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SBL Annual Meeting Papers — November 2007 WORKING DRAFT: Please do not cite without permission of the author
****Not for attribution*** Intercultural Bible Study and Care: the method that we advocate for communal and contextual Bible study in local congregations and communities, is postmodern and post-colonial. This intercultural method1 of inquiry takes everyone’s voice seriously and exercises care so as not to privilege one voice above the others. This method—reflective of God who is radically inclusive—begins with the faithful practice of listening to the many voices in the room and within the text. We wish here to demonstrate through a reading of a particular text, Joshua 2, how seemingly easy this kind of reading is for some, while dangerous for others. We examine the tensions in the text and the tensions within our present construction of reality to investigate the challenges to reading, listening, and knowing together. It is helpful to remember at the outset of our study that, in some respect, we all have access to various aspects of truth (we all bring important knowledge to the discussion); and some of us, by virtue of our relative privilege and access to power, can learn the value of making concessions, to acknowledge a truth/value in another’s perspective or life experience. This concession-making is an attitude of yielding the space for another’s truth or story to be expressed, reflective of the intentional Christian practice of hospitality, whereby we physically create spaces of welcome for others to tell their stories in detail without judgment and condemnation. The practice of listening in intercultural Bible study and care is a faithful exercise grounded in yearning to grow in knowledge of God, our sisters and brothers, and ourselves. We practice listening together in community because we don’t know everything; our look-out points in life are partial and biased by our position. We know what we know; and others know what they know. We must risk stepping over the chasms that often divide us. As we risk meeting and listening to—especially the disregarded or socially disgraced other—we come to know more intimately the face of reality. Assumptions and stereotypes may be turned inside-out and upside down. We do not take kindly to such shape-shifting of our mental scaffolding. We grow accustomed to having the world ordered in a way that suits us; such ordering, though, can be odious and hostile to those who do not stand to benefit from it. In a large Introduction to the Hebrew Bible class I taught at Wesley Seminary in the early 90s, two male M.Div. students who had recently fled the civil war in Liberia offered up their interpretation of Rahab in Joshua 2. These two young men had been force-marched from their village and had watched helplessly as people in the line ahead of them were gunned down by members of rebel Charles Taylor’s drugged children’s army. With angry tears they denounced Rahab as a traitor to her people in Jericho. Rahab with her crimson cord (Josh 2:15,18) was no better than the prostitutes with whom Charles Taylor had made a deal: nail red cloth to your door as a sign of safe haven for my men, and you will be spared as we march toward the capital city of Monrovia. Most of the students in the class sat in stunned silence as the pair told their story. I daresay that no one in that class had ever heard such an interpretation. After all, the NT lists Rahab as one of only five women in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus, Hebrews 11.31 includes her in the roll call of the faithful, and James 2.25 praises her as justified by works, not faith alone. How jarring to consider Rahab as a traitor in the context of the Liberian civil war that killed an estimated 300,000 or more people, and uprooted hundreds of thousands from their homes. How fitting that Charles Taylor is about to go on trial in The Hague for allegedly backing rebels and their atrocities in neighboring Sierra Leone. I have not encountered any more Liberians in my classes at Wesley, I’m sorry to say. But I continue to tell their story when we study Joshua 2. Why? To illustrate the complex ambiguities and tensions in the story of Rahab on the theological, economic, psychological, and political levels, not only for Rahab, but also for her interpreters. Theses tensions challenge a passive or hegemonic interpretation of the text that refuses to see other interpretations from diverse contexts in favor of a co-opted Rahab who serves the purposes of the colonizing Israelites claiming God on their side. Too many of us come to Josh 2 identifying with the Israelites to affirm our superior self-understanding and divine approval for our politics. Encountering the radical ‘other’ Rahab can be a practice of community building and a spiritual/pastoral practice of growth in individual and national awareness. Can we let Rahab be ‘other’ and a person, not simply “the prostitute,” without