This volume addresses the problematic relationship between colonialism and the Bible. It does so from the perspective of the Global South, calling upon voices from Africa and the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean. The contributors address the present state of the problematic relationship in their respective geopolitical and geographical contexts. In so doing, they provide sharp analyses of the past, the present, and the future: historical contexts and trajectories, contemporary legacies and junctures, and future projects and strategies. Taken together, the essays provide a rich and expansive comparative framework across the globe.

This volume addresses the problematic relationship between colonialism and the Bible. It does so from the perspective of the Global South, calling upon voices from Africa and the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean. The contributors address the present state of the problematic relationship in their respective geopolitical and geographical contexts. In so doing, they provide sharp analyses of the past, the present, and the future: historical contexts and trajectories, contemporary legacies and junctures, and future projects and strategies. Taken together, the essays provide a rich and expansive comparative framework across the globe.

Resistance against unjust (wicked) cultures and imperial powers is at the heart of scripture. In many cases, the resistance is waged against external systems or the misappropriation of scriptural texts and traditions. In some cases, however, scripture resists oppressive cultures and powers that it also requires, certifies and protects. At other times, and in different settings, the minders of scripture speak against the abusive cultures and power systems that they inherited and whose benefits they milk. Scripture and Resistance contains reflections by authors from East and West, South and North, on resistance and the Christian scriptures around a rainbow of concerns: the colonial legacies of the Bible; the people (esp. native and indigenous people) who were subjugated and minoritized for the sake of the Bible; the courage for resistance among ordinary and normal people, and the opportunities that arise from their realities and struggles; the imperializing tendencies that lurk behind so-called traditional biblical scholarship; the strategies of and energies in post- and de-colonial criticisms; the Bible as a profitable product, and a site of struggle; and the multiple views or perspectives in the Bible about empire and resistance. In other words, the contributors, as a collective, affirm that the Bible contains (pun intended) resistance.

This collection of essays, with contributions by many long-term colleagues and collaborators of R. S. Sugirtharajah, Professor of Biblical Hermeneutics in the University of Birmingham, is meant to review, evaluate, celebrate, and honour his many scholarly contributions. The title of the collection signifies that the volume focusses not only on how we read socio-political interventions, but also on how reading can itself be a form of intervention. This focus on reading and intervention is in many ways most fitting, as Professor Sugirtharajah's biblical and theological hermeneutics have indeed been a significant force of intervention. His work has confronted and challenged many to see beyond a parochial mainstream, to perceive imperial and colonial dynamics in the Bible and in biblical studies, and to remain open to the transformative possibilities of reading from new sites as well as with new sights.

Mary Ann Tolbert has been a pioneering voice in what we have now come to call 'interdisciplinary reading' of the Bible. In the early stages of her career, Tolbert used New Testament parables to push biblical scholarship beyond the traditional confines of historical-critical methods. Over the past four decades, she has made significant contributions to psychoanalytical, narrative, rhetorical, feminist, and queer readings of the Bible, and has interrogated the social location of biblical interpreters as well as the ideological implications of reading and reading methodologies. Divided into three main sections, this collection of essays from biblical scholars around the world to honor Tolbert engage the very issues that have driven and defined Tolbert's scholarship: reading between the historical and the literary; reading between biblical authority and social location; and reading between gender and sexuality. The title of the collection focuses on an often-used but arguably under-examined term in biblical studies: 'ideology'. Together, essays in this volume not only perform ideological criticism of the Bible but also profess the ideological nature of criticism itself, since-regardless of 'what' and 'how' one is reading-the act of reading is always already infused with ideology. By highlighting the work of ideology in interpretation, this volume ultimately suggests that while ideology impacts interpretation of meaning, the meaning of ideology itself also needs to be interpreted.

Resistance against unjust (wicked) cultures and imperial powers is at the heart of scripture. In many cases, the resistance is waged against external systems or the misappropriation of scriptural texts and traditions. In some cases, however, scripture resists oppressive cultures and powers that it also requires, certifies and protects. At other times, and in different settings, the minders of scripture speak against the abusive cultures and power systems that they inherited and whose benefits they milk. Scripture and Resistance contains reflections by authors from East, West, South, and North - on resistance and the Christian scriptures regarding a rainbow of concerns: the colonial legacies of the Bible; the people (especially native and indigenous people) who were subjugated and minoritized for the sake of the Bible; the courage for resistance among ordinary and normal people, and the opportunities that arise from their realities and struggles; the imperializing tendencies that lurk behind so-called traditional biblical scholarship; the strategies of and energies in post- and de-colonial criticisms; the Bible as a profitable product, and a site of struggle; and the multiple views or perspectives in the Bible about empire and resistance. In other words, the contributors, as a collective, affirm that the Bible contains (pun intended) resistance.