KERALA THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

(Affiliated To Senate of Serampore)

Subject: biblical hermeneutics: methods and perspectives.

Topic: materialist reading, Socio-political Reading and Postcolonial studies.

Submitted To: Dr . sajitha Varghese Submitted By: Soloman Saren

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Introduction
Hermeneutics, as a field of study, delves into the interpretation and understanding of texts, symbols,
and cultural artifacts. It encompasses various approaches, including materialist and socio-political readings,
which provide unique perspectives on the construction of meaning within texts and their broader socio-cultural
contexts.

This assignment aims to explore the principles and methodologies of materialist and socio-political
readings within the framework of hermeneutics. Through a critical examination of selected texts, we will
interrogate the ways in which material conditions and socio-political contexts shape textual meaning and
interpretation. By engaging with these readings, we will develop a deeper understanding of the complex
interplay between text, context, and interpretation in the field of hermeneutics.

1) Materialist Reading
According to Gustavo Gutierrez the developed nations increased their wealth by 50% during the period
from 1960 to 1970 while the third world countries continued to struggle in poverty.Only Cuba, after the 1959
communist revolution, showed a counter example of progress in Latin America and this espoused Marxist
principles. The Latin American Roman Catholic and Protestant churches started associating more with the poor
and denounced theinjustices they witnessed around them.

Materialistic reading, by definition, is a political act. It approaches the Bible focusing on the social class
distinctions created by economic and politica forces. Bible is not "politically neutral","value-free", or "culturally
innocenr"rather, it is a political intervention within a well-defined historical cultural space. Deriving its
perspective from Marxism, materialistic reading focuses on investigating literature's role in the class struggle.
The basic tenets of materialist reading are summarized in two well-known statements by Karl Marx: "It is not
the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines
their consciousness,"and " the philosopher have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The
point,however , is to change it.

1.1) Materialist approach

This basic materialist approach underscores a now well-established and richly represented concern in
biblical studies to interrogate the ideological preferences of both writers and readers of the Hebrew Bible. Set
together with the so-called "revisionist" or minimalist critique of the relationship between biblical texts and the
ancient societies from which they emerged - a critique strongly skeptical of the historical reliability of the
Hebrew Bible -ideological criticism contends that biblical texts are social products of power. Set within this
context, the materialist characteristics ofideological criticism have enjoyed a relatively productive and
influential role in biblical studies - particularly in the liberationist and class-engaged works of Norman
Gottwald, Fernando Belo, C. Myers, and Itumeleng Mosala, and as attested more generally in the establishment
of feminist criticism, and later Dalit and tribal criticisms as an indispensable lens through which to read biblical
literature.

1.2) Materialist criticism

 Materialist criticism engages explicitly the Marxist proposition that within a given society, people are
inextricably bound up with the material world and their own material processes and products. Intrinsically,
people's identities, statuses, and hierarchies are dynamically established in and through their materiality, so
"materialism is an acknowledgment of the consequences of materiality." Implementing this particular notion of
materialism demands a move beyond "a vulgar theory of mere things as artifacts,"and the rejection of a
similarly crude distinction between people as "subject" and material things as merely "objects" in favor of a
sophisticated and critical concern with the material aspect of human experience, and the extent to which identity
is created, shaped, impacted, or transformed by the materialexperience.

1.3) Materialist reading of the Bible:

The scholars such as Fernando Belo and Michel Clevenot have given detailed analysis of various texts from
the Bible in the light of materialist analysis . Clevenot distinguishes between a semiotic "gift" system and the
"purity"system. The "gift" system he associates with the ten Northern tribes of Israel and with the so-called E
and D documents. Here "the spirit of the clan was democratic ... hostile to all centralization... to all
monopolizing of power". The elitist priestly class works with the purity system. But Jesus affirms the egalitarian
system of gift. Thus in Mark 6:36-37, the disciples suggest "buying" something to eat,but Jesus tells them,"Give
them something to eat"(v. 37). Clevenot sees this as the negation of the merchant system that governs exchanges
by money and the promotion of the system of the gift in which everything belongs to everyone.

2) Socio-political Reading
We may say that socio-political constitutes a study of the way of life in the society and politics. By socio-
political reading of the Scripture it tends to mean the way one reads the Scripture in the backdrop of the way of
living in the society. In other words it points to the Bible in the context of the society and community. Walter
Brueggemann has discussed the socio-political reading of the HebrewBible.
A variety of "political theologies" and Christian-Marxist dialogues pmerged in Europe and the U.S.A during
this same period. Liberation theologies aroused "political readings" of the Bible that focused upon God's
attentiveness to the poor; the prophetic insistence upon social justice; and the vocation of the church to stand in
solidarity with the marginalized. Such perspectives elicited denunciations from political and ecclesial
leaders,including the Reagan White House and Pope John Paul II. But some First World Catholic and Protestant
theologians paid close attention to them -usually because they too had experienced conditions of oppression at
homeor abroad.

2.1) Three lavels of Reading

Reading from the socio-political perspective has to be understood at three levels along the lines of the
author-centred, text-centred and the reader-centredcriticisms.

