Latino/a/x Biblical Interpretation Related to the Hebrew Bible

Introduction

Offering a literature review of recent and current trends in Latino/a biblical interpretation related to the Hebrew Bible (HB) is more difficult than it might seem at first blush (for a recent look at Latino/a/x biblical interpretation related to the New Testament [NT] see Lozada Jr. 2017). The primary difficulty has to do with the question of ‘what counts?’ as Latino/a biblical interpretation related to the Hebrew scriptures. In fact, ironically, precisely that question itself constitutes one of the major issues that Latino/a biblical interpretation and scholars—both NT and HB or Old Testament (OT) specialists—have striven to unpack. It is fundamentally a question about identity—ethnic/racial identity, of course, signaled by terms such as Latino/a, Hispanic, or ‘minoritized’ (cf. Bailey, Liew, and Segovia 2009). Yet it is also a question of scholarly or academic identity—how one’s Latino/a-ness impacts one’s professional work.

One might ask, for example, if Latino/a biblical interpretation of the HB is not simply scholarly work on the Hebrew scriptures done by those who claim, or are ascribed, a Latino/a identity. If so, what does Latino/a signify in terms of ethnic identity? Is it a synonym for Hispanic—a term that many view as a tool of categorization and control offered by dominant U.S. culture, introduced as it was in the 1980 U.S. census? And what does Hispanic signify? Spanish speaking? From a Spanish speaking country? If so, what about the majority of Latinos/as in the contemporary U.S. born there and for whom Spanish is not their primary language? Does ‘Latino/a’ only include people currently living in the United States (or North America?) who are originally from, or the descendants of people from, countries in Latin America and certain areas of the Caribbean? Or, should the term Latino/a include Latin Americans and others living in the Caribbean, or perhaps even Iberians? One might also ask whether the terminology Latino/a, which seeks to be gender inclusive, is adequate. Or, if Latinx, which seeks to transcend a perceived gender binary represented by ‘Latino/a’, is to be preferred? From this point on in the essay, I will regularly deploy the more gender flexible term ‘Latinx’ as a way of signaling not only a move away from gender binaries, but also the fact that ethnic Latinx identities intersect with sex and gender (and other) identity constructions.

One might also perhaps wonder if, when we speak of Latinx biblical scholarship on the HB, we are to be concerned less with scholarly work on these texts undertaken by Latinx or Hispanic people, or more properly with work pursued from certain scholarly, theoretical orientations and positions: for example, postcolonial or liberationist standpoints, borderlands or Latino studies perspectives; or through particular hermeneutic lenses generated by some understanding of Latinx experience, i.e., ‘latinamente’ (cf. Carroll 2017: 311-12) or ‘Latinx-ly’ or ‘through Hispanic eyes’, as one early and important articulation of Latinx biblical interpretation (González 1996) has put it. Or, is Latino/a biblical interpretation scholarly work undertaken in, from, and on behalf of Latinx or Hispanic communities, especially communities of faith? Or might it include all these things and possibly something else too?

For a review article such as this, therefore, some decisions about what to include and leave out obviously need to be made at the outset. Some provisional boundaries need to be drawn around Latinx biblical interpretation related to the HB. Recognizing that others might very well and quite legitimately suggest other provisional boundaries, or argue for firmer or more fluid borders, this article will consider scholarly work from the last decade or two—roughly since the turn of the millennium—that has been undertaken by:

This means that I will only in passing engage the work of:

These sorts of boundaries within Latinx biblical studies, between HB and NT, and even between ‘Bible’ and the broader fields of Latinx theology and religious studies, are not merely provisional ones. They are in very real ways arbitrary ones too. The disciplinary division between HB and NT, for instance, is one that derives from European and majority culture North American scholarship, while such authoritative boundary drawing and policing is itself something that Latinx and other minoritized or non-dominant approaches to biblical studies (e.g., African-American, Africana, Asian and Asian-American, feminist, gender, queer, and so forth) often attempt to disrupt. Some Latinx or Hispanic HB/OT scholars are, for example, profoundly influenced by the work of Latinx NT scholars (e.g., Fernando Segovia) as well as Latin American thinkers inside and outside of biblical studies (e.g., in HB, see Severino Croato 1987; more broadly, see Támez 1982; 2000; cf. Pilarski and Segovia forthcoming; in philosophy, see Dussel 1985), especially as regards hermeneutical and theoretical issues. Other specifically Christian (as opposed, say, to secular or Jewish) Latinx scholars are regularly professionally concerned with both testaments and broader theological, religious, and social issues facing real Latinx ecclesial groups and communities. Latinx biblical scholars also regularly draw significantly on a range of other disciplines in their biblical work, including borderland studies, Latino studies, postcolonial/decolonial theory, gender studies, literary and critical theory, sociology, anthropology, and so forth. In this regard, of course, Latinx biblical interpretation is part of a broader turn in academia toward interdisciplinarity and it participates in the diversification of methods and approaches to the study of the Bible that has been evident in biblical studies over the last generation or so.

The concern among Latinx biblical scholars with sketching and understanding Latinx identities and considering the ways in which such identities can, do, or ought to impact (or not) our biblical scholarship and interpretation is thus a significant, and perhaps the most characteristic, element of recent Latinx biblical interpretation on the HB. Hence, after discussing recent contributions of Latinx HB scholars to broader questions of identity and what constitutes Latinx biblical scholarship or interpretation, I will consider contributions in areas that emerge from, but can be analytically distinguished from, these fundamental questions about Latinx scholarly identities: (1) the Bible and contemporary questions of migration and diaspora existence; (2) insistence on a more robust recognition or insertion of Latinx biblical interpretation in biblical studies through, for example, implicit or explicit critiques of aspects of mainstream (largely, but not only, historical-critical) biblical studies, the production of Latinx hermeneutic perspectives and readings of biblical texts that draw on such interpretive lenses, and the deployment of a range of critical discourses that broaden critical engagement with texts and the shape of biblical scholarship; and (3) the provision of educational resources for Latinx communities of faith.

What Is a Latinx Biblical Scholar? What Is Latinx Biblical Interpretation?

Latinx HB or OT scholars have for some time participated in a robust conversation about what constitutes Latinx biblical interpretation and scholarship and how one might identify as a Latinx biblical scholar—taking up the sorts of questions noted above in the introduction. A somewhat older statement by Justo González (1996), a church historian and theologian—but also an important figure in establishing a Latinx presence in biblical and theological studies more broadly in the North American academy—has been, and to an extent remains, a sort of touchstone for introducing both Latinx and non-Latinx students and scholars to the notion of Latinx biblical interpretation. In an oft-quoted passage, González describes the phenomenon as

the perspective of those who claim their Hispanic [or Latinx] identity as part of their hermeneutical baggage and who also read the Scripture within the context of a commitment to the Latino struggle to become all that God wants us and all of the world to be—in other words the struggle for salvation/liberation (1996: 28-29).

