Reading from This Place

by Segovia, Fernando F.; Tolbert, Mary Ann

• ISBN13: 9780800628123
• ISBN10: 0800628128
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-12-01
• Publisher: Fortress Pr

Summary

Are some readings of the Bible more objective than others? More privileged? More true? How does one's own life situation shape one's reading of the text? What will acknowledgment of the validity of a variety of perspectives mean for historical-critical methods of interpretation?
The present dizzying pluralism of "locations" - not only of ethnicity, class, and gender, but also of social and religious standpoints - presents a daunting challenge to older, mainstream interpretive schemes. In this landmark project, Segovia, Tolbert, and their fifteen other contributors have begun to measure the impact of social location on the theory and practice of biblical interpretation.
This volume, and the international one to follow, signals the critical legitimation of reading strategies that supplement or modify or even in some ways dethrone the historical-critical paradigm that has dominated academic biblical studies for 200 years. It will provide immediate and enduring guidance to scholars and students sorting through the complex epistemological, social, historical, and religious questions that issue from this paradigm shift.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Introduction: "And They Began to Speak in Other Tongues": Competing Modes of Discourse in Contemporary Biblical Criticism	p. 1
Acknowledging the Contextual Character of Male, European-American Critical Exegeses: An Androcritical Perspective	p. 35
Toward a Hermeneutics of the Diaspora: A Hermeneutics of Otherness and Engagement	p. 57
Social Location and the Hermeneutical Mode of Integration	p. 75
Reading Texts as Reading Ourselves: A Chapter in the History of African-American Biblical Interpretation	p. 95
The Author/Text/Reader and Power: Suggestions for a Critical Framework for Biblical Studies	p. 109
They're Nothing but Incestuous Bastards: The Polemical Use of Sex and Sexuality in Hebrew Canon Narratives	p. 121
Reading from My Bicultural Place: Acts 6:1-7	p. 139
"By the Rivers of Babylon": Exile as a Way of Life	p. 149
Reading the Cornelius Story from an Asian Immigrant Perspective	p. 165
"Hemmed in on Every Side": Jews and Women in the Book of Susanna	p. 175
"And I Will Strike Her Children Dead": Death and the Deconstruction of Social Location	p. 191
Solidarity and Contextuality: Readings of Matthew 18:21-35	p. 199
A Second Step in African Biblical Interpretation: A Generic Reading Analysis of Acts 8:26-40	p. 213
The Uninflected Therefore of Hosea 4:1-3	p. 231
Framing Biblical Interpretation at New York Theological Seminary: A Student Self-Inventory on Biblical Hermeneutics	p. 251
Reading for Liberation	p. 263
The God of Jesus in the Gospel Sayings Source	p. 277
Afterwords: The Politics and Poetics of Location	p. 305
Index of Names	p. 319
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.