WHEN THE TEXT IS THE PROBLEM: A POSTCOLONIAL APPROACH TO BIBLICAL PEDAGOGY

Religious Education, Winter 2007 by Lee, Boyung

Abstract

Postcolonial biblical scholars use the hermeneutics of decolonization to reinterpret the biblical text. One goal is to find contemporary aplications for an age-old message. This article explores the challenges and implications of postcolonial hermeneutics for biblical pedagogy. First, the author explores fundamental hermeneutical principles of postcolonial biblical criticism. Then she reviews its challenges for a liberative biblical pedagogy. Finally, the author applies these principles to a Bible study using the story of Hagar.

INTRODUCTION

Contextual pedagogy, teaching context as text, is not a new idea to religious educators. Both public educators and religious educators have emphasized the importance of connecting students' learning to the context of life and also connecting the realities of present life to a reinterpretation of the texts. Especially in contemporary biblical pedagogies, the connection between the text and life contexts of participants is regarded as one of the most critical elements. For example, in her book, The Art of Teaching the Bible: A Practical Guide for Adults (2001), Christine Blair repeatedly highlights that adults learn best when their learning is grounded in life experience. Based on that principle, she presents a biblical pedagogy that connects the text and the life contexts of participants through reinterpreting the Bible in present realities. A contextual model of biblical pedagogy is also supported by many biblical scholars, such as Mary A. Tolbert and others who contributed to the volume Teaching the Bible: The Discourse and Politics of Biblical Pedagogy (1998). These authors focus on contextual approaches to the Bible, ones that seriously consider the diversity of readers and contexts, especially those who have been marginalized by Western Christianity-led biblical hermeneutics.

Notwithstanding these contributions, this article asks whether contextual approaches to the Bible are enough for transformative biblical pedagogy. As postcolonial biblical scholars suggest, what if the text itself is a problem that hinders any type of transformation to happen in learners' lives?

This article explores the challenges and implications of postcolonial hermeneutics for contextual pedagogy and biblical pedagogy. First, I introduce and explore fundamental hermeneutical principles of postcolonial biblical criticism, focusing on Fernando Segovia's theory. second, I review challenges of postcolonial hermeneutics for a liberative biblical pedagogy. Third, I show how to utilize postcolonial hermeneutics in a faith community, using the story of Hagar.

POSTCOLONIAL BIBLICAL HERMENEUTICS

Hermeneutical Principles

Postcolonial biblical critics use a multilayered biblical hermeneutic, one that emphasizes "the demythologization of the biblical authority, the demystification of the use of the Bible, and the construction of new models of interpretation of the Bible" (Kwok 1995, 30). Fernando Segovia, a postcolonial New Testament scholar, for example, argues that there are three different and equally important worlds that readers of the Bible should investigate and analyze: the world of the text, the world of modernity, and the world of today (Segovia 2002, 119-132).

First, readers should analyze the world of the Near East or of the Mediterranean Basin in which the Bible was written and edited. This was a world of colonial empires, those of Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. The political, economic, cultural, and religious dynamics in those empires between centralized authority and those without power heavily influenced the production of the Bible. Questions about culture, ideology, and power are sine qua non (quibus, really) for understanding the text. For example, in a study of the book of Exodus, it is crucial to analyze the power relationship between Israel and the Near Eastern colonial empire.

According to biblical archaeologists, whose research defines contemporary biblical scholarship's debates on the origin of Israel, the biblical depiction of the rise of early Israel-such as stories of the Patriarchs, Exodus, and Conquest-was recast by the Deuteronomic historians to serve their ideology and historical-national convictions. Based on excavation, the survey of material culture (especially pottery and architecture), ecological data, and ethnographic studies of Palestine, biblical archaeologists present several new perspectives on the origin of Israel (Finkelstein 1988,1998; Finkelstein and Silberman 2001). First, the formation and settlement of Israel was a gradual one starting from the sixteenth century BCE. second, the confederating process was a regional phenomenon. Most settlers were indigenous nomads who sparsely inhabited "frontier zones" suitable for pasturage, such as the Transjordanian plateau, the Jordan Valley, the desert fringe, and the hill country. Although some of the settlers were from outside of the country, including the eastern desert and the coastal plain, the majority of the settlers were local nomads, ones that had a symbiotic relationship with the city dwellers in Canaan (Finkelstein 1988, 332335). Although pottery types and architectural structures found in the Canaanite cities and the hill regions show a certain connection between the two, their distinctive features do not support the peasant revolutionary model. Third, the biblical depiction of the origin of early Israel, such as Exodus and Conquest, was a description that constituted a "mythical memory of a Golden age" produced by orthodox, nationalist reform parties during the Assyrian crisis in the brief reign of Josiah, late in Judah s history (Finkelstein and Silberman 2001,123-145).