Recent Research on Asian and Asian American Hermeneutics Related to the Hebrew Bible

Introduction

Due to the increase in numbers and visibility of Asian and Asian American biblical scholars, research content devoted to the particularities of Asian and Asian American history, social contexts, and experiences has grown significantly over the past two to three decades. With the inception of the Asian and Asian American Hermeneutics Group (AAAHG) at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) in 1995, Asian and Asian American biblical scholars have begun to contemplate the interconnectedness between one’s social location and biblical interpretation. In addition, several significant publications on Asian American biblical interpretation contributed to the emergence of this new way of reading scripture (Liew and Yee 2002; Foskett and Kuan 2006; U. Kim and Yang 2019). Two volumes addressed particularly to Asian and Asian American women were written from the intersection of social location and scripture (Brock et al. 2007; Hertig and Sun 2010). Several articles in the two volumes devoted to ethnic Chinese biblical interpretation included Asian and Asian American hermeneutics as well (Wan and Foskett 2014; Yee and Yieh 2016). These publications are all edited volumes with multiple authors. The Eurocentric reading of scripture tends to read the text with the grain, whereas an Asian and Asian American interpretation often reads the text against the grain. For Asian and Asian American biblical interpreters, the historical-critical methods proved insufficient to address the cultural and contextual particularities of the Asian and Asian American diaspora. For example, while David may be the main character in 1–2 Samuel, how many western scholars would read the text from the point of view of Uriah the Hittite (U. Kim 2002) or notice Ruth from the perspective of a perpetual foreigner and a model minority (Yee 2007)?

Asian and Asian American hermeneutics (AAAH) has gained positive momentum as more scholars of Asian descent residing in North America have perceived the urgent need to develop and discern an alternative way of reading scripture that can both articulate their own experiences as ethnic minorities in the larger cultural context of North America and in the academic guild, and at the same time bring hope and liberation to those who read the text. For this article, I focus on those who self-identify as either an Asian or an Asian American. Yet the terms ‘Asian’ and ‘Asian American’ are general and broad markers, which include a vast diversity of people with distinctive cultures, languages and experiences. ‘Asian’ includes but is not limited to the Chinese, Cantonese, Taiwanese, Korean, Japanese, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Southeast Asians, Indians, Burmese, Singaporean, Malaysian, Filipino and Filipina, and many others who live in Asia and in the Asian diaspora around the globe. It also includes those who have interracial marriages or bear more than one Asian identity. Each of these groups of people speaks different languages, and each group has its respective history, culture and experience. Therefore, the label ‘Asian’ embodies multiplicity and multivocality.

As for the term ‘Asian American’, it is also a contested symbol due both to its lack of specificity and the fact that it flattens the particularity of the people who identify themselves as Asian Americans. The term can refer to people of Asian descent who were born or raised in North America, whether as the second or third generation. And yet we need to recognize that the second and third generations of Asian Americans have different sets of experiences in North America. Many of them may find it offensive to be identified as Asian and not Asian American (Yee 2010a: 79). The term ‘Asian American’ can also refer to those who came to North America later in life and have been acculturated into the mainstream of American culture. The term may also refer to Asians who reside permanently in North America and identify themselves as Asian Americans. Just as the term ‘Asian’ embraces a plethora of people and cultures, so too ‘Asian American’ encompasses a wide range of people including Chinese Americans, Taiwanese Americans, Korean Americans, Japanese Americans, Vietnamese Americans, Indian Americans, and so forth. Those with mixed identities due to interracial marriage or hapa (in Hawaiian language meaning ‘mixed’) identity (Rietz 2002, 2006), inter-Asian marriage, transnational or international adoption, as well as those who belong to Pacific Islands such as the Hawaiians, further contribute to the complexity of the term ‘Asian American’. That said, the term is perhaps best used to refer not to a people group or culture but to the experience of living in North America (Foskett 2006: 304). There is, however, no common experience among Asian Americans that parallels the history of slavery in which African Americans share (Yee 2006a: 158). Still, there are general commonalities that bind Asian Americans together, such as the hybrid diasporic identity of living in North America (Kato 2012: 3).

