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Toward Decentering the New Testament: A Reintroduction
Toward Decentering the New Testament is the first introductory text to the New Testament written by an African American woman biblical scholar and an Asian-American male biblical scholar. This text privileges the voices, scholarship, and concerns of minoritized nonwhite peoples and communities. It is written from the perspectives of minoritized voices. The first few chapters cover issues such as biblical interpretation, immigration, Roman slavery, intersectionality, and other topics. Questions raised throughout the text focus readers on relevant contemporary issues and encourage critical reflection and dialogue between student-teachers and teacher-students.
"This is the book I wish had been assigned in my days as a young Christian college undergraduate student. The authors go beyond pointing out the hubris of those who think a New Testament introduction can somehow be politically objective or ideologically neutral. Instead, they show us how a 'de-centering' of Scripture--in all its messiness--can serve as a form of 'resistance literature' which opens up ways of thinking otherwise and of imagining new worlds altogether."
--Roberto Sirvent, Hope International University
"This exemplary volume represents refreshingly unchartered terrain in New Testament introductions, with conceptual and theoretical analyses that will help the reader understand why apprehending the noetic complexities of the politics of empire and power, gender, race, intersectionality, migration, postcolonial theory, and questions of hybridity, and subaltern agency, are thoroughly indispensable in interrogating early Christian origins, and in adjudicating the ever-evolving iterations and often contested implications of what this history means for critical pedagogies and practices of resistance, hope, and justice in our times."
--Clarice J. Martin, Colgate University, Hamilton, New York
"The authors bring to the literary surface voices often relegated to the margins. The margin does not replace the center, but through historical, racial, ethnic, class, and gender analyses the book provides tools on how to dismantle its metes and bounds. This work renders a less hegemonic and more inclusive hermeneutical lens for studying the New Testament and the context that produced its content."
--Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder, Chicago Theological Seminary
"This book establishes so many firsts. The most important may be that it marks a liminal moment in NT studies. In foregrounding what has been in the background it will open up new worlds of learning for students and teachers alike."
--Michael Joseph Brown, President of Payne Theological Seminary
Mitzi J. Smith is Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Studies at Ashland Theological Seminary, Detroit. She is the author of Insights from African American Interpretation; Womanist Sass and Talk Social (In)Justice, Intersectionality and Biblical Interpretation; I Found God in A Biblical Hermeneutics Reader; The Literary Construction of the Other in the Acts of the Apostles; and co-editor of Teaching All Interrogating the Matthean Great Commission.
Yung Suk Kim is Associate Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology, Virginia Union University. Kim is the author of eight books, including Christ's Body in Corinth, Biblical Interpretation, Resurrecting Jesus, and Messiah in Weakness. He edited two 1-2 Corinthians and Reading Minjung Theology in the Twenty-First Century. Kim is editor of Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion and Journal of Bible and Human Transformation.
"This is the book I wish had been assigned in my days as a young Christian college undergraduate student. The authors go beyond pointing out the hubris of those who think a New Testament introduction can somehow be politically objective or ideologically neutral. Instead, they show us how a 'de-centering' of Scripture--in all its messiness--can serve as a form of 'resistance literature' which opens up ways of thinking otherwise and of imagining new worlds altogether."
--Roberto Sirvent, Hope International University
"This exemplary volume represents refreshingly unchartered terrain in New Testament introductions, with conceptual and theoretical analyses that will help the reader understand why apprehending the noetic complexities of the politics of empire and power, gender, race, intersectionality, migration, postcolonial theory, and questions of hybridity, and subaltern agency, are thoroughly indispensable in interrogating early Christian origins, and in adjudicating the ever-evolving iterations and often contested implications of what this history means for critical pedagogies and practices of resistance, hope, and justice in our times."
--Clarice J. Martin, Colgate University, Hamilton, New York
"The authors bring to the literary surface voices often relegated to the margins. The margin does not replace the center, but through historical, racial, ethnic, class, and gender analyses the book provides tools on how to dismantle its metes and bounds. This work renders a less hegemonic and more inclusive hermeneutical lens for studying the New Testament and the context that produced its content."
--Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder, Chicago Theological Seminary
"This book establishes so many firsts. The most important may be that it marks a liminal moment in NT studies. In foregrounding what has been in the background it will open up new worlds of learning for students and teachers alike."
--Michael Joseph Brown, President of Payne Theological Seminary
Mitzi J. Smith is Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Studies at Ashland Theological Seminary, Detroit. She is the author of Insights from African American Interpretation; Womanist Sass and Talk Social (In)Justice, Intersectionality and Biblical Interpretation; I Found God in A Biblical Hermeneutics Reader; The Literary Construction of the Other in the Acts of the Apostles; and co-editor of Teaching All Interrogating the Matthean Great Commission.