domesticating her for our individual and national purposes? Rahab’s story is plurivocal. According to postcolonial feminist Musa Dube,2 Rahab represents a land to be colonized. . . Rahab is the only land [the spies] enter...” Robert Coote3 argues that Rahab’s prostitution is a result of her family’s poverty and that her story is at base a folk narrative about the poor against kingly power, meant to appeal to debtor families under King Josiah’s reign who would sympathize with her; debt slavery and debt prostitution still exist in our world.4 Carmen Nanko-Fernandez, speaking of contemporary Latino/a (im)migrants, issues a warning that we might heed when reading Joshua 2: “naive interpretations of border-crossings as passion/resurrection experiences downplay the ongoing uncertainty and risk of life in the ‘promised land’.”5 Robert Warrior of the Osage Nation insists that God the deliverer has become God the conqueror in the Joshua narratives and that Native Americans must identify with the Canaanites who already lived in the promised land but whose story has been silenced.6 These multiple interpretations born of diverse social locations may cause
those in comfortable, homogenous mainline churches to become defensive
and dismissive. How we conduct Bible study matters in terms of our pastoral caring of one another. For Rahab’s story, to start off by saying ‘you/we are the colonizers’ would be to shut down dialogue, listening, and discovery for those in positions of power. On the other hand, a dominant or traditional reading of Rahab as faithful heroine can block contributions from colonized peoples (such as my Liberian students) who are often too polite and don’t feel safe sharing what Gerald West calls the “hidden transcript” of their story.7 What matters is honoring the social location of each of the readers of a text. “Pastoral theology and care cannot be separated from the social, political, and cultural context.”8 The field of pastoral psychology can provide language to help navigate the depths of our inner world as that world encounters the inner worlds of others around a biblical text like Joshua 2. Self-knowledge is key to all forms of relational knowing; if we don’t know ourselves, or are unwilling to know ourselves, then all of our relationships suffer. Yet we live in a time of information overload outpacing our ability to know. Knowing who we are has become more difficult: recognizing shadow and light, perfections and flaws, warts and beauty, all that gives us joy and makes us fearful, our tendencies to compete and demean, to gloat and to snicker. Our inner landscape is no more terrain to be “conquered” and “colonized” than the actual land that we/Rahab inhabit[ed]. But sometimes this is exactly the way we approach our knowledge of self and others. A student in a pastoral care course once commented that we must “bust our self-deceiving idols in the service of Christ.” This well-intentioned student unwittingly conveyed a sensibility that many of us harbor: change takes place by aggressive means of control. Unfortunately this pattern of conquering and colonizing, learned from our outer experience and taught to us through history, media, politics, and the Bible (i.e. Holy War) is imported to our inner world at great cost. We cede trust-filled, easeful, relational patterns —both to ourselves and others—to patterns of violence and unhealthy aggression. This becomes extremely detrimental when we are frightened into a corner; we are more likely to pull inward even further, narrowing our ability to engage with others or else lash out with hostility as we attack and seek to annihilate the potential threat.9 We can begin to create a space for interpretive encounter by looking at Joshua 2 as a “contact zone,” i.e. “the space of colonial encounters” where separated people come into contact with one another.10 This text is a contact zone between Israelites and Canaanites, specifically on the border between them in Jericho, near fords of the Jordan River. The text creates a space (borrowing from postcolonial theory) that is hybrid, porous, and unfixed. It is a liminal, or threshold space11 for Rahab, but also for us as readers. In this text we as readers make multiple contacts with Rahab, the Israelites, the people of Jericho, God, ourselves, other readers, our group/nation, and our myths. Just as Rahab negotiates and shifts her tone in v.12: “now then,” so we readers must negotiate in the contact zone with one another and the text. How we make contact will depend upon our own contexts and the skill of the facilitator. Out of his context in South Africa, West urges us to create interpretive space for “ordinary readers” (i.e. non-scholars) to “bring their life experiences and perspectives to the text and to articulate the meaning they find in the text in their own words.”12 As Nancy Ramsay13 cautions, it is naive for instructors to imagine that they can create a safe space. We can, however, model a readiness to work through