Postcolonial Biblical Interpretation: Empire, Resistance, and the Reading of Scripture from the Margins

Introduction

When Spanish conquistadors arrived in the Americas in 1492, they carried two instruments of conquest: the sword and the Bible. The Requerimiento, read aloud to indigenous peoples before military engagement, invoked biblical authority to demand submission to Spanish rule and Christian conversion. Those who refused faced enslavement or death—all justified by appeal to Scripture. This historical reality poses an uncomfortable question: How has the Bible functioned in the colonial enterprise, and how should we read it in light of that history?

Postcolonial biblical interpretation emerged in the 1990s as a hermeneutical approach that reads Scripture through the lens of colonialism, imperialism, and their aftermath. Drawing on postcolonial theory developed by Edward Said (Orientalism, 1978), Gayatri Spivak, and Homi Bhabha, this interpretive method examines three interrelated questions: How has the Bible been weaponized to justify colonial domination? How have colonized peoples read the Bible as a resource for resistance? And how do the biblical texts themselves reflect the dynamics of empire and subjugation?

R.S. Sugirtharajah's Postcolonial Criticism and Biblical Interpretation (2002) established the methodological foundations for this field. Sugirtharajah, a Sri Lankan biblical scholar, demonstrated how European missionaries in Asia used biblical texts to legitimate cultural imperialism while simultaneously dismissing indigenous interpretive traditions as primitive or heretical. Fernando Segovia and Musa Dube extended this analysis, showing how the Bible has functioned ambivalently—as both oppressor's handbook and liberator's manifesto—depending on who reads it and from what social location.

This article argues that postcolonial biblical interpretation offers essential correctives to Western biblical scholarship by exposing its cultural biases, amplifying marginalized voices, and recovering anti-imperial dimensions of Scripture that dominant readings have obscured. While this approach has limitations—particularly the risk of reducing Scripture to political ideology—it challenges interpreters to recognize that all biblical reading is culturally situated and that the social location of the reader profoundly shapes what one sees in the text.

Biblical Foundation

Empire in the Biblical Text

The Bible was written in the shadow of empire. The Old Testament narratives unfold against the backdrop of Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and Hellenistic empires; the New Testament emerged under Roman imperial rule. Far from being politically neutral, the biblical texts engage empire in complex and sometimes contradictory ways—ranging from accommodation to resistance to subversive critique.

The exodus narrative (Exodus 1–15) provides the paradigmatic story of resistance to imperial oppression. Pharaoh's decree to kill Hebrew male infants (Exodus 1:15-22) represents the genocidal logic of empire, while Moses' confrontation with Pharaoh—"Let my people go" (Exodus 5:1)—articulates a theology of liberation. The plagues function as divine judgment against Egyptian imperial power, culminating in the destruction of Pharaoh's army at the Red Sea (Exodus 14:26-31). For enslaved Africans in the Americas, this narrative became a source of hope and resistance; Harriet Tubman identified herself with Moses, leading her people to freedom.

Yet the exodus narrative contains a troubling sequel: the conquest of Canaan (Joshua 1–12). The same God who liberated Israel from Egyptian oppression commands the destruction of Canaanite populations (Joshua 6:21; 10:40). Robert Allen Warrior, a Native American scholar, has argued that indigenous peoples in the Americas are the Canaanites of this story—those whose land was taken and whose cultures were destroyed by colonizers who saw themselves as the new Israel entering the promised land. This reading exposes how the same biblical text can function as liberation for one community and genocide for another, depending on the reader's social location.

The prophetic tradition offers sustained critique of imperial power. Isaiah mocks the pretensions of Assyrian empire (Isaiah 10:5-19), while Jeremiah and Ezekiel pronounce judgment against Babylon (Jeremiah 50–51; Ezekiel 26–28). Daniel's visions subvert the claims of successive empires—Babylonian, Median, Persian, Greek—by asserting that ultimate sovereignty belongs to the God of Israel, not to earthly rulers (Daniel 2:44; 7:13-14). These texts provided colonized peoples with a theological framework for resisting imperial domination.

