Abstract
Punt's essay collection is a good addition to show the significance of postcolonial studies for biblical studies. His aim is to show some possible ways postcolonial work can be helpful to biblical scholars, and to indicate how postcolonial studies can be practiced in exegetical work done on biblical texts. The book has ten chapters, and it is divided in two halves. The first three chapters deal with the theoretical underpinnings of the whole project, while the other chapters purport to present the applicability of the theories to some biblical (Pauline) materials.
Although the first part of the project is important for clarifying what postcolonial studies is from a historical and methodological perspective, and what it can add to the interpretative readings in biblical studies, these chapters are too jargon-driven and repetitive. The first chapter, “Possibilities and Prospects of Postcolonial Biblical Criticism: Doing Mind and Road Mapping,” is very good at explaining the concerns of postcolonial studies and why it is an important tool that is more than a passing fad. This chapter alone is enough to serve as the theoretical ground upon which the other more applied chapters could stand. There is no need for chapter 2, which is a more geography-specific contribution. In it the author is musing as to why postcolonial biblical criticism has not taken root in the context of Southern Africa where he works and where he thinks the critical stance of postcolonial studies would allow more nuanced theological discourses than what at present dominate most theological and ecclesiastical reasonings in that part of the world. The chapter, as a stand-alone piece, is good as far as it goes, but it does not belong in this book. The third chapter, “Postcolonial Theory as Academic Double Agent? Power, Ideology and Postcolonial Hermeneutics,” is good in that it pushes the reader to consider how postcolonial studies encourage one to read against the grain and retrieve alternative stories. However, a reader might wonder whether there is not too much theorizing and how much application of the theory is useful for biblical studies. Also, there is a lack of attention to editing this chapter for inclusion in the book. For example, note 3 is exactly the same as note 35 of chapter 2. Particularly helpful in this chapter, nevertheless, is the illuminating discussion and critique of liberation theology in positioning it vis-à-vis postcolonial studies (pp. 77–80).
The author is a seasoned biblical scholar. It was a delight to read his different chapters showing how biblical studies can use appropriately some insights from postcolonial studies. Chapter 4, “Competing Missions in Acts, Countervailing ‘Missionary’ Forces: Empire and Church in Acts,” places the narratives of Acts squarely within the political world of the Roman Empire, and illuminates the way disjointed communities of Jesus tried to make sense of their allegiance to Christ is such a world. The next chapter, “Paul and Postcolonial Hermeneutics: Marginality and/in Early Biblical Interpretation (2 Cor 10–13),” tries to probe
the role of (the use of) the Jewish Scriptures by Paul in an imperialist, and marginal context, and further to investigate their invocation amidst broader and narrower discourses of power which Paul maintained or endured, but in any case interacted with [p. 107].
The next chapter (“Postcolonial Clashing with Empire in 1 Thessalonians 4–5”) is good but underdeveloped.
One of the best chapters of the book is chapter seven (“Paul, Power and Philemon: ‘Knowing Your Place’ “). The author presents a well-balanced understanding of the short letter and he is quite cognizant of the major biblical interpreters of this short letter. His understanding of first-century slavery, which in the letter to Philemon is “not simply a theme … but informing the framework and gist of the letter” (p. 153), is excellent. For him, a postcolonial perspective on this short letter, which is first interested in the subaltern voice, is critical to understanding this correspondence. This chapter is essential reading for anyone interested in interpreting Paul's letter to Philemon. Chapters eight (“Paul, Body, and Resurrection in an Imperial Setting: Considering Hermeneutics and Power”) and nine (“Negotiating Creation in Imperial Times, Romans 8:18–30”) are also useful and present suggestive reading insights that may help one go beyond some usual (too theological and otherworldly) interpretative conclusions. I was particularly struck by how the author paid close attention to the issue of embodiment in Paul's apocalyptic hermeneutics, and how he understands Paul's thinking about the body as a work in progress (p. 186). The importance of the discourse of the body, the author reminds us, needs to be noted, because body was continuously constructed and “was not simply there but had always been created rhetorically” (p. 192). I particularly appreciate the following statement with regard to body and resurrection in Paul: “The dislodgment of the power of death, one of Empire's most threatening weapons, through the resurrection, meant the annihilation of the real power behind the tyranny” (pp. 185–86). In the chapter on Romans 8, the author brings beautifully apocalyptic thinking with empire imaginations. Rome's imperial ideology conceived the world to align with its cosmological assertions. Paul's ambiguous position vis-à-vis the Empire is noted in a particularly nuanced way. The author asserts that “the language of pain and suffering in Romans 8 comes close to a lament, especially when used together with credo recital and songs of thanksgiving” (p. 207). The remaking of creation in Paul's thinking in Romans 8, the author proposes, is about (re)-imagining a new reality, a structural change, that is dominated not by the visions of the Roman Empire, but by God's. Dominion certainly remains, but it is from a different source.
The strength of the author's contributions is the ways in which he presents a balanced picture of Paul. The reframing is well-accomplished. The last chapter (“Pauline Agency in Postcolonial Perspective: Subverter of, or Agent for Empire?”) shows how a postcolonial optic is susceptible to allow an interpreter to come to terms with the ambivalence of Paul's and other New Testament texts in how they depict and relate to empire. In this sense, the book has succeeded. The book is well-balanced and presents much to think about. The editing, however, could have been better.