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Santa Biblia: The Bible Through Hispanic Eyes
Gonzalez explores how a Hispanic perspective illuminates the biblical text in ways that will be valuable not only for Latino readers but also for the church at large. Introducing five "paradigms" for Latino biblical interpretation, Gonzalez discusses theory and provides concrete examples of biblical texts that gain new meaning when read from a different perspective.
124 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1996
19 people are currently reading
386 people want to read
About the author
Justo L. González
157 books190 followersJusto L. González, author of the highly praised three-volume History of Christian Thought and other major works, attended United Seminary in Cuba, received his MA at Yale, and was the youngest person to be awarded a PhD in historical theology at Yale. He is one of the few first generation Latino theologians to come from a Protestant background. He helped to found the Association for Hispanic Theological Education and the Hispanic Theological Initiative. Dr González is now on the faculty of the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
June 11, 2019
In a small but illuminating book, Justo Gonzalez describes how aspects of the Latin American experience shape a perspective on the Bible (while carefully acknowledging nuance within and without) that has much to offer to the rest of the Church.
Discussing elements of marginality, poverty, cultural mixing, alienation, and solidarity in Hispanic culture and in the Bible itself, Santa Biblia is an easy read that is full of fresh insight, both inspirational and challenging. It's a beautiful example of what American evangelical culture has to learn from other Christians whose different backgrounds can provide different perspectives on the same Bible that "has been so good" to all of us.
Discussing elements of marginality, poverty, cultural mixing, alienation, and solidarity in Hispanic culture and in the Bible itself, Santa Biblia is an easy read that is full of fresh insight, both inspirational and challenging. It's a beautiful example of what American evangelical culture has to learn from other Christians whose different backgrounds can provide different perspectives on the same Bible that "has been so good" to all of us.
November 23, 2024
Wow this took me way too long to finish!
This will certainly stick with me for a long time. This is a book that every Christian should read, especially us in the south. There is so much wisdom in Gonzalez's perspective. His interpretation of a handful of passages, especially those in Acts, really surprised me. I have a sense that much white biblical interpretation has a lot of explaining to do. What this book and Reading While Black seek to teach us is that different is not bad or wrong. Different is enlightening.
Anyways 5/5
This will certainly stick with me for a long time. This is a book that every Christian should read, especially us in the south. There is so much wisdom in Gonzalez's perspective. His interpretation of a handful of passages, especially those in Acts, really surprised me. I have a sense that much white biblical interpretation has a lot of explaining to do. What this book and Reading While Black seek to teach us is that different is not bad or wrong. Different is enlightening.
Anyways 5/5
December 30, 2025
I have a greater appreciation for this book after reading Mañana.
This is Gonzalez’s more hermeneutically oriented book, especially aimed at covering the blindspots of Western biblical scholarship with those elements of overlap between the Latin American experience and that of 1st Century Judah. Looking at the Bible through the lens of the marginalized and those with mixed (mestizo) identities helps those outside of these lived experiences better understand the Bible.
This is Gonzalez’s more hermeneutically oriented book, especially aimed at covering the blindspots of Western biblical scholarship with those elements of overlap between the Latin American experience and that of 1st Century Judah. Looking at the Bible through the lens of the marginalized and those with mixed (mestizo) identities helps those outside of these lived experiences better understand the Bible.
July 27, 2020
I loved this book, with its stories and concrete examples from scripture. Easy to read and yet challenging, it enlarged my perspective on the Bible and sparked curiosity to learn more from my Latino/Chicano brothers and sisters.
October 15, 2025
Below is my review of this book, written for a class so it's a bit lengthier. To be very brief I believe Justo makes a good case for the importance of understanding how different perspectives lead to us interpreting the Bible differently and the value that can be found there. I definitely think Justo could and should have been harsher on simply put bad interpretations of certain passages, but overall this work is well done even though there are areas of disagreement in methodology and approach I would have with certain parts of this work. With that, below is the more expansive review.
Joshua Pearsall. Review of Justo L. Gonzales, Santa Biblia: The Bible Through Hispanic Eyes (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1996.).
