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

When Biblical Scholars Talk About
“Global” Biblical Interpretation
KNUT HOLTER
INTRODUCTION
Once in the late 1990s I was invited to give some lectures at a university in
Nairobi. The topic was “contextual Old Testament interpretation”, and with the zeal
of the newly converted I advocated the necessity of contextual sensitivity—that is
sensitivity vis-à-vis the contemporary interpreter’s context—in biblical
interpretation. Consequently, I tried to draw some lines between the interpretative
context of my students, which I assumed to be that of traditional East African
culture and religion, and some Old Testament texts and motifs. It should be
admitted that I expected my topic to be met with some enthusiasm, as I knew from
their biblical studies curriculum that the students were normally exposed to
traditional—and I would then and now add “Western”—historical-critical
scholarship only. However, the enthusiasm I met was quite moderate, and I had a
feeling that the students did not to catch my point.
A colleague in the Religious Studies department explained the whole thing to
me. “It’s your concept of context”, he said. “You take for granted that their
interpretative context is found in traditional East African culture and religion, but it
is not. These students are almost as far away from traditional African culture and
religion as you.” And then he outlined the background of the average student in my
Old Testament class: metropolis and middle class, Levi’s trousers and Nike shoes,
McDonald’s and Burger King, Michael Jackson and Britney Spears, and not least,
being born again in one of the many United States-inspired Pentecostal churches.
“With your focus on traditional African culture and religion as interpretative
resources for Old Testament interpretation in Africa you probably won’t like this”,
my colleague argued somewhat ironically, “but these students are actually children
of the modern globalization.”
My encounter with the students in Nairobi a decade ago taught me a couple of
things. One is that, due to the multifaceted economic, political and cultural monster
called “globalization”, someone living in an African metropolis may experience
life—and read the Bible—more or less in the same ways as someone living in
another metropolis in whatever part of the globe. Another is that the relationship
between biblical interpretation as part of the “globalization” project and a more
ethically sensitive “global” biblical hermeneutics is at best quite ambivalent. The
following is an attempt at elaborating a bit on these insights.
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