What, then, is Asian hermeneutics or Asian biblical interpretation? Since the term ‘Asian’ includes multiple and complex identities and experiences in East Asia, Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, and transgenerational and international contexts, biblical interpretation that addresses any aspect of Asian culture, history, experience, tradition, values, and socio-political or socio-economical contexts may be considered to be Asian hermeneutics. Fully mapping Asian biblical interpretation is an impossible task due to the scope of the subject matter and the multiple languages involved. A recent publication entitled Asian Theology on the Way (Rajkumar 2015) has captured the movement of this endeavor. Particular theologies arise from Asian culture generally, such as Minjung theology (Y. Kim 1981) and Dalit theology (Premnath 2006: 7; Melanchthon 2010). However, each region or country in Asia may have diverse ways of interpreting the biblical text. For instance, several articles in Ways of Being, Ways of Reading trace the historical development and issues involved in doing biblical interpretation in Asia, including Indian, Chinese, Korean, and Southeast Asian contexts (Premnath 2006; Cheon 2006; Chia 2006; Yieh 2006). Wong argues that Asian biblical interpretation is not about ‘interpreting the biblical text in the context of Asia but with the Asian context as text’ (2017: 29). Due to the limited scope of this article, I only include selected Asian authors who write in English as representatives of Asian hermeneutics.

What, then, is Asian American hermeneutics? Foskett argues that Asian American interpretation is better defined as ‘a particular discourse that has evolved in response and in relationship to the multicultural reality of contemporary Asian North America’ than as a single method or approach (2006: 304-305). Y. Lee observes that Asian American biblical interpretation is neither purely western nor purely Asian in orientation but a mixture and integration of these two modes of thinking (2006: 60). Yee’s article entitled ‘Yin/Yang is Not Me’ reflects her strong differentiation from the traditional Asian heritage characterized by the concept of Yin and Yang (contra Hertig 2010a). She contends that biblical interpretation about Asian Americans should be guided by both the positive and negative engagement with the biblical text and ‘not solely by the negative use of these texts by white male society against Americans of Asian descent’ (Yee 2006a: 157). Thus for Yee, the task of Asian American hermeneutics is to ‘interpret the biblical text on behalf of the Asian American communities, motivating and enlightening them, as well as critiquing and admonishing them’. It also involves making the whiteness of the typical interpretation visible (Yee 2006a: 163; Tan 2008: 110-12). Liew sees Asian American hermeneutics as a convergence of different fields, primarily the field of Asian American studies and biblical studies. It is a kind of biblical hermeneutics ‘done by Asian-raced persons from the United States, and/or biblical hermeneutics done with the explicitly political goal of helping to address issues confronting Asian American communities’ (Liew 2009). Ngan considers Asian American hermeneutics to be not a single method but a means of ‘consciously appropriate[ing] lenses that read through Asian American experiences and immigrant histories in North America’ (2014: 168). In light of these multifaceted viewpoints and definitions, Asian American hermeneutics can be understood as a kind of biblical interpretation that involves the intersection of and interaction between the Asian American experience, context, concepts, ideologies, traditions, culture, and social practices, and that of scripture (Foskett 2006). Its purpose is to illuminate scripture in one’s life and thought, and it can lead to social transformation.

Finally, what is AAAH with reference to the Hebrew Bible? Does it refer to Asian or Asian American authors who write about texts or themes from the Hebrew Bible? No. Not all biblical scholars of Asian descent who interpret the texts from the Hebrew Bible count as such. Only those who bring Asian and Asian American worlds and the Hebrew Bible into conversation are considered as doing AAAH with reference to the Hebrew Bible. Asian or Asian American scholars who write about the Hebrew Bible without drawing attention to the specific Asian or Asian American concepts, history or contexts do not fall into the scope of this article.

In what follows, I first highlight the dominant issues and themes in AAAH related to the Hebrew Bible, and then provide an overview of recent scholarship, which I group according to different methods including ethnographical interpretation, feminist interpretation, postcolonial interpretation, intercontextual interpretation, culturally specific interpretation, and LGBTQ interpretation. The last section of this article will assess how these contemporary research approaches correspond to the larger conversations in the academy, and then offer some reflections on what the future might hold for AAAH related to the Hebrew Bible.

