Abstract This article sheds new light on the Servant of YHWH texts in Isaiah 41–49 by reading them from a literary perspective. The much-debated question of whether the Servant designates an individual or a collective, is approached using the stylistic device of “pars pro toto”, in which a part represents the whole. After an analysis of Isaiah 41:8–10 and 49:1–6, which deals specifically with the Servant’s relationship to the people, a discussion of the interpretations of Ulrich Berges and Martin Buber follows, who represent different exegetical traditions. This is followed by an outline of how pars pro toto and metonymy have already been reflected upon in literary studies. The pars pro toto figure is also compared to two other interpretive models, corporate personality and personification. In conclusion, the concept of pars pro toto does justice to the tensions within the text without resolving them.
Abstract This article examines Revelation 6:9–11 through the lens of Frantz Fanon’s concept of ‘absolute violence’, arguing that John’s vision of divine judgement parallels Fanon’s call for the destruction of oppressive systems in the creation of a ‘new humanity’. Rather than relativising or denouncing Revelation’s violence, this study seeks to explore the opportunities for taking the text’s violence seriously as a site of anti-imperial meaning-making. Revelation’s theological impetus, while attached to John’s socio-political context, invites renewed ethical scrutiny for theological application today. The martyrs’ witness challenges Rome’s cultural logic, and their cry for vengeance calls for God to enact cosmic, de-creation violence that overthrows imperial structures and establishes a new creation centred on Jesus. This essay is an open-ended and heuristic juxtaposition of two bodies of thought that address the ambiguous transformation of empire through violence, not to justify either perspective, but to inhabit the theological and ethical tensions they produce.
Abstract Yahweh’s speech “I have been a ‘little sanctuary’ ( מִקְדָּשׁ מְעַט , Ezek 11:16c, literal translation) in the countries where they have gone,” seems to be significant in understanding Ezekiel’s conception of God in the material conditions of the Babylonian exile. The poignance of the cryptic phrase is accentuated by the fact that Ezekiel’s language of God is largely concrete and anthropomorphic, especially the discourse of kābôd Yahweh . The phrase seems to have some resonance with the experience of the exiles in Babylon. Hence, the question of whether the “little sanctuary” entails a concrete representation of Yahweh embracing and embodying the material conditions of exile is crucial. Furthermore, what does מקדּשׁ מעט imply for the community of exile in the margins of the Babylonian empire? This paper employs the concepts of vulnerability and precarity, as articulated by Judith Butler, to shed light on the life situation of the Babylonian exile, and thereby to understand the theological ramifications of the enigmatic phrase “little sanctuary” in the material conditions of exile.
Abstract In Mark 7:24–30, Jesus calls a woman a “dog.” From a Peranakan perspective – a hybridised identity – Jesus’ words are self-evidently problematic. Not only is Jesus dehumanising, but in Peranakan culture, dogs are either house pets or can be seen as unclean animals, meaning there is no redemptive quality to this word. Reading the text, which minimises or downplays the harm of this word, echoes the racial slur that degrades the Peranakan people. The historical interpretation of this name-calling ha favoured the dominant voice in the text, Jesus. Interpreters have largely downplayed the harshness of this saying, rejecting the harm caused by Jesus’ reinscribing of; patriarchal and ethnic norms upon women with hybridised identities. Therefore, there is a need to read from “below” and from an intersectionality perspective where the reading can enlighten the struggle at the same the agency of the Syrophoenician woman.
Abstract This article traces the reception history of the Book of Hosea in African American tradition from 1619 to 1968, offering a close reading of how Hosea’s wilderness theology, wounded divine love, and covenantal imagery became central resources for Black spiritual survival and liberationist imagination. Drawing on the methodological frameworks of Wil Gafney’s womanist midrash (2017), Albert Raboteau’s foundational study of the invisible institution (1978), and James H. Cone’s theological analysis of the spirituals (1972), the article argues that African American interpreters did not passively receive Hosea but actively transformed it—making the book’s most dangerous theological claims into a grammar of resistance against chattel slavery, its aftermath, and structural racial terror. The analysis proceeds across three historical arcs: the hush-harbour appropriation of Hosea 2:14 as wilderness theology among the enslaved (1619–1865); the reclamation of Gomer as the patron saint of sanctified Black women in the holiness tradition (1865–1940); and the deployment of Hosea 11 as the emotional and ethical grammar of nonviolent resistance in the civil rights movement (1954–1968). A concluding section reflects on the implications of this reception history for womanist biblical hermeneutics and the continuing conversation about divine solidarity in contexts of communal trauma. In each era, Hosea emerges not as a text of judgment but as a love song—dangerous, scandalous, and fiercely protective of a people whom no earthly power could finally claim.