As a basic or introductory formulation or description of the concerns and structure of much Latinx biblical interpretation, it might be hard to do better than González does. Nonetheless, Latinx biblical scholars have continued to articulate what Latinx biblical interpretation consists of. The work of HB/OT scholars in this regard has been undertaken in close connection with NT scholars, and also with Latinx scholars in other theological and religious studies disciplines.

As will become evident below, most works on Latinx or Hispanic biblical interpretation or hermeneutics by HB scholars address questions of Latinx identities and what hermeneutical impact such identities do, can, or ought to have in biblical scholarship undertaken by those who claim or have been ascribed a Latinx or Hispanic identity. The most important recent work on questions of identity in Latinx biblical interpretation, however, is a collection of essays edited by NT scholars Francisco Lozada, Jr. and Fernando Segovia (2014). In this volume, ten NT scholars along with six HB scholars (Avalos 2014; Botta 2014; Cuéllar 2014; García-Alfonso 2014; Pilarski 2014; Sandoval 2014) were asked to reflect upon their identities and academic work as ‘Latino/a’ biblical scholars. Most of the contributors—working in dialogue with different critical, theoretical discourses (e.g., identity studies, critical race theory, feminist-gender studies, queer theory, postcolonialism, and so forth)—reject essentialist or ‘coherentist’ understandings of identity. Rather, Latinx identity, and therefore what constitutes Latinx biblical scholarship, is more fully understood by these scholars to be something that is constructed, in flux, changing, provisional, often contested, and sometimes voluntarily adopted by an individual, sometimes ascribed.

This understanding of identity as constructed, in flux, changing, provisional, and adopted by or ascribed to individuals is certainly reflected in Timothy J. Sandoval’s contribution and is rather evident in the contributions of others, too. In ‘How Did You Get to Be a Latino Biblical Scholar? Scholarly Identity and Biblical Scholarship’, Sandoval’s (2014: 263) starting point is his own experience in negotiating ethnic identity—both outside and especially inside the academy—as a person of Mexican and Scandinavian descent living in the U.S. He writes: ‘There is no stable or unchanging set of criteria upon which our identities— “racial”, ethnic, or otherwise—are situated. There is no natural or authentic core to being Latina/o, Puerto Rican, gay, working class, African-American, or whatever that can merely be discovered or uncovered within us to reveal our true and unchanging essence’. Ahida Pilarski (2014: 237), in a similar vein, explains in her essay ‘A Latina Biblical Critic and Intellectual: At the Intersection of Ethnicity, Gender, Hermeneutics, and Faith’, that understanding ethnicity ‘requires a constant process of identification that acknowledges and reevaluates the histories of traditions and the heritages of cultural expressions, and appropriates them—critically—in current narratives and discourses, creating in this way a transforming ethnic heritage and discourse that upholds the primary value of human dignity for every person’. As a Latina, however, Pilarski (2014: 237-41) is concerned not merely to consider how, and that, gender identity is constructed, as was Sandoval, but also to reflect on how gender and ethnic categories intersect to inform the construction of a Latina (or Latino or Latinx) identity (cf. Pilarski 2011).

In her essay in Latino/a Biblical Hermeneutics, Cristina García-Alfonso (2014), too, is interested in the intersectionality of gender and ethnic categories in the construction of her Latina identity and identity as a Latina biblical scholar. García-Alfonso also underscores the importance of her identity as one born and raised outside of the North American context, in Cuba. Pilarski alluded to her Latin American origins and has, in fact, co-edited a volume offering a Latin American, liberationist perspective on the Pentateuch (Botta and Pilarski 2014). But García-Alfonso perhaps distinguishes somewhat more sharply between her North American Latina identity and her Caribbean or Cuban identity, though she regards both as important and constitutive of her identity as a Latina biblical scholar. Building on earlier work (2010), García-Alfonso sees the biblical character of Rahab (Josh. 2) as a person whose identity in the Israelite account is also a space of intersection—she is a woman, foreigner, and a sexual minority (2014: 157-63) who in the idiom of Cuban Spanish is resolviendo—struggling decisively to survive and strategically exercising power (pp. 154-63).

Together with Pilarski’s essay, García-Alfonso’s reflections point up an important lacuna in the ‘identity reflections’ of some Latino or male Hispanic scholars represented in Lozada Jr. and Segovia (2014) (and in other articulations of Latinx biblical interpretation) who regularly turn out to be less concerned to explore the way gender intersects with and helps to construct their own particular ethnic Latino identities. As Lozada Jr. (2014b: 369) has also noted in his postscript to Latino/a Biblical Hermeneutics, this fact suggests another fact about the exploration of identity among some Latinx scholars—namely, a dearth of analyses about the ways in which other identity formations—from class considerations to sexual orientations and beyond—intersect with ethnic categories to construct particular Latinx identities. In his perceptive review of Latino/a Biblical Hermeneutics, Tat-siong Benny Liew puts the point even more forcefully when he writes, ‘despite the fact that the call for intersectional analysis has been made for at least twenty years both inside and outside of biblical studies, such analysis has not really been pursued in Latino/a biblical criticism’. Rather, ‘the only intersectional analysis seems to be limited to that between race/ethnicity and gender’ (2015: 5), though one might think that the construction of national identities that Pilarski and García-Alfonso (and as we will see, Alejandro F. Botta) evoke in their essays in Latino/a Biblical Interpretation can also be analytically distinguished from ethnic identity construction.

The shifting, constructed, and contested space of what constitutes both Latinx identity and identities as Latinx HB scholars or interpreters is also taken up in the contributions of Botta and Avalos. In significant ways, both scholars qualify their identities as Latino biblical scholars, and therefore presumably also their scholarly work as examples of Latino biblical scholarship. In his articulation of his identity as a Latino critic (or not) Botta (2014), like Pilarski and García-Alfonso, alludes to his Latin American origins. However, more fully than either, he privileges his Italian descent as an Argentinian in the articulation of his ethnic-national identity. Like Pilarski and García-Alfonso, he too recognizes that a Latino identity has been ascribed to him in the United States and affirms ‘my “Latinicity”, my being a Latino critic in biblical studies’ in the U.S. context since ‘I feel part of this group [Latinx people] that is discriminated against in almost every realm of U.S. life’ (Botta 2014: 115). Yet aspects of Botta’s scholarship at times can be described both as liberationist (e.g., Botta and Pilarski 2014; Botta and Andiñach 2009) and rather unproblematically as historical-critical (e.g., Botta 2008; 2009), though he would describe the latter as ‘a holistic historical-critical method’ that ‘takes seriously into consideration factors often left behind by traditional approaches, such as social class, social location, and gender’ (2014: 116). All this underscores the complexity of his and other Latinx biblical scholars’ identities and the character of their scholarly work. Indeed, Botta seems to refuse what Sandoval (2014: 276), drawing on Kwame Anthony Appiah (1994), has called a ‘too tightly scripted’ Latinx scholarly identity.