Jesus, Paul, and the Roman Empire

The New Testament was written under Roman occupation, and its texts bear the marks of that context. Jesus' proclamation of the "kingdom of God" (Mark 1:15) was not merely a spiritual metaphor but a political challenge to Roman imperial ideology. When Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey (Mark 11:1-11), he enacted a counter-imperial procession that parodied Roman triumphal entries. His crucifixion—a Roman method of execution reserved for political rebels—reveals how the empire perceived his movement as a threat.

Paul's letters employ imperial language subversively. His declaration that "Jesus is Lord" (kyrios Iēsous, Romans 10:9) directly challenges the Roman imperial cult's claim that "Caesar is Lord" (kyrios Kaisar). When Paul describes the gospel as euangelion ("good news"), he appropriates terminology used for imperial propaganda announcing military victories or the emperor's birthday. Richard Horsley has demonstrated how Paul's theology of the cross (1 Corinthians 1:18-25) functions as a critique of Roman imperial power, which glorified military conquest and crucified those who resisted.

The Book of Revelation offers the most sustained anti-imperial polemic in the New Testament. John's vision portrays Rome as "Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes" (Revelation 17:5), a beast that makes war on the saints (Revelation 13:7). The slain Lamb who conquers through suffering (Revelation 5:5-6) stands in stark contrast to the Roman emperor who conquers through violence. Stephen Moore's postcolonial reading shows how Revelation employs coded language to resist Roman power while constructing an alternative vision of cosmic sovereignty centered on Christ rather than Caesar.

The Bible and Colonial History

The history of European colonialism is inseparable from the history of biblical interpretation. Pope Alexander VI's papal bull Inter Caetera (1493) divided the non-Christian world between Spain and Portugal, invoking biblical authority for European territorial claims. The "Doctrine of Discovery," which provided legal justification for European colonization, rested on the premise that Christian nations had divine authorization to claim lands inhabited by non-Christians—a reading derived from the conquest narratives of Joshua.

In the transatlantic slave trade, biblical texts were weaponized to justify the enslavement of Africans. Genesis 9:25-27, the so-called "curse of Ham," was interpreted to mean that Africans were divinely ordained to be slaves. Ephesians 6:5 ("Slaves, obey your earthly masters") was preached to enslaved people to enforce submission. Yet enslaved Africans developed their own readings of Scripture, finding in the exodus narrative and the prophetic tradition resources for resistance and hope. The spirituals—"Go Down, Moses," "Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel"—testify to this counter-reading.

British colonialism in India and Africa similarly deployed biblical interpretation to legitimate cultural imperialism. Missionaries dismissed Hindu and African religious traditions as demonic, using texts like Acts 17:16-34 to justify the replacement of indigenous cultures with European Christianity. Yet colonized peoples also appropriated the Bible for anti-colonial purposes. Mahatma Gandhi, though not a Christian, drew on Jesus' Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7) to develop his philosophy of nonviolent resistance. African Independent Churches reinterpreted biblical texts to affirm African identity and resist European cultural domination.

Theological Analysis

Reading from the Margins: Social Location and Interpretation

Postcolonial interpretation insists that the social location of the reader matters for interpretation. This claim challenges the Enlightenment ideal of objective, disinterested biblical scholarship. Readers who have experienced colonization, slavery, or marginalization bring questions to the text that privileged readers may never ask: Whose interests does this interpretation serve? Who benefits from this reading? Whose voices are silenced? These questions do not invalidate traditional interpretations but expose their partiality and open space for alternative readings.

Consider the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). Western interpreters have typically read this as a story about individual charity and compassion. But Musa Dube, reading from a postcolonial African perspective, notes that the Samaritan is an ethnic and religious outsider who shows mercy to a Jew—reversing the expected power dynamics. In colonial contexts where European missionaries portrayed Africans as the ones needing salvation from civilized Christians, this parable subverts colonial assumptions by making the outsider the moral exemplar. The social location of the reader determines which dimensions of the text become visible.

