The New Testament Around the World
Exploring Key Texts from Different Contexts
Edited by Mariam Kamell Kovalishyn
Baker Academic, 368 pages, $32.99
As has become more and more obvious, the Western world is post-Christendom. Through Europe and North America, for some time now, church buildings have been closing, denominations have been shrinking, and those who describe themselves as having no religion at all is increasing.
The expansion of Christianity in the majority world has serious implications for theology—that is, for how the people of God describe and reflect upon the acts of God that have their apex in the person and work of Jesus, and upon what that revelation means for our lives. If the Bible provides us with the material building blocks for theology, what does it mean for us to listen to the Scriptures in a Church that is global, a Church that exists in markedly diverse contexts, a Church that daily confronts multiple and varied circumstances, including (for many) situations of poverty, powerlessness, religious diversity, and marginalization?
Mariam Kamell Kovalishyn, who teaches New Testament at Regent College in Vancouver, has provided us with a collection of essays that opens a discussion. Kovalishyn’s collection is not the first attempt to bring together voices from differing global contexts, but it is a welcome addition to a growing corpus of global interaction with the biblical text.
It goes beyond my task to discuss every essay in this collection, but several aspects of the collection lead me to commend this helpful volume. First, the essays cover every section of the New Testament canon: there is an essay on each of the Gospels and one on the Book of Acts; there are ten chapters that cover every part of the Pauline corpus; there are chapters on Hebrews through the Revelation.
Although virtually every book of the New Testament receives some attention, even the much-neglected Jude (well, 2 and 3 John got missed), this is not a one-volume commentary. Each chapter focuses on a particular text (for Matthew, it is the famous story of the separation of the sheep and the goats in 25:31-46) or theme (for Luke it is “exorcism,” for Acts it is “land”).
Second, the authors, although differing in their methodological approaches, have a common goal: they desire not to leave the text in the past, but to show how the text has relevance for their situation. Each author seeks both to understand the text (yes, including understanding the text in its original historical context), and how that text can be of service in the essayists’ particular cultural situation. They describe how their chosen text has meaning in their context.
Abenaezer Urga challenges the way he believes the theology of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church has misinterpreted a text from Hebrews. Masanobu Endo gently broaches a disturbing parallel between the situation of the writer of Revelation and modern Japan in the ways that emperors in both times and places are honored (or even worshiped). Each essay reads the New Testament as a book that can illuminate the world, and in some way help to bring the world healing.
A third interesting aspect of this book is that, although the vast majority of the 22 essays come from the non-Western world, there are a few helpful studies from the West. David deSilva is an American scholar, but he has Sri Lankan ancestry. His study, “Reading 1 Peter among the Elect Resident Aliens in Sri Lanka,” provides a wonderful model of how a Western scholar can listen to and interact with readers from another culture.
Also writing on 1 Peter, Dennis Edwards allows his experience as an African American to raise insights about how the author of 1 Peter encouraged marginalized readers in the first century to imitate Christ in a dangerously “oppressive and hierarchical social structure.” The same text, he says, can help African Americans “find a measure of hope … within a culture that depends on violence and intimidation in order to maintain social order.”
The essayists in this book come from a diversity of denominational backgrounds, cultural traditions, and experiences. But they are united in their belief that the Bible can help the world, bringing healing and hope in situations of conflict and suffering. For these writers, the Bible is a book that does things, leading to renewed lives and fruitful action in the world, because the Bible comes from a God who has demonstrated his love for world in Jesus, desiring his church to share that transforming love with the world.
The Rt. Rev. Dr. Grant LeMarquand is emeritus professor of biblical studies at Trinity Anglican Seminary and retired Bishop of the Horn of Africa.
