Biblical Resistance Hermeneutics Within a Caribbean Context

by Thomas,Oral A. W.

• ISBN13: 9781845536565
• ISBN10: 1845536568
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2014-08-08
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This work takes the view that biblical hermeneutics within a Caribbean context focus more on the meaning of biblical texts for lived realities and less on the Bible as historically and contextually conditioned and thereby ideological. Further, the work outlines the difficulties of combining biblical hermeneutics and social praxis within the context of the Caribbean and particularly within Christian communities that descend from a long history of slavery. Moreover, it examines the social and hermeneutical context of a post-independence Caribbean and poses hermeneutical questions involving text-context, oral-written and reading-practice. The historical materialist, postcolonial and contextual Bible study reading strategies are employed as tools of analysis for the following: to identify the socio-ideological interests, theological agenda and social practices that produced biblical texts; to analyse readings of the Letter to Philemon in the New Testament; to engage in a resistant reading of Philemon; and to develop a biblical resistant reading strategy that is critically aware of the cultural meaning of contextual realities (cultural literacy consciousness), comes out of a commitment to and involvement in social struggle(praxis of and for resistance) and gives agency to the materiality of conditions of interpreters and the material conditions out of which biblical texts emerged. This biblical resistant reading strategy seeks to overcome the disjuncture between the sociality of existence and matters of faith and has implications for the reading and defining of the Bible, theological perspectives in the Caribbean, worship and Caribbean hermeneutical practices. It does not privilege the socio-ideological interests and theological agenda and social practices that produced biblical texts over the socio-cultural and historical realities within the context of readers in the interpretive process but both. To give emphasis to one over the other is to blunt the Bible as a cultural weapon of resistance. The biblical resistant hermeneutic as developed in this work is the first of its kind within the Caribbean context.

Author Biography

Oral Thomas is a minister in the Methodist Church in the Caribbean and the Americas (MCCA) and Lecturer in Biblical Studies, Theologies in the Caribbean and Contextual Theologies at the United Theological College of the West Indies (UTCWI).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Stating the Case	p. 1
Tracking Biblical Hermeneutical Practices within the Caribbean	p. 18
Introduction	p. 18
Colonial Era: 1492-1838	p. 21
Complicity and duplicity of the Church	p. 23
Biblical interpretive approaches	p. 25
Outcome: Social control and stability versus social reconstruction	p. 31
Eisegetics and exegetics	p. 32
Post-"Emancipation" Era: 1840-1959	p. 35
Biblical interpretive approaches	p. 37
Intercultural Hermeneutics	p. 41
Outcome: quest for self-identity and self-determination	p. 44
Eisegetics and exegetics	p. 46
Post-"Independence" Era: 1959 onwards	p. 48
Outcome: Economic dependency versus human liberation and social transformation	p. 57
Conclusion	p. 59
Analysing biblical hermeneutical practices within the Caribbean	p. 67
Introduction	p. 67
Biblical hermeneutical practices "on the ground"	p. 68
Possible reasons for reading strategies	p. 71
Reflective summary	p. 74
Reading strategies from Caribbean social history	p. 75
Conclusion	p. 81
Putting Philemon in its place	p. 83
Introduction	p. 83
Mode of production	p. 84
Social relations to production	p. 84
Manumission	p. 87
Peculium	p. 88
Formation of social class structure	p. 89
Pauline theopolitics and slavery	p. 92
Socio-historic environment of Philemon	p. 98
Eisegetics and exegetics	p. 100
Conclusion	p. 101
"Readings" of Philemon	p. 107
Introduction	p. 107
The era of slavery	p. 108
Exegetics and eisegetics	p. 116
The contemporary era	p. 119
Liberationist Hermeneutics	p. 129
Postcolonial Type	p. 133
Eisegetics and exegetics	p. 137
Conclusion	p. 138
Towards a biblical resistant hermeneutic within a Caribbean context	p. 144
Introduction	p. 144
Component parts of a biblical resistant hermeneutic	p. 145
Cultural-literacy consciousness	p. 146
Praxis of resistance	p. 153
Text as cultural construction	p. 158
A biblical resistant reading of Philemon	p. 161
Brothers or "slaves" of Caribbean "masters"	p. 165
Conclusion	p. 167
Implications of a biblical resistant hermeneutic within a Caribbean context	p. 170
Introduction	p. 170
Defining the Bible	p. 171
"Reading" the Bible	p. 173
Doing theology from non-traditional sites	p. 175
Understanding the ground and structure of Caribbean religions	p. 181
Structuring spirituality against resistance	p. 184
Cultural expressions as hermeneutical practices of resistance	p. 187
Cricket as Hermeneutical Practice of Resistance	p. 195
Conclusion	p. 202
Conclusion	p. 207
Bibliography	p. 218
Index	p. 232
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.