Table Of ContentPOSTCOLONIAL
BIBLICAL CRITICISM
INTERDISCIPLINARY INTERSECTIONS
Edited by
Stephen D. Moore and
Fernando F. Segovia
Other volumes in the series:
The Postcolonial Bible, éd. R.S. Sugirtharajah
Vernacular Hermeneutics, ed. R.S. Sugirtharajah
Interpreting Beyond Borders, ed. Fernando F. Segovia
Last Stop Before Antarctica: The Bible and Postcolonialism in Australia,
Roland Boer
John and Postcolonialism: Travel, Space and Power, eds. Musa W. Dube
and Jeffrey L. Staley
THE BIBLE AND POSTCOLONIALISM
Series Editor:
R.S. Sugirtharajah
Editorial Board:
Fernando Segovia, Kwok Pui-lan, Sharon Ringe,
Ralph Broadbent and Marcella Althaus-Reid
T&.T CLARK INTERNATIONAL
A Continuum imprint
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Published by T&T Clark International
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Copyright © Stephen D. Moore and Fernando F. Segovia, 2005
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Typeset by Tradespools, Frome, Somerset
Printed on acid-free paper in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham,
Wiltshire
ISBN 0567084396 (hardback)
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vi
List of Contributors vii
POSTCOLONIAL BIBLICAL CRITICISM. BEGINNINGS, TRAJECTORIES,
INTERSECTIONS
Stephen D. Moore and Fernando F, Segovia 1
MAPPING THE POSTCOLONIAL OPTIC IN BIBLICAL CRITICISM:
MEANING AND SCOPE
Fernando F. Segovia 23
QUESTIONS OF BIBLICAL AMBIVALENCE AND AUTHORITY UNDER A
TREE OUTSIDE DELHI; OR, THE POSTCOLONIAL AND THE POSTMODERN
Stephen D. Moore 79
GOSPEL HAUNTiNGS: THE POSTCOLONIAL DEMONS OF NEW TESTAMENT
CRITICISM
Laura E. Donaldson 97
MARGINS and (CmriNG-)EDGES. ON THE (IL)LEGITIMACY AND
INTERSECTIONS OF RACE, ETHNICITY, AND (POST)COLONIALISM
Tat-siong Benny Liew 114
MARX, POSTCOLONIALISM, AND THE BIBLE
Roland Boer 166
'VERY LIMITED IDEOLOGICAL OPTIONS': MARXISM AND BIBLICAL
STUDIES IN POSTCOLONIAL SCENES
David Jobling 184
Index of Authors 202
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This volume has been made possible as a result of the assistance and
support of a good number of people, to whom we are deeply indebted and
most thankful. First and foremost, thanks are due to all those who kindly
accepted the invitation to serve as contributors to the project. Second, to
Professor R.S. Sugirtharajah, General Editor of this series on 'The Bible
and Postcolonialism', for his gracious invitation to submit the volume for
inclusion in this distinguished series. Third, to Dean James Hudnut-
Beumler of the Divinity School at Vanderbilt University for his unreserved
backing of the project and much appreciated support toward editorial
expenses. Fourth, to the Revd. James A. Metzger, who, as a doctoral
student in New Testament and Early Christianity within the Graduate
Department of Religion at Vanderbilt University, served as editorial
assistant for the project, for his superb editing of the project. Fifth, to
Lynne S. Darden, who, as a doctoral student in New Testament and Early
Christianity at Drew University, served as research assistant for the
project, for ably compiling the index. Finally, to the entire staff of T&T
Clark International.
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Roland Boer, Centre for Studies in Religion and Theology, Monash
University, Victoria, Australia
Laura E. Donaldson, Department of English, Cornell University, Ithaca,
NY, USA
David Jobling, St. Andrew's College, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
Tat-siong Benny Liew, Chicago Theological Seminary, Chicago, IL, USA
Stephen D. Moore, The Theological School, Drew University, Madison,
NJ, USA
Fernando F. Segovia, The Divinity School, Vanderbilt University,
Nashville, TN, USA
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POSTCOLONIAL BIBLICAL CRITICISM: BEGINNINGS,
TRAJECTORIES, INTERSECTIONS
Stephen D. Moore and Fernando F. Segovia
The origins of the present volume go back a few years—to be precise, to
the 1997 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and the
months that followed. In the course of that meeting, the two of us
discussed the possibility of launching a consultation that would bring
together for mutual engagement and fertilization the discourses of Biblical
Studies and Cultural Studies. We had both been working, in different
contexts and from different perspectives, on such interaction, toward the
development of a cultural biblical criticism,1 and we thought that a
program unit within the context of the Annual Meetings would allow us to
do so in sustained and collective fashion. This idea we pursued in earnest
through the remainder of 1997 and into the early months of 1998. While
agreed on the overall focus for such a consultation, a beginning
exploration into the nature and parameters of a biblical criticism informed
and guided by Cultural Studies, the question of a specific angle of inquiry
and a proper nomenclature for it soon forced itself upon us. What had
been conceived in general terms had to be narrowed down.
In effect, within the Society at that time, a program unit bearing the
designation 'Cultural Studies' in its title was already in existence. What
had begun as a three-year consultation on Gender and Cultural Criticism
(1993-1995), under the leadership of Alice Bach and J. Cheryl Exum, had
petitioned, successfully, in 1996 to become a section, changing its name in
the process to The Bible and Cultural Studies. While the rationale and
aims of our envisioned consultation were not the same as those of this
1. In April of 1997, Moore, along with J. Cheryl Exum, had convened an international
colloquium on the topic of'Biblical into Cultural Studies' at the University of Sheffield, under
the auspices of the Centre for Biblical and Cultural Studies. The colloquium papers were
published the following year, in a co-edited volume entitled Biblical Studies ¡Cultural Studies
(Exum and Moore 1998b). For this volume Moore co-authored with Exum the introduction,
by the same title, with a focus on the history of Cultural Studies and its implications for
biblical criticism (Exum and Moore 1998a; see also Moore 1998). In October of 1993, Segovia,
along with Mary Ann Tolbert, had organized an international conference on the theme of
'Reading from This Place' at the Divinity School of Vanderbilt University. The conference
papers appeared in 1995, under the title of Reading from This Place. Volume 2: Social
Location and Biblical Interpretation in Global Perspective (Segovia and Tolbert 1995b). In this
volume Segovia had two pieces, the introduction and a position paper, on a cultural studies
approach to biblical criticism (Segovia 1995a, 1995b).
