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The Liberation of Method

The Ethics of Emancipatory Biblical Interpretation
  • ISBN-13: 9781506474588
  • Publisher: 1517 MEDIA
    Imprint: FORTRESS PRESS
  • By David Janzen
  • Price: AUD $84.99
  • Stock: 2 in stock
  • Availability: Order will be despatched as soon as possible.
  • Local release date: 27/06/2022
  • Format: Hardback (235.00mm X 159.00mm) 300 pages Weight: 680g
  • Categories: Biblical studies & exegesis [HRCG]
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The field of biblical studies has championed the historical-critical method as the only way to guarantee objective interpretation. But in recent decades, women, people of color, scholars from the Two-Thirds World, and members of the the LGBTQIA+ community have pursued hermeneutical approaches that provide interpretations useful for marginalized communities who see the Bible as a resource in their struggles against oppression. Such liberative strategies remain at the margins of the field. The Liberation of Method argues that this marginality must end, and that liberative methods should become the central methods of biblical studies. The first part of the book draws upon the hermeneutics of philosophical pragmatism to argue that, because readers are responsible for the interpretation, there is no necessary connection between the meanings they produce and the ones ancient authors may have intended. As a result, the historical-critical method, which prioritizes the study of the ancient contexts of biblical writings, becomes an optional rather than a necessary aspect of interpretation. The second part of The Liberation of Method argues that if we truly hope to create an ethical academic field, more privileged scholars and students must see their minoritized colleagues as the leaders in the field, as models of the ethical liberative standards of interpretation.
David Janzen is associate professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at Durham University in England. He has published numerous academic monographs on the Hebrew Bible using postcolonial theory, trauma theory, and socioanthropological methods. His works include The Violent Gift: Trauma's Subversion of the Deuteronomistic History's Narrative (2013) and Trauma and the Failure of History: Kings, Lamentations, and the Destruction of Jerusalem (2019). He has lived and taught in Guatemala, the United States, and England.
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