Issues and Themes

Ethnographical Interpretation

Beginning with this section, I identify several prevalent methods in AAAH related to the Hebrew Bible. Ethnographical interpretation is also known as the ‘autobiographical’ approach. Korean American theologian Jung Young Lee asserts that ‘if theology is contextual, it must certainly be at root autobiographical’ (J. Lee 1995: 7). In another edited volume entitled Journeys at the Margin, Asian American theologians attempt to construct a theology based on an autobiographical approach (Phan and Lee 1999). However, according to Chang, the research method of ethnography is not simply that of writing an autobiography. Rather, it utilizes the researcher’s autobiographical data to analyze and interpret their cultural assumptions (Chang 2016). At the heart of a majority of AAAH lies autobiographical information of the author, based on his or her experience as an Asian or an Asian North American. All the multi-authored edited volumes on AAAH include, in one way or another, the authors’ autobiographical data as the basis for their respective theological reflections. I have mentioned some of them in the section on Asian American identity. For example, Uriah Kim’s own name as Uriah and his context of coming to the United States as a teenager, as well as his experience as a member of a marginalized or diasporic community, are analogous to the context of Uriah the Hittite. He writes at the intersection of his own experience and that of Uriah (U. Kim 2002: 70). Yee’s story of a third-generation Asian American, who does not fall easily into the Yin and Yang paradigm or the black and white binary, is a story of a woman who strives to find her identity as an Asian American feminist scholar (Yee 2006b, 2010a). In delineating Asian American hermeneutics and liberation theology, Ngan first tells her own story as a Chinese American Christian woman from a Baptist tradition (Ngan 2009: 213-14) and states overtly that it is from this angle that she reads the Bible.

In Mirrored Reflections, all the chapters either start with the author’s own story or interweave the author’s story into the narrative (Hertig and Sun 2010). For instance, Hertig writes about witnessing injustice in her institution, which she suggests is analogous to the political drama that unfolds in the stories of Vashti and Esther (Hertig 2010b). Sun writes from her upbringing as a suppressed silent woman who has learned to gain a voice for her community. Her own story is reminiscent of Bathsheba’s transformation from silence to voice (Sun 2010). G. Kim writes from a Korean’s perspective of parents desiring a son, which then forms an alternate reading of Hannah wanting for a son (G. Kim 2010). In How Immigrant Christians Living in Mixed Cultures Interpret their Religion, Kato (2012) reflects on the hermeneutics of hybridity based on his identity as a son of a Japanese father and a Filipina mother and having lived in both parents’ homeland for a considerable amount of time. Leung Lai (2013) identifies the external forces that have shaped who she is as a Chinese-Canadian as well as an immigrant and minority in the guild. Thus, her reading of Daniel as a survival manual illuminates the appropriation of the book by the immigrant families and minorities in the profession. Sun responds to Leung Lai’s chapter by discussing the appropriation of the book of Daniel by first-generation immigrant communities and the book of Esther by the second and later generations (Sun 2013).

In Identity and Loyalty in the David Story, U. Kim includes an epilogue reflecting on the politics of identity and loyalty from Barack Obama to his own experience as an Asian American who has no desire to return to Korea but feels a lack of rootedness in the United States. He then shares ‘a father’s dream’ that one day when his son responds to the question, ‘Where are you from?’, his answer will be ‘Hartford, Connecticut’, signifying his full acceptance by America (U. Kim 2008: 216-27). While writing theology, Yong (2014) also includes a prologue and an epilogue with his own autobiographical stories as the points from which he constructs an evangelical Pentecostal theology in the Asian American diaspora. The contributors to the T&T Clark Handbook to Asian American Biblical Hermeneutics were asked to write five hundred words about their own stories and journeys as a launching point for their chapters (U. Kim and Yang 2019), though not all of them did so.

All these examples point to the necessity of integrating personal experience into the foundations of an Asian and Asian American interpretation of scripture. Hermeneutics emerge from the authors’ social location, biographical information, and experience, not in isolation from them. Therefore, this method is highly personal, particular, reflective, situational, contextual and functional. All other hermeneutical approaches, such as feminist, postcolonial and ideological interpretations, are, in some ways, based on ethnographical realities.