In contrast to Botta, Avalos (2014), as one born in the U.S., accepts rather unproblematically his Latino, in particular Mexican American, identity, and so his essay does not explore much what that means. He does, however, reject labeling his biblical scholarship as Latino biblical scholarship. At the outset of ‘Rethinking Latino Hermeneutics: An Atheist Perspective’, he says forthrightly, ‘I am not a Latino biblical scholar. I am a biblical scholar who happens to be Latino’ (2014: 59). Indeed, as Avalos himself points out, his most well-known scholarly endeavors center on the one hand around understanding illness in ancient Near Eastern texts and contexts (including the Bible and ancient Israel), and on the other hand, with championing a non-religionist or secular approach to biblical studies, including ‘deconstructing the principal hermeneutical strategies used by most biblical scholars’ whose work often seems to him illegitimately to smuggle in unwarranted theological presuppositions and so function partly as ‘apologetics’ (2014: 59; cf. 1995; 2007). For Avalos (2014: 69), his ‘thorough secularism’ explains ‘a lot more’ about his biblical scholarship than does his Latino identity. In this regard, Liew’s review of Latino/a Biblical Hermeneutics is again apt. He wonders whether or why the various components of one’s identity need to be ranked or privileged, querying, ‘What would it take for Avalos to start looking at the Bible and, for lack of a better term, “disability” [and one might add “secularity”] alongside rather than aside from race/ethnicity?’ (2015: 5).

In short, then, the volume by Lozada Jr. and Segovia suggests that a lively conversation regarding what constitutes Latinx identity, along with what makes for Latinx biblical interpretation, continues among those who in some way claim, or have ascribed to them, identities as Latinx people and Latinx HB scholars. Lozada Jr. (2014b: 365) has summarized matters well, asking whether Latinx biblical interpretation and identity is ‘a matter of being and/or practice’. Lozada Jr. has also noted that the scholarly work of Latinx Bible scholars often seeks to correlate events and figures in the biblical texts ‘with similar and concurrent experiences of marginality among Latino/as’ (2014a: 196). We have already seen some of this, for example, in García-Alfonso’s analysis of Rahab in the context of her reflections on being a Latina biblical critic (2014). Yet correlating features of biblical texts with contemporary Latinx experience is evident in other ways in Latinx biblical scholarship too—none more obvious (or urgent perhaps) than in Latinx scholarly efforts to bring biblical resources to bear on contemporary contexts of international migration and diaspora existence.

The Bible and Immigration

For many, if not most, Latinx scholars of the Bible, migration—from especially Latin America and the Caribbean to the U.S.—is not merely a contentious issue of national discourse. It constitutes a profound social concern that personally impacts many of us—individually, our families, and the communities that formed us and to which many of us remain connected and responsible. It would surely be a rare thing to find a Latinx or Hispanic scholar of the Bible (at least from theological schools) who in the last decade and a half has not written on or offered a presentation on Christian or biblical perspectives on ‘immigration’.

The Hebrew scriptures, of course, prominently speak of individuals and communities ‘on the move’ (cf. Ruiz 2011a) from one home to another—whether Eve and Adam expelled from the garden, Abraham leaving Ur, the Hebrews escaping from Egypt, Ruth leaving behind Moab, or the Israelites and Judeans carried away to and returning from exile. What’s more, a core aspect of the Hebrew Bible’s social ethic—the regular and prominent concern with the gēr (the sojourner, migrant, or ‘alien’)—is sometimes explicitly articulated in view of the chosen people’s own experience as sojourners or migrants. As Lev. 19.33-34 says, ‘When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien…you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt…’ (NRSV; cf. Exod. 22.21; see further Exod. 23.9; Deut. 1.16; 10.18; 27.19). It is hardly surprising, then, that important work by Latinx biblical scholars on the HB has focused on the question of the ‘Bible and immigration’.

At the turn of the millennium, Costa Rican HB scholar Jose E. Ramírez-Kidd in his Alterity and Identity in Israel: The in the Old Testament (1999) offered a significant historical-critical and linguistic study of the gēr or stranger in the First Testament. Since then, Latinx biblical scholars whose center of life is in North America have also offered treatments of the ‘Bible and immigration’ designed to be more accessible to contemporary communities of faith wrestling with how to respond to the migrant other.

In Latino/a Biblical Hermeneutics, Segovia (2014: 4-31) highlighted recent and influential programmatic statements regarding Latinx biblical interpretation offered by several scholars. These statements, of course, regularly explore questions of Latinx identities and hermeneutic lenses or perspectives, even if they do not always do so with the breadth and detail that the essays in Latino/a Biblical Hermeneutics collectively are able to. The proposals Segovia discusses include not only the work of church historian Justo González (1996), mentioned above, but also the diaspora hermeneutic developed by theologian Luis R. Rivera-Rodriguez (2007) and the contribution of NT scholar Efrain Agosto (2010). M. Daniel Carroll R[odas] (2013b; 2017) and Jean-Pierre Ruiz (2011a) might be said (see below) to represent OT scholars whom Segovia identifies as offering significant proposals regarding the shape of Latinx biblical interpretation. (To this list Segovia’s own substantive contributions to mapping Latinx biblical interpretation and hermeneutics must be added [esp. 2009; cf. 1995a; 1995b; 1998; 1999; 2000; 2014]). Central to the work of both Ruiz’s and Carroll’s Latinx biblical interpretation, moreover, is a concern with reading the entire Christian Bible (Old and New Testaments) in light of Latinx experiences of migration and diaspora, and the desire to present the Bible as a theological and ethical resource for communities of faith that wish to explore contemporary questions of ‘immigration’.

In a number of articles and books, Carroll’s Latino biblical scholarship emerges from his hybrid or mestizaje (mixed race) identity as a child of a North American father and a Guatemalan mother. Because he has spent significant time in Guatemala, both growing up and as a professor, his Latino or Hispanic biblical interpretation is also one significantly informed by global and diasporic perspectives, a view developed in part at least in conversation with Rivera-Rodriquez’s diaspora hermeneutic mentioned above (2013b; 2017; cf. Rivera-Rodriguez 2007). Carroll’s work also emerges from within a broadly evangelical perspective. He claims, for instance, perhaps more strongly than some might, that ‘Latino/a scholarship across the theological spectrum upholds some level of biblical normativity’ (2017: 315). He himself, however, eschews any simplistic theological or hermeneutic claims about textual meaning. Rather, the sort of global and diasporic perspective his identity affords, he believes, allows one to ‘bring different and valid insights into the biblical text that deserve to be heard’ (2013b: 7). For Carroll, ‘self-consciously reading the text from a particular place’ is ‘helpful and necessary’ (2013b: 11). ‘To read the Scripture latinamente ’ (bold original), he writes, ‘is to recognize and embrace the distinct realities of Latino/a history that can profoundly impact how the Bible is read. These include the difficulties of longtime social marginalization and discrimination’ (2017: 312). Not surprisingly, then, significant aspects of Carroll’s work, undertaken through his global, diasporic, and Latino identity, begin with questions of international migration (especially from Latin America to the U.S.), though Carroll has helpfully suggested that ‘“Diaspora” is a better label than “immigrant”, as the term encompasses both first-generation immigrants and their communities and their descendants’ (2013b: 9).

