CHAPTER 1

THE BIBLE AS A LITERARY DOCUMENT

This book is designed to call attention to and to deconstruct the colonizing elements in Scripture.  Mention will be made to the fact that the Bible, for the most part, was not only written by people who experienced colonization (usurpation of their land and uprooting), but that these colonized people, in time, became colonizers themselves.  As part of their colonizing activities, they engaged in what we call today “ethnic cleansing.”  They justified their colonization and ethnic cleansing by writing that their God, Yahweh, mandated them to do so.  So, they resorted to theological rationales in order to justify their colonizing enterprise.

For us to observe the colonizing elements of Scripture, we must study its history.  This study would include the history of how we obtained the Bible, who the “key players” were in the writing of Scripture, and how the Scriptures eventually came to be a document of faith in the Jewish and Christian communities.

This study would entail looking at the Bible in its literary composition.  In other words, studying the Bible as a literary document would help us to understand the issues at hand in this book.  It would be intellectually dishonest for one to see the Bible as a document of faith while at the same time denying, disregarding, and overlooking the very human elements of  its literary composition and contents.

Having said all the above, I submit that the Bible as a literary document challenges us to examine the same elements found in other literature, be it religious or secular.  As with any other piece of literature, when we read the Bible, we must ask the same questions asked when reading any other document.  It is inevitable that we raise questions about the following:

 

1.  Authorship- Who wrote the particular books that we read in Scripture?  Does it matter?  I submit that if the Bible is going to be considered authoritative and normative in the life of the faith community, that the authors must have some type of commitment to that community and its beliefs and practices.  Otherwise, I believe, we would have to assume that the authors of Scripture had an ulterior motive in writing, i.e. to discredit and defame the faith, and undermine the mission of the community.  There is nothing in the content of Scripture that suggests that the writers had any such sinister motives in writing.

We would also have to ask if the authors named in the books were the actual authors, or were the books attributed to certain authors in order to give them more credibility and weight.  For example, were the first five books of the Bible (the Pentateuch) written by Moses or were they written just before, during, or after the Babylonian Captivity and attributed to Moses in order to give these documents legitimacy and authoritative status?

A related question would be whether we subscribe to the Documentary Hypothesis, i.e. the theory that there are multiple authors of the Pentateuch, or not, each one representing different political and theological interests.  Some of us would be more inclined to believe that there was one author who wrote the first five books of the Bible, while others, based on the contents of the Pentateuch, believe that there were multiple authors.  The same goes for the book of Isaiah, in that some authors believe that there was one person named Isaiah who wrote the entire book and covering not only the events taking place in his time, but also what would happen in the future.   On the other hand, there are other biblical scholars, who, on the basis of both content and style, believe in a “Deutero-Isaiah,” who unlike the first one, only covered events of the period of the Babylonian Captivity.

2. Date of Writing- Since the Bible is not an ahistorical book, we must examine its publications and writings in the context of history.  In other words, we must ask at what point in history were the books of the Bible written.  The date of writing will reveal the relevance or non-relevance of what the authors say.  We would have to examine whether the writings were contemporaneous with the events and issues that the authors speak about or whether the writings came about much later in history.  For example, we would ask if the Gospel accounts were written during or shortly after Jesus’s earthly ministry, or were they written much later, therefore, requiring the writers to resort to different sources of information in order to compose their writings?

3.  Motive- The reading of any book or other literary document calls for us to examine the motives and intention of the writers.  No one writes in a vacuum.  There are always reasons behind the writings.  Every writer has a specific reason or intention for composing her/his writing.  So, we may ask for example “What was Paul’s reason for writing his Corinthian correspondence?”  Was he in a bad mood?  Were there things in the Corinthian church that were annoying and bothering him?  Did he have a personal grudge with someone there or perhaps a score to settle?  Did the Psalm writer just want to vent and therefore wrote a prayer asking God to avenge his personal enemies?  Did the writer or writers of the books of Chronicles and Kings write as one prison resident said to me “to earn royalties?”

4.  Audience- Writers of all types (book writers, newspaper journalists, poets, etc.) always have someone in mind that they believe should be the recipients of their writings.  In other words, all writings are addressed with a particular audience in mind. When we take a literary approach to the Bible, one of the questions asked is that of intended audience.  So, for example, we have four Gospel accounts in the New Testament and apparently each Gospel writer is addressing her/his account to a particular group of people. When I was a Visiting Scholar/Professor of Theology at the Tainan Theological College/Seminary in Taiwan, I wrote a book “The Sovereignty of Taiwan” A Theological Perspective.”  After the book was written and published, I had a discussion with the Academic Dean about the book.  Thinking that the book would be read by the general public in Taiwan, I asked him “Who do you think would be the readers of this book?” Hoping that he would confirm my hopes, he answered “The academic community, i.e. in this case, the faculty, students, and other engaged scholars.”  While I was happy that the “community of scholars” would be among my readers, I was somewhat disappointed that he didn’t think that my audience would be a much wider one.  We ask the same type of questions about the audience of the biblical writers.  How large was their audience?  What type of people were in this audience?  Would the audience be receptive to their message?  Was the select audience an exclusive audience, or did the writers think that whatever they said to one audience would be universally applicable in all times and in all places?  Did the author/authors of the epistles and letters believe that what they said to one person or particular church would be normative for the church universal?