2.1.1) author -centred

Author centred criticism seeks to examine the original intention of the author, or in other words tries to
bring out the world behind the text. It approaches the text analyzing it in the historical,cultural, geographical,
religious, ideological and literary context.

2.1.2) text- centred

Text-centred criticism studies the inner composition of the text and sources on the world within the text
using the criteria of harmony and appropriateness to study the authentic value of the text under consideration.

2.1.3) reader- centred criticisms

The Reader-centred criticism studies the importance of the reader's perception of the text, or the world in
front of the text-the world of the reader. Thus all the components such as the author, text and the reader are
placed in a socially defined location called the "margin". The term margin is to be understood
socially,politically and economically and not necessarily geographically. The location called margin is to be
defined assessing the worldview ofthe author present in the text.

2.2) Application on the Bible

Herman C. Waetjen207 in his book A Re-ordering of Power: A Socio-Political Reading of Marks 's Gospel
tries to see Mark in the context of the socio-political context of the time when Mark wrote his Gospel. The
author also notes parallels between the Third World and the world of Mark's Gospel as striking. First of all, here
we try to apply the socio-political reading on a New Testament passage from Mark 12:13-17. Mark could have
written his Gospel just before or after Apostle Peter's martyrdom during the latter part of the 60s during the first
century at Rome. During the public ministry of Jesus he attained wide acceptance among the common people in
most areas of Palestine and many had become his disciples. This made the Roman Government angry. The
Jewish Sadducees, Pharisees and the Herodians were also unhappy about the situation. Politically the Roman
Emperor was ruling the Empire. He was regarded as the Son of God. Herodians were not a religious sect, but a
political party.They were supporters of King Herod and his dynasty and their rule,and they had allied with the
Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Herodians considered Herod the Great as the messiah of the Jew,
and wished him to make Palestine independent.
Secondly, we look at a passage from the Hebrew Bible: Jeremiah 42:9-17. The great powers, North and South,
dominate Israel's public life and policy. While Babylon may be regarded as simply one among several great
powers that concern Israel, it is also clear that Babylon peculiarly occupies the imagination of Israel. Indeed in
the post-exilic period, it is Babylon, not Persia that continues to function as a theological metaphor of Israel. In
its final form the Book of Jeremiah has a decidedly pro-Babylonian stint, mediated through a Baruch document
and perhaps powered by the authority and influence of the family of Shaphan. The sustained argument of the
text is that the people of Jerusalem must stay in the jeopardized city and submit to the occupying presence of
Babylon and not to flee to Egypt. This announcement reflects a political judgment and a political interest that
co-operation with Babylon is a safer way to survival. This voice of advocacy also concluded that co-operation
with Egypt would only cause heavier than destructive Babylonian presence. That politicaljudgment is, however,
given as an oracle of God.

3)Postcolonial Studies
Bible reveals the pain and agony which the people of Israel underwent under the colonial rule of the
Assyrians, Babylonians,Persians, Greeks and the Romans. Postcolonial hermeneutics defies such colonial
persuasions and upholds the experiences of the colonized. It originally began as a resistance discourse of the
colonized to encounter dominant epistemological systems of the colonizers and the neo-colonizers. It is an
important reading now in literary, cultural and biblical studies. It is because more than three quarters of the
world population have been greatly affected in theirlives and cultures due to colonialism
"Postcolonial criticism interprets the Bible from the perspective of those who seek to engage with the legacy of
colonial rule," writes R. S. Sugirtharajah. The study emerged in the 1970s first in departments of English
literature and later making its way into other disciplines. It is associated with the study of sacred texts, historical
documents, colonial records, and fictional accounts of societies that had been invaded and disrupted by
European colonialism and were initiated in Edward Said's book Orientalism. The task of postcolonial studies is
twofold:
1) To analyze how European scholarship codified and studied colonial
cultures;
2) To recover how the resistant writings of the colonized tried to redeem
their couture and restore their identity and dignity.

The middle of 204 century, all forms of political/territorial colonialism had come to an end. Per contra there still
remains mental, cultural, language and academic colonialism; and not only that colonialism has taken new face
and it institutes further by the manoeuvre of neo-colonialism. Here we recall Homi Bhabha's comment on
Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White masks. Remembering, Bhabha remarks, "is never a quite act of introspection
or retrospection. It is a painful re-membering, a putting together of the dismembered past to make sense of the
trauma of the present." This memory is the necessary yet sometimes hazardous bridgebetween colonialism and
the question of cultural identity.

conclusions
Materialsit interpretation depends on the presence of not only internal contradictions within the text, but
also on an explicit identification of different conflicts as representing conflicting social interests by different
socio-politicalgroups in the game of power and labour which produces the texts. Postcolonialism has become a
new method in biblical interpretation.

Bibliography
 maisuangdibou m., hunibou nawmai. biblical hermeneutics methodologies and perspectives. Delhi:
Christian world imprints, 2023.
 Philip, Abraham., biblical hermeneutics methods and perspectives. tiruvalla: christava sahitya samithy,
2022.