Yung Suk Kim is Associate Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology, Virginia Union University. Kim is the author of eight books, including Christ's Body in Corinth, Biblical Interpretation, Resurrecting Jesus, and Messiah in Weakness. He edited two 1-2 Corinthians and Reading Minjung Theology in the Twenty-First Century. Kim is editor of Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion and Journal of Bible and Human Transformation.
388 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 11, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 13, 2021
Wonderful to have an introductory NT text written by people of color! Tone shifts between the authors was a bit jarring at times, and some assertions are questionable (for example, the repeated claim that Judaism was a lauded ethnos in the Roman Empire), but overall a very coherent, easy-to-read, and most importantly contextually hermeneutic text.
February 16, 2020
I wanted to like this book, but ..... I just couldn't. Much of the material is just such a stretch. Not my cuppa but I had to read it for a class.
May 8, 2020
Reintroducing the New Testament
I thought this book did a good job of connecting the New Testament to the lived realities of students of the Bible that are from minority communities. I especially appreciated some of the material that connected the context of Scripture to contemporary issues that can cause the text to come alive in different ways and also to help us see our own context from a thoughtful biblical perspective.
I thought this book did a good job of connecting the New Testament to the lived realities of students of the Bible that are from minority communities. I especially appreciated some of the material that connected the context of Scripture to contemporary issues that can cause the text to come alive in different ways and also to help us see our own context from a thoughtful biblical perspective.
April 28, 2020
Read for my New Testament Interpretation class. It's always fun to read the professor's book, but I'm really glad Dr. Smith had us read this. There are really helpful discussion questions that consider multiple sides to the scriptures. If you need a solid resource for preaching, general understanding of each book, and overall themes, this book was very helpful for me!
February 5, 2023
I really struggled rating this. I feel the book is probably better than my rating suggests but for me it was only a three.
I believe this book was written primarily for first year theology students. As such, it’s an introductory text with a very broad scope. The premise is very exciting: books, articles and opinions which come from minority communities’ perspectives are more than not ignored in preference for a supposed more neutral majority perspective (read:white CIS male). One of the authors even laments seeing textbooks she was supposed to give to her students which would talk about black perspectives, but were still written by a white guy! A colleague suggested she write her own book then, and here is the book.
The first part are essays discussing the background of the New Testament or perhaps some of the ideas that will be followed in later chapters on specific biblical books. Some were fine but a few seemed out of place to me. It felt almost like the authors just included essays they had written previously but.. it wasn’t really related to the theme if the book. The chapter in intersectionality was one such chapter. The chapter itself was fine, but only at the very end did it explain how any of this was relevant to reading the New Testament and even then I’m not really sure.
Other than that, it was a fine book. Very little of it, if any, felt very different to me. Oh sometimes they nonchalantly mention how Jesus was ‘lynched’ and they sometimes had discussion questions with good probing questions regarding how certain passages (such as the household rules) could negatively affect especially the already disadvantaged. But most was pretty… well introductory. Which is exactly what it’s supposed to be which is why I feel bad giving it three stars.
Overall, it probably does fulfill its purpose. I would have benefited from this just coming out of high school and the pushing of different perspectives especially from those within minority groups is an absolute necessity. Reading it now though, I picked up very little I haven’t already heard in more depth before.
I believe this book was written primarily for first year theology students. As such, it’s an introductory text with a very broad scope. The premise is very exciting: books, articles and opinions which come from minority communities’ perspectives are more than not ignored in preference for a supposed more neutral majority perspective (read:white CIS male). One of the authors even laments seeing textbooks she was supposed to give to her students which would talk about black perspectives, but were still written by a white guy! A colleague suggested she write her own book then, and here is the book.
The first part are essays discussing the background of the New Testament or perhaps some of the ideas that will be followed in later chapters on specific biblical books. Some were fine but a few seemed out of place to me. It felt almost like the authors just included essays they had written previously but.. it wasn’t really related to the theme if the book. The chapter in intersectionality was one such chapter. The chapter itself was fine, but only at the very end did it explain how any of this was relevant to reading the New Testament and even then I’m not really sure.
Other than that, it was a fine book. Very little of it, if any, felt very different to me. Oh sometimes they nonchalantly mention how Jesus was ‘lynched’ and they sometimes had discussion questions with good probing questions regarding how certain passages (such as the household rules) could negatively affect especially the already disadvantaged. But most was pretty… well introductory. Which is exactly what it’s supposed to be which is why I feel bad giving it three stars.
Overall, it probably does fulfill its purpose. I would have benefited from this just coming out of high school and the pushing of different perspectives especially from those within minority groups is an absolute necessity. Reading it now though, I picked up very little I haven’t already heard in more depth before.
August 16, 2022
Pretty OK for a secular NT textbook
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews