Text and Context

As biblical hermeneutics moves increasingly toward the inclusion of vernacular approaches to the text--understandings of the Bible based on culture, context, and human experience--many communities of faith around the world are contributing their voices to the conversation of global Christianity. This volume explores reading methods and text interpretations of believers in South Africa, the Caribbean, Spain, the Netherlands, the United States, India, Kenya, Fiji, Japan, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Nigeria--revealing the ways various faith communities read the Bible contextually. Essays in this volume also illustrate the impact of the biblical text in people's lives--on their understandings of oppression, identity, the plight of refugees, decline and loss, the relationship between church and society, imperialism, homelessness, restorative justice, bodily experiences of the Holy Spirit, and time and the future. Together, these writings provide an in-depth sense of how global Christians read the Bible through the lens of their own tradition or culture, as well as how the Bible informs all aspects of their lives as they read the world biblically.
""In recent years, the much-needed move toward a global approach to and practice of biblical criticism has become ever-more expansive and sophisticated. This series represents a most welcome addition to this corpus. This first volume, Text and Context, with its focus on vernacular approaches to the Bible in global Christianity, brings together critics of different stripes from throughout the world . . . The result constitutes an excellent point of departure for the series as well as an excellent contribution to the critical discussion.""
--Fernando F. Segovia, Vanderbilt University
""This compelling volume explores in detail how vernacular experience informs the reading of the Bible so that the readers transform the texts and in turn are themselves transformed by it . . . this fine array of contributors excels in highlighting the complexities of transferring from local to global, rural to urban, street to seminary, and colonial to postcolonial. An indispensable read that has strength and scope to stand side by side with the dominant cosmopolitan exegesis.""
--R.S. Sugirtharajah, University of Birmingham
""The diversity of approaches represented in this opening volume provides a flavor of the depth and breadth of biblical interpretations that consciously and critically reflect their contextuality. The interplay between faith experience, real life, and critical interpretation demonstrates that a pluriversity of voices has the potential not only to contribute to respect for difference but also to open doors to new conversations about biblical texts that promise to enrich academic and faith communities around the world.""
--Kathy Ehrensperger, Universitat Potsdam
Melanie Baffes is a writer and independent biblical scholar. She is the author of Love, Loss, and Abjection (Pickwick Publications, 2016), coauthor of Research and Writing in the Seminary (2014), and coeditor of Nation and World, Church and God (2014).