Global Hermeneutics? - International Voices in Biblical Studies ...

90 GLOBAL HERMENEUTICS?
example (Levison and Pope-Levison 1999), the term here includes European and
North American commentators, as the editors wanted the commentary to reflect the
demography of today’s readers of the Bible. Hence, of seventy-one commentators,
two-thirds come from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania, and (nearly) half
are women. 11
The commentators have been free to define their own particular context. Some,
therefore, emphasize socio-cultural aspects whereas others emphasize more socioeconomic
aspects. Even though the editorial introduction does not address the issue
of globalization as such, some of the commentators touch typical globalization
questions. An illustrative example is Jorge Pixley (Nicaragua), who reads Exodus
in a socio-economic context of “formal democracies and dramatically declining
lifestyles for the majority of the people.” “It is a situation”, he argues, “dominated
by a global market in an era when capitalism is no longer a growing productive
force”, and the structural explanation of this is found in “a merciless extraction of
wealth from impoverished countries, an extraction that is only possible through a
policing network of financial organizations controlled by U.S. financial interests”,
such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and the
World Bank. In such an unjust context, Exodus’ revolutionary message about
freedom from oppression and the creation of a new society based on just principles
may serve as a challenging model. 12
A third set of examples is the book series “Global Perspectives on Biblical
Scholarship”, initiated by the Society of Biblical Literature a decade ago, and now
with a dozen volumes or so. 13 The first volume in the series grew out from the SBL
International Meeting in Helsinki (Finland) in 1999, 14 and it offers an interesting
discussion between Heikki Räisänen (Finland) and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza
(USA) on the role of the “old paradigm” of historical-critical interpretation in
relation to the “new paradigm” of feminist, liberationist, post-colonial, etc.
interpretation. Proceeding from Schüssler Fiorenza’s famous 1987 SBL
Presidential Address on decentering biblical scholarship, 15 Räisänen argues that the
“old paradigm” should not be seen as contrary to the “new”, rather as an ally. When
it has not always been experienced that way, it is not the fault of the method, rather
of its practitioners, he argues, programmatically claiming that the “colonial attitude
11
Ibid., xxi–xxxii.
12
J. Pixley, “Exodus”, in Global Bible Commentary (eds. D. Patte et al.; Nashville:
Abingdon, 2004), 17–29, especially 17–18, 28–29.
13
Cf. J.T. Fitzgerald et al. (eds.), Animosity, the Bible, and Us: Some European, North
American, and South African Perspectives (Global Perspectives on Biblical Scholarship 12;
Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009).
14
H. Räisänen et al. (eds.), Reading the Bible in the Global Village: Helsinki (Global
Perspectives on Biblical Scholarship 1; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000).
15
E. Schüssler Fiorenza, “The ethics of biblical interpretation: Decentering biblical
scholarship”, JBL 107 (1988), 3–17.