Paul, Inclusion and Whiteness: Particularizing Interpretation
This article takes its point of departure from the effort to reflect critically on how my racial/ethnic identity shapes what I (and the academic tradition of which I am a part) see and ask (and do not see or ask) in our interpretative work. Selections from commentaries are used to illustrate the his...
| Published in: | Journal for the study of the New Testament |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Sage
[2017]
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| In: |
Journal for the study of the New Testament
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| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Bible. Galaterbrief 3,28
/ Whites
/ Christianity
/ Exclusivism
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| IxTheo Classification: | CC Christianity and Non-Christian religion; Inter-religious relations FD Contextual theology HC New Testament NBE Anthropology |
| Further subjects: | B
Charts, diagrams, etc
B Christians B Ethnicity B RACIAL identity of whites B Bible. Galatians B Race B Religion B Christianness B Religious Aspects B Bible. New Testament Criticism, interpretation, etc B Galatians 3.28 B Whiteness |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This article takes its point of departure from the effort to reflect critically on how my racial/ethnic identity shapes what I (and the academic tradition of which I am a part) see and ask (and do not see or ask) in our interpretative work. Selections from commentaries are used to illustrate the history of interpretation of Gal. 3.28, and the findings are interrogated in the light of questions and issues deriving from the field of whiteness' studies. For a start, such studies may provoke us to think about how far Christianness - and unspoken assumptions about its superiority - shapes what is said about this text (e.g., in the frequent contrast drawn between Jewish exclusivism and Christian inclusivism). Furthermore, we may ask about the particular location of this interpretative tradition not only in religious terms, but also in racial ones. The changing contours of interpretation help to show how it is, in part at least, shaped by its contexts of production in the white, Christian West: it may thus be particularized' in both religious and racial terms. Just as whiteness studies has criticized the tendency of the white' perspective to remain unlabelled', unspecific, implicitly human' and universal, so too we may critique the tendency of this tradition of biblical studies to avoid labelling and recognizing its own specificity. Doing so, moreover, may help us not only to acknowledge our own particularity, but also to recognize why we need the insights of differently located and embodied interpreters to reach towards richer insight. Recognizing and labelling the particularity of our own perspective is thus one step towards equalizing the value of the various (labelled and unlabelled) perspectives in biblical studies. |
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| ISSN: | 1745-5294 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal for the study of the New Testament
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1177/0142064X17739204 |