Carroll thus finds in the HB a number of texts that are ripe for re-examination in light of a global, diasporic, Hispanic hermeneutic. Among the passages he scrutinizes is, for example, ‘Abram’s trek to Egypt to sojourn there with his wife and clan (Gen. 12)’. In Abram instructing Sarai to tell Pharaoh that ‘he is her brother, not her husband’, Carroll sees the ‘kind of ruse used by the powerless’ in order to survive in hostile environments (2013b: 17). For Carroll, ‘a diaspora point of view also may offer a different appreciation of the encounter between Joseph and his brothers’ (2013b: 19; cf. 2017: 318). Carroll, for example, valorizes Joseph as a ‘bilingual cultural hybrid’ who was ‘God’s instrument to preserve his people’ and for whom ‘assimilation did not mean severing his roots’. Like Joseph, Carroll concludes, ‘Many of us are bilingual, bicultural, and can contribute to the common good because of who we are’ (2013b: 19). Similarly, Carroll sees in the story of Ruth a further mirroring in Scripture of a diasporic and hybrid existence, a way of life that requires one to negotiate the ‘odd zone of being from two places at once’. For Carroll, Ruth can help readers—both diasporic people and others—recognize that ‘integration is hard and full of challenging relationships and complicated moments’ (2013b: 22).

If Carroll’s articulation of his hermeneutic emerges from his hybrid, diasporic, Latino, or Hispanic identity and experiences, his fullest and most influential work on migration and the Bible is presented in light of this positionality. Christians at the Border: Immigration, the Church, and the Bible (2013a) is presented as a kind of guide or resource for Christians who wish to reflect biblically and theologically on contemporary situations of migration. After suggesting that for the dominant or majority culture of North America significant levels of migration from Latin America to the U.S. might be best regarded as an ‘opportunity’ and not an ‘invasion’, Carroll offers two chapters in which he explores biblical texts from the Hebrew scriptures, and then a third section that takes up NT passages.

The stories of Abram and Sarai, Joseph, and Ruth are again among the HB passages Carroll analyzes in the first HB section of Christians at the Border, but his discussion of these texts are, importantly, framed by another: an initial consideration of Genesis 1 and the notion that all humans—including migrants—are created in the divine image (2013a: 45-51). ‘Immigration should not be argued in the abstract’, he insists. ‘Immigrants are humans, and as such they are made in God’s image’ (2013a: 47). Though perhaps an obvious point, Carroll is astute enough to know that it bears reiteration as a first principle especially for communities of faith of the majority culture who experience the heat and passion of negotiating real social change in their midst. In a second section on the Hebrew scriptures, Carroll turns his attention to Torah, or the laws of the Bible, regarding fair and just treatment of the sojourner or alien (2013a: 75-101). For Carroll, the texts reveal three motivations for this moral impulse: Israel itself was a sojourner in Egypt; it is a concrete way of loving one’s neighbor as oneself (Lev. 19.18); and it reflects an imitation of God’s character who in concrete fashion ‘loves the helpless’, including the sojourner (2013a: 91).

Turning to the NT, Carroll highlights the story of the holy family forced to flee their home as refugees in Matthew 2 (2013a: 105-106), as well as Jesus’ broad teaching regarding acceptance and treatment of social outsiders (2013a: 106-16). Carroll likewise discusses the metaphor of ‘Christians as Sojourners’ developed in 1 Peter (2013a: 116-19) and the NT ethic of hospitality (2013a: 119-21). For Carroll, ‘the Hispanic experience is close to what those early Christians went through’ and thus can ‘contribute to the majority culture Christians’ understanding of the exhortations and promises of the Word of God’ (2013a: 119-21). What’s more, as sojourners, migrants are due Christian hospitality. Or, ‘at the very least, the recognition of our sinfulness and of the boundless forgiveness of God should leaven Christian attitudes toward outsiders in need—even those whom we know are here [in the U.S.] as undocumented immigrants’ (2013a: 121).

Indeed, perhaps the most important aspect of Christians at the Border is precisely Carroll’s recognition that many majority culture Christians in the U.S. are troubled by the undocumented legal status of many migrants to the U.S. He thus offers a discussion of Rom. 13.1-7, a passage that exhorts first-century Roman Christians to be subject to secular authorities and their laws. For many contemporary Christians—especially those who are politically and culturally resistant to immigration reform that seeks to institutionalize more welcoming and generous public policies vis-à-vis undocumented migrants and immigrant communities—the passage trumps the broad and deep moral trajectory of the OT that insists that kindness and justice be shown to the migrant or alien (gēr). As Carroll notes, ‘If one begins here [with Romans 13], any sensible discussion about Hispanic immigration is quickly aborted. Either one has proper documentation or not; either one tried to go through established channels, irrespective of what that actually entails or not’ (2013a: 122). For Carroll, however, Romans 13 is decidedly not the place to start. Rather, the ‘biblical orientation that includes the centrality of the importance of the immigrant as made in the image of God’, along with the OT’s ‘ethic of compassion’ and the thrust of the NT message ‘as a whole’ to ‘love the outsider and be hospitable’ ought to be the foundation for contemporary Christian ethical consideration of immigration. Carroll further, and astutely, points readers to the Christian virtues of Romans 12 and reminds them of the brokenness, if not injustice, of U.S. immigration law. He writes: ‘If one believes that these laws do not fit the teaching of the Bible and the ethical demands of the heart of God, some Christians will not say, ‘What is it about “illegal” that you don’t understand?’. Instead, ‘they might declare with the apostles Peter and John, “Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges” (Acts 4.19)’ (2013a: 123).

Although Ruiz’s doctoral dissertation focused on the NT book of Revelation, his key work of Latinx biblical interpretation, Reading from the Edges: The Bible and People on the Move (2011a), lays heavy emphasis on texts from the Hebrew scriptures. The second half of the title of Ruiz’s book says much about how he envisions the focus of his work as a Latino or Hispanic biblical scholar. It must be relevant to the wellbeing of Latinx or Hispanic communities. The phrase ‘people on the move’ underscores a significant aspect of the experiences and struggles of many Latinos/as in North America already mentioned—the realities of migration. Like Carroll and others, Ruiz, of course, recognizes that it is not the case that all Latinx people in the United States are migrants. Far from it. But whether as actual migrants, members of migrant families (e.g., children or grandchildren of immigrants), or through voluntary or ascribed identification with migrants and migrant communities, Ruiz (2011a: 2) makes clear that the experiences of a diaspora community, a ‘people on the move’, are substantial for many Latinx individuals in North America. As Arturo Bañuelos, whom Ruiz cites, has put it: Immigration ‘is a defining issue that is about us—all of us Latinos—and about how we will shape the future of our church and our country’ (Bañuelos 2010: internet edn).

