Semeia 47: Interpretation for Liberation
Overview
Semeia is an experimental journal devoted to the exploration of new and emergent areas and methods of biblical criticism. Studies employing the methods, models, and findings of linguistics, folklore studies, contemporary literary criticism, structuralism, social anthropology, and other such disciplines and approaches, are invited. Although experimental in both form and content, Semeia proposes to publish work that reflects a well defined methodology that is appropriate to the material being interpreted.
- Key perspectives on biblical criticism
- Includes bibliographies and index
Top Highlights
“A hermeneutics of suspicion is therefore called for! Such a hermeneutics can identify and make explicit the institutional patriarchal interests that seek to sustain dehumanizing racism, economic, and cultural superiority of Euro-Americans, and the exploitation of all women but especially of those who are not only oppressed by sexism but also by racism, poverty, and colonialism.” (Page 2)
“With regard to the interpretation of the Bible as part of a religious liberation agenda, every ‘reading’ is, and must always be recognized as, culture-specific. Thus, even every potentially ‘liberating’ hermeneutical construct must reflect the history of that people to be liberated.” (Page 44)
“Four decisive factors are operative in this epistemic construct. First, one’s way of experiencing reality prompts an ‘ideological suspicion;’ secondly, an individual applies the ‘ideological suspicion’ to the whole ideological superstructure (within the context of our discussion, theology receives particular focus); third, a new way of experiencing theological reality arises which leads to an ‘exegetical suspicion’ that a prevailing interpretation of the Bible ‘has not taken important pieces of data into account;’ and fourth, the interpretation of Scripture (the ‘fountainhead’ of our faith) proceeds in new ways allowing the exegete to incorporate the new elements into his or her ideological superstructure’” (Page 123)
“Entirely under the power of whites, against whom they dare not to complain and whom they dare not resist, enslaved Africans were denied the right to possess property, deprived of the means of instruction, of every personal, social, civil, political and religious mode of agency. If they asserted their personhood in defiance of oppressive authority, slaveholders punished them severely.” (Page 14)
- Sheila Briggs
- Katie Geneva Cannon
- Cheryl Townsend Gilkes
- Kwok Pui Lan
- Clarice J. Martin
- Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza
- Renita J. Weems
- Vincent L. Wimbush
- Title: Semeia 47: Interpretation for Liberation
- Editors: Katie Geneva Cannon and Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza
- Publisher: Society of Biblical Literature
- Publication Date: 1989
- Pages: 153
Katie Geneva Cannon is Annie Scales Rogers Professor of Christian Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, Virginia. She is the author of Katie’s Canon: Womanism and the Soul of the Black Community.
Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza is Krister Stendahl Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is the author of numerous books, including In Memory of Her.
