Coding And Decoding: Postcolonial Criticism And Biblical Interpretation

Abstract The singular aim of postcolonial biblical studies is to put colonialism at the center of biblical scholarship. Both the historical and the hermeneutical literature of biblical interpretation over the last four hundred years has been defi need by the needs of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, and later by the Enlightenment and such attendant features as rationalism, or its offshoot historical criticism. There is a remarkable reluctance among biblical scholars to speak of imperialism as shaping the contours of biblical texts and their interpretation. What postcolonialism makes clear is that biblical studies can no longer be confined to the history of textual traditions, or to the doctrinal richness embedded in texts, but needs to extend its scope to include issues of domination, Western expansion, and its ideological manifestations, as central forces in defining biblical scholarship.