Abstract
With the ascendency of Christianity in the global south, opportunities to hear voices from the Majority World in the field of biblical interpretation represents one of today’s most exciting possibilities for the global church in the twenty-first century. Yet, confronted with a myriad of new voices clamoring for attention at the biblical interpretation round-table (e.g. postcolonial, post-structuralist, postmodern), the tendency for a ‘ghettoization’ of biblical interpretation, whereby small interpretative communities arise, which talk almost exclusively within the safe confines of shared methodologies and common contextual concerns, remains a real possibility. In Power and Responsibility in Biblical Interpretation, Nelson ‘undertakes the project of closing the gap between academic and vernacular hermeneutics’ as she believes that ‘meaningful dialogue…is not only possible but also necessary to the future of biblical interpretation’ (p. 11).
In chapters one and two, Nelson provides a conceptual basis for a ‘contrapuntal reading’ of biblical texts by adapting Edward Said’s concepts of subjectivity, power and intellectual responsibility in postcolonial contexts. Said, most well-known for his acclaimed Orientalism, was a literary critic and champion of the Palestinian peoples who argued, largely on the basis of European power structures and the colonial past, that objective knowledge is impossible since all knowledge is inherently ‘interested’ and clothed in subjectivity (p. 19). Contrapuntal, an adjective ‘derived from the music term counterpoint’, when applied to interpretation, is ‘the effort to bring various interpretative voices into conjunction without harmonization, to emphasize the uniqueness of each voice in contrast with other voices, and to compensate for gaps in one interpretation or interpretive perspective by placing it in conjunction with another’ (p. 9). By listening to the ‘polyphony rather than harmony’ (p. 69) of both academic and vernacular voices in biblical interpretation, an effort is made to both de-center the dominant discourse (p. 62) while at the same time bringing particular contextualities and subjectivities into genuine dialogue with one another. Thus, rather than academic biblical interpretations simply treating vernacular voices as exotic appendices, which are easily dismissed in favor of more scholarly objective interpretations or vernacular interpretations (likewise side-stepping academic voices as hopelessly out of touch with real contexts and particularities) a contrapuntal reading of biblical texts attempts to bridge the academic-vernacular hermeneutic divide in the global church. In chapter 3, Nelson critically interacts with major voices from the global south in biblical hermeneutics who are likewise seeking to address the academic-vernacular gap in various ways, including Kwok Puilan, Elsa Tamez, Gerald O. West, Justin Ukpong, Fernando F. Segovia and R. S. Sugirtharajah. Although Nelson concludes that none offer the promise that ‘contrapuntal readings’ provide, the chapter nonetheless makes for an especially rich, informative and fascinating overview of scholarly options currently circulating in the global church.
In part two (chs 4-6), Nelson moves from concepts to practice by placing academic and vernacular voices in contrapuntal interaction through an exploration of various interpretations of the book of Job. Chapter four explores the possibility of interaction between Gerhard Von Rad’s historical-critical interpretation of Job with the vernacular, liberative reading of Job provided by Gustavo Gutiérrez with special focus on the Whirlwind speeches (utilizing Job 42:6 as an interpretative key), while also integrating the additional voices of David J.A. Clines, Tamez and Enrique Dussel to further ‘resonate and clash’ (p. 146) with the main dialogue already in process. Chapter five engages interpretations of Job, based upon psychological and spiritual readings, with a special focus upon HIV-positive perspectives in Africa. Chapter six engages the Joban themes of chaos and order, the purpose of pain and divine mystery utilizing various readings from Asian contexts. Therefore, part two effectively engages perspectives from Latin American, African and Asian contexts, which yield especially rich and engaging readings of particular texts (e.g. Job 3; 19:25-27; 24:2-14; 42:6; 42:7-8; 38:1-42:6) and various Joban themes. From a keen conceptual analysis of Edward Said’s thought (chs 1-2) to an insightful overview of vernacular (and often marginalized) biblical hermeneutics (ch. 3) to various contrapuntal readings of Job which are to be commended in their own right to Joban studies more generally (chs 4-6), Alissa Jones Nelson offers fresh perspectives and an innovative, creative way forward for biblical interpretation given the new global realities of the twenty-first century.