Third World Biblical insights of women

BIBLICAL INSIGHTS FROM: Hope Abundant (Third World and Indigenous Women’s Theology) editor, Kwok Pui-lan

p59ff “For us women from the Christian tradition, the task if to reflect anew on the role of the Bible in our lives, in our struggles, in the modification of our behavior...In the last twenty years, I believe, a particular phase of the struggle has been achieved. Through the contributions of many intellecvtuals and popular readings, we have succeeded in relativizing the written text and in seeing what is written as constrained by a historical, cultural, political, social and male perspective.”

P.104 “It needs to be somehow impressed upon women and men that many of the biblical statements that are considered oppressive are not necessaril factual or normative, nor do they reflect reality, but are often the wishful projections of male authors in situations where it was felt that women needed to be controlled since women were more assertive and successful.”

P. 112 “In the context of a multi-scriptural environment, ‘scripture’ understood as revelation that is canonized but not closed is essential for authentic and meaningful exegesis of the biblical text.”
P. 113 “The ‘Word of God’ is not absolute or ahistorical.”
P. 115 “This calls for what Tissa Balasuriya calls a ‘new hermeneutic,’...this involves recognition of the fact that there is a distinction between God’s revelation at a given time as expressed by the author and how the meaning of a text is interpreted in the cultural context of another time.”

P.181 “What alienates some African women is the interpretation of revelation that suggests that before Jesus Africans had not encountered God and that without Jesus all are doomed. Christian exclusiveness is in large measure not biblical and must therefore not be allowed to become an obstacle in the multi-religious communities of Africa.

P. 223 “The major problem of African Christians is their uncritical reading of the Bible...”

P. 233 “The Bible was born out of a culture that honored men and despised women and so it reflected this phenomenon. If we pay no attention to historical context and background in our biblical interpretation, but simply apply things mechanically, we turn the revelation of God into a fossilized word, and not the living Word.”