[Rezension von: Postcolonial commentary and the Old Testament]
The Roman-numbered pages cover a table of contents, a list of abbreviations and a list of 19 contributors (four of whom are women) with their professional positions and academic affiliations, of which 11 are in the United States of America, two in Australia, two in South Africa, one in Canada, one i...
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| Format: | Electronic Review |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
SA ePublications
[2019]
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| In: |
Old Testament essays
Year: 2019, Volume: 32, Issue: 2, Pages: 788-789 |
| Review of: | Postcolonial commentary and the Old Testament ([London] : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019) (Van der Zwan, Pieter)
Postcolonial Commentary and the Old Testament (London : Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2018) (Van der Zwan, Pieter) |
| IxTheo Classification: | HB Old Testament |
| Further subjects: | B
Book review
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | The Roman-numbered pages cover a table of contents, a list of abbreviations and a list of 19 contributors (four of whom are women) with their professional positions and academic affiliations, of which 11 are in the United States of America, two in Australia, two in South Africa, one in Canada, one in Norway and one in Finland. Only one is in a non-western country, India. This clustering and gravitation towards a northern-hemispheric dominance already raises questions about how postcolonial this book really is, even when some of the USA scholars clearly stem from Third World countries. It would therefore seem that these postcolonial readings of the Old Testament are done from an imperialist perspective, unless the colonising culture is at times also the colonised, as Israel has been regarded in different chapters (cf. the chapter by Jione Havea, for instance). This suspicion is further reinforced by the high level of representation of western, especially European, theories applied to explain postcolonial readings and the fact that four times more male than female authors have been selected. Only one deuterocanonical book, the Wisdom of Solomon, has been dealt with (by Daniel C. Timmer), suggesting a definite, but unacknowledged Calvinist base and perhaps bias. Yet, the sometimes obvious need for linguistic editing such as in the last chapter by Wilhelm Wessels on Nahum - which is nevertheless very clear in its exposition - could be responded to by justifying it as disrupting the colonial language standards. While the background to which is reacted sometimes remains unexplained, it can be deduced from the selective relevance attributed to some biblical texts, with others even being rejected in this regard. |
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| ISSN: | 2312-3621 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Old Testament essays
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