The first half of the title of Ruiz’s book, however, is just as revealing as its subtitle. ‘Reading from the Edges’ hints that for Ruiz biblical interpretation ought to be a critical practice. Most fundamentally, as Segovia (2014: 22) aptly remarks, this part of the book’s title ‘signals a move beyond traditional strategies for bringing the Bible to bear on Latino/a migration’. Ruiz, that is, understands himself to be examining biblical passages ‘that are rarely marshaled in service of arguments on behalf of people on the move or of public policy reform regarding immigrants and refugees’ (2011a: 6). In the HB this means, practically, focusing less attention on some of the texts Carroll focuses on—e.g., the legal texts of Torah—and offering interpretations of passages such as Genesis 12, which describes Abram and Sarai as ‘economic refugees’ (also treated by Carroll); Ezekiel 12 and 20, which portray ‘the prophet-as-political-exile’; and Nehemiah 13, which ‘offers a postexilic perspective on language and assimilation’ (2011a: 9). In addition, Ruiz takes up an examination of Matthew’s ‘Parable of the Day Laborers’ to note that ‘the face of a gracious and generous God’ is not to be found in the parable’s ‘vineyard owner’. Rather, the parable can move readers to ‘recognize the face of Christ in the faces of today’s immigrant day laborers’ (2011a: 122). Ruiz closes Reading from the Edges with a fascinating exploration of Christopher Columbus’s El libro de las profecías (The Book of Prophecies) (see West and Kling 1991) in order to consider ‘the foundational (and abiding) implication of the Bible (as visionary charter and as the vehicle of a sometimes violent evangelism) in the construction of the Spanish empire, its colonial legacy in the Americas, and the echoes of that history into the present day’ (2011a: 135).

Yet Ruiz’s title ‘Reading from the Edges’ hints at a further aspect of his critical stance—one that he shares with Carroll (2013b; 2017) and in some sense with all of the contributors to Latino/a Biblical Hermeneutics already discussed—namely, the recognition of the situatedness or contextual nature of all understanding and hence the multiplicity of meanings that any particular biblical text might evoke for diverse readers. Of course, one might be hard pressed these days to find any critical, biblical scholar who would not subscribe to such a view, at least generally. Yet Ruiz and many other Latinx biblical scholars—at least when self-consciously producing Latinx biblical scholarship and not privileging some other aspect of their scholarly identities—might suggest more forcefully than some other Bible scholars (though hardly more than all others) that such a reading position ‘from the edges’, socially and culturally, ought to be hermeneutically privileged. Ruiz thus highlights ‘my own situatedness as a flesh-and-blood reader with a variety of complex overlapping identity markers (for example, as a male, as a Roman Catholic, as a Nuyorican, as an academic), while recognizing that other readers … may or may not share either my convictions or my context’ (2011a: 7). What’s more, Ruiz is clear that ‘the Bible does not speak with a single voice, and to read as though this were not the case fails to do justice to its complex textures’ (2011a: 70). Not surprisingly, because of its concern with Latinx people and migration, as well as for ‘reading from the edges’, Ruiz’s work is also profoundly concerned with issues of justice and can be described as activist or liberationist—even as Ruiz takes a sympathetic but critical stance vis-à-vis liberation theology (cf. Segovia 2014: 25, who makes similar observations). If Carroll seeks to invite readers, some of whom he knows will be resistant to his project, to understand his Latino/Hispanic, diaspora, global hermeneutic and to consider how the biblical witness might transform one’s view of migrant others, Ruiz more straightforwardly stakes out and claims an activist position. Ruiz’s proposals likewise reveal his work as one that emerges from Roman Catholic traditions, though hardly in a way that Reading from the Edges might be considered any more parochial than Carroll’s work, which emerges from his Protestant-Evangelical context.

Recognition: Reading, Method, Critique

In Latino/a Biblical Hermeneutics, Segovia has noted that Latinx biblical criticism is ‘a desire for self-assertion and self-introjection’ (2014: 20; cf. Liew 2015: 5 who cites the same passage), a kind of longing for recognition. Sandoval (2014: 274) makes a similar claim in the same volume by citing Charles Taylor: ‘Due recognition is not just a courtesy we owe people. It is a vital human need’. In his review of Latino/a Biblical Hermeneutics, Liew points out that other essays in Latino/a Biblical Interpretation make similar points. Yet Liew also astutely asks, ‘Whose recognition may Latino/a biblical criticism be seeking?’ and suggests that the essays in the Lozada Jr. and Segovia volume ‘imply that recognition from the dominant (read: white) biblical studies guild is desired’ (2015: 5). Sandoval (forthcoming), for instance, characterizes at least some Latinx biblical scholarship as a kind of call to the broader guild ‘to move over’ or ‘hacerse más allá’ and make space for a range of Latinx biblical scholarship. Liew’s evaluation thus may be right, at least to an extent, although individual Latinx scholars will want to provide a fuller narrative as to how his is an accurate formulation (or not) in their particular cases.

One way to understand how a desire for recognition by Latinx biblical scholars(hip) is articulated is through a consideration of scholarly practices that constitute self-assertion or insertion. Several strategies for how Latinx biblical scholarship of the HB asserts or introjects itself into the professional guild of biblical studies can be discerned. The proffering of various Latinx hermeneutic positions and optics together with offering readings of biblical texts through those interpretive lenses is one way. The taking up by Latinx scholars of diverse methods and critical theory in interdisciplinary fashion in order to illumine texts and the practice of scholarship in ways that can account for and acknowledge the particularities and knowledges of Latinx people and communities is another. The offering of explicit critiques of dominant biblical studies, usually but not only of historical-critical modes, is another mode of self-assertion and call for recognition. These three strategies, however, should hardly be considered distinct or isolatable. Rather they are regularly discernible in combination, implicitly or explicitly, in individual works of Latinx biblical scholarship. In all this, of course, Latinx biblical scholarship is again not alone. Rather it once more participates in larger trends in biblical studies, which after nearly half a century now regularly recognizes (to some extent) the work of feminist (now feminist and gender), queer, liberationist, poststructuralist/postmodern, postcolonial, and various other forms of ‘minoritized’ scholarship, most of which receive some treatment in recent, important handbooks on method in HB studies (e.g., LeMon and Richards 2009; Brown 2017).

The articulations of Latinx biblical hermeneutics, optics, and interpretive programs by scholars such as González (Church History), Segovia (NT), Agosto (NT), and especially Carroll and Ruiz in relation to the HB have already been mentioned. As we saw, Carroll and Ruiz were concerned not merely to articulate theoretical positions, but to offer readings of actual HB texts, especially in light of contemporary realities of migration to North America from Latin America and the Caribbean.