The Canaanite conquest narratives (Joshua 1–12) provide a more troubling test case. For European settlers in the Americas, these narratives provided a template for understanding their own colonization as divinely sanctioned. John Winthrop, governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, explicitly compared the Puritan settlement to Israel's conquest of Canaan, viewing Native Americans as the new Canaanites whose land God had given to his chosen people. For indigenous peoples, the same narratives raise agonizing questions about divine violence and the dispossession of native populations.

Robert Allen Warrior's essay "Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians" (1989) articulated this indigenous critique powerfully. Warrior argued that Native Americans are the Canaanites of the exodus-conquest story—those whose destruction is narrated as necessary for God's people to possess the land. Liberation theology's celebration of the exodus as a paradigm of liberation ignores the genocide of the Canaanites that follows. Postcolonial interpretation does not resolve these tensions but insists that they be acknowledged and engaged rather than suppressed.

Hybridity and Cultural Negotiation

Homi Bhabha's concept of "hybridity" has proven useful for analyzing how colonized peoples negotiate between dominant and subordinate cultural systems. Hybridity describes the cultural mixing that occurs in colonial contexts, where colonized subjects adopt elements of the colonizer's culture while maintaining aspects of their indigenous identity. This concept illuminates how biblical texts reflect similar cultural negotiations.

The apostle Paul exemplifies hybridity. He claims both Jewish identity ("circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel," Philippians 3:5) and Roman citizenship (Acts 22:25-28), while proclaiming a gospel that transcends ethnic boundaries ("There is neither Jew nor Greek," Galatians 3:28). Tat-siong Benny Liew has analyzed how Paul's letters reflect the complex cultural positioning of a colonial subject who must navigate between Jewish, Greek, and Roman cultural systems. Paul's theology emerges from this hybrid space, neither purely Jewish nor fully Hellenized, but something new created in the encounter between cultures.

The Gospel of Matthew similarly reflects cultural hybridity. Written for a Jewish-Christian community navigating its relationship to both Judaism and the Gentile world, Matthew presents Jesus as the fulfillment of Jewish messianic expectations (Matthew 1:1-17) while also commissioning the disciples to "make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19). Fernando Segovia has shown how Matthew's community occupies a liminal space—no longer fully part of the synagogue but not yet a distinct Gentile religion—and how this hybrid identity shapes the Gospel's theological vision.

The Ambivalence of Scripture: Oppression and Liberation

A central insight of postcolonial biblical interpretation is that Scripture functions ambivalently—as both an instrument of oppression and a resource for liberation. This ambivalence requires a hermeneutic more nuanced than either wholesale rejection or uncritical celebration of the Bible.

Liberation theology, as developed by Gustavo Gutiérrez and others in Latin America during the 1960s-1970s, tended to read the Bible as a straightforwardly liberating text that speaks on behalf of the poor and oppressed. The exodus became the master narrative, and God was identified unambiguously with the oppressed against their oppressors. While this reading empowered marginalized communities, it sometimes overlooked the Bible's complicity in violence and domination.

Postcolonial interpretation adopts a more ambivalent stance. It recognizes that the same Bible used to justify slavery also inspired abolitionists; the same texts invoked to legitimate colonization also fueled anti-colonial resistance. This ambivalence demands what Segovia calls a "hermeneutic of suspicion and retrieval"—suspicion toward interpretations that serve imperial interests, retrieval of texts and readings that empower the marginalized.

Musa Dube's postcolonial feminist reading of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) illustrates this approach. Dube notes that this text has been used to justify Christian missionary expansion and cultural imperialism—the command to "make disciples of all nations" became a mandate for European colonization. Yet Dube also retrieves liberating dimensions of the text: Jesus' authority is based not on military conquest but on his resurrection; the commission includes "teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you," which includes Jesus' teachings about justice, mercy, and solidarity with the poor. A postcolonial reading neither simply rejects nor uncritically accepts the text but reads it critically and constructively.

