TY - CHAP
T1 - Reading the Bible in the Context of Christianity Worldwide
AU - van den Toren, B.
PY - 2024
Y1 - 2024
N2 - The worldwide Christian community constitutes the appropriate horizon for the last chapter written by Benno van den Toren. Since the second half of the twentieth century, the “centre of gravity” of the church is increasingly moving southward. The majority of the world’s Christians no longer live in the Middle East, Europe, or North America but in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. This change has raised the awareness that the Bible is not a book that belongs to the West. It can be and is read from many cultural perspectives. The chapter explores how from the very beginning the Christian Bible has been translated in different languages as it successively crossed ever new cultural boundaries. This translation is itself an example of how Scripture is read in multiple cultures and can be used as a model for cross- cultural hermeneutics. After introducing the hermeneutical implications of the process of cross- cultural translation, the chapter outlines some of the main approaches to Bible reading that have been developed in the context of the globalization and southward movement of the church since the latter half of the twentieth century such as inculturation hermeneutics, liberation hermeneutics, postcolonial hermeneutics, and Pentecostal hermeneutics. These reflect the need to take into account the role of culture, religious plurality, social tensions, global power relations, and personal spiritual involvement for understanding how people groups read the Christian Scriptures. The author argues for the need for an intercultural reading of the Scriptures in which different contextual readings can critically enrich each other. Thus modern Western readings are challenged to reflect in new ways on the question whether some readings are more able to do justice to the nature and content of the Christian Scriptures than others.
AB - The worldwide Christian community constitutes the appropriate horizon for the last chapter written by Benno van den Toren. Since the second half of the twentieth century, the “centre of gravity” of the church is increasingly moving southward. The majority of the world’s Christians no longer live in the Middle East, Europe, or North America but in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. This change has raised the awareness that the Bible is not a book that belongs to the West. It can be and is read from many cultural perspectives. The chapter explores how from the very beginning the Christian Bible has been translated in different languages as it successively crossed ever new cultural boundaries. This translation is itself an example of how Scripture is read in multiple cultures and can be used as a model for cross- cultural hermeneutics. After introducing the hermeneutical implications of the process of cross- cultural translation, the chapter outlines some of the main approaches to Bible reading that have been developed in the context of the globalization and southward movement of the church since the latter half of the twentieth century such as inculturation hermeneutics, liberation hermeneutics, postcolonial hermeneutics, and Pentecostal hermeneutics. These reflect the need to take into account the role of culture, religious plurality, social tensions, global power relations, and personal spiritual involvement for understanding how people groups read the Christian Scriptures. The author argues for the need for an intercultural reading of the Scriptures in which different contextual readings can critically enrich each other. Thus modern Western readings are challenged to reflect in new ways on the question whether some readings are more able to do justice to the nature and content of the Christian Scriptures than others.
UR - https://zondervanacademic.com/products/the-bible-throughout-the-ages
M3 - Book chapter
SN - 978-0310139232
T3 - The Scripture Collective
SP - 296
EP - 314
BT - The Bible Throughout the Ages: Its Nature, Interpretation and Relevance for Today
A2 - Jaeger, Lydia
A2 - Bartholomew, Craig G
PB - Zondervan Academic
CY - Grand Rapids, Michigan
ER -