Review of Reading The Bible Around the World

Roth, Federico Alfredo, Smith, Justin Marc, Oh, Kirsten Sonkyo, Yafeh-Deigh, Alice, and Smith, Kay Higuera, Reading the Bible Around the World: A Student’s Guide to Global Hermeneutics, Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2022, pp. 167, $22.00, Paperback.

The book is still a good tool for bible students to see the passage from different angles and social locations, albeit making the text play a primary role in keeping its textual determinacy. Therefore, I recommend that anyone who reads this book will do well to exercise great caution in identifying and discerning the employed interpretative method to apply in their situation. 

Reading the Bible Around the World is written to encourage and expose Bible students to new ideas and approaches to reading and interpreting the Scriptures. The contributing authors of this book are Roth, Alfredo Federico, Smith, Justin Marc Oh, Kirsten Sonkyo, Yafeh-Deigh, Alice, and Smith Kay Higuera, who are well-trained scholars in the area of biblical and theological studies and are serving together on the faculty of Azusa Pacific University. One of the book’s objectives is to introduce its readers to a global approach to interpretation, helping them see the “world-in-front” of the text instead of historical-critical and other Interpretative methods. In other words, the book aims to encourage a reader-response interpretation where the full range of the reader’s location is applied to give a new meaning to the text, not a new application or understanding. To make it more transparent, what it means is that this contextual/global approach reformulates the shift toward the current reader. At the same time, the text occupies a more secondary role (i.e., authorial intent).  In the book, the loving neighbor, the Samaritan, is read and found to resonate within different contexts along with some Old Testament passages (Luke 10:25-37; Deut. 24:17-22; Esther and Ruth; 2 Sam. 11:1-27). In each chapter, the contributors use the opportunity to interpret the same passage found in the Gospel of Luke and passages from the Old Testament with the attention given to every one of their social locations to arrive at meanings they think correspond to that social location, not according to the authorial intention.

The book contains five interpretative social locations: the Latin American Approaches, the African Approaches, the European and Euro-American Approaches, the Asian Approaches, and the Diasporic Approaches. Each author employs a reader-response or “In front of” the text approach to interpret the Gospel of Luke Chapter Ten. In the Latin American context, Frederico shows that the Samaritan put aside his social status as an outsider, unauthorized, and alien and moved away from himself and toward the other in a way that brought healing and restoration. Yafeh-Deigh describes that Jesus calls for action for restorative justice for His Kingdom praxis. The Gospel of Luke centers on social repair, rehabilitation, and inclusion for those excluded. In the African case, the author finds the passage forces them to think critically about the interpersonal relationship they have between tribes. She also discusses Esther and Vashti’s condition and concludes that they were mistreated. She asserts that in the male-dominated and male-defined world, what Vashti stands against should be applauded for resisting the king’s attempt to sexually objectify her for publicly displaying her beauty (p. 56-57). Also, the author thinks that even though Esther risks her life to save her people, the narrative deprives her of the highest honor and instead makes Mordecai a hero (Esther 1: 10-12; 10:3). But this interpretation of postcolonial and feminist hermeneutics should be scrutinized with the best hermeneutics to drive the authorial intent of the passage to get the correct meaning. The question that one must ask is, does the king want to demonstrate Vashti as a sexual object? First, the author’s position that suggests the queen should be applauded for standing up to the king is proper and agreeable. However, I don’t believe there is sufficient textual evidence that proves that the king uses his wife as a sexual object. Second, in the ancient world and even in some parts of the world, in today’s society, husbands take pride in their wives’ beauty in social gatherings, which may not indicate any intent of using them as sexual objects.

However, the king’s command to display his wife’s beauty before a large crowd was arrogant and foolish, and there is no question about it (it was partly because he was inebriated to ask “to bring the queen wearing her royal robe in order to display her beauty to the people” (Esther 1:10-12)). His desire to be admired and achieve a more excellent social standing because of her beauty was a mistake.  At the same time, the queen’s courage to stand up to the most powerful person in the empire must be acknowledged, as well as her refusal to show herself publicly because her dignity was more important than her status and position as a queen by doing the right thing. Finally, the author’s assertion that the narrative makes Mordecai a hero while depriving Esther of high honor is a bit stretching. First, it was Mordecai who perceived and followed through with the plot to annihilate the Jews and brought it to Esther’s attention to make strategic and hard decisions to do something to avert it. Second, it was his appeal that helped her risk her life by entering the palace without the king’s permission. It is, in fact, a courageous act on her part to do so, and no otherwise explicit evidence shows the diminution of her bravery in the narrative (Esther 4:6-17).

