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New Testament Studies
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Why Race, Gender and Empire matter for New Testament Interpretation

This paper will introduce at least five contemporary approaches and perspectives for interpreting the text of the New Testament: Black, womanist, feminist, postcolonial, and ecological. There are many more perspectives one could engage and the paper does not claim to be comprehensive, covering all contemporary perspectives. These five methods, however, will offer a solid introduction to contemporary interpretation so that those who engage with this paper will become more critically reflective about what it is we do when we interpret New Testament texts. Through these methods, students will be encouraged to embrace critical and creative approaches to Scripture along with a deeper understanding of how people negotiate their contexts when reading the New Testament. By engaging these perspectives and approaches, students will develop their own critical abilities to evaluate different approaches and to examine their utility for a variety of situations. How does a difference in perspective, approach, and method affect the use and interpretation of the New Testament?

Across the 8 weeks of this paper, we will learn about particular critical approaches for New Testament interpretation - what they are, why they matter, and how they work - and then apply this approach to selected texts from the New Testament. Each week, students will be asked to read New Testament texts (ranging from the Gospels to Revelation), a set of chapters and/or articles on a particular approach to New Testament interpretation, and then apply that approach to the New Testament. Students will prepare up to three pieces of written work, one of which could develop into their submitted essay.

Aims

  • To achieve a rounded understanding of contemporary methods used to interpret the New Testament, with particular focus on methods emerging from marginalised populations;
  • To explore how ways of reading the New Testament have emerged from contemporary political, social, and cultural contexts;
  • To engage with some of the literature produced and key New Testament texts used by scholars immersed these various approaches to New Testament interpretation;
  • To develop skills in engaging critically with these methods of reading the New Testament and applying the method to their own exegesis of the New Testament.

Objectives

Students who successfully complete this paper will have: 

  • A good knowledge of some contemporary approaches to the text of the New Testament and an awareness of key features of different methodological approaches; 
  • A developed awareness of the interpretative contexts in which these approaches are situated;
  • Engaged with contemporary approaches in their own exegesis of New Testament texts;
  • Acquired skills important for the study of Scripture generally, and for the New Testament specifically;
  • Demonstrated their ability to analyse a New Testament text through one or more of these interpretative lenses.
     

Links to each week's reading are on ORLO (Single Sign on needed to access)

Week 1: Introduction to Biblical Interpretation and Interpretative Communities

Week 2: Black and African American Interpretation

Week 3: Womanist Interpretation

Week 4: Feminist Interpretation

Week 5: Postcolonial Interpretation

Week 6: Ecological Interpretation

Week 7: Queer Approaches

Week 8: Disability Approaches