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

88 GLOBAL HERMENEUTICS?
biblical interpretation, 4 but they are now gradually being acknowledged even by
these guilds of theology (to some extent) and biblical studies (to a less extent) as
representing central, interpretative concerns. Moreover, taken together, such
contextually sensitive interpretative strategies are “global”, in the sense that they
grow out of experiences of “every nation, tribe, people and language.”
CONTEMPORARY “GLOBAL” BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION
Throughout the last decade, several collaborative book projects have put the
concept of “global” biblical interpretation on the agenda. A brief look at how the
concept is approached in three sets of representative examples from the (more or
less) global guild of biblical scholarship would therefore be of interest to us.
A first set of examples is the essay collection Return to Babel: Global
Perspectives on the Bible, edited by John R. Levison and Priscilla Pope-Levison
(1999). 5 The title alludes to the Tower of Babel narrative in Gen 11, interpreting,
however, the destruction of the tower and confusion of languages not as a kind of
punishment, rather as a signal event in the restoration of a desirable diversity,
against the unification project of the Babylonian empire. 6 Diversity is in several
ways a key concept in the essay collection, too. Diversity with regard to the
personal, cultural, social, geographical, educational, and denominational
background of the authors, a diversity they are supposed to bring with them into
their encounter with the biblical texts. The book includes thirty essays by fifteen
authors, and these authors come from twelve countries in Latin America, Africa
and Asia. The essays are systematically gathered and presented in ten chapters, of
which five interpret texts from the Old and five texts from the New Testament. In
each case, three authors are asked to give an interpretation of the same text, and to
explicitly make use of their Latin American, African and Asian contexts as
interpretative resources vis-à-vis the text.
An illustrative case is the Tower of Babel narrative in Gen 11, referred to
above. From a Latin American perspective, José Míguez-Bonino (Argentina) points
to the sixteenth-century Spanish conquest, which included a rejection of all
vernacular languages. Against this background, the confusion of languages in Gen
11 may be read as a blessing, preparing for the blessing of all nations in Gen 12. 7
4 Cf. R. S. Sugirtharajah (ed.), Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the
Third World (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1991); idem (ed.), Still at the Margins: Biblical
Scholarship Fifteen Years after Voices from the Margin (London: T&T Clark, 2008).
5 J. R. Levison and P. Pope–Levison (eds.), Return to Babel: Global Perspectives on
the Bible (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1999).
6 Ibid., 1–2.
7 J. Míguez-Bonino, “Genesis 11:1–9. A Latin American perspective,” in Return to
Babel: Global Perspectives on the Bible (eds. J. R. Levison and P. Pope-Levison; Louisville:
Westminster John Knox, 1999), 13–16.