The question that one must ask is, does the king want to demonstrate Vashti as a sexual object? First, the author’s position that suggests the queen should be applauded for standing up to the king is proper and agreeable. However, I don’t believe there is sufficient textual evidence that proves that the king uses his wife as a sexual object. Second, in the ancient world and even in some parts of the world, in today’s society, husbands take pride in their wives’ beauty in social gatherings, which may not indicate any intent of using them as sexual objects.

Smith presents the European and Euro-American context and argues that the parable of the loving neighbor manifests radical love and mercy to all, regardless of race, culture, or ethnicity. It also shows that to view it from the perspective of the Samaritan, what might have been like to be a Samaritan in a doubly dangerous space. Sonkyo Oh presents the Asian context and argues that varied Asian contextual approaches to reading Scripture suggest unseating Western centrism and the end of the universalization of Western theology (p.115). For example, in the Indian context, the parable of the loving neighbor is viewed as a model of liberation to the Jews and to anyone who oppresses, and the fact that an oppressor needs the oppressed (p.107).  For the Diasporic context, Smith asserts that just as hybridized and diasporic identities help cultures and people live, they also keep biblical meaning alive, meaning there is no such thing as fixed meaning (p.136). She argues that passages highlighting the poor and the sojourners are overlooked when the guardians of culture are the only ones who interpret the Scriptures (p.137). The chapter generally encourages readers to participate in the reading and interpretative process by considering their location status to celebrate them as historically shaped, politically engaged, and socially acceptable (p.11). It relates to their locations so that they may apply it to their situation, such as those who suffer injustice, an immigrant from marginalized communities, those who are oppressed, etc.

One might notice that from the onset, the interpretive approach has already been mentioned as “in-front-of” the text or the reader-response approach. This approach is designed to set aside authorial intention by avoiding author-centered, text-centered, referential, and representational accounts of the text. Hence, some of the meanings are subjective and indeterminate, and as a result, it is subject to multiple meanings of the text. For instance, in this context found in the Gospel of Luke (Luke 10:25-37), Jesus answered the question asked by the lawyer regarding the grounds for inheriting eternal life. Jesus, in turn, wants to provoke the lawyer to think about changing the definition of “neighbor.” In this discourse, Jesus engages the lawyer by challenging him to a new way of thinking that one’s love for God should be followed by love for his neighbor. The implication is that neighborly love knows no boundaries that may extend to all humanity. Indeed, Jesus’ point presupposes the identification of anyone as our neighbor, and this identification opens a new door for a loving action, so to speak. Finally, a social outcast, the compassionate Samaritan, embodies neighborly love while the religious Jews mentioned in the parable fail. Therefore, Jesus’ intention in this context was not to teach directly about retributive justice, racism, oppression, or liberation, for that matter, even though He is a righteous Son of God and appalled by evil.

Finally, the book holds a neo-pragmatic hermeneutical approach where the location of the readers plays a significant part in the meaning of the texts. It is a fact that the reader-response theory is one of the many tools in biblical hermeneutics; it is not the only one. There are, in fact, places in the Bible where the “in-front” of the world approach is applicable; otherwise, it would be plausible if the authors applied the integrated approach mentioned above. As the authors said, it is also true that taking a historical-critical method as the only tool to interpret the text fends off or disinterests others, predominantly minority groups and the global south, from participating. However, by bringing the integrated approach, we still recognize the situations or locations that others are in and apply the Scriptures to their lives while keeping authorial intent. The book is still a good tool for bible students to see the passage from different angles and social locations, albeit making the text play a primary role in keeping its textual determinacy. Therefore, I recommend that anyone who reads this book will do well to exercise great caution in identifying and discerning the employed interpretative method to apply in their situation.