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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | Postcolonial biblical interpretation: a futile exercise? |
| Author: | Hunter, Jannie |
| Year: | 2014 |
| Periodical: | Journal for Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences (ISSN 2026-7215) |
| Volume: | 3 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Pages: | 118-125 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Namibia |
| Subjects: | Bible Christian theology |
| Abstract: | The history of the interpretation of the Bible has gone through many stages. These normally followed a trend in philosophy which rules the era or period into which the interpretive approach(es) would find expression. Literal interpretation was a trend of the middle ages. The modernist era saw the emergence of more critical interpretations with historical criticism, structural criticism and others. After modernism, interpretive approaches moved away from focussing only on language for seeking the meaning of texts. Focus shifted to the periphery and the historical (diachronic) and current (synchronic) 'outsides' or contexts of texts in order to establish meaning. The gest of this paper is to distinguish postcolonial literary critical exercises from the main literary critical exercise of postmodern philosophy, namely deconstruction, and see whether the negative judgements that have been levelled against deconstruction by some (e.g. Ellis, 1989) might hold true for postcolonial criticism as well. The author presents a Namibian case of gendered social injustice as an example of a situation for which a story from the Old Testament (Ruth) holds relevance. The author concludes that a postcolonial approach based on intertextuality and the temporality of the sign, unlike a deconstructive approach, is no futile exercise. Bibliogr., sum. [Journal abstract, edited] |