Feminist Interpretation

Feminist interpretation in general began to flourish during the 1960s and 1970s, in response to the historical, political and social movements of the time. Yee defines ‘feminism’ in general terms as ‘political activism by women on behalf of women’ (Yee 2018b: 1). It started out as a white movement and has since evolved into various strands of feminism including liberal feminism, radical feminism, Marxist/socialist feminism, postmodern feminism, psychoanalytic feminism, postcolonial feminism, feminisms of color, ecofeminism, and so forth (Yee 2018b: 2). Asian and Asian American feminist interpretation is one of the latest iterations of feminism. Like the early movement of feminist interpretation championed by white female biblical scholars, Asian American feminist interpretation exposes the patriarchal orientation and male domination in the Bible, together with the ingrained gender inequality expressed through the text, in order to bring a counter perspective to an androcentric reading (Yee 2018b: 14-22). The first woman in the Bible, Eve, becomes a focus of exploration. The maternal imagery of God, redeeming the female character in the Song of Songs, the praise of the women in Exodus 1–2, and other marginal women in the Hebrew Bible are all sources for feminist interpretation. This interpretation is often a form of liberation, focusing on the issue of gender. Additionally, some feminist interpreters focus on the power dynamics of the female characters in the Hebrew Bible (e.g., Hagar and Sarah, Naomi and Ruth, Jephthah’s daughter and the mourning women, Vashti and Esther, Lot’s wife and her daughters) through the lenses of class and race. Thus, feminist interpretation is combined with intersectional perspectives to provide a fuller analysis (Yee 2018b: 27-29).

In many Asian and Asian American cultures, the hierarchy between male and female is rather distinct; consequently, women are often perceived as inferior to men in intellectual, mental, physical, religious and social capacities, and thus are more likely to suffer discrimination, prejudice and various forms of assault in the larger society as well as in the academic guild. This particular social location becomes the external force that has moved many Asian and Asian American women biblical interpreters toward the path of feminist scholarship. As mentioned earlier, AAAH is derived from the author’s autobiographical information as a means for theological reflection. Feminist interpretation of the Hebrew Bible involves both the author’s ‘personal voice as a means to explore the cultural-biblical interplay’ (Yee 2006b: 377) and the construction of Asian American identity as both the ‘perpetual foreigner’ and ‘model minority’ (Yee 2006b: 385). This perspective is distinct from the white and black feminist interpretations.

As an example, in her essay on Hagar, Ngan (2006: 71-72) poses several key questions that an Asian American woman would ask when she reads the Bible:

Although there are overlapping concerns in Asian feminist interpretation and Asian American feminist interpretation, these two groups of interpreters arise from two different socio-economic contexts. Asian feminist theology developed from a grassroots movement, initiated by women from the non-academic world who conducted Bible studies in their homes. These women include social activists, church reformers, community organizers, religious women, and lay leaders at local churches. Many of them live in third-world countries (Kwok 2000: 9). Sugirtharajah (2006a: 80) points out that third-world feminists tend to distance themselves from the work of western feminists because the latter often overlook the colonial context and the interpretation of the biblical text from the colonial angle. Asian feminist interpretations are relatively new and have been shaped largely by western feminist interpretations, but they go beyond a gender-focused analysis to ‘see the interconnections that exist between women’s oppression and cultural systems such as caste, religion, ethnicity and language’ (Melanchthon 2014b: 118). Generally speaking, women in many Asian countries experience suffering and violence not just because of the existence of patriarchy or structural discrimination, but also because of socio-economic, familial and religious differences. For example, poverty is not so much a concern for Asian American women interpreters but it is the backdrop for many Asian feminist interpreters’ experience. Many of the Asian feminist interpreters are outside of the academic guild and do not have formal theological training. Yet their writings complement those of biblical scholars (Melanchthon 2014b: 108-109). Therefore, Asian feminist interpretation presents a different picture when compared to Asian American feminist interpretation.

One should note that since biblical scholars in Asia originate from different geographical, historical and cultural contexts, there is a diverse spectrum of interpretive trajectories even within the general feminist approach noted above. For example, while Asian American scholars write primarily in English, women in the countries of Asia write in many different languages. It would be impossible to trace all the relevant published data in Asia. More specifically, Melanchthon’s (2014a) study focuses on South Asia alone. In regard to Asian feminist readings of the Hebrew Bible, South Asian interpreters tend to focus on the stories of female characters such as Shiprah and Puah in Exodus 2; the Zelophehad sisters in Numbers 27 and 36; and Ruth, Naomi, Abigail and Huldah for their theological and religious formation. Others include Lot’s wife as a model of ‘holiness, compassion and empathy’ (p. 61); Hannah as the model mother and role model for faith and prayer; Deborah and Miriam as female leaders; and the woman in the Song of Songs as a model for positive female sexuality. In addition, the widow in 1 Kings 4 parallels the plight of the widows in India; the story of Tamar in 2 Samuel 13 calls attention to violence done to women at home; the story of Sarah and Hagar becomes a source for understanding the struggles related to discrimination by caste, class and race (Melanchthon 2014a: 60-61). The story of Rizpah’s silent vigil in 2 Samuel 21, which prompts David to give Saul and Jonathan a proper burial, results in the appeasement of God’s wrath. This story becomes a source for women’s inspiration to act within their limited resources (Melanchthon 2014c). Melanchthon also notes that the range of Hebrew Bible texts discussed by women in South Asia is limited. More can be written on biblical laws, Rebecca, Tamar in Genesis 38, and Zipporah, for example. Although the Psalms receive attention for devotional and liturgical purposes, they have received little attention in specifically feminist interpretation (Melanchthon 2014a: 62-63).

In defining Asian feminist interpretation, then, Melanchthon identifies the following factors (2014b: 106-108). Such interpretation must:

As the last point suggests, many feminist interpreters in Asia are church bound, finding their identity and meaning through their participation at church. Although outside of the academy, many contribute substantially to feminist biblical interpretation through artwork, poetry and drama. Feminist biblical interpretations in Asia are also liberation oriented, aiming for self and social transformation. They are heterogeneous in method and motivated by class, culture, ethnic and social issues (Melanchthon 2014b: 115-17). Although Melanchthon writes from the South Asian context, her observations are applicable to the wider Asian contexts. Kwok, for instance, notes that the focus of Asian feminist interpretation is greater on women in the New Testament, and for the Hebrew Bible, the stories of Naomi, Ruth, Hannah, Miriam and Deborah serve as role models for such interpreters to examine their own place in the world (Kwok 2000: 52). For the particular context of East Asia, including the countries of Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan, Wong (2017) proposes a feminist reading that emphasizes cultural and social locality, which resists the dominating biblical discourse of the West not only on the basis of anti-colonialism but also in terms of a commitment to exploring the collective historical, political, cultural and religious complexities. Such interpretation, Wong believes, helps to achieve multiplicity and a heterogeneous interpretation process. It also includes references not only to the Bible but to the Asian classical, cultural and multi-religious resources, the experiences of women from all walks of life, and the intersection between global, local and personal voices (Wong 2017: 49-50).

The rich diversity within the Hebrew Bible creates fertile ground for Asian and Asian American feminist interpretations. Yet, due to the limited number of feminist biblical interpreters who write in English in both Asia and in Asian America, the feminist approach related to the Hebrew Bible awaits a more substantial critical mass in order to make a significant impact in the academy and society at large. Nevertheless, it highlights a wide spectrum of experiences and contexts related to women through which scripture can be read and brought into a new light. In a sense, Asian and Asian American feminist interpretations contribute to a global theology in which their voices should be heard and honored.

Postcolonial Interpretation

Postcolonial interpretation has become one of the dominant approaches in AAAH. It is more than an interpretive method; it is an opportunity to establish a different epistemological (back)ground for accessing scholarship that involves a western lens and minoritized groups (U. Kim 2019). Given the contexts of migration and diasporic existence of Asian and Asian Americans, the examination of the relationships between domination and subordination, power and the powerless, margin and center, is pertinent to the Asian and Asian American experience. This interpretation exposes the conflicted and unequal relations between the colonizer and the colonized (Yee 2010b: 193). Yee (2010b: 194) cites a definition that identifies postcolonial criticism as ‘a group of reading strategies examining economic, cultural, and political relations of domination and subordination between nations, races, and cultures with histories of colonial and neocolonial rule’. Diaspora hermeneutics falls under the broad area of postcolonial interpretation (Wan 2000: 107). In regard to the Hebrew Bible, postcolonial interpretation seeks to determine the range and nature of Israel’s relations with the other nations or empires that ruled over it, as well as to uncover the subaltern or marginalized voices that result from the imperial domination (Yee 2010b: 195).

Since the texts of the Hebrew Bible emerge from contexts of domination by empires such as Egypt, Babylonia and Persia, the writings are especially fruitful for postcolonial interpretation. In the postcolonial approach, a reader would ask questions such as the following (Yee 2010b: 206):

Sugirtharajah (2006a: 68) observes that traditional biblical scholarship tends to place great emphasis on the religious, theological and socio-economic background of biblical narratives and ignores the colonialism in them. He then identifies the following goals for postcolonial biblical criticism (p. 67):

Postcolonial interpretation takes seriously the biblical text, its reception history, and the global context of readers (Yee 2010b: 205-208). This interpretation provides fertile ground for examining the overlapping concerns of hybridity, liminality, the third space, and the in-between space of the Asian and the Asian American identity and predicament.

Filipino biblical scholar Fernandez (2002) uses the story of Babel to shed light on the plight of Asian Americans in the modern United States. In his reading, the tower of Babel functions as a symbol of imperial praxis. In the context of the Babylonians’ domination over Israel, the presence of different languages becomes a stumbling block to their centralization of power. The subsequent confusion of language by God serves as a counter project, which strikes at the core of the empire’s unity through language. Likewise, Fernandez states that Asian Americans in the United States resemble the story of Babel in that the Asian Americans, as racial minorities, may be allowed to participate in the economic sphere but are not automatically included politically in the United States. He then moves forward to Pentecost where the descent of the Holy Spirit enables the flourishing of many tongues and colors. That is the vision by which all should be inspired to move past Babel to the promise of Pentecost. In another article, Fernandez (2003) uses the story of the Garden of Eden as a way to advocate for Filipino Americans who have succumbed to the temptation to ‘exorcise’ the ‘white gods’ (Gen. 3.5a). The ‘fall’ of the Filipino Americans is precisely their desire to be ‘white’ like their colonial and neocolonial masters. He concludes by urging Filipino Americans to practice a transformative praxis of building bridges of connection across nations and thus articulate a new social self. Along the same lines, Fernandez (2006) argues that the experience of Filipino Americans in the United States is best captured by the narrative of ‘exodus-toward-Egypt’. Egypt refers not only to the negative connotation of flight and migration but also to the positive image of release and liberation. For Filipino Americans, exodus from their homeland means release from poverty and fatalism, as well as movement toward the land of wealth and opportunity. The twist in this story is that they migrate toward the land of their colonial master and stay there as a colonized people.

From his research on a postcolonial reading of the Deuteronomic History, U. Kim (2005; 2006: 94-97) suggests a parallel predicament between the liminality of Josiah’s kingdom in the larger historical context of the Assyrian empire and the Asian American experience in white America. He names this reading strategy as ‘intercontextual’; that is, reading the story of Josiah in conversation with the experience, aspirations and history of Asian Americans for the purpose of illuminating the meaning of the text for these readers.

Sometimes, postcolonial interpretation is combined with feminist interpretation to form a postcolonial feminist hermeneutics, exposing the gendered power dynamics between empire and the colonized. For example, Kwok defines the postcolonial imagination as the overlapping of three modes: the historical, the dialogical, and the diasporic. She suggests that we step outside the worldview of the Eurocentric theological tradition and re-encounter our own history and culture in an attempt to discover anew our particular self and identity (Kwok 2005: 22). As a case in point, Kwok examines Ruth through the lens of gender, sexuality, and the politics of otherness. In Kwok’s reading, ‘home’ can be understood in terms of kinship, the patriarchal household, and hospitality toward strangers. She researches multiple readings of Ruth, inquiring about Ruth’s identity construction, which cuts across the issues of chosen and unchosen, race, class, culture, colonialism, conquest, and slavery. She concludes that the interpretations of the book of Ruth belong to scholars of different tribes who construct different understandings of ‘home’ for Ruth. These diverse readings reflect that ‘home’ for biblical studies is no longer fixed, but is constantly shifting and re-created. A postcolonial imagination is more about what the Bible says to the contemporary context rather than to its original audience (Kwok 2005: 100-21).