To the work of these two HB-oriented scholars, one might now add the contributions of Francisco O. García-Treto. García-Treto has articulated what he has called an ‘Hispanic U.S. Protestant’ hermeneutic (1999) and what might be considered a Cuban diasporic optic (2009). Via these hermeneutic positions, he also reads texts, such as Lamentations 1 and 2, with his Latinx, diasporic optic facilitating and sanctioning his interpretive decisions—for example, his siding ‘with the Daughter Zion’ in her complaints against the divine (2009: 74). His Latinx, diaspora hermeneutic also entails drawing on the cultural resources of the Cuban diaspora (e.g., the literature of Daína Chaviano)—‘my history, my culture, and my identity’ (2009: 75)—in his work of biblical interpretation. Outside the ranks of biblical scholars, theologian Maya Rivera Rivera has offered an intellectually rich response to minoritized biblical scholarship, including that of Latinx scholars, in the important volume They Were All Together in One Place? Toward Minority Biblical Criticism (2009). She wonders: ‘What is the theology of racial and ethnic approaches to biblical interpretation? What kind of God is affirmed by their methodological choices? What kind of creation do they speak of?’ (2009: 313). For Rivera, the interpretive approach of the minoritized, including Latinx, biblical scholars of They Were All Together in One Place? is a kind of ‘relational hermeneutic’ that issues ‘a multiplicity of readings in the encounters between the relational singularity of readers and texts’. For Rivera, then, ‘[i]nstead of a controlling power to stop the multiplying flow of interpretation, God may be seen as the spirit of relations that cannot but continue to evolve and complicate truth: God with us and between us’ (2009: 327).

An example of Latinx HB scholarship that inserts itself into academic biblical studies by drawing on distinct critical discourses in creative and robust interdisciplinary fashion is Julián Andrés González Holguín’s Cain, Abel, and the Politics of God: An Agambenian Reading of Genesis 4:1-16 (2018). González’s reception history of the famous Bible story is undertaken in dialogue with theoretical heavyweights such as Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Rancière, and Julia Kristeva, as well as Latin American literary figures such as Jorge Luis Borges and César Vallejo. Concerned with the dynamics of othering in the biblical tale and its reception, González’s study along the way also reveals a concern with migration in the contemporary world, something we have seen is important to other Latinx Hebrew Bible scholars.

The work of Gregory Lee Cuéllar can be characterized as Latinx biblical scholarship that fairly obviously asserts itself in all of the ways noted above (and perhaps more). Like the work of Ruiz and Carroll, Cuéllar’s principal monograph, Voices of Marginality: Exile and Return in Second Isaiah 40–55 and the Mexican Immigrant Experience (2008), is also intimately concerned with the transformation of the characterization and treatment of migrants in U.S. culture, especially among those for whom the Bible remains an important theological and ethical guide. Cuéllar’s work, however, is also methodologically diverse. It includes, for instance, a concern with the reception history of the Bible, analyzing in particular the interpretations of biblical texts in the cultural work of Latinx people. Through a postcolonial, diaspora optic or hermeneutic (adapted from Segovia 1995a; 1995b; 1998; 1999; 2000), Cuéllar understands the ‘categories of exile and return that emerge from the poetry’ of Second Isaiah alongside discourses of ‘the diasporic experience of the Mexican immigrant’ to the U.S. (2008: 2), especially those musical creations called corridos, which narrate aspects of Mexican migrant realities (cf. Sandoval 2009 upon which portions of this paragraph are based). For Cuéllar, moreover, postmodernism provides a powerful critique of notions of objectivity that legitimate certain dominant readings and modes of interpretation in the guild of biblical studies while denying legitimacy to others on the margins of dominant academic discourse. Postcolonialism, for its part, possesses an ‘intellectual commitment’ with a strong moral component important to Cuéllar: namely, a desire to ‘develop new forms of engaged theoretical work that contribute to dynamic ideological and social transformation’ (2008: 11–12).

Cuéllar’s contribution to Latino/a Biblical Hermeneutics, ‘Forgotten Forebears in the History of North American Biblical Scholarship’, deals less with identity issues than many other of that volume’s contributions. Instead, Cuéllar offers a further example of a critique of aspects of dominant modes of biblical criticism together with a creative, critical view of biblical reception history relevant to Latinx biblical scholarship. Not unlike the final chapter of Ruiz’s Reading from the Edges (‘The Bible and the Exegesis of Empire’; 2011a: 123-35), Cuéllar insists that aspects of the official narrative of the history of biblical studies be revised to include heretofore neglected contributions. He, for example, notes that the publication of ‘the Bay State Psalm Book (1640) in Cambridge, Massachusetts’ occurred in the same year that ‘Juan de Zumárraga, the first archbishop of colonial Mexico, published a theological/doctrinal book (quarto volume of twelve leaves) in Tenochtitlán, Mexico’ (2014: 121). As Cuéllar explains, ‘this published work represents the beginning of a broader theological discourse in which Western readings of Scripture and the indigenous “Other” were paramount’. What’s more, he contends that ‘for Latina/o biblical interpretation in North America this published text represents an early thread to a complex and violent legacy of reading the Bible’ (p. 121). After tracing the engaging stories of a ‘Bible book trade’ and the Bible reading efforts of ‘the convicted crypto-Jew Luis de Carvajal’ in colonial Mexico, Cuéllar concludes that Latinx biblical interpretation ought to understand its ‘hybridity and alterity’ (italics original) precisely in this ‘context of colonialization and empire’ (2014: 122).

The critique of dominant modes of biblical criticism and the proffering of new readings via an optic that foregrounds Latinx identities and experiences, of course, is also evident in the work of most of the HB scholars mentioned earlier in this essay. All the HB scholar contributions to Latino/a Biblical Hermeneutics, for example, do this in one fashion or another (Lozada Jr. and Segovia 2014). The works of Carroll and Ruiz do too. Ruiz, for example, self-consciously offers work that he suggests ‘violates the ethos of hyperspecialization’ (2011a: 9) of the academy. He explicitly seeks to move beyond what he calls an ‘academic esotericism that fetishizes texts’ (2011a: 52; cited also by Segovia 2014: 25) that he believes is characteristic of much of professional biblical scholarship.

The sorts of critiques offered by Ruiz (and others) point to a further important critical category adopted by him, Carroll, and other Latinx biblical critics, one that was developed within a broader context of Latinx theological work—namely, the idea of undertaking critical theological and biblical interpretive work en conjunto (‘together’, ‘with others’, not in isolation). The notion of working en conjunto is sometimes paired with the idea that Latinx biblical and theological work ought to be undertaken in light of lo cotidiano—the everyday realities of Latinx communities and individuals. The foundational work of Ada María Isasi-Díaz in Mujerista theology is often referenced when these categories are invoked (e.g., 1996; 2003). Ruiz, however, expresses the principle of lo cotidiano in a slightly different idiom, speaking as he does in Reading from the Edges of work undertaken at the ‘intersection of pastoral de conjunto and teología de conjunto’ (2011a: 2). As he writes, some ‘Latino/a biblical scholars and theologians’ believe ‘scholarship and ministry are richly interwoven’ and scholarship ought to be ‘a matter of engagement and not flight from lived daily experience’ (2011a: 2). Carroll, too, speaks of ‘the importance of unique communal realities of everyday life, lo cotidiano’ (bold original; 2017: 313) for Latinx biblical interpretation. Sandoval (forthcoming) also names these two critical principles of Latinx biblical and theological work in his ‘Reading 1 Kings 21 en conjunto: The Subjectivity of lo cotidiano’, where he describes the hermeneutical and ethical insights that emerge from studying the story of ‘Naboth’s Vineyard’ with (en conjunto) a particular Latinx community.