Justos’ work seeks to discuss the importance of perspectives which should and can not be avoided (Introduction, point 1 & 2), and the lack of “objectivity” in approaching Biblical text. To the point of possibly undermining and rejecting objective truth, even if Justo grants it in some cases. “We probably would have learned it much sooner had we really listened to Immanuel Kant, who showed that objective knowledge is a contradiction in terms. But the modern age was so enamored with the dream of objectivity that it has taken us two centuries to begin to understand the implications of what Kant was telling us. Kicking and screaming, shaken and poked by the likes of Freud and Marx, modernity has finally begun to awaken from its dream of objectivity, and the result has been the birth of postmodernity (introduction).” His example of the East and West, saying that they anathematized each other not over objective truths, that one of them was following the faith of the apostles and the other wasn’t, but but over how they had contextualized the gospel in their cultures and not realized it (ibid). I strongly disagree with Justo’s methodology and epistemology here, even though I agree we can’t remove our own biases and perspectives which must be taken into account. The idea we cannot find the objective meaning of the Bible ultimately leaves us with nothing but subjectivity as the natural logical consequence. There must be an objective truth, delivered by God, and which is used as the standard to hold all of us accountable, and that is something God gave us with the intention of us being able to find and hold to.
I am happy Justo rejects the idea of this rampant subjectivity, but I cannot help but wonder if his exact argumentation and examples doesn’t undermine the case itself. I agree with Justo, we must come together, and look at all the ways in which people are approaching scripture through different perspectives/lenses, and acknowledge we need all of these together to prevent the idea “each particular group has its own truth” which Justo rightly notes would be “radical solipsism in which no dialogue is possible (ibid).” I believe we agree, at least largely, in substance but his phrasing does concern me, though this may simply be my own over reaction to what has happened with the UMC since the time this book was written. That said, I think Justo’s succeeds in showing how these perspectives are unavoidable, that we must take them into account, and in giving us an Hispanic perspective, “looking at the same landscape (ibid),” not as outside observers but as inside observers inside the landscape with our lives being shaped by it, “defined by it.” Including noting how an hispanic perspective, especially for those who are marginalized, can expand past an hispanic perspective and have overlap with many other people reading it through a similar lens. With that I move forward, agreeing with Justo such a work as this does “enrich everyone’s appreciation of the landscape itself… Such a variety of perspectives is not only valuable but absolutely necessary (ibid).” This is what it truly means for the church to be catholic, that is universal. Much like how one man and one wife become ehad (Gen 2.24), that is numerically one in unity not in number, so we too do in Christ (Gal 3.28-9).
Of course we must see what he means by “Hispanic eyes” as it’s not simply anyone who is hispanic, or all hispanic interpretations such as those that lead into abuses of the Bible like using Deut 22.5 to ban women who wear pants from church. He means anyone who, “claim their Hispanic identity as part of their hermeneutical baggage, and who also read Scripture within the context of commitment to the Latino struggle to become all that God wants us and all of the world to be - in other words, the struggle for salvation/liberation (introduction).” Here he speaks not of those who adopt American culture to the exclusion of their ancestry, but who embrace their ancestry, which American culture sadly does have a tendency to diminish in many areas. I do not agree with the specific tying of cultural identity into hermeneutics personally, we are to be a kingdom of all people and the best way to understand Scripture is through the cultures they were written in and then applying them to ours, which I’m sure Justo would agree with the positive part of my statement even if he might disagree on the negative. I think tying cultural identity such as asian, or hispanic, will only lead to the problem Eastern Orthodox has failed to jettison from its ranks, well this one specific problem. That of ethnocentrism, which plagues many parts of Eastern orthodoxy by the admittance of many Eastern Orthodox theologians still today. I am all for maintaining one’s own distinct cultural identity, we are a kingdom of all cultures, but I am not a fan of adopting it as a "hermeneutical lens” even though it can yield valuable insights. However this lens is what Justo seeks to unpack in the rest of the book.
