Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Other Critical Approaches to the New Testament by Professor Shaili Patel Most of my textbook approaches the New Testament from a historical and a traditional literary point of view, but there are many other approaches that one can take to the Bible or any other writing. In recent decades, other theoretical forms of analysis are developed and fruitfully employed by scholars.
[00:00:24] I decided to say something about these theoretical approaches in my book so students will be informed about them, even though I do not employ them in the book itself.
[00:00:33] Since critical theory is not my long suit, I asked my then graduate student and now associate professor of religious studies at Virginia Tech, Shailey Patel, who is deeply familiar with various kinds of theoretical discourse, to write up a short summary for me. Here is the excursus that she produced now in the textbook Methods of Ideological Criticism by Shaila Patel.
[00:00:57] So far in this book we have examined a number of different critical methods for studying the writings of the New Testament, all of them firmly committed to a traditional historical approach to the task. Recent years have seen an explosion of other theoretical or ideological approaches that we will not be using, but it's helpful to have even a brief sense of what some of them are, as they have become widely used and are seen by many to provide unusually fruitful ways to read the New Testament.
[00:01:25] Some of them may well be favored by the professor of your course.
[00:01:29] A brief bibliography is included after each, for those who would like to learn more.
[00:01:36] Postcolonial Criticism Postcolonial criticism emphasizes the influence that empires and imperial policies, both ancient and modern, have on the texts, the history, and the scholarship of the New Testament.
[00:01:51] Postcolonial interpreters analyze how historical empires are depicted in biblical texts and how these texts have reflected and shaped the attitudes and concerns of the subjects of these empires.
[00:02:02] They read the New Testament by viewing the first Christians as subjects of the Roman Empire. A post colonial critic might ask how being ruled by Rome configured the way that the followers of Jesus understood themselves and their place in the world. He or she might also highlight biblical narratives that feature people excluded from positions of social and political power.
[00:02:25] A second component of postcolonial criticism involves looking at whether modern scholarship is the product of more recent empires, such as those dominated by Western capitalism.
[00:02:36] Is how we read the New Testament affected by our own relationship to empire? What does it mean to read these texts in the United States or Western Europe, as opposed to in Latin America or South Africa?
[00:02:49] How does one's political situation determine his or her understanding of the New Testament?
[00:02:56] For further reading, Richard A. Horsley's Jesus and the Kingdom of God and the New World disorder, published in 2002 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, by Fortress Press. There's Anna Exegesis in the Making Postcolonialism in the New Testament, published in 2010 by Brill in Leiden in the Netherlands. There's Fernando Segovia and R.S. sugitharaja's the Postcolonial Commentary on the New Testament writings, published in 2007 in London by T. & T. Clarke, and R. S. Sugya Tharadja's the Postcolonial Biblical Reader, published in 2007 in Oxford by Blackwell Publishing.
[00:03:37] Feminist Criticism Feminist criticism challenges traditional historical interpretations of the New Testament.
[00:03:44] Some feminists approach the task by bringing to light the stories of women in the New Testament that are often slighted or ignored. For example, one might read the infancy story in the Gospel of Luke from the perspective of Jesus Mother Mary, or to choose to highlight the importance of the women at the empty tomb in the synoptic Gospels.
[00:04:03] Other feminists take a more rigorous approach by applying a hermeneutics of suspicion to the text, that is, a suspicion of the inherent biases in these texts in favor of men and their concerns as a result of this bias. In this view, the text portrays women as less important and subordinate to men when they portray women at all. Feminist critics sometimes further claim that modern scholarly interpretations of the New Testament also privilege males.
[00:04:33] Readings using a feminist framework seek to question both ancient and modern biases by drawing attention to them, analyzing how and why they are constructed and maintained, and offering readings that reassert the centrality of women to the development of Christianity.
[00:04:48] Yet other feminists take a completely different tack, choosing to abandon the text altogether and arguing that such male focused documents cannot speak for women.
[00:04:58] For further reading, there's Amy Jill Levine, who edited the Feminist Companion to the New Testament and Early Christian Writings, published by Sheffield University Press in in 2010.
[00:05:11] There's Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ring's The Women's Bible Commentary, Second Edition, published in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1998.
[00:05:23] There's Firenze Schussler, who wrote In Memory of a Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian origins, published in 1994 in New York by Crossroad and also by Schussler. There is Wisdom Ways Introducing Feminist Biblical Interpretation, published in Maryknoll, New York, in 2001 by Orbis Books. Queer Criticism like feminist criticism, queer criticism is a way of reading the New Testament that contests certain norms depicted in the text, especially those that privilege heterosexuality and fixed gender roles.
[00:05:58] Queer criticism analyzes how these norms are established and maintained, both in the biblical text and in modern scholarship.