If Latinx biblical scholarship’s ‘desire for self-assertion and self-introjection’ that Segovia speaks of is a kind of desire for recognition in the guild of biblical studies, which is pursued in part through the construction of critiques of dominant modes of biblical scholarship and via the development of Latinx hermeneutic lenses and readings, as well as the deployment of various critical methods and theories when analyzing texts and the shape of biblical scholarship, another strategy of assertion and introjection—hardly fully distinct from the first—takes a different approach. Another way Latinx biblical scholarship’s ‘desire for self-assertion and self-introjection’ (Segovia 2014: 20) manifests itself is through the development of scholarly publication venues and institutions dedicated to presenting and developing Latinx (and/or other non-mainstream or minoritized) biblical (and theological) scholarship and scholars.

Much Latinx biblical scholarship, for instance, tends to be published in collections of essays—sometimes emerging from the work of Society of Biblical Literature groups, rather than in mainstream journals, which tend to publish more traditional, historically oriented work (e.g., the Journal of Biblical Literature, the Catholic Biblical Quarterly, or even the more methodologically diverse Journal for the Study of the Old Testament). Especially Segovia, together with several of his students, have been instrumental in this regard, conceiving, editing and shepherding through publication several important volumes (e.g., Lozada Jr. and Segovia 2014; Bailey, Liew, and Segovia 2009; Liew and Segovia forthcoming).

Latinx biblical scholars also join Latinx scholars in other disciplines in publishing—sometimes in Spanish—in spaces that are not widely known outside the circles of Latinx (theological and religious studies) scholarship: for example, the Journal for Latino/Hispanic Theology, published through the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States (ACHTUS); Perspectivas, published by the Hispanic Theological Initiative and often showcasing the work of younger scholars; or more ministry-oriented periodicals such as Apuntes, published by the Hispanic/Latin@ Ministries Program at Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology. This is all hardly to say that Latinx biblical scholarship on the HB does not appear in monographs from well-known publishing houses. It does, of course, as the work of many of the scholars noted above makes clear. It is also not to say that Latinx Bible scholars do not publish scholarly work of a more traditional nature in journals such as the Journal of Biblical Literature. We do, of course. Rather these realities merely point to a further way Latinx biblical scholarship asserts itself in biblical studies and underscores the complexity and hybridity of the identities of Latinx biblical scholars and scholarship.

It is perhaps also important to note that Latinx biblical scholars of the HB, together with Latinx scholars in other theological and religious studies disciplines, have often been nurtured and supported by key institutions designed to promote and develop Latinx scholars, scholarship, and perspectives. Many, if not most, Latinx biblical scholars of both the HB and the NT at some point in their academic careers have been formed and supported by one or both of a couple of key institutions: The Hispanic Summer Program (HSP) and the Hispanic Theological Initiative (HTI). The HSP each year offers seven, two-week intensive courses for especially (but not only) self-identifying master’s level Hispanic or Latinx students. These courses, including classes on Bible and interpretation, are taught by Latinx or Hispanic professors, and thematize Latinx perspectives and concerns. It is at the HSP that a not insignificant number of Latinx scholars in theological and religious studies disciplines have in a sense ‘got their start’. The HTI, by contrast, focuses on Latinx or Hispanic Ph.D. students, offering participants both financial support and workshops as well as mentors to ensure student success. The HTI likewise actively promotes publications of Latinx scholars and, as noted, publishes the journal Perspectivas. The HSP and HTI share a common institutional genealogy with the Asociación de Educación Teológica Hispana (AETH) that focuses on education in churches and in Institutos Bíblicos (Bible Institutes), precisely the sorts of community contexts that many Latinx or Hispanic Bible scholars are also committed to supporting through their teaching and writing.

Resourcing Latinx Communities of Faith

If the critical categories and theoretical discourses of Latinx biblical scholarship are often directed toward the academy in some shape or fashion, Latinx biblical scholars are also often very concerned to engage Latinx communities of faith and to provide biblical and theological resources for these communities. Indeed, the critical concepts of en conjunto and lo cotidiano that have been central to forms of Latinx biblical and theological scholarship point in an immediate fashion to the critical scholarly work undertaken in, with, and for particular, local Latinx communities. Indeed, demonstrated work in and on behalf of such communities is for some Latinx scholars one possible and important identity marker of a Latinx biblical scholar. A number of NT scholars in Latino/a Biblical Hermeneutics, for example, suggest as much (Lozada Jr. and Segovia 2014: 51, 145, 307). We have also already seen how such a community connection is vital to Ruiz (2011a). Sandoval, too, (2014: 283) explicitly identifies commitment to Latinx communities as one among a cluster of markers that in some constellation might be adequate to construct a Latinx biblical scholar identity. Others, however, have insisted more strongly that Latinx communities should be the focus of the work of Latinx biblical and theological scholars. Martínez (2011: 134), for example, seeks to critique ‘the philosophy and praxis of biblical interpretation as conceptualized and modeled by some of the most prominent Latino/a theologians in the U.S.’ He is concerned in particular that much academic work in Latinx biblical interpretation and theology is not particularly relevant ‘for Hispanic and church realities’ and he is essentially claiming that it ought to be (2011: 134).

Latinx biblical scholars will agree or disagree with Martínez’s evaluation to varying degrees. Yet, regardless of whether Latinx scholars should, or need not, engage local Latinx communities of faith more robustly, it is worth noting that many, if not most, Latinx biblical scholars of the HB already mentioned have not only taught in programs such as HSP (e.g., Carroll, Cuéllar, Pilarski, Sandoval), but many of these scholars also regularly teach the Bible in various local Latinx contexts, including in Institutos Bíblicos or other programs (e.g., the United Methodist Course of Study). These educational venues provide biblical and theological education for students who for a variety of reasons (English language ability; educational background; financial situation, and so forth) cannot or do not wish to enroll in an accredited theological school. What’s more, some published work (often in Spanish) by some Latinx scholars is designed specifically to resource local Latinx contexts. We have already mentioned how the work of Ruiz, Carroll, and others is in large part directed toward local communities of faith, including Latinx ones. To this one can add The Word of God and Latino Catholics: The Teaching of the Road to Emmaus (also published in Spanish), co-edited by Ruiz (Ruiz and Paredes 2011), which includes contributions by HB scholar Renata Furst (2011) and Ruiz himself (2011b) and offers brief but programmatic sketches of what Latinx Catholic readings of the Bible underscore and ought to attend to. In non-Catholic contexts, the Conozca su Biblia (‘Know your Bible’) series published by Augsburg Fortress under the general editorship of Justo González is perhaps the most ambitious publication project by Latinx or Hispanic scholars in biblical (and other theological) disciplines designed to support the educational needs of Latinx ecclesial communities.

