Text, context, and liberation. (Presenting the Issue).

Scriptural studies reach beyond merely academic interests, or, for that matter, merely parochial applications. Whatever the weight given to Sacred Scripture, its use enters into the fabric of human society in ways far beyond what influences we might expect from other forms of literature or human communication. Yet, at the same time, the use of Scripture depends largely upon the local circumstances of those who attempt to plumb its depths of meaning or govern behavior by its prescriptions. In a word, interpretation is local; and, its extension into theology is similarly local. This is so because for whatever faith claims one might make for the inspired origins or revealed truths resulting from that inspiration, the medium remains local to those receiving, interpreting, and transmitting. All claims to the contrary, we must learn to live with partial truths even within revealed religions. But, you'd never get that impression from the way sacred texts are bandied around, usually against someone or some groups that those beating the texts don't like, can't tolerate, or outright hate. Such interpreters hardly bring honor to their deity, respect to their tradition, or merit to their purveyors.

In a rather remarkable study of the Qur'an, Farid Esack, a South African Muslim, renders a great service to his Sacred Scripture and religious tradition by grappling with relativism and pluralism, notions that emerged from European Enlightenment values and were applied very concretely in the liberation from apartheid in South Africa. In QUR'AN, LIBERATION & PLURALISM (Oxford: One World, 1998, 2002), Esack anticipated present-day calls for Muslims to take steps to mitigate hostile images of non-Muslims that lead to fear, hate, and destructive behavior against targeted outsiders. Despite the foundational contributions of Muslims to Western civilization, present-day Islam labors under the charge of fundamentalism, extremism, and militancy. Whether Islam can find a means to be freed of such charges remains to be seen, but Esack's approach bears closer examination.

Breaking from a naive recital of qur'anic texts, Esack takes pages from critical biblical scholarship in identifying texts, contexts, and hermeneutics as essential ingredients for eliciting meaning from scriptural sources, relativizing concepts seldom heard among most true-believers. He cites the diverse contexts even in the lifetime of Muhammed that occasioned changes in practices, such as in the use of alcohol. Early qur'anic texts reflect Muhammed's acceptance of the use of alcohol in moderation. Subsequent texts suggest greater caution. A final text prohibits the drinking of alcoholic beverages. Esack explains these changes in terms of concrete contexts in the life of Muhammed that altered even the Prophet's perspective. Similarly, as qur'anic texts came to be applied in new contexts, adaptive hermeneutics altered the selections and their meanings to match the local circumstances. Few pre-moderns would acknowledge that any substantive change could, far less regularly does, occur in the process of preaching and teaching.

One rather stunning recent examination of Islam in Afghanistan indicated that before the tribal Pashtun Taliban assumed militaristic control of religion and politics in Afghanistan, each tribe had a notably distinct ("relaxed") version of Islam. With the Taliban came a sweeping reduction of such diversity to a standardized militant observance. The question might be asked, using Esack's method, whether the many versions of Islam aren't really the norm, and whether any one can be explained only in terms of various adaptive changes that occurred to meet particular circumstances. Such an adaptive process weakens the argument for a single, holy vision that dates back to the allegedly pure, whole, and seamless revelation of Muhammad.

The question that Westerners must face is whether Islam isn't inherently hostile to outsiders and aggressive against Western values. Esack argues not, affirming rather that pluralism and its concomitant liberating values are at home within the hermeneutics of the Qur'an. Liberation from apartheid necessitated Muslims working harmoniously with non-Muslims without losing their undergirding of qur'anic religious tradition. A case in point: Esack's study addresses how the qur'anic interpretation in the South African context dealt with the mustad'afun--the poor or oppressed:

   The most significant text of the South African qur'anic discourse on
   liberation is undoubtedly Qur'an 28:4-8. This particular text was quoted
   with unceasing regularity at the rallies of virtually every Islamist
   organization both fundamentalist and progressive--during the uprisings of
   the 1980's, as well as in their magazine, newspapers and pamphlets.... The
   use of mustad'afun in this text was applied to all the oppressed people of
   South Africa, irrespective of their religious background [102].

