Social identity and South African biblical hermeneutics : a struggle against prejudice?

Abstract

In a recent debate in the Bulletin for Old Testament Studies in Africa (vol. 12-14), the issue of social identity and South African (Biblical) hermeneutics was put on the table. This essay responds to the debate from the point of view a member of the colonial remnant or apartheid's perpetrator culture. The essay starts with a summary of the BOTSA debate and then discusses the following three aspects that the debate highlighted: (a) a recognition of subjectivity in contrast to a prevailing objectivist and essentialist approach in reading the Bible; (b) the call for 'contextual authenticity' in relation to the problem of ideology in defining context; and (c) the role of postcolonial Bible reading in the light of an expressed discomfort with a critical reading of the Bible and an unease with what is perceived to be 'Western hermeneutics'. The essay concludes that (i) the effects of colonialism in the form of objectivist Bible reading and essentialist thinking will linger on long after its demise, (ii) an appeal to contextual authenticity makes sense within an objectivist and essentialist framework and (c) a postcolonial Bible reading can bring the texts back to their place of origin and thus loosen the Bible from its (perceived) Western protection.