5. Sources of information- As a student in graduate school, I learned the importance in identifying and quoting my sources of information. While this was also emphasized in my undergraduate studies, it was not done with the same degree of vehemence.  Relative to the biblical writers, we must inquire about their sources of information.  In other words, we must ask for example, “Where did the writer of Mark’s Gospel account get her/his information from in order to compose that Gospel account?”  Did the writer of the Pentateuch get her/ his information about the Creation and the Flood from a previously written document such as the Babylonian accounts of Creation and the Flood, i.e. the Enuma Elish and the Epic of Gilgamesh?  Did Ezra and Nehemiah “copy-cat” off

each other, or did they write separately?  In our time, whenever we want to know about or focus on our world events, we make choices about which sources we resort to in order to form an opinion, whether about economic, political, or social issues. As writers do not write in a vacuum, we, as thinkers, do not think or operate in a vacuum. We all base ourselves, to one degree or another, on what someone else has said.

6.  Literary Style- Whenever we read any document, one of the first questions we often raise is “What type of literature is this?”  Is it actual and literal history?  Is it folklore, legend or myth?  Is it allegory?  Is it comedy?  Is it tragedy?   The Bible, as a literary document, does not escape these same types of questions.  All the literary forms that we find in books, articles, essays, and other types of literature, are found in the Bible.

In our current time, in order to form an opinion and make an evaluation of local, national, and world events, we resort to reading the different literary forms of journalism.  Some of us resort to reading sources which are super-hyper sensationalist in nature, while others are more inclined to resort to more intellectually and scholarly-oriented sources of journalism.

It is the same thing in biblical literature.  Some of us are inclined to read books such as the Psalms which are more devotional in nature, while others are inclined to read the letters of Paul such as Romans, which establish the foundation for a well thought-out biblical and systematic theology.

Again, I repeat, that biblical literature is not exempt from the forms that we find in other literary documents.  Subsequently, we need to ask the same kinds of questions that we ask about any other type of literature.

7.  Questions of Redaction- In our time, whenever we read any type of document, one of the questions that we raise is whether the particular document has been edited and revised or not.  Biblical scholars raise the same type of question about the Scriptures.  It is, indeed, much more convenient to believe that whatever we are reading in Scripture was done in one sitting by the authors.  In other words, it is very convenient and to a certain extent, expedient for us to believe that there was no editing, or redaction involved in the writing of Scripture.

I think that it should be obvious by now to the reader, that this writer (yours truly) subscribes to the above approaches of reading, talking about, and writing about the Bible.  These approaches constitute what is called the “historical-critical” approach to Scripture.  It is in my opinion, both irresponsible and reckless to avoid this method of Bible reading and study.  The denial and lack of recognition to the historical-critical approach results in sloppy engagement with Scripture. 

Subsequently, we do injustice to the Scriptures, their authors, and to the biblical message.  My intention in describing the importance of utilizing the historical-critical approach to the Bible has been to affirm its message based on a responsible approach that entails clear, analytical and critical thinking.

NOTE:

The above-posed questions are related to the approach to the Bible known as the “historical-critical” method of biblical studies.  This approach emerged in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, with a special focus on the so-called “Documentary Hypothesis” of the Hextateuch (first six books of the Old Testament).

THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE

To discuss the Bible as literature, with chief attention to stylistic effects generated by word choice and order, therefore, would require limiting ourselves either to the original languages or to a particular translation.  If that were the case, the choice would be the easy one of choosing a particular translation such as the King James Version because it is universally conceded to be the finest writing in the English language (Calvin Clinton in “The Bible as Literature.”  The Expositor’s Bible Commentary.  Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1979, p.129).

There are, however, elements of literary excellence that do not depend on peculiarities inherent in any particular language.  They include formal elements such as prose and poetry, narrative, drama, allegory, and biography; and such stylistic elements as parallelism, imagery, symbolism and the like. It is with such literary elements that we deal (Ibid.).

In further clarification of purpose, several questions may be asked.  Is it our intent to judge or “criticize” the book?  The last question is not so fanciful as it may seem (Ibid.)

The purpose, however, is neither to judge the value of Scripture nor to assess God’s literary style.  Nor does this disavowal evade the issue. Utilizing the literary approach to Scripture, we examine some of the major dimensions of literary quality as derived from and normally applied to other works of literature, to see how they are manifested in the Bible (Ibid.)

THE NATURE AND PURPOSE OF LITERATURE

Great literature is that kind of writing which, in addition to whatever other purposes may serve, is characterized by aesthetic and artistic qualities.  It differs, for example, from expository prose, not in that it does not communicate, but in that it communicates in a way rendered more moving and memorable than writing designed merely to transfer an idea from one mind to another with a minimum of loss. It is writing, whether it be chiefly aimed at informing, exhorting, narrating, dramatizing, or whatever, is additionally concerned with aesthetic quality.  It is peculiarly fitting, therefore, that so much of the Bible should be beautiful as well as true, i.e. reminding us that God created humankind with the wonderful and mysterious capability of responding with delight to beautify of many kinds (Ibid.).

Literary quality is not merely decoration.  Because humankind is deeply moved by beauty, literature informs and teaches more effectively than does unadorned verbal communication.  Nor need the term adornment suggest anything elaborate or calculatedly artificial (Ibid.).

SOME BASIC ELEMENTS OF LITERARY FORM

Literary beauty, like all beauty, results from the harmonious blending of many elements and the complexity begins at the simplest level, that of the words themselves.  For almost every object, the biblical languages-Hebrew and Greek (and in a few Old Testament passages , Aramaic)-present us with multiple choices.  For example, whether one writes “girl,” “maiden,” or “young woman,” depends on the connotation that one wishes to convey.  Some words, indeed, come so richly robed in an aura of feