This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Asian Biblical Hermeneutics as Multicentric Dialogue Towards a Singaporean Way of Reading Lim, Stephen Chin Ming Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 01. Oct. 2021 Asian Biblical Hermeneutics as Multicentric Dialogue: Towards a Singaporean Way of Reading Chin Ming Stephen, Lim Thesis Submitted for the degree of PhD 2016 1 Abstract In this thesis, I propose a way of reading the Bible in the context of Singapore which is my country of origin. My understanding of context draws in what decolonial thinkers, Anibal Quijano (2007) and Walter Mignolo (2012) have argued to be the modern/colonial world system and social epistemologist, Jose Medina’s (2006) polyphonic contextualism. This allows me to better situate the contextual reader within current networks of knowledge production and argue for the goals of reading the Bible in Singapore to be transformative praxis and identity formation. With the understanding of Singapore as an epistemic terrain embedded in global and local networks of knowledge production, I outline the hermeneutical norms that control contextual reading of the Bible in chapter 2. In order to better aid the task of constructing this hermeneutic, I also survey scholarship on biblical hermeneutics in chapter 3 both in the West and Asia to distil important considerations and useful reading strategies. With these considerations in mind, I propose that reading the Bible in context requires at the metatheoretical level a negotiation between western, Asian and Singaporean standpoints in chapter 4. This is facilitated by a conscientisation framework that checks the posture of specialist readers in relation to nonspecialist readers in a specific context so as to ensure submerged voices are not silenced in favour of dominant epistemologies; and a conversation framework that facilitates understanding the Other that tries to avoid Orientalist and nativist/nationalist dangers. In chapter 5, I then test the proposed method through reading the stories of Daniel to see the discursive effects such a reading strategy has on issues I outline in the analysis of my context pertaining to praxis and identity. In my final chapter, I reflect on how the reading exercise impacts on my proposed understanding of Bible and Singapore. I show that it fundamentally shifts the understanding of the Bible to what Justin Ukpong (2002) argues to be a ‘site of struggle’ and an inclusive canon that is hospitable to the many voices, especially of the marginalised in my context of Singapore. 2 Contents Abstract 2 Abbreviations 7 List of Figures 7 Acknowledgements 8 Chapter 1: Multicentric Biblical Hermeneutics in a Contextual Frame 9 Context and Contextualism 10 Biblical Scholar as Public Intellectual 16 The Bible as Dangerous Other 21 Towards a Singaporean Way of Reading 27 Chapter 2: The Bible in Between Academy, Church and Society: Challenges of Contextualising a Hermeneutic in Singapore 32 Brief Overview of the Singapore Context 32 The Academy: Between Eurocentrism and Scientism 33 Public of the Academy in Singapore 34 Church: Fundamentalism and its Excesses 36 Exploring Fundamentalism and its Effects on Biblical Interpretation 37 The Public of the Church in Singapore 40 Society: Friend or Foe? 43 Neocolonialism – The Call to Read in Solidarity with the Marginalised 44 Secularisation – Negotiating Muscular Secularism 45 Multiculturalism – Listening to Others 48 Bringing the Three Publics Together 50 Chapter 3: Journey Back from the West: Biblical Hermeneutics and an Asian Turn 54 Reading the Bible in the West: Metropolitan Centres and Peripheries 54 Paradigm Criticism Reconceived 55 Religious-The*logical-Scriptural Paradigm 56 Critical-Scientific-Modern Paradigm 57 Cultural-Hermeneutic-Postmodern Paradigm 65 3 Emancipatory-Radical Democratic Paradigm 68 Politics of Class, Gender and Race 68 Contours of Postcolonial Biblical Criticism 70 A Contextualist Take on Paradigm Criticism 74 An Asian Turn: From Identity Politics to Identity Formation 76 South Asia: Resistance and Reconciliation 78 East Asia: False Starts and Troubled Beginnings 81 Southeast Asia: Still in the making? 86 A Rejoinder: Asian Womanist Readings 87 Paradigm Criticism and an Asian Turn 89 Does a ‘Singaporean’ Reading Exist? 92 Chapter 4: Towards A Singaporean Biblical Hermeneutic 98 Conscientisation Framework: Reorienting One’s Posture 98 Reading without, for, with and from 99 Conversation Framework: Learning to Dialogue as Equals 106 Who Defines Context? 