What is significant about this contextual use of a qur'anic text is that it recognizes the movement of Muslims away from seeing only themselves as oppressed, toward finding common cause with others who are similarly marginalized. Typical ingroup behavior might have been expected to lose a fix on injustice when it slipped beyond the scope of group membership.

Similarly, Tawhid is a qur'anic principle of unity and wholeness. "The conviction that tawhid is at the heart of a comprehensive socio-political worldview, although not entirely novel, has grown enormously in the last few decades" (91). Thus

  viewing tawhid as a hermeneutical principle means that the different
  approaches to the Qur'an--philosophical, spiritual, juristic or political
  must be regarded as components of a single tapestry. All of these are
  required to express the fullness of its message, for no single approach can
  adequately express it [93].

Extending this hermeneutical principle to the notion of Nas--"the people"--the spirit of God "covers all of humankind and gives them a permanent sanctity (e.g. 15:20; 17:22, 80, 21:91)" (95).

While such tries at finding a linkage between text, context and the hermeneutics of liberation within qur'anic interpretation may not fully resolve a manifest ethno-centrism or xenophobia that seems at time to characterize Muslims, the message that Esack delivers is that Muslims can find common cause with outsiders, and this common cause can be based upon a holistic view of the human condition situated under the unity of their God's protective care.

There is little doubt today that such efforts at hermeneutics of liberation and inclusion merit reciprocal efforts by other religionists, to find means within their sacred texts and traditions to obviate the widespread tendency to exclusivist claims to truth, unique relationship, and preempting symbols of the divine.

The present issue of BTB begins with an article on The Family in the Bible by James A. Sanders, with a touching dedication to Leland J. White. In his final editorial essay, Leland White wrote:

   The answer to familism and the various forms of tribalism that plague
   religious communities is a vision of the unity of the human family that
   respects the enormous diversity that characterizes humans [BTB 31:3 (2001),
   Group Hatreds? Some Explanations].

Leland's call to stem group hatreds converges with Esack's attempts to encompass the larger human family in place of an ethnocentric, tribal view that alienates instead of finding common cause in the biblical symbol of family. And, recasting the symbol of family from a narrow defensive tribalism ("familism"), the larger pluralistic context ennobles the biblical tradition. James Sanders explores the symbol of family, but readers might well re-contextualize it within the modern pluralistic context, using the hermeneutics of liberation to render the tradition "adaptable for life" (see J. A. Sanders, FROM SACRED STORY TO SACRED TEXT, Fortress Press, 1987).

Another conscious effort to re-contextualize the biblical message is Time, Communion, and Ancestry in African Biblical Interpretation: A Contextual Note on 1 Maccabees 2:49-70 by Mario I. Aguilar. The author finds resonances between the biblical genealogy of faithful men in Israel and African exegetes' understanding of ancestry: "If God gives life, he does so through humanity." Thus, relating biblical tradition to African practice can help build bonds of mutual understanding rather than build boundaries dividing diverse peoples.

Roland Murphy returns to the pages of BTB with a valuable summary and critique of the most recent document from the Pontifical Biblical Commission (2001) on the relation between Christians and Jews. Eschewing "supercessionism," the document seeks to see both continuity and discontinuity between the First and Second Testaments of the Bible and thus between the Jews and Christians who interpret them for their own traditions.

Paul Achtemeier lauds BTB associate editor John H. Elliott for a superlative new translation and exquisitely detailed commentary on 1 Peter. Elliott's work expounds the local cultural setting of the letter. Achtemeier sees the major contribution of the Commentary as

   the argument for household and family terminology as the root metaphor and
   key conceptual framework for understanding the intention of the author of 1
   Peter. [E]lliott contends for this major insight not only into 1 Peter but
   also into the larger mode of self-understanding practiced by the early
   Christian community.

The family as metaphor is well suited to the quest we now need to initiate for understanding religious and human diversity, and for actively pursuing liberating inclusion of human persons within that complex family. It may not be too late to begin sharing methods, seeking insights, and building new understandings of the varied traditions of sacred texts that so often in the past and into the present have succeeded mainly in expelling rather than welcoming into our homes the many peoples of God.