The Bible and Empire: Postcolonial Explorations

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Cambridge University Press, Jun 16, 2005 - Religion - 247 pages
At a time of renewed interest in Empire, this stimulating volume explores the complex relationship between the Bible and the colonial enterprise, and examines some overlooked aspects of this relationship. These include unconventional retellings of the gospel story of Jesus by Thomas Jefferson and Raja Rammohun Roy; the fate of biblical texts when marshalled by Victorian preachers to strengthen British imperial intentions after the India uprising of 1857; the cultural-political use of the Christian Old Testament, first by the invaders to attack temple practices and rituals, then by the invaded to endorse the temple heritage scorned by missionaries; the dissident hermeneutics of James Long and William Colenso confronting and compromising with colonial ambitions; and finally the subtly seditious deployment of biblical citations in two colonial novels. This innovative book offers both practical and theoretical insights and provides compelling evidence of the continuing importance of postcolonial discourse for biblical studies.

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Contents

Acknowledgements page
1
conscription of texts
60
the subversive and complicit
98
the Hebrew scriptures
145
entertainment
192
Afterword
222
Index of biblical references
242
Copyright

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About the author (2005)

R. S. Sugirtharajah is Professor of Biblical Hermeneutics at the University of Birmingham. His publications include Postcolonial Criticism and Biblical Interpretation (2002) and The Bible and the Third World (2001).

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