Justo also makes a strong point in his introduction, on what can happen when we are focused on theological and biblical studies, to the exclusion of how we actually are to grow closer to the text and to God by that text, as well as delivering that to the body of Christ. As he called it, his dark night of the soul. He was a master theologian by many standards, traveling to universities, giving lectures, writing books, but there was this gulf between him and Scripture, a struggle many Seminarians I know fall into and one I perhaps now can understand. The gap between his theology, and his practice, was something I still see today. But it was something that learning to look at the Bible from these other perspectives, even ones he disagreed with, made the Bible come alive for him again, seeing how it was being lived out in other places. Of seeing how the Bible directly applies to them and their context.
In chapter 1 Justo unpacks the marginality of the Hispanic perspective. There are other things addressed within this, including marginality within the Hispanic community such as the oppression of women by men, the differences of origins as in one’s ancestors and the physical lands they now dwell in - from native to the children of slaves and slave masters who came to the latino world. As Justo admits in both the introduction and this chapter, this means there can be no single lens that fits this idea, there is no the Hispanic perspective, only one of many. Rather, Justo organizes it into five perspectives/paradigms, even though there is a level of arbitrariness to this, and there are various areas of overlap. Marginality, the first chapter, is the first paradigm addressed.
This paradigm applies to almost all Latinos today in one way or another, it is one of the things that could bring together an hispanic journal that Justo and others were seeking to write putting into practice the very idea presented in this book. Titling this journal Apuntes:Reflexiones desde el margen hispano (reflections from the Hispanic margins). “Apuntes had the value of being a somewhat ambiguous word which could be taken to mean “jottings” but also “aimings.” Thus, this title would allow us to consider ourselves as merely making marginal jottings at the edge of theology, but also as aiming at some core issues within church and theology. Note that a common denominator of both meanings is that in both cases one stands outside the center, either making marginal notes or taking aim at something in the center… Clearly, there is something—or rather, several somethings—at the core of our being that bind us together: language, culture, history, traditions. But all of these are sufficiently varied that when we try to pin them down they prove both unitive and divisive. The one point at which there is a commonality of experience and perspective is marginality. (Chapter 1).” A marginality sometimes imposed from the outside, as well as the inside for the sake of their distinctive hispanic identity.
There are of course several examples of marginality. Such as, protestants ostracized by Roman Catholics as viewing Hispanics should “by right” be Roman Catholic.” By the larger society as race, accents, even surnames which I can attest to in my own work environment the frustration some people have over the way many Hispanic people have multiple last names. Leading to things like being barred from leadership both in culture and even at times sadly in the Church itself. This leads them to read the Bible as, “a source of strength,” that can explain their painful experiences and how they can feel left out even in their own communities (Chapter 1). How this can work out practically is in the story of Abraham and Isaac, who is the one in the margin here? Many see it as Abraham as being one almost certainly in anguish over what he is going to have to do, or of Isaac, but this Hispanic perspective can lead one to see the Ram as the one on the margin (Chapter 1 & 2).] As well as a look at Peter’s selection of Matthias, the Prophet Jonah, Jesus’ message in Lk 4.21, a few specific parables, and more.
The second perspective, which is covered in chapter 2, is that of Poverty which is described as, “a particular instance or mode of marginality,” that is important enough for its own chapter. Though there is of course a large lack of poverty for many Latinos today, and on average they are 150% higher than other cultures. His example when the unemployment is at 8% for the population, Latino’s are at 12%. Of course this isn’t true everywhere for everyone, but it sets a general rule. And Justo notes, “This means that, although most of us who write on Hispanic hermeneutics are not ourselves poor, we can only write about such a hermeneutics to the degree that we stand in solidarity with the vast majority of our people, who are indeed poor (Chapter 2).” A shift in Justo’s thought, and one he argues we too should be following as part of this book, is when asked about the theme of “The Bible and the poor” we should not only approach it as the question of what the Bible says about the poor, but also how someone coming a perspective of poverty reads the Bible.