Intercontextual Interpretation

Foskett indicates that there are two directions for Asian American interpretation of the Bible. One moves from the Asian American context to the Bible in order to illuminate its passages, themes and concepts. The other tries to ‘place nonbiblical texts and traditions in mutual conversation with the Bible’ (Foskett 2006: 305). The latter approach can be understood as an intercontextual interpretation, which has gained popularity among Asian American biblical interpreters. Archie Lee observes that in the Asian context, religious plurality and the existence of multiple scriptural texts pose a challenge when one converts to Christianity, since the Christian community often puts pressure on new converts to denounce non-biblical scriptural texts (A. Lee 2008: 182). By contrast, intercontextual interpretation brings the traditional Asian texts or art forms such as movies into conversation with the Bible. For example, Yamada identifies his reading of Genesis 2–3 as ‘inter(con)textual’ (Yamada 2009: 105). He draws attention to the text’s often overlooked themes such as human survival outside the garden to form a parallel text to the experience of Japanese internment in the United States. Yee reads 1 Kings 21, the story of Naboth’s vineyard, in light of Japanese internment (Yee 2016). In another article, Yee (2013) reads the woman warrior, Jael, in Judges 4 in conversation with the Chinese female warrior, Fa Mulan, using the lens of American Orientalism. She makes an intercontextual comparison between the two forms of literature and exposes their underlying ideologies, such as that both Jael and Mulan defy the stereotype of women in patriarchal traditions and break the tropes of inner/outer and domestic/public figure expected of both cultures. The liminality and (trans)gendering through cross-dressing define two women as transgressing the societal boundaries, yet paradoxically remaining within their confines. Yee then moves on to discuss Disney’s portrayal of Mulan as an Americanized teenager. Disney turns the ancient Chinese heroine into a western figure for the sake of a global market. Yee’s research blends traditional Chinese folktale, the biblical text, the Asian American context, and Disney to produce an illuminating work that speaks to a variety of audiences regarding the issues of identity formation, cultural expectations, and gender dynamics. The audiences include Americans, Asian Americans, and Asians in general and Chinese in particular.

Other examples of an intercontextual approach include Eng’s research (2014). Eng studies the meaning of the word hesed in the Hebrew Bible and then examines it from the perspective of Confucius. In the Confucian understanding of honor and shame, hesed is not just a relational term that describes the binding of one party to another while conveying the sense of a gracious and responsible deed. It also has to do with the Confucian teaching of li (‘ritual’) and ren (‘benevolence or human goodness’). Therefore, when Rahab asks the spies of Joshua for hesed, based on the Confucian understanding of the act, she is requesting a transaction. Goh (2016) compares the Confucian Analects with the theme of righteousness in Ecclesiastes. She asserts that though the two texts have similar themes of justice, the motivations behind the injustice are different. For Confucius, the immoral nature of the ruling government is the reason for injustice, whereas for Qohelet, injustice emerges from the corrupted political structure and system (Eccl. 4.1-3; 3.16-17).

Since time, context and history vary drastically between the world of the Hebrew Bible and that of the traditional Asian classical texts, a more thorough methodology in delineating the selection of texts and the way of reading them intercontextually is needed. In addition, since the intercontextual approach requires interpreters’ familiarity with the concepts, literary texts, themes, culture and history of both worlds (the world of the Asian or the Asian American and the world of the Hebrew Bible), it poses challenges to the interpreters due to their social location of being betwixt and between and neither here nor there. Not many interpreters are masters of both worlds. The multiplicity of Asian culture, history and tradition, however, produces diverse genres of literature and art, which makes this approach an attractive one. The popularity of the recent motion picture Crazy Rich Asians, China’s television drama series, The Story of Yanxi Palace, and other popular movies related to Asian culture make the intercontextual approach a possible trend for the future.

Culturally Specific and LGBTQ Interpretations

Due to the multifaceted nature of Asian and Asian American contexts, there is a wide array of cultural and contextual particularities that refuse to be grouped under a specified domain. Below, I suggest three context-specific readings as examples.

Future Directions

In conclusion, I highlight four possible future trajectories for AAAH.