Decolonizing Biblical Studies

Postcolonial biblical interpretation has prompted calls for the decolonization of biblical studies as an academic discipline. R.S. Sugirtharajah has argued that Western biblical scholarship functions as a form of intellectual colonialism, imposing European interpretive methods and theological categories on non-Western readers while dismissing indigenous hermeneutical traditions as unsophisticated or pre-critical.

Gerald West's work in South Africa exemplifies a decolonized approach. West developed a contextual Bible study methodology that brings academic biblical scholarship into conversation with the interpretive insights of ordinary readers in marginalized communities. Rather than assuming that trained scholars possess superior interpretive authority, West's method recognizes the hermeneutical competence of communities whose lived experiences of oppression give them unique insight into biblical texts about suffering, resistance, and hope. This approach challenges the monopoly of professional scholars over biblical interpretation and democratizes the interpretive process.

The inclusion of non-Western scholarly voices has enriched biblical studies by bringing diverse cultural perspectives into dialogue with Western academic methods. Scholars like Kwok Pui-lan (Hong Kong), Archie Lee (China), and Elsa Tamez (Costa Rica) have demonstrated how Asian and Latin American interpretive traditions offer fresh insights that Western scholarship has missed. The recognition that all interpretation is culturally situated challenges the pretension of objectivity that has characterized Western academic biblical scholarship and opens space for a genuinely global conversation about the meaning and significance of biblical texts.

Conclusion

Postcolonial biblical interpretation challenges the church to read Scripture with awareness of its own cultural location and with attention to the voices of those who have been marginalized by colonial history. This hermeneutical approach does not reject the Bible but reads it critically, recognizing both its complicity in colonial violence and its potential as a resource for liberation and resistance. The ambivalence of Scripture—its capacity to function as both oppressor's handbook and liberator's manifesto—demands interpretive strategies that can distinguish between readings that serve imperial interests and those that empower the marginalized.

The contributions of postcolonial biblical interpretation are substantial. It has exposed the cultural biases of Western biblical scholarship, which often presented its interpretations as universal and objective while actually reflecting European and North American cultural assumptions. It has amplified the voices of readers in the Global South—Africa, Asia, Latin America—whose questions and insights have enriched biblical studies. And it has recovered anti-imperial dimensions of biblical texts that dominant readings have obscured, showing how the exodus narrative, the prophetic tradition, and the New Testament's proclamation of Jesus as Lord all challenge imperial power.

Yet postcolonial interpretation also has limitations. There is a risk of reducing Scripture to a political document, reading it primarily as a text about power relations rather than as divine revelation. There is a tendency to privilege contemporary political concerns over the text's own theological claims. And there is the difficulty of maintaining a coherent hermeneutical method across diverse postcolonial contexts—what counts as liberating in one context may function oppressively in another, as Warrior's critique of the exodus-conquest narrative demonstrates.

For pastors and ministry leaders, postcolonial interpretation offers practical wisdom for cross-cultural ministry. It teaches awareness of how cultural power dynamics shape biblical interpretation and how the same text can be heard differently depending on the listener's social location. It challenges preachers to ask whose interests their interpretations serve and whose voices are silenced. And it invites the church to read Scripture in solidarity with the marginalized, recognizing that God's preferential option for the poor is not merely a political slogan but a hermeneutical principle rooted in the biblical narrative itself—from the exodus to the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55) to Jesus' inaugural sermon in Nazareth (Luke 4:16-21).

Implications for Ministry and Credentialing

Postcolonial interpretation challenges pastors to read Scripture with awareness of how interpretive traditions have been shaped by cultural power dynamics. This awareness enriches cross-cultural ministry and enables more faithful engagement with the Bible's message of justice and liberation for all peoples.

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