[00:06:05] Those who use queer criticism question the use of the biblical text to privilege heteronormativity, that is, the position that only heterosexuality is normal and valid. They also challenge rigid gender roles depicted in the text, paying close attention to how these roles exclude or diminish those individuals who do not conform to them.
[00:06:26] Alternatively, they may highlight in the places in the New Testament that do not privilege strict ideas of gender.
[00:06:33] Many who adopt a queer framework look at how ideas about sexuality in the ancient world differ from current ideas about sexuality.
[00:06:40] They also analyze how some modern readers tend to read heteronormativity back into the biblical text.
[00:06:48] For example, queer criticism may highlight the fact that Jesus is never depicted in the New Testament as condemning homosexuality.
[00:06:57] For further reading, Derrin Guest et al. Who edited the Queer Bible commentary, published in 2006 in London by SCM Press.
[00:07:07] There's Ken Stone and Teresa Hornby, who edited Bible Trouble Queer Readings at the Boundaries of Biblical scholarship, published in 2011 in Atlanta, Georgia, by the Society of Biblical Literature. There's Dale B. Martin, who wrote Sex and the Single Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation that was published in 2006 in Louisville, Kentucky, by Westminster and John Knox Press. And then there is Jeffrey S. Psycher, who edited Homosexuality in the Church Both Sides of the debate, published in 1994 by Westminster John Knox Press in Louisville, Kentucky.
[00:07:47] Liberation theology Liberation theology emerged in Latin America in the 1950s and 60s.
[00:07:55] At that time, Catholic theologians were deeply concerned about what was happening in the impoverished communities that made up many of their parishes. As a result, these theologians developed a way of reading the Bible that emphasized a preferential option for the poor.
[00:08:11] This means that the God of the Bible identifies with the poor and the powerless and condemns their oppression and injustice.
[00:08:19] A liberationist reading, therefore, might draw attention to Jesus association with members of the community who are poor or otherwise socially excluded. Such a reading would highlight Jesus message as being one that was principally concerned with liberating these individuals from their economic and their social suffering.
[00:08:38] Along with reading the text from the perspective of the impoverished, a liberationist framework is dedicated to political action.
[00:08:46] Although commonly associated with Latin America, liberation theology has developed in many different forms, including feminist liberation theology and black liberation theology, each responding responding to the needs of a particular community.
[00:09:00] Liberation theologians of all stripes often work as activists to secure economic justice, believing that it's an ethical duty and a biblical mandate to provide support and relief to people in need.
[00:09:14] For further reading, there's James Cone's God of the Oppressed. The revised edition was published in 1997 by Orbis in Merinol, New York. Gustavo Gutierrez wrote A Theology of Liberation History, Politics, and Salvation that's published in 1971 again by Maryknoll, New York. Orbis Press.
[00:09:34] Christopher Rowland and Mark Corner wrote Liberating the Challenge of Liberation Theology to Biblical Studies that was published in 1989 in Louisville, Kentucky, by Westminster John Knox Press.
[00:09:46] John Sobrino wrote Jesus the Liberator A Historical Theological View that was published in 1993 in Merriknoll, New York, by Orbis & Elsa Tames edited the Bible of the Oppressed, 1982, again Orbis in Maryknoll, New York.
[00:10:05] Minority criticism Minority or Race? Critical Interpretation analyzes the New Testament with an eye to the various underrepresented racial and ethnic groups mentioned in the texts.
[00:10:18] Interpreters who employ this framework emphasize stories that include members of these groups to demonstrate how persons of color are depicted by the biblical authors and what their depictions say about race relations more generally. As a result, they might read the story of the Ethiopian eunuch in the Acts of the Apostles from the perspective of the eunuch rather than from the evangelist Philip.
[00:10:42] Furthermore, like critics who work within many ideological methods, interpreters using a minority framework challenge readings of the Bible that justify or maintain oppression, in this case racial oppression.
[00:10:54] For example, many of these interpreters have pointed out the false assumption that Jesus and his disciples were white men, highlighting instead their Palestinian Jewish heritage. Others have offered readings of the text that demonstrate the dignity and humanity of persons of color. Still others have analyzed how biblical texts were historically employed in the justification of systems of racial oppression like slavery or Jim Crow.
[00:11:22] For further reading, there's Randall C. Bailey, Tatsiyong Benny Liu, and Fernando F. Segovia, who edited they Were All Together in One Place toward minority biblical criticism that's published in 2009 in Atlanta, Georgia, by the Society of Biblical Literature.
[00:11:37] Denise Kimber Buell wrote why this New Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity, published in 2005 in New York by Columbia University Press.
[00:11:47] Kimberley Crenshaw et al. Edited critical Race the Key Writings that Form the movement, published in 1995 by the New Press in New York. And there is Richard Delgado and Gene Stefanczyk, who edited Critical Race the Cutting Edge, second Edition, published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, by Temple.
