Gerald West

Expanding Approaches to Bible Translation

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“Those of us who do our biblical studies work in African contexts understand just how important translation studies are, constituting a significant component of ‘African biblical studies.’ This edited collection of essays enables us to understand just why translation studies are so important, combining emerging theory with particular practices and intersecting biblical textual orientations with a focus on orality and performance. Translation in general, and biblical translation in particular, is more complex and includes more than we have envisaged. This interdisciplinary volume, both as a product and a process, summons us to delve more deeply into translation.”

Imitating Jesus

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“The Bible still matters in many contexts. It certainly matters in South Africa, having shaped our history, both from the side of colonialism and apartheid and from the side of our liberation struggle. The South African context therefore provides an important site for Richard Burridge's project. Surrounding his South African case study are an in-depth engagement with the full array of scholarship on New Testament ethics and his own careful reading of particular New Testament texts. But it is the South African site that provides Burridge with an answer to the 'so what?' question. Vast amounts of biblical scholarship stop short of moving beyond a piling up of ancient detail. Burridge goes beyond the detail to risk saying something about how and why the detail matters. And while we in South Africa will derive a special benefit from this study, those in other contexts will also find much that resonates with their own contexts.”

Pharaohs on Both Sides of the Blood-Red Waters

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“Allan Boesak breaks the awful silence of prophetic Christianity in our contemporary times. Boesak recognizes the kindred struggles intersecting our world, but returns again and again to the South African context, revisiting and re-constructing the resources required for a prophetic theology for this contextual ‘moment.’ The book offers a careful analysis of the prophetic theological trajectory, gathering what remains useful and forging what is needed to do prophetic theology in and for our globalized world.”

Piles of Slain, Heaps of Corpses

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“In recovering a redemptive interpretation of the poetry that is the book of Nahum using socio-historical resources, Jacob Onyumbe Wenyi offers African (and other) readers another biblical voice speaking into contexts that yearn for voices of reconciliation rather than voices of violence. A particular contribution of this book is its attention to trauma theory, facilitating a dialogue between ancient biblical contexts circumscribed by trauma and contemporary African contexts saturated in centuries of colonial and neo-colonial trauma.”

Taking a Deep Breath for the Story to Begin

Theology

“This edited book offers a rigorous interrogation of how Christian theology, as Christian theology in its diverse trajectories, might (re)(ad)dress our engagement with the ecological. The essays each make a distinctive contribution to the envisaged project; indeed, they are all quite different. This is in my view a positive feature of the book. Readers will find little repetition of theory, theology, or ecology across these essays, encouraging readers to read widely within the book, yet there are sufficient resonances to ensure a coherent volume.”

The Gospel of Mark and the Roman-Jewish War of 66–70 CE

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“In my work with the Bible in local communities of the poor and marginalised there is an immediate resonance with almost any section of the Gospel of Mark. Kimondo offers us a compelling analysis of why this is the case, providing a detailed interpretation of Mark as ‘good news’ for the economically oppressed in the context of war and empire. Mark’s Jesus offers an egalitarian alternative to the ruling elites of both Jerusalem and Rome.”