107 Dangers of Territorialism 109 Dialoguing with An(-)Other 112 Singaporean Biblical Hermeneutic as Multicentric Dialogue 119 Chapter 5: From the Abstract to the Concrete: Reading the Stories of Daniel in Singapore 123 Making Connections 125 Dynamics of Empires 127 Ideological Apparatuses 127 Administration and Education 130 Sacred Economies? 132 Militarism and its Relevance 133 Contextual Questions 135 4 Case Study #1: Reading Daniel 1 in the Classroom of National Education 137 Daniel 1: More than Food? 137 Biblical Scholars: Piety or Protest 137 Daniel the Confucian Gentleman? 141 Daniel the Malay Muslim: Between Resistance and Oppression 145 In Conversation: Biblical Scholars, Confucius and Malays 150 Case Study #2: Braving the Furnace of the Lion’s Den in the Lion City 152 Daniel 3 and 6: Tales of Political Intrigue 152 Biblical Scholars: Piety or Politics? 153 Piety as Response 153 Political Resistance 156 Unfair Comparisons? 157 Gandhi: Politics of Piety 159 Passive Resistance 160 (Re-)reading Daniel and the Three Jews 162 Singaporean Political Prisoners: Piety and Politics 164 The Furnace in the Lion’s Den 164 Empire as Ambivalence 165 The Imperfect Heroes 167 In Conversation: Biblical Scholars, Satyagrahi and Political Prisoners 169 Case Study #3: Whose Dreams? 172 Dreams and Visions in the Stories of Daniel 173 Dreams of Falling Empires 174 Dreams of Transcending Empires 178 Dreams of Fellow Kings 180 Dreams of Empires? 185 Dreams of the Disenfranchised 188 In Conversation: Biblical Scholars, Buddhist Interpreters and Ma 191 Perceiving Empire 191 In Search of Dreams 192 5 Daniel: From the Ancient Near East to Singapore 194 (Un)Problematic Secularism: Revisiting the Question of Religion and Politics 194 (Un)Problematic Capitalism: Logic of Purity to Logic of Impurity 199 Who is the Christian? 202 Chapter 6: Conclusion: From Reading to Theory 208 Defamiliarising the Familiar 208 Biblical Hermeneutics and Contextualism 213 Conclusion 217 Bibliography 221 Appendix 1: The Postcolonial and the Decolonial 242 6 Abbreviations ASEAN: Association of Southeast Asian Nations ISPCK: Indian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge ISEAS Publishing: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Publishing JSOT: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament KPI Publishers: Kegan Paul International Publishers MT: Masoretic Text NIAS Press: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Press NRSV: New Revised Standard Version NUS Press: National University of Singapore Press OG: Old Greek SBL: Society of Biblical Literature SPCK: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge SUNY Press: State University of New York Press UN: United Nations List of Figures Figure 1: Challenges that Constructing a Singaporean Hermeneutic Faces 50 Figure 2: Proposed Framework towards a Singaporean Reading 120 7 Acknowledgements I would like to thank King’s College London Theological Trust Fund for their generous support of this research project. I would also like to express my gratitude to my supervisors Prof. Paul Joyce and Dr Jonathon Stökl for their continued guidance and openness to this endeavour. Last but not least, I would like to thank my wife, Wei Shieng for her help both tangible and intangible for without her, I am sure this thesis would not have seen the light of day. 8 Chapter 1 Multicentric Biblical Hermeneutics in a Contextual Frame This is home truly, where I know I must be Where my dreams wait for me, where that river always flows This is home surely, as my senses tell me This is where I won’t be alone, for this is where I know it’s home Home, Chorus by Dick Lee, Sung by Kit Chan (1998) hen Home was released in 1998 as a song to celebrate Singapore’s National Day, Wit resonated with a people undergoing one of the worst recessions in Asia. It was a stark reminder of the vulnerabilities associated with nation building after more than a century of British colonial rule. More than that, the song was not merely a panacea to tide over difficult times as it was subsequently remade in 2004 and brought back again in 2010. Indeed, it struck a deeper chord. Borrowing the title of the song, I would like to invoke a familiar Asian metaphor of ‘home’ in relation to biblical hermeneutics. Pui Lan Kwok (2005, 100-121) in her reading of Ruth points out a flowering of diverse approaches that has moved from its historical bases to its relevance to the contemporary world.