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

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basis of the inter-contextuality involved in our common pursuit of biblical
interpretation.”
This view takes its point of departure in the dialogical nature of meaning.
Meaning is not something “out there” which can be excavated from those
authoritative texts that we have at our disposal. Those with the most efficient tools
(read: money and methods) 21 are obviously the fastest in uncovering “meaning”.
And this Vorsprung durch Technik (to borrow an expression from the advertising
campaign of a well-known German car) puts these interpreters in a position of
dominance and power. Certain perspectives and approaches (or interpretative
contexts) are simply regarded as being more valid and important than others.
However, when we start acknowledging that meaning is not something “out there”,
but that it is rather something dialogical that comes into being in interaction with
others, the issue of dominance or interpretative power could be relativised. No one
of us can claim sole possession of meaning. Without interaction, there is no
meaning. Possession of meaning leads to relativism (where each one claims the
validity of his/her point of view). Meaning-as-interaction, however, provides
contours along which the ethical responsibility of global hermeneutics could be
fulfilled.
My proposal of a communal approach is not an attempt at formulating yet
another exegetical (super-)method. It should rather be seen as an appreciation of the
multidimensionality of the textual traditions that we consider authoritative, as well
as of the multidimensionality of the global world in which we interpret those
traditions. The attitude of communality could bring us to that liminal space where
different approaches and different contexts can start interacting with one another in
a dialogical uncovering of meaning.
CONCLUSION
I am in complete agreement with Ukpong’s analysis of the three phases in the
process of the globalisation of Old Testament studies. And I agree that we are now
in the third phase in which resistance to European and American control of Old
Testament interpretation is offered by non-Westerners and in which the
decentralisation of interpretation is taking place. But I would like to remain an
idealist who looks forward to a fourth phase: a phase of communality. This fourth
phase will not be characterised by binary oppositions and power plays. Our
exegetical agenda will then be set by the biblical texts themselves, and not by our
agendas of control and influence.
21 See K. Holter, “It’s not only a question of money! African Old Testament
scholarship between the myths and meaning of the South and the money and methods of the
North,” OTE 11 (1998), 240–254.