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

The Global Context and Its Consequences for
Old Testament Interpretation
LOUIS C. JONKER
INTRODUCTION: WHO AM I?
My participation in a session on global hermeneutics is for me no small
occasion. Coming from the southern tip of the African continent as well as from a
very specific part of South African biblical scholarship (namely white, male
scholarship) makes my inclusion in this seminar no self-evident decision. My social
location could potentially have silenced my voice in any debate on global
hermeneutics. I am well aware of the fact that any voice with a more Western
inclination advocating a global hermeneutics could very easily be interpreted as
another imperialising or colonising endeavour. It seems to me that the term “global
hermeneutics” has different overtones in traditional Western scholarship, on the
one hand, and non-traditional scholarship in non-Western and marginal contexts, on
the other hand. 1
I am starting my contribution with this ideological-critical appraisal of my own
participation, because I am convinced that we cannot (and may not!) talk of global
hermeneutics if we do not know ourselves. 2 It seems to me that issues of identity
cannot be separated from our discussions on global hermeneutics. In an
international conference at my university early in 2006 which was intended to bring
African and European scholarship into conversation around the theme “Exegesis
and Actualisation”, I was challenged to reflect on my own identity as a biblical
scholar. 3 There I shared from my own biography the fact that I am living in
different worlds simultaneously. Because of my more Western training as a biblical
scholar, I have come to appreciate the rigour of traditional Western scholarship. But
1 Ukpong, for example, emphasises in his work that for a long time in the history of
biblical scholarship globalisation has been a vehicle for the propagation of European and
American interpretations. See J. Ukpong, “Developments in Biblical Interpretation in Africa:
Historical and Hermeneutical Directions,” in The Bible in Africa: Transactions, Trajectories
and Trends (eds. G. O. West and M. W. Dube; Leiden: Brill, 2000), 11–28.
2 See R. C. Bailey, “The danger of ignoring one’s own cultural bias in interpreting the
text,” in The Postcolonial Bible (ed. R. S. Sugirtharajah; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic
Press, 1998), 66–90.
3 See L. C. Jonker, “Living in different worlds simultaneously. Or: A plea for
contextual integrity,” in African and European Readers of the Bible in Dialogue: In Quest of
a Shared Meaning (eds. J. H. de Wit and G. O. West; Leiden: Brill, 2008), 107–119.
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