Justo notes as an example Daniel Garcia’s interpretation of Genesis 22.1-14, which I think is a perfect example of how this approach can go wrong by going too far. He preached on how those in power often find "convenient rams for sacrifice” utilizing their power in an exploitive manner. Though I understand how one could read the passage this way and pull this from it, this seems like it comes straight out of the dangerous extremes of liberal liberation theology that re-interprets passages like Jericho’s walls being crashed as “toppling the towers of patriarchy.” This simply isn’t what the passage is saying, at all, and reading it in such a way is just a bad interpretation. Though he is making a true statement, he is twisting a scriptural passage into saying something it’s not to make that point. Several examples he uses such as a sermon the sabbath law, though I certainly think there are plenty of passages speaking of the command to work and avoid being slothful, I am not so certain the 10 commandments are the place to look for that such as the parable of the laborers Justo then brings up which I think is a wonderful interpretation of what is happening in this passage and the emphasis on Jesus as a truly just king that stands out in so many interpretations missed by people such as myself often times.
In Chapter 3 he covers the perspective of Mestizaje and Mulatez or mixed blood, chapter 4 the exile and alien, and chapter 5 that of solidarity. For time’s sake I will simply note these, and say I believe Justo does as good a job arguing for and demonstrating these perspectives as he does the first half of this work. I would, and will, recommend this book to others interested in Biblical studies and in understanding other cultural perspectives. Justo is one of my favorite Church historians, and though this is not a history text it was a wonderful and insightful read even in areas of disagreement.
Joshua Pearsall. Review of Justo L. Gonzales, Santa Biblia: The Bible Through Hispanic Eyes (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1996.).
Justos’ work seeks to discuss the importance of perspectives which should and can not be avoided (Introduction, point 1 & 2), and the lack of “objectivity” in approaching Biblical text. To the point of possibly undermining and rejecting objective truth, even if Justo grants it in some cases. “We probably would have learned it much sooner had we really listened to Immanuel Kant, who showed that objective knowledge is a contradiction in terms. But the modern age was so enamored with the dream of objectivity that it has taken us two centuries to begin to understand the implications of what Kant was telling us. Kicking and screaming, shaken and poked by the likes of Freud and Marx, modernity has finally begun to awaken from its dream of objectivity, and the result has been the birth of postmodernity (introduction).” His example of the East and West, saying that they anathematized each other not over objective truths, that one of them was following the faith of the apostles and the other wasn’t, but but over how they had contextualized the gospel in their cultures and not realized it (ibid). I strongly disagree with Justo’s methodology and epistemology here, even though I agree we can’t remove our own biases and perspectives which must be taken into account. The idea we cannot find the objective meaning of the Bible ultimately leaves us with nothing but subjectivity as the natural logical consequence. There must be an objective truth, delivered by God, and which is used as the standard to hold all of us accountable, and that is something God gave us with the intention of us being able to find and hold to.
I am happy Justo rejects the idea of this rampant subjectivity, but I cannot help but wonder if his exact argumentation and examples doesn’t undermine the case itself. I agree with Justo, we must come together, and look at all the ways in which people are approaching scripture through different perspectives/lenses, and acknowledge we need all of these together to prevent the idea “each particular group has its own truth” which Justo rightly notes would be “radical solipsism in which no dialogue is possible (ibid).” I believe we agree, at least largely, in substance but his phrasing does concern me, though this may simply be my own over reaction to what has happened with the UMC since the time this book was written. That said, I think Justo’s succeeds in showing how these perspectives are unavoidable, that we must take them into account, and in giving us an Hispanic perspective, “looking at the same landscape (ibid),” not as outside observers but as inside observers inside the landscape with our lives being shaped by it, “defined by it.” Including noting how an hispanic perspective, especially for those who are marginalized, can expand past an hispanic perspective and have overlap with many other people reading it through a similar lens. With that I move forward, agreeing with Justo such a work as this does “enrich everyone’s appreciation of the landscape itself… Such a variety of perspectives is not only valuable but absolutely necessary (ibid).” This is what it truly means for the church to be catholic, that is universal. Much like how one man and one wife become ehad (Gen 2.24), that is numerically one in unity not in number, so we too do in Christ (Gal 3.28-9).
Of course we must see what he means by “Hispanic eyes” as it’s not simply anyone who is hispanic, or all hispanic interpretations such as those that lead into abuses of the Bible like using Deut 22.5 to ban women who wear pants from church. He means anyone who, “claim their Hispanic identity as part of their hermeneutical baggage, and who also read Scripture within the context of commitment to the Latino struggle to become all that God wants us and all of the world to be - in other words, the struggle for salvation/liberation (introduction).” Here he speaks not of those who adopt American culture to the exclusion of their ancestry, but who embrace their ancestry, which American culture sadly does have a tendency to diminish in many areas. I do not agree with the specific tying of cultural identity into hermeneutics personally, we are to be a kingdom of all people and the best way to understand Scripture is through the cultures they were written in and then applying them to ours, which I’m sure Justo would agree with the positive part of my statement even if he might disagree on the negative. I think tying cultural identity such as asian, or hispanic, will only lead to the problem Eastern Orthodox has failed to jettison from its ranks, well this one specific problem. That of ethnocentrism, which plagues many parts of Eastern orthodoxy by the admittance of many Eastern Orthodox theologians still today. I am all for maintaining one’s own distinct cultural identity, we are a kingdom of all cultures, but I am not a fan of adopting it as a "hermeneutical lens” even though it can yield valuable insights. However this lens is what Justo seeks to unpack in the rest of the book.
Justo also makes a strong point in his introduction, on what can happen when we are focused on theological and biblical studies, to the exclusion of how we actually are to grow closer to the text and to God by that text, as well as delivering that to the body of Christ. As he called it, his dark night of the soul. He was a master theologian by many standards, traveling to universities, giving lectures, writing books, but there was this gulf between him and Scripture, a struggle many Seminarians I know fall into and one I perhaps now can understand. The gap between his theology, and his practice, was something I still see today. But it was something that learning to look at the Bible from these other perspectives, even ones he disagreed with, made the Bible come alive for him again, seeing how it was being lived out in other places. Of seeing how the Bible directly applies to them and their context.
In chapter 1 Justo unpacks the marginality of the Hispanic perspective. There are other things addressed within this, including marginality within the Hispanic community such as the oppression of women by men, the differences of origins as in one’s ancestors and the physical lands they now dwell in - from native to the children of slaves and slave masters who came to the latino world. As Justo admits in both the introduction and this chapter, this means there can be no single lens that fits this idea, there is no the Hispanic perspective, only one of many. Rather, Justo organizes it into five perspectives/paradigms, even though there is a level of arbitrariness to this, and there are various areas of overlap. Marginality, the first chapter, is the first paradigm addressed.
This paradigm applies to almost all Latinos today in one way or another, it is one of the things that could bring together an hispanic journal that Justo and others were seeking to write putting into practice the very idea presented in this book. Titling this journal Apuntes:Reflexiones desde el margen hispano (reflections from the Hispanic margins). “Apuntes had the value of being a somewhat ambiguous word which could be taken to mean “jottings” but also “aimings.” Thus, this title would allow us to consider ourselves as merely making marginal jottings at the edge of theology, but also as aiming at some core issues within church and theology. Note that a common denominator of both meanings is that in both cases one stands outside the center, either making marginal notes or taking aim at something in the center… Clearly, there is something—or rather, several somethings—at the core of our being that bind us together: language, culture, history, traditions. But all of these are sufficiently varied that when we try to pin them down they prove both unitive and divisive. The one point at which there is a commonality of experience and perspective is marginality. (Chapter 1).” A marginality sometimes imposed from the outside, as well as the inside for the sake of their distinctive hispanic identity.
There are of course several examples of marginality. Such as, protestants ostracized by Roman Catholics as viewing Hispanics should “by right” be Roman Catholic.” By the larger society as race, accents, even surnames which I can attest to in my own work environment the frustration some people have over the way many Hispanic people have multiple last names. Leading to things like being barred from leadership both in culture and even at times sadly in the Church itself. This leads them to read the Bible as, “a source of strength,” that can explain their painful experiences and how they can feel left out even in their own communities (Chapter 1). How this can work out practically is in the story of Abraham and Isaac, who is the one in the margin here? Many see it as Abraham as being one almost certainly in anguish over what he is going to have to do, or of Isaac, but this Hispanic perspective can lead one to see the Ram as the one on the margin (Chapter 1 & 2).] As well as a look at Peter’s selection of Matthias, the Prophet Jonah, Jesus’ message in Lk 4.21, a few specific parables, and more.