painful experiences without allowing any one to be shamed Ramsay insists that we must know our students, rejecting stereotypical knowledge of them, and recognize the three concerns held by those who are not Euro-American like their instructors: alienation, isolation, and vulnerability to self-esteem.14 As noted above, we must also know ourselves as instructors, becoming self-aware of our own cultural identity, asymmetries of difference, and how our racial privilege distorts self-understanding. Taking a cue from Daniel Smith-Christopher,15 we suggest that we must also become good coyotes or border runners. Smith-Christopher builds on the work of Bob Ekblad16 and his work with (im)migrant workers in Washington state. Ekblad challenges the negative image ofborder runners between the US and Mexico, especially the polleros, or coyotes who help people from Central and South America cross over. Many (im)migrants call them good coyotes and heroes. For Smith-Christopher, Jonah, Jesus, and Harriet Tubman were good coyotes, and Christians are called to violate borders that become excuses for conflict, bigotry, and war. It takes a strong conscience to be a good coyote. In metaphorical language, if the self is the vehicle, say the ship, then superego/conscience is the rudder and compass. A moral compass is necessary for navigating the inner and outer worlds; it gives focus and direction to life. But this moral compass also needs sufficient flexibility not only to provide guidance, but to alter the direction (sometimes slightly and other times radically) when necessary. Conscience (super-ego) is developed through meaningful interaction with significant others—first parents and primary caregivers, then teachers and mentors in educational and church communities. What happens when the lessons and ideals we learn need to change, as they might when we cross the border with Rahab? A weak superego (conscience) leaves people subject to driving impulses and instincts (e.g. lashing out at the prostitute with hatred, superiority, or judgment) as well as to powerful and tyrannical external authority (e.g. kill the Canaanites - Holy War); we retreat to what is known at the expense of actually learning about the other. A strong superego (conscience) allows for exploration without unnecessary sacrifice of self/community or the other. Cultivating Conscience in Bible StudyA number of methods can help to cultivate a healthy conscience in Bible study and to develop the ability to differentiate between right and wrong as well as reflect on the complex and interweaving circumstances that necessarily blur the distinctions between these two poles. The goal is a healthy sense of ethical and moral responsibility that is not injurious to self and neighbor. Bible study leaders, particularly within dominant culture groups, need to encourage and model different levels of listening:17 Consonant listening—recognizing places of agreement and commonalities; this kind of listening is relatively easy for group participants and builds a sense of simpatico, not sympathy.18 Consonant listening emerges when we identify with and can relate to aspects of the narrative and to experiences of our fellow readers. The caution with this type of listening is that we can easily see in the text only what we want to see, what makes us comfortable. Thus, from the viewpoint of the dominant culture, Rahab represents a model of faith who risks for Israel’s God. Dissonant listening—recognizing places of discomfort, disagreement, and conflict between story narratives. Such listening occurs when there are few perceived commonalities between narratives, texts and readers, and readers with one another. The experience of dissonance usually precipitates an internal shutting-down or closing off so that the listener actually stops listening, even while perhaps pretending to listen.This dissonance emerges in those who are shocked by the description of Rahab as a traitor to her people. Harmonious Listening—recognizing the emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually arduous posture of listening practice through the commonalities as well as the differences in stories, while intentionally staying open and attentive to ourselves and the other in the process. Such listening builds on Augsburger’s idea of ‘interpathy.’ Harmonious or interpathic listening is a border crossing practice that builds on the assumption that people on both sides of the divide are “equally human.”19 Herein rests the challenge. To assume that a foreign prostitute operates with a moral compass with concern for her and her family’s survival is beyond the comprehension of many. Pastoral care methods in Bible study are not only for personal edification and growth, but for developing and strengthening moral conscience for the betterment of community. Growth in consciousness (ways of seeing and knowing the environment) needs to coincide with growth in conscience or the ability to engage morally in a decidedly ambiguous world. Concretely, this means that Bible study ought to recognize the power in ambiguity.20
What borders must those in the dominant culture cross to reach Rahab? What borders must she have crossed to be described as having “lived among Israel ever since” in Josh. 6.25? What borders must readers cross to hear one another from their different contexts? How do we cross those borders? To reach Rahab, those of us in the dominant culture must
recognize that Josh. 2 is a “contested narrative.” Interpathy
suggests crossing borders with the intended purpose of reaching out to
others, while simultaneously reaching in to one’s own sense of
self.21 When reading Josh 2, if we are part of a marginalized group, we must struggle to recover Rahab’s voice. If we are part of the dominant culture, we must struggle to uncover what we do not want to hear or see. This takes a great deal of work, not to see, but it is, paradoxically, a recognition of seeing and not wanting or willing to work with the challenges of what is seen. My class’ shocked, silent response to the Liberian students’ story offers a case in point. The Liberians’ emotional interpretation of Rahab challenged the class’ self-validation which was gained by their viewing Rahab positively as a paragon of faith who recognized the inclusive quality of Israel’s, and thus, of our Christian God. Frymer-Kensky illustrates this approach by arguing that Rahab’s words “I know” (v.9), are a conversion formula for foreigners acknowledging Israel’s God (Exod. 18.11; 2 Kgs. 5.15) in a kind of “proto-conversion.”23 To strengthen the case for a positive view of Rahab, she notes the extensive parallels between the Exodus stories and Rahab’s story.24 “Once again, the saved are to stay inside the house marked in red; Rahab’s family is to be rescued from Jericho, as the Israelites were from Egypt.” Rahab is a “new Israel.”25 This interpretation evidences consonant listening for the dominant culture. It is a comfortable reading that obliterates the Canaanites. How are we to enter Rahab’s world? More importantly,
what world does she inhabit? The text of Josh 2 offers several clues,
but each can be interpreted indifferent ways, again depending upon the
reader’s
context. Rahab is called a prostitute, in Hebrew, zonah, in
2.1. The NIV offers a footnote that suggests this term can be translated
as ‘innkeeper’, a kind of Miss Kitty from “Gunsmoke.”26 This
is not an option in the semantic range of the word in Hebrew. Prostitutes
formed part of the underclass in ancient Israel. The book of Leviticus
forbids priests to marry prostitutes (21.7) and fathers to force their
daughters into prostitution (19.29 - as a way out of poverty?). Prophets
like Hosea (ch.1-3; see also Jer., Ezek., and Isa.) used prostitution
as a metaphor for Israel’s unfaithfulness to God. Some readers will take a hard line and reject prostitutes (and liars) as morally depraved. This makes it easy to lump the ‘bad’ (from a moral standpoint) Rahab in with her fellow ‘bad’ (from a religious standpoint) Canaanites. Fymer-Kensky, for example, notes that Rahab’s name means ‘wide, broad’ and that she is “the ‘broad of Jericho’ - the wide-open woman who is the wide-open door to Canaan and maybe the open door to apostasy.”28 Dube argues that Rahab’s story is “loaded with colonizing ideologies.”29 As a prostitute, she is wild and must be saved by superior, moral conquerors. Because the spies in v.24 repeat Rahab’s words in v.9, Dube insists that Rahab’s voice has become one with the colonizer. She is the “mouthpiece of their agendas” and their “textual fantasy,”30 who proclaims the colonizer’s superiority, pledges loyalty and surrenders rights. Dube’s observation about this text is echoed in an editorial piece by Uzodinma Iweala from Nigeria, who warns us in the West to “stop trying to ‘save’ Africa.” She reacts to the West’s celebrity-led campaign (e.g. Bono, Angelina Jolie) to stop genocide in Darfur with the observation that stereotypical reports about Africa as a “black hole of disease and death,” with tribal conflicts, child laborers, corruption, abused women, are reminiscent of reports from “the heyday of European colonialism.” Africans who are working to address these problems are ignored; they are “used as props in the West’s fantasy of itself.”31 Wild One Within—id, the animal energy, the unconscious, the untamed and unknown, in a sense is our inner Rahab: the image of the unwanted/unknown/radical other inside of us and also within our community. This is the image we must recognize and name, otherwise we will remain consonant, comfortable listeners. We venture into this area with absolute terror (and possibly toward our undoing) unless we have the strength of self/community that allows for this stepping out in faith. Recognizing our inner Rahab is also partly related to our development of trust which is foundational to all other life stages (Erickson). We can call this a kind of practice of spiritual hybridity, taking our cue from Rasiah Sugirtharajah who declares that “the postcolonial notion of hybridity is not about the dissolution of differences but about renegotiating the structure of power built on differences...Hybridity is a two-way process in which both parties are interactive so that something new is created.”32 For example, dominant culture readers and feminists (how complex!) connect with Rahab by arguing that Rahab is the wealthiest member of her family and therefore negotiates for them (“father, mother, brothers, sisters and all who belong to them” 2.13,18;6.23); she subverts the patriarchal household. Yet she is still identified as “Rahab the prostitute: in Josh. 6.25. Dube warns that imperialism in Rahab’s story undercuts any use we can make of her for feminist ideals.33 The fact that she hid the spies in the stalks of flax on her roof (2.6) offers, for some, another indication that she had wealth, since flax was made into linen, a luxury fabric. But flax was also made into sails, nets, and twine; Rahab spread the flax on her roof not only to dry it but first to have it moistened by the dew, which produced a coarser product compared to soaking it in water.34 Coote, 35 cautions us that “poverty was by far the most common cause of prostitution in the ancient world” and that the poverty of her father’s house, Hebrew bet ‘ab, was what forced Rahab into prostitution in the first place. He argues that people in churches that are not poor might not recognize how this text resonates with the experience of the poor. Another comfortable, consonant reading is to pity and
romanticize ‘poor’ Rahab.
Some have pointed to Rahab’s physical habitation in Jericho as
a symbol of her underclass status: she was living “on the outer
side of the city wall” within the wall itself” (v.15). Archaeological
excavations of Canaanite city walls reveal casemate wall that surrounded
cities. Casemate walls consisted of two parallel walls separated by about
five or six feet of space with crosswalls at regular intervals separating
off rooms within the wall. Perhaps Rahab’s ‘house’ was
in one of these rooms. She lives on the boundary of Jericho society,
hanging on by her fingertips, marginalized. Perhaps she even ‘serviced’ the
king, who is watching what goes on (v.2). This can help readers from
the dominant culture to understand what was at stake in her decision
to lie to the king about the spies’ location and send his men on
a wild goose chase (vv.4-5). Rahab, “the woman on the edge,” may
have seen possibilities and a different future for her life by protecting
the Israelite spies. Rahab was focused on survival for herself and her family. Who among us would not be so focused? As we reach inward in self-examination, it’s not that we see or touch what the other sees and touches, but we learn from our own honest looking that shadow and light dwells within us as well as in the other.37 Rather than a selfish or navel-gazing practice, this spiritual looking and reaching has, paradoxically, profound implications. It connects rather than disconnects us from our neighbors and even from the alien ‘other’. For if we look inward and acknowledge what we see, even when we don’t like it, we move closer toward compassion, which is the courage to come close to the suffering of the ‘other’, even if it challenges our own self-identity. This gentle looking is also non-violent. It can challenge the link between violence in our own personal interactions and the violence between nations and groups in the world. A pastoral care practice of non-violent listening in Bible study groups would mean acknowledging histories of violence in families, institutions, economic systems, and nations. Reading Rahab with interpathy means that we acknowledge her position between a rock and a hard place in her own city of Jericho and in relation to the Israelites. As Letty Russell argues, there are three choices for those marginalized by gender, ethnicity, and economics: 1. Choose the center and copy the oppressors to be accepted by the dominant group; 2. Choose not to choose and internalize oppression in resignation, and loss of self-esteem; and 3. Choose the margin –work in solidarity with others to move toward the center through resistance that can lead to transformation.38 Choosing the center is saturated with ambiguity. Dominant culture values Rahab’s choosing positively. However, my Liberian students deem Rahab’s choice of the center a ‘sell-out’: she betrayed her own people. Dube would agree with the students. Israel uses Rahab as an example of a preserved artifact to keep power in Canaan; native culture and people survive as suppressed entities, so Josh. 6.25.39 Yes, Rahab and the Gideonites live among Israel (Josh 6.25;9.1-27), but as a way for the colonizer to maintain power; the insider/outsider distinction “is never meant to be absolute.”40 Recognizing the tension in these views can help guard against the self-delusion of thinking we are working at the margins when we are actually caught in the center. This is duplicitous and warrants continual ‘checks’ with others who can call us on it. In v. 11, Rahab mimics41 the