The Conozca su Biblia series is published in Spanish and treats the books of the Protestant canon, but also includes a few volumes that offer introductions to general or introductory matters of Bible study. Although as with any series the strengths of particular volumes in Conozca su Biblia vary, several of the books by Latinx or Hispanic and Latin American or Caribbean scholars that treat HB or OT texts are full, up-to-date treatments that draw on the best of specialized biblical scholarship with a clear eye to the realities and concerns of Latinx communities. Indeed, as González (2006–2011) explains in his introduction to this series (‘Esta serie’), ‘lo que esperamos lograr es que la Biblia sea más leíble, mas inteligible para el creyente típico, de modo que pueda leerla con mayor gusto, comprensión, y fidelidad a su mensaje’ (what we hope to achieve is that the Bible might become more readable, more intelligible for the typical believer so that one might be able to read it with more pleasure, comprehension, and faithfulness to its message) (pp. v-vi, all translations mine). The goal, as González puts it, is not that one might read the books in the series, but rather come to read ‘la Biblia con nueva y más profunda comprensión’ (the Bible with new and deeper understanding) (pp. v-vi). The starting point of the series is a basic hermeneutical point: Because one always reads the Bible from within a particular context, much in interpretation depends upon who we are. For this reason, González says, the books in the series are written ‘en nuestro lengua, por personas que se han formado en nuestra cultura y la conocen’ (in our language, by people who have been formed in our culture and understand it) (pp. v-vi).

Several of the Conozca su Biblia volumes merit further comment. First, Ediberto López (2006), in Cómo se formó la Biblia, offers Spanish-speaking lay students and working pastors a clear and readable overview of how the Bible came to be. Jane Atkins-Vasquez (2009), similarly, sketches the history of the Bible in Spanish in La Biblia en Español: cómo nos llegó. Alicia Vargas (2009) has also offered an important guide to Bible interpretation that ought to serve as an alternative to the many other, usually quite theologically conservative, handbooks on ‘La Hermenéutica’ that are sometimes the only sources available to students in Spanish language Bible institutes. An important strength of Vargas’s Cómo estudiar la Biblia (2009) is the fact it does not merely offer its audience an introduction to some basic hermeneutic points regarding, for example, readerly perspectives and the multiplicity of textual meaning. She also treats concepts that have to do with the theological status of the Bible—considering, for instance, the Bible’s authority (‘autoridad’), its divinely inspired (‘inspirada’) status, its status as testimony (‘testimonia’) and as word of God (‘palabra de Dios’; 2009: 11-20). Given that in many Latinx churches this theological language, and not hermeneutic discourse, is the idiom by which people regularly understand the nature of the Bible and biblical interpretation, Vargas’s discussions of these matters might have been expanded and sometimes nuanced. For example, Vargas’s claim—following González (1996)—that ‘El Gran error al leer la Biblia no es error de Dios ni de la Biblia, sino de nosotros’ (The great error in reading the Bible is no error of God nor of the Bible, but our own) seems somewhat insufficient (p. 20). For her, ‘El error está en no utilizar nuestros propios oídos y la fe que nos permite acercarnos a la Biblia tal como somos’ (The error is in not using our own ears and the faith that permits us to draw near to the Bible just as we are) (p. 3). Vargas seems to want to hang on to a rhetoric of inerrancy—no doubt very important to some in conserving Hispanic ecclesial communities—but change its referent rather drastically, to convert its conceptions of singular textual meaning and unchanging truth into something that is potentially characterized by multiplicity and subject to contextual difference. One wonders, however, if more robust explorations of concepts such as testimony and word of God, rather than a rhetorical play with the idea of error, might not have more effectively critiqued notions of biblical inerrancy.

García-Treto’s (2010) treatment of Job, Proverbios, Eclesiastés y Cantar de los Cantares (Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs) and his (2008) Salmos (Psalms) in the Conozca su Biblia series are exemplary. One would, for example, be hard-pressed to find in any language a more adequate, brief introduction to biblical wisdom books than that which García-Treto offers. Samuel Pagán likewise offers an accessible and erudite introduction to Ezequiel y Daniel (Ezekiel and Daniel) on the one hand (2010) and Isaías (Isaiah) on the other (2007). Botta (2006) has also authored a study of the Book of the Twelve (Los doce profetas menores) while Renata Furst has added contributions on Ruth, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther (2009) and the historical books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles (2007) in De Josué a Crónicas (From Joshua to Chronicles). Other volumes in the Conozca su Biblia series include Guillermo Ramírez-Muñoz’s introduction to the books of the Pentateuch, De Génesis a Deuteronomio (2009), and Jeremías y Lamentaciones (Jeremiah and Lamentations) by Eugenia Cornou (2009).

Conclusion

Although not all Latinx scholars of the HB have positions in the theological academy—working instead in secular universities, ministries, or elsewhere—many do. According to the Association of Theological Schools (ATS), the percentage of Latinx or Hispanic faculty members at U.S. ATS schools hovers around 4 percent to 5 percent, compared with our 17.6 percent representation in the overall U.S. population (https://www.ats.edu/uploads/resources/institutional-data/annual-data-tables/2016-2017-annual-data-tables.pdf; accessed 5 October 2017). The demographic outlook for the future of Latinx people in higher education, including biblical studies, while promising, is also mixed. As the number of Latinx students born in the U.S. and for whom English is their first language rises, the number of Latinx and Hispanic students seeking out higher education is also on the rise. Yet as the Pew Research Center reports:

Despite these recent milestones [in accessing higher education], Latinos continue to lag [behind] other groups when it comes to earning a bachelor’s degree. In 2012, 14.5% of Latinos ages 25 and older had earned one. By contrast, 51% of Asians, 34.5% of whites and 21.2% of blacks had earned a bachelor’s degree. Hispanic college students are also less likely than whites to enroll in a four-year college, attend a selective college, and enroll full-time (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/09/04/hispanic-college-enrollment-rate-surpasses-whites-for-the-first-time/; accessed 5 October 2017).

Because both the percentage of ‘native born’ Latinx people pursuing higher education continues to rise and institutions of higher education continue to recognize the value of diverse student bodies and faculties, one might thus cautiously expect that in the future the number of Latinx scholars of the HB will rise as well. When this happens, one can anticipate that the already robust scholarly work and community of Latinx HB scholars will not only continue, but flourish in creative and unexpected ways.

Note: Much of the research that informs this article was undertaken during a one-year research leave from Brite Divinity School made possible not only by Brite, but also the generous support of the Louisville Institute Sabbatical Grant for Researchers program.