The second perspective, which is covered in chapter 2, is that of Poverty which is described as, “a particular instance or mode of marginality,” that is important enough for its own chapter. Though there is of course a large lack of poverty for many Latinos today, and on average they are 150% higher than other cultures. His example when the unemployment is at 8% for the population, Latino’s are at 12%. Of course this isn’t true everywhere for everyone, but it sets a general rule. And Justo notes, “This means that, although most of us who write on Hispanic hermeneutics are not ourselves poor, we can only write about such a hermeneutics to the degree that we stand in solidarity with the vast majority of our people, who are indeed poor (Chapter 2).” A shift in Justo’s thought, and one he argues we too should be following as part of this book, is when asked about the theme of “The Bible and the poor” we should not only approach it as the question of what the Bible says about the poor, but also how someone coming a perspective of poverty reads the Bible.
Justo notes as an example Daniel Garcia’s interpretation of Genesis 22.1-14, which I think is a perfect example of how this approach can go wrong by going too far. He preached on how those in power often find "convenient rams for sacrifice” utilizing their power in an exploitive manner. Though I understand how one could read the passage this way and pull this from it, this seems like it comes straight out of the dangerous extremes of liberal liberation theology that re-interprets passages like Jericho’s walls being crashed as “toppling the towers of patriarchy.” This simply isn’t what the passage is saying, at all, and reading it in such a way is just a bad interpretation. Though he is making a true statement, he is twisting a scriptural passage into saying something it’s not to make that point. Several examples he uses such as a sermon the sabbath law, though I certainly think there are plenty of passages speaking of the command to work and avoid being slothful, I am not so certain the 10 commandments are the place to look for that such as the parable of the laborers Justo then brings up which I think is a wonderful interpretation of what is happening in this passage and the emphasis on Jesus as a truly just king that stands out in so many interpretations missed by people such as myself often times.
In Chapter 3 he covers the perspective of Mestizaje and Mulatez or mixed blood, chapter 4 the exile and alien, and chapter 5 that of solidarity. For time’s sake I will simply note these, and say I believe Justo does as good a job arguing for and demonstrating these perspectives as he does the first half of this work. I would, and will, recommend this book to others interested in Biblical studies and in understanding other cultural perspectives. Justo is one of my favorite Church historians, and though this is not a history text it was a wonderful and insightful read even in areas of disagreement.
July 11, 2022
Incredible, incredible resource for experiencing and interpreting the Hispanic perspective of Scripture. Highly practical and prophetic, González's five paradigms of Hispanic interpretation of Scripture translate to marginalized peoples across the US and the world. Great, great book. A must read.
February 21, 2025
This book was eye-opening to me in many ways. Not only did I learn things about Hispanic/Latin culture, but my mind was blown away with different ways to understand and interpret familiar biblical texts and concepts. My personal cultural perspectives limited my hermeneutical practices and limited my preaching in ways that cause me a certain level of pain and disappointment (in myself and what I have brought to the pulpit). Maybe more than anything, though, and even though this book was published in 1996, Gonzalez' writing is especially relevant and important in these challenging times and should be a reading requirement for modern disciples who are interested in making a fair and honest biblical assessment of the times.
September 23, 2025
This book was recommended as a great read for the world wide church. It promotes a specific reader perspective of the Hispanic community. There are times when one's background may help you to understand something in certain way, but when you ignore the context of scripture and allow your perspective to dominate the interpretation, you are missing the authorial intent. Which, with the Bible, is the most important aspect.
Quite honestly, I got tired of the poor, poor, pitiful me/us attitude of the author which he seems to think gives Hispanics a better grasp on interpretation.
Quite honestly, I got tired of the poor, poor, pitiful me/us attitude of the author which he seems to think gives Hispanics a better grasp on interpretation.
