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Bitter the Chastening Rod follows in the footsteps of the first
collection of African American biblical interpretation, Stony the
Road We Trod (1991). Nineteen Africana biblical scholars contribute
cutting-edge essays reading Jesus, criminalization, the enslaved,
and whitened interpretations of the enslaved. They present
pedagogical strategies for teaching, hermeneutics, and bible
translation that center Black Lives Matter and black culture.
Biblical narratives, news media, and personal stories intertwine in
critical discussions of black rage, protest, anti-blackness, and
mothering in the context of black precarity.
Nonwhite women primarily appear as marginalized voices, if at all,
in volumes that address constructions of race/ethnicity and early
Christian texts. Employing an intersectional approach, the
contributors analyze historical, cultural, literary, and
ideological constructions of racial/ethnic identities, which
intersect with gender/sexuality class, religion, slavery, and/or
power. Given their small numbers in academic biblical studies, this
book represents a critical mass of nonwhite women scholars and
offers a critique of dominant knowledge production. Filling a
significant epistemological gap, this seminal text provides
provocative, innovative, and critical insights into constructions
of race/ethnicity in ancient and modern texts and contexts.
Nonwhite women primarily appear as marginalized voices, if at all,
in volumes that address constructions of race/ethnicity and early
Christian texts and contexts. The contributors, who identify as
African American, Asian American, and Asian, analyze the
historical, literary, ideological construction of racial/ethnic
identities. In reading how identity is constructed in early
Christian texts, the contributors employ an intersectional
approach. Thus, they read how race/ethnicity overlaps or intersects
with gender/sexuality, class, religion, slavery, and/or power in
early Christian texts and contexts and in U.S. and global contexts,
historically and currently. Identity construction occurs in public
and private spaces and institutions including households, religious
assemblies/churches, and empire. While some studies discuss the
topic of race/ethnicity and employ intersectional approaches, this
book is the first volume that nonwhite women New Testament Bible
scholars have written. Given their small numbers in the academic
study of the Bible, this book gives voice to a critical mass of
nonwhite women scholars and offers a critique of dominant forms of
knowledge and knowledge production. The contributors provide
provocative, innovative, and critical cultural and ideological
insights into constructions of race/ethnicity in early Christianity
and contemporary contexts.
'The Construction of the Other in the Acts of the Apostles'
explores the beginnings of the Christian Church, showing how early
believers united and created a self-identity through delimiting the
Other. Mitzi Smith shows how the creation and subjugation of the
Other was crucial for the expansion of Christianity by the
Apostles. Mitzi Smith employs Jonathan Smith's theory of otherness
as a framework for analysing Luke's literary and discursive
construction of character in Acts. In order to define the Self we
define the Other, using opposition as a form of definition and
subjugation. Furthermore, Jonathan Smith argues that the project of
otherness is more about proximity than alterity; the other that is
like us is the most threatening. Both Luke and many others have
written accounts of Jesus's deeds; Luke's project of otherness was
motivated by the need to promote his account as the most accurate.
Projects of otherness are linguistic or discursive, evaluative,
hierarchical, and essentially political and economic. Mitzi Smith
provides a new way to understand Christian identity; allowing
people to understand the Other in terms of themselves. Mitzi J.
Smith is Associate Professor of New Testament and Early Christian
Studies at Ashland Theological Seminary at Detroit. She is a
contributor to 'True to Our Native Land' (2008). 'Here Mitzi Smith
provides a subtle and well-written analysis of how the various
kinds of characters are portrayed in Acts and what that means for
Luke's theology of mission. She moves far beyond the usual literary
summaries of Acts: both the nature of language and the nature of
story-telling are treated with sensitivity and sophistication, and
yet her book is readable for a non-scholarly audience. A must-read
for all those interested in the literary achievement of Luke and
Acts and what it means for Luke's theology'. Lawrence M. Wills,
Episcopal Divinity School
Too often the negative characterization of "others" in the biblical
text is applied to groups and persons beyond the text whom we wish
to define as the Other. Otherness is a synthetic and political
social construct that allows us to create and maintain boundaries
between "them" and "us." The other that is too similar to us is
most problematic. This book demonstrates how proximate characters
are constructed as the Other in the Acts of the Apostles.
Charismatics, Jews, and women are proximate others who are
constructed as the external and internal Other.
Each volume in the Insights series discusses discoveries and
insights gained into biblical texts from a particular approach or
perspective in current scholarship. Accessible and appealing to
today's students, each Insight volume discusses how this method,
approach, or strategy was first developed and how its application
has changed over time; what current questions arise from its use;
what enduring insights it has produced; and what questions remain
for future scholarship.Mitzi J. Smith describes the distinctive
African American experience of Scripture, from slavery to Black
Liberation and beyond, and the unique angles of perception that an
intentional African American interpretation brings to the text for
a contemporary generation of scholars. Smith shows how questions of
race,ethnicity, and the dynamics of "othering" have been developed
in African American biblical scholarship, resulting in new reading
of particular texts. Further, Smith describes challenges that
scholarship raises for the future of biblical interpretation
generally.
That Christian missionary efforts have long gone hand-in-hand with
European colonization and American imperialist expansion in the
19th and 20th centuries is well recognized. The linchpin role
played in those efforts by the "Great Commission" - the risen
Christ's command to "go into all the world" and "teach all nations"
- has more often been observed than analyzed, however. With the
rise of European colonialism, the Great Commission was suddenly
taken up with an eschatological urgency, often explicit in the
founding statements of missionary societies; the differentiation of
"teachers" and "nations" waiting to be "taught" proved a ready-made
sacred sanction for the racialized and androcentric logics of
conquest and "civilization."
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