Abstract
As Park describes the primary contribution of his book, it seeks to bring about ‘a critical retrieval of ethnoracial politics in Jesus’ crucifixion’ (p. 6). Park challenges the contention that the origins of early Christianity were non-racial. Instead, it is argued that the execution of Jesus was perpetrated by a dominant majority culture as a means of attacking and undermining a suppressed minority group.
After the introductory opening chapter, the argument is developed in four further chapters and a brief conclusion. Chapters two and three are mainly an attempt to deconstruct what is seen as the dominant discourse of non-ethnoracial readings of the Gospel of Matthew. Following on from this, chapters four and five seek to establish a new reading strategy based on minority readings, which foreground the politics of race and ethnicity. In chapter two there is an initial focus on the title ὁ βασιλεὺς τῶν Ἰουδαίων ‘the king of the Judeans’ as Park prefers to translate the Greek. It is argued that both traditional religious-theological and more recent socio-political readings overlook the ethnoracial dimensions of this title. In relation to the former, it is argued that the reading strategy of equating ὁ βασιλεὺς τῶν Ἰουδαίων with other messianic titles evacuate this title of its specific racial meaning, that Jesus is an ethnic Judean. In relation to the second dominant reading strategy, Park interacts with Warren Carter’s anti-imperial or socio-political reading. It is argued that although Carter’s approach does focus on the politics of marginalization, it fails to specify the basis of that marginalization (p. 24). Chapter three builds on these perspectives by seeking their logical foundations. It is suggested that such a non-ethnoracial reading is a result of the ‘deracialized readers and reading locations from which it stems’ (p. 48). According to Park what underpins this is ‘the dominant western representation of the white Jesus in modern Christian imagination’ (p. 48).
In the following two chapters Park constructs his alternative reading, first by constructing a minoritized approach and then through constructing an alternative ethnoracial reading on Matthew 26-27. The outcome of the methodological discussion is to suggest a ‘broader economy of minoritization’ that results in presenting ‘a minoritized Jesus that appeals to the racialized experiences of various groups’ (p. 101). This approach is then applied to the Matthean Passion Narrative to highlight various points where Jesus’ minority status is weaponized against him by the dominant political powers. Thus Park concludes, ‘[l]ynched on a Roman tree, Jesus is estranged as proud, inferior, illegal and foreign-other: “The Judaized King”’ (p. 136).
Park has presented a powerful and destabilizing reading of a story whose interpretation is seen to be dominated by a narrative shaped through an ideology of ‘white invisibility’. This challenging argument causes one to question previously unsurfaced assumptions, and to reassess what might have been regarded as neutral perspectives. It would be fascinating to see Park apply his reading strategy to other parts of the Gospel of Matthew, both those that foreground marginalization and those which seem to speak of universal hope and inclusion. However, it is sufficient to note that Park has whetted the appetite of his readers for more of his incisive, but in many ways destabilizing reading of the Matthean gospel.