TOPIC:
JUDITH AND KUYILI: AN INTERSECTIONAL READING
Towards Envisioning an Activist Liberative Biblical Hermeneutics
– Presenter: Dr. Aravind Jeyakumar Moniraj-
OLD TESTAMENT DEPARTMENT
ABSTRACT:
In a context where uprisings, protests, revolutions, and movements are on rise, both globally and locally due to various reasons, the academia and ecclesia should not be confined to the framework of unearthing the semiotics from the unending storehouse, i.e., the ancient biblical texts, but should move ahead into a new phase of examining the intersections between the Bible and Activism. Therefore, it is inevitable and imperative to showcase the intersectional readings of the Bible as an activist interpreter and use the text as a tool for activism and consider Bible as a tool for liberating social and political change. With this outlook this piece of work is an attempt to explore the significance of intersectional reading in the Bible scholarship with a notion of envisioning an activist liberative biblical hermeneutics for the changing and challenging contexts for which two entirely different pieces of events and characters, namely, Judith (the intertestamental woman liberator) and Kuyili (the Indian freedom struggle warrior) are analysed with the help of the intersectional hermeneutics and an activist oriented pragmatism has been drawn from the insights of the above mentioned characters. Moreover, this paper has been structured in the following way: the first section unfolds the necessity and richness of the intersectional reading in the biblical scholarship which is followed by deciphering the above-mentioned two characters and events with the help of intersectional reading, esp. in section two and three; the final section attempts to formulate an activist oriented biblical hermeneutics from the juxtaposed analysis of the contributions of Judith and Kuyili in their own contexts.
