Reading from the margins
Reading the Bible from the margins means giving precedence to the experience and interpretive voices of Africans, Asians and Latin Americans, of the nonelite, of women, of popular and indigenous religious traditions and of people outside the "mainstream" of professional biblical scholarship. R. S. Sugirtharajah, a reader in biblical hermeneutics at the University of Birmingham in England, has become a major spokesperson for efforts to read the Bible from the margins. His book opens up a new landscape and raises a host of new questions for those resting all too comfortably in their certitudes and traditional "biblical truths."
"Precolonial Reception," the book's first part, explores the role the Bible played when it was still a "marginal and minority" text in the cultures of Asia and Africa. During this time of pluralism and syncretism, the biblical story joined with other local stories and voices to offer wisdom and guidance for daily life. Since the Bible had no "strong civil or ecclesiastical authority" bolstering its credibility, it was only minimally influential.
The book's second part documents the growing hegemony of the Western conquerors and their Christian "scriptural imperialism." Sugirtharajah surveys the role the Bible played in the clash of cultures endemic to the period of Western colonial expansion. The Bible became a ready tool of the colonizers and aided their efforts. The British and Foreign Bible Society struggled to disseminate the Bible in the vernacular languages of all the colonies. But biblical dissemination came packaged with hermeneutical principles marked by the inculcation of European manners and customs. "Under the guise of biblicization" alien values encroached, displacing local cultures. "The juxtaposition of biblical and secular history [was used] as a convenient weapon against those who dared to resist colonial intervention." "Textualization" was privileged over indigenous oral cultures, and biblical religion was affirmed "as a historical faith" superior to local religions.
