The Bible and the Third World: Precolonial, Colonial and Postcolonial Encounters
Cambridge University Press
Edition: 1st Edition, 6/14/2001
EAN 9780521773355, ISBN10: 0521773350
Hardcover, 318 pages, 21.6 x 14 x 2.2 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
This innovative study moves briskly but comprehensively through three phases of the Third World's encounter with the Bible - precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial. It recounts the remarkable story of how an inaccessible and marginal book in the ancient churches of India, China and North Africa became an important tool in the hands of both coloniser and colonised; how it has been reclaimed in the postcolonial world; and how it is now being reread by various indigenes, Native Americans, dalits and women. Drawing on substantial exegetical examples, Sugirtharajah examines reading practices ranging from the vernacular to liberation and the newly-emerging postcolonial criticism. His study emphasises the often overlooked biblical reflections of people such as Equiano and Ramabai as well as better-known contemporaries like Gutiérrez and Tamez. Partly historical and partly hermeneutical, the volume will serve as an invaluable introduction to the Bible in the Third World for students and interested general readers.
Introduction
Part I. Precolonial Reception
1. Before the empire
Part II. Colonial Embrace
2. White men bearing gifts
diffusion of the Bible and scriptural imperialism
3. Reading back
resistance as a discursive practice
4. The colonialist as a contentious reader
Colenso and his hermeneutics
5. Textual pedlars
distributing salvation - colporteurs and their portable Bibles
Part III. Postcolonial Reclamations
6. Desperately looking for the indigene
nativism and vernacular hermeneutics
7. Engaging liberation
texts as a vehicle of emancipation
8. Postcolonialising biblical interpretation
Afterword
Bibliography
Index of biblical references
Index of names and subjects.