannine dualistic Weltanschauung warrants such a sharp differentiation between Jesus and the minor characters. Lim argues, to the contrary, that the multiple constructions of otherness deriving from the minor characters make Jesus' identity vulnerable to a constant process of transformation. Consequently, John's minor characters actually challenge and destabilize Johannine hierarchical dualism within a both/and framework.

The writer <jobymon.skaria2@mail.dcu.ie> is a priest of the Jacobite Church, currently doing doctoral studies in Dublin City University, Ireland at the School of Theology, Philosophy and Music. This paper analyses the political and religious context of Babylonian Diaspora community and Achaemenid Yehud to account for the similarities between Genesis 12: 1-3 and Deuteronomy 28: 1-14 and the reservations to the Edict of Cyrus in Abraham's call. The study shows that the historical, political and religious context of the post-exilic Yehud had influenced the composition of Genesis 12: 1-3. The post-exilic Deuteronomic school challenged the attempts of the Persian administration to limit Yahweh and the Davidic kingship. Genesis 12: 1-3 might have emerged out of the discontent of the post-exilic Deuteronomic school with the imperial policies of the pro-Persian management of Achaemenid Yehud.

This article explores the biopolitical dimension of the trial of Jesus in John 18:28–19:16a from the Agambenian perspective of “bare life.” According to Giorgio Agamben, bare life, namely, life at risk of death through sovereign power, operates in the “state of exception.” The state of exception is a state wherein the threshold between the juridical order and anomie, or that between an insider and outsider of the juridical order becomes blurred as a result of a law that is suspended from its effectiveness yet is effective in its suspension. Jesus can be interpreted as a bare life in a zone of absolute undecidability in which both the Jewish and Roman laws simultaneously are operative and ineffectual. More specifically, Jesus is an insider in both the Jewish and Roman worlds on the grounds that he is subject to both the rules of Judaism and the Roman Empire. But at the same time, Jesus is an outsider from both the Jewish and Roman worlds explicitly because his kingship goes beyond both earthly rules (18:36; cf. 8:23; 17:14, 16). Paradoxically, Jesus is simultaneously an insider in and an outsider from each of the Jewish and Roman sovereignties. That is to say, Jesus lives in both of the sovereignties, while at the same time belonging to neither of them. It follows from this that Jesus resides in an in-between zone between insider and outsider. My contention, therefore, is that Jesus is such a liminal character—an unfixed and unfixable character in a zone of uncertainty—that he subverts the sovereign power and hierarchical dualism of the Jewish and Roman worlds.

Building on a former contribution (lectio 2/2014) on the Elijah
cycle (1 Kings 17 – 2 Kings 2) read with different approaches of a gender-sensitive exegesis, this article explores how postcolonial approaches change or sharpen an analysis of the Elijah story, especially relating to 1 Kings 21. Following a short introduction to the most well-known founders of postcolonial theory (Fanon, Said, Bhabha, Spivak) and some reflections on the reception of postcolonial studies in biblical studies/OT studies, a first reading of 1 Kings 21 focusses on land grabbing, whereas a second reading concentrates on the figure of Jezebel and analyses 1 Kings 21 within the context of 1 Kings 16,29-34 – 2 Kings 2,14. The present contribution is an expanded version of the third lecture delivered as a visiting professor at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris (spring 2014).

This paper revisits the thorny issue of whether or not the subaltern can speak against the colonial authority. It argues that in John 4 the nameless Samaritan woman as a subaltern native is a creative agent who undermines the colonial authority of Jesus as a so-called missionary, when seen through Homi Bhabha’s lens of mimicry. A close reading of John 4:1-42 reveals that the mimicry of the Samaritan woman is anti-colonial in the sense that she, as the colonized, menaces the authority of Jesus as the colonizer by causing ambivalence to him with regard to his ethnic and political identity. As a consequence, mimicry is transformed into the location of resistance against colonialism

brief introduction into postcolonial biblical studies - postcolonial exegetical considerations on the connex Ex-Jos - postcolonial exegetical perspectives on Rahab/Jos 2 on the basis of current publications
first presentation of postcolonial studies at the Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Deutschsprachigen Alttestamentler*innen (AGAT)

This paper intends to delve into the political economy of the symbolic practice of eating idol meat in 1 Corinthians 8 from a Bourdieuian perspective. My contention is that Paul attempts to undermine the Roman socioeconomic system by substituting a dietary habitus of abstention for a dietary habitus of consumption. In Bourdieu's view, the Roman colony of Corinth can be seen as a religious fijield consisting of a conflict over diffferent capital between the strong and the weak. Through rhetorical strategies, Paul enables the weak to subvert the hierarchical structure as embodied in the practice of idol meat consumption, while simultaneously urging the strong to surrender the claim to their authority. Thus, while deconstructing an old, colonial habitus of consumption , Paul reconstructs a new, postcolonial habitus of abstention.

This paper aims at foregrounding race and ethnicity discourse in Biblical Studies and beyond in order to undermine transhistorical and transcultural racism and ethnocentrism in religious discourse. It is my argument that matters of race and ethnicity should be approached as analytical categories in an interdisciplinary manner, albeit in a specific context, Hellenistic, Roman, Jewish, or Christian. In doing so, I first examine the works of Steve Fenton as well as Robert Miles and Malcolm Brown in order to look closely at race and ethnicity discourse in the ancient Mediterranean world, especially from a sociological perspective. Then, I indicate how Jonathan Hall and Shaye Cohen examine Hellenic and Jewish identity, respectively, with a focus on ethnic identity in the Greco-Roman world. Finally, I consider how Judith Lieu and Denise Buell analyze early Christian identity as a racial or ethnic discourse in the Jewish, Hellenistic, and Roman matrix. Hence, I contend that identity in general and racial-ethnic identity in particular are by no means stable and static in essentialist terms, but rather they are fluid along the ostensible axis of fixed identity.

This article advances the hypothesis that surveillance studies can inform a postcolonial feminist reading of Genesis narratives.  The method of reading uses the overall metaphor of the omnividence (the ability to see all) of the few acting upon the many. Of particular use in this study are literary poetics, ethnic and gender profiling, assemblage and data doubles, shame and honour, and a reimagining of the “omniscient” third person narrator. Persian and Assyrian period intelligence gathering and surveillance is investigated as an influence on the text.  That is, the narrator and characters report events after seeing them through a particular nationalistic and legal ideological lens. In one account of narrative surveillance in the story of Dinah and Shechem, in Gen 34, the narrator demonstrates bias. To counterread this, sousveillance techniques in the narrative can be understood as not only a means of profiling but also a means of resisting this profiling. Drawing on the practical theology of Eric Stoddart, cultural theory and postcolonial feminist thinking, resistance strategies of (in)visibility in the narrative imaginary are posed for those who are under the eye of powerful forces.

This essay is a narrative analysis of Genesis 18:16-19:29 in light of the trope of seeing and representation as mimetic desire in the text. This informs a postcolonial feminist reading of the narrative in two ways. For one, in terms of the tensions in ancient Israelite national identity, and also for readers of the text in light of exceptionalism tendencies in the ideology of US drone strikes.