The Biblical Hermeneutics From The Perspective Of Postcolonial Theory

Postcolonial theory pushed culture of the third world to the front stage of global culture. By stressing the right to speak and to cultural existence of the third world, the postcolonial theory has become a cultural strategy to communicate with the first world, which serves as an adjusting role for the unequal cultural situation of the world. Postcolonial hermeneutics for the Bible is a sub-scholar field under postcolonial theory and the Biblical hermeneutics, and it is a kind of strategy used by marginal scholars to deconstruct the western mainstream of the Biblical hermeneutics and a challenge and reform to the west-centered the Biblical hermeneutics. Postcolonial theory extended the contest of research of the Bible by studying it with a brand new angle, therefore it has more important theoretical meaning and practice value to the people of the third world. At present, this research has made great achievements, in foreign countries but had very little progress in china, whereas this essay attempts to arrange and summarize systematically the fruits of postcolonial hermeneutics for the Bible, with the expectation to lay a foundation for the future better works.This paper consists of three parts: the preface, the main text, and the conclusion.The preface summarizes the present situation of this research and states the significance of writing this paper.The main text includes four chapters.The first chapter introduces briefly the postcolonial theory and points out that the postcolonial theory is the colonized other. It is mainly the people of the third world, like Asia, Latin America, Africa and so on who stand on the academic stage for the first time as major roles and make their voice independently, in order to break the speech hegemony of colonial countries that once was the predominant role and strive for cultural equivalence. Then, it summarizes the point of interpreting the Bible with postcolonial theory. The Bible is a very important cultural tool in the process of western colonization and the spread of the Bible is a distinct symbol of the colonial expand of Europe, therefore studying hermeneutics for the Bible from a postcolonial angle can better reach the goal of deconstructing center and hegemony.The second chapter states the three ways of postcolonial hermeneutics culture and traditions, looking for the rationalization of local culture and challenging the superiority of western people, doing contextual hermeneutics from local experience.The third chapter states the topic of postcolonial hermeneutics for the Bible and it contains two aspects: one is that the people of the third world reveal the conspiratorial relation between west hermeneutics for the Bible and the colonial expand of Europe, stating the colonialists hermeneutics for figures of the Bible, such as Jesus, Paul and so on as well as their hermeneutics for the action of preaching and invading; the other is that people of the third world return to hermeneutics for the Bible from a local standpoint by looking for chapters from the Bible that are suitable for themselves and applying their own perspective to read, interpret and make use of the Bible in order to discover, restore and describe again the national cultures that are degraded and discarded by history written by colonialists and the mainstream scholars of the Bible.The fourth chapter states hermeneutics for the Bible made by both the new and old empires. It is an extent to the topic of collusion, the hermeneutics of the Bible in old empire and modern empire reflects their ideologies themselves.The conclusion points out the significance of the postcolonial hermeneutics for the Bible to culture construction and politics of this day.