Israelites with her declaration: “The Lord your God is indeed God
in heaven above and on earth below” (resemblance), which is immediately
followed in v. 12 by her radical shift in tone with “now then” (menace),
let’s make a deal. One way would be to identify the national myths that shape our beliefs and ourselves, our relationships with others, and our roles in life. National myths join those personal, marital, family, an ministry myths articulated by Edward Wimberly, that can either support or hinder the “project of existence” that gives our life meaning and purpose.45 Fortunately, as with the other myths, we can participate in “reauthoring” our national myths by “re-storying” them and bringing new perspectives to past experience as can be done for other myths.46 We suggest that such reauthoring constitutes a border crossing into unknown territory. This process of reauthoring begins with an identification of themes that make up the myth.47 Ryan LaMothe suggests that American expansionism is “deeply rooted in the American psyche” and has been supported by religious-mythic narratives that proclaim the United States’ divinely sanctioned role in history. He calls this the “empire psyche” and outlines four themes that mark it: 1. the allusion of American altruism 2. Sense of entitlement 3. Simplification into us/them, and 4. Pride and arrogance. The ‘other’ is less and our war dead are heroes. To his list of bumper stickers which includes Support our Troops,we would add God Bless America, and One Nation Under God . LaMothe urges prophetic pastoral care to confront this empire psyche. Perhaps we could ask, prompted by Nancy Duff’s argument, how faithful Christians and Jews today are “breaking the second commandment by too closely identifying the purposes of God with the purposes of the nation.”48 Intercultural Bible study creates a safe enough zone for people to meet, give voice, and listen together in order to chart new steps in faith. Pastoral and lay caregivers serve as the stewards and guardians of such space, helping to ensure respect of all people. Structured guidelines must be implemented to ensure that the space does not inadvertently become a hostile and threatening zone for marginalized people. Studying, sharing stories, and learning together itself can be border-crossing work; such effort requires courage or strength of heart and mind in order to know and be known truly because we often do not have equal footing. Some of us have to stand down so that others may be able to stand up. We are sensitive and resilient beings, and we are also scared, bruised, and abused by systems and patterns of economic disparity, social injustice, and national hypocrisy. We may see tempers flaring and tears flowing or we may simply notice a pit in the stomach or tightness in the throat. These are signposts of bordercrossings. Leaders and caregivers need to pay attention to these signs and to teach others to do so as well. Aware of these signs, participants may then choose to share or withhold information based on levels of trust and empathy development within a group. Care and caution must be exercised since, in the sharing and investigating of stories, borders and boundaries are rarely clear or clean-cut. Border crossing is “touchy” and “edgy” work, as it sometimes leaves people whether of the dominant culture or marginalized feeling confused, questioning, perplexed, or angry. These internal and interpersonal stirrings reflect a blurring of the boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ a process that moves from refusal to realignment: from marginalized persons’ refusal to adapt their lives to another’s construction of reality and refusal to have their identity assigned or co-opted by others. Stories of pain and anger may be the only available means to voice the frustration that underlies being pushed aside or marginalized. As people share and listen to stories (both dominant culture folks and marginalized persons), everyone experiences the destabilization, either consciously or unconsciously. The ground of our souls is being tilled; we cannot read texts and hear stories without being changed. Realignment of perspective for dominant culture folks usually emerges through the experience of destabilization—if only through the felt experience of destabilization as people begin to feel their own experience of pain and recall their own experiences of being marginalized. Subtly and maybe even unwittingly people begin to see ‘the other’ in themselves. Intercultural Bible study and care, based in principle and process on post-colonial theory, teaches people about refusal and realignment so that together we might know something more profound about the God who refuses stereotypes and realigns all relationships. Suggested Practices for the Contact Zone of Reading with
Rahab
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