(Download) "Using the Master's Tools to Shore up Another's House: A Postcolonial Analysis of 4 Maccabees." by Journal of Biblical Literature # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Using the Master's Tools to Shore up Another's House: A Postcolonial Analysis of 4 Maccabees.
- Author : Journal of Biblical Literature
- Release Date : January 22, 2007
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 268 KB
Description
The past fifteen years have witnessed an explosion of studies in biblical criticism and criticism of the history of interpretation that are generally held together under the rubric of "postcolonial studies" or "postcolonial criticism." (1) These are written largely, though by no means exclusively, by biblical scholars who belong to a minority group in a Western culture or who live in a country not considered part of the dominant culture of the "Western world," such as Asia, Africa, or Latin America. That it is a "hermeneutic" rather than another exegetical "method" is clear from the ways in which some of its most noted practitioners describe the approach. (2) Postcolonial interpretation has been described as "a mental attitude rather than a method, more a subversive stance towards the dominant knowledge than a school of thought." (3) Another of its prominent practitioners has described it metaphorically as an optic, a lens through which to take a new look at Scripture and the way it has been, and can be, interpreted and used in real-life political and social situations. (4) This lens has most frequently been employed to examine the use of the Bible and its interpretation as a means of advancing Eurocentric agendas and legitimating the hegemony of Western Europe and its partners, both in situations of formal imperialism and in the lingering aftermath of "empire." (5) The "mental attitude" has also contributed greatly to the reversal of the devaluation of indigenous cultures that accompanies imperialism, and to the construction of an alternative hermeneutics that honors the culture, experience, and reading and interpretative strategies of non-Western peoples. (6)