Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World ed. by R. S. Sugirtharajah (review)

This new edition of Voices from the Margin marks the 25th anniversary of the first volume published in 1991. In the new introduction, the editor R. S. Sugirtharajah, reminiscences about how the first edition was received, as if it were a barely audible drop of water that eventually rippled out making an impact upon the vast ocean of the dominant white European American academic and biblical scholarship.

Twenty-five years later, biblical scholars who are identified as voices from the margin still have a lot of work to do. Their voices, however, are more than a drop of water. They have charted a new direction of biblical scholarship and have unsettled the mighty fortress of Eurocentric and white scholarship by introducing globally complicated problems and multiple cultural references without losing conceptual clarity or solid historical analysis.

The new edition maintains the same structure as the 2006 revised and expanded edition which is divided into six parts, according to different methodologies. Part 1, "Reading Strategies," takes a perspectival approach that involves hermeneutical attention to the reader's own social, geographical, and cultural locations. The articles in this part are "The Bible and the Five Hundred Years of Conquest," by Elsa Tamez; "Re-Reading for Liberation: African American Women and the Bible," by Renita J. Weems; "Marxist Critical Tools: Are They Helpful in Breaking the Stranglehold of Idealist Hermeneutics?," by José Míguez-Bonino; "Developments in Biblical Interpretation in Africa: Historical and Hermeneutical Directions"; "Five Smooth Stones: Reading the Bible through Aboriginal Eyes," by Graham Paulson and Mark Brett; "Reading Islandly," by Jione Havea; "Modern Chinese Attitudes toward the Bible," by Chen Jianming; "Dalits, Bible, and Method," by Monica Jyotsna Melanchthon; and "Postcolonial Biblical Criticism," by R. S. Sugirtharajah.

Part 2, "Subaltern Readings," offers a preferential approach, which privileges struggles, suffering, and marginalization embedded in the text and the context. The articles in this part are "Jesus and the Minjung in the Gospel of Mark," by Ahn Byung-Mu; "Rereading the Bible with Dispersed Migrants and Disempowered Indigenous People," by A. Maria Arul Raja; "Anti-Greed and Anti-Pride: Mark 10.17-27 and 10.35-45 in the Light of Tribal Values," by George M. Soares-Prabhu; "The Cornelius Story in the Japanese Cultural Context," by Hisao Kayama; "The Forgiveness of Debts in Matthew and Luke: For an Economy without Exclusions," by Ivoni Richter Reimer; "Wickedness in the Place of Justice and Righteousness: A Reading of Ecclesiastes 3:16-17 in Response to Court's Ban for Malasian Christians Publications to Use the Word Allah," by Elaine W. F. Goh; and "Voices of the Whenua: Engaging 1 Kings 21 through a Maōri Lens," by Nasili Vaka'uta.

The third part, "Many Readings: Exodus," follows a pluralistic approach, illuminating multiple interpretations of the Book of Exodus. The articles in this part are "A Latin American Perspective: The Option for the Poor in the Old Testament," by George V. Pixley and Clodovis Boff; "An Asian Feminist Perspective: The Exodus Story (Exodus 1.8-22; 2.1-10)," by An Asian Work Group; "A Palestinian Perspective: Biblical Perspectives on the Land," by Naim S. Ateek; "A Native American Perspective: Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians," by Robert Allen Warrior; "Exodus-toward-Egypt: Filipino-Americans' Struggle to Realize the Promised Land in America," by Eleazar S. Fernandez; and "Let My People Go! Threads of Exodus in African American Narratives," by Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan. The most recent methodology is a postcolonial approach, which attempts to address the issues of colonialism as a problem of both the past and the present. The last methodology, but not the least, is dubbed the people's approach, a practice that is close to reader-response criticism. It highlights ordinary people's agency and ability to interpret the Bible.

Part 4, "Postcolonial Readings," contains "Returning to China: Biblical Interpretation in Postcolonial Hong Kong," by Archie C. C. Lee; "Reading for...