January 11, 2021
In this relatively short but indelibly wise book Gonzalez shows readers how reading the Bible from the margins can open up the truth of Scripture in new ways. Not to be missed are the chapters titled "exiles and aliens" and "solidarity" which highlight what is lost when our faith is taken over by nationalism and the trappings of Rome.
July 22, 2018
A really great book and I think an essential read for anyone approaching Latino Christian community from the outside. So much of the book reminded me of my experience working at Mexican immigrant church in Chicago. The church was "family" in a way that I have never experienced before and since.
December 30, 2020
I joined a group that was reading and discussing this together, but I never finished it until today.
The book looks at theology through the lens of Hispanics, exploring topics such as poverty, alienation, marginality, exile, and solidarity. Eye-opening.
The book looks at theology through the lens of Hispanics, exploring topics such as poverty, alienation, marginality, exile, and solidarity. Eye-opening.
April 25, 2021
Very enlightening
I do not think I will ever read the Bible the same again. Highly recommend to everyone. Opened my eyes that there are different perspectives on stories I’ve heard my whole life
I do not think I will ever read the Bible the same again. Highly recommend to everyone. Opened my eyes that there are different perspectives on stories I’ve heard my whole life
April 10, 2023
Very well written and full of interesting observations. I was most struck by the chapter on poverty. What does the commandment to work and rest mean for the person who cannot find work or is inhumanely overworked?
August 19, 2021
Practical, easy, and basic introduction to paradigms by which Latinos in the U.S. interpret the Bible: Marginality, Poverty, Mestizaje, Exile/Alien, and Solidarity. Very refreshing for any Latino!
December 1, 2021
I really like this book. I hope to return to it in the future. It provides theology with feet. Highly practical. Highly relatable.
January 20, 2023
It's a wonderful book!
May 13, 2023
outstanding
Great Biblically based book very appropriate for today’s immigration issues and challenges.
It provides an excellent non-white viewpoint
recognizing that we are all minorities.
Great Biblically based book very appropriate for today’s immigration issues and challenges.
It provides an excellent non-white viewpoint
recognizing that we are all minorities.
November 7, 2023
Eye opening and perspective shifting.
January 13, 2026
Such a masterpiece.
April 17, 2024
An amazing outline of a Hispanic perspective on the Bible. Plus, it includes an excellent discussion about hermeneutics!
October 29, 2019
Gonzalez's 5 chapters cover topics that will stand out to many Hispanic readers of the Bible: Marginality, Poverty, Mestizaje/Mulatez, Exiles/Aliens, and Solidarity. As a white reader in a dominant culture in the U.S. this book highlighted many angles and perspectives of characters and the stories in the Bible that I had not considered. If you are a church member or a minister in a Hispanic or growing Hispanic area this book is short and will be helpful as you engage with the culture around you and share the gospel.
October 31, 2013
This is a slim book and initially I wasn't sure if it would be of interest as I am not Hispanic. I am glad that did not stop me from picking this up. Gonzalez explores at Biblical stories as they are seen through the eyes of people with an intuitive cultural understanding of being a stranger in a strange land, of having one foot in one culture and one foot in another (as St. Paul did) and of issues of poverty and marginality. Gonzalez' perspective is valuable no matter what your cultural background.
July 15, 2016
A quick but satisfying and engaging read. I enjoyed Gonzalez's differing perspective on how to interpret the Bible from a variety of perspectives found in the Hispanic experience of faith and culture. I appreciated the inclusion of excerpts of sermons preached on familiar Bible passages in a new and distinct way, drawing on the experience of poverty, marginality, and solidarity.
Read
July 25, 2011Great book for understanding the Hispanic perspective on Scripture...but even better for a general understanding of how the reader's position and interests necessarily influence Biblical interpretation. A great read!
November 26, 2019
Perspectives I've never had are huge to me. Envisioning familiar scriptural stories through the eyes of a completely different cultural experience has very much opened my eyes. I intend to read a lot more books like this.
December 30, 2024
For school. Interesting
February 9, 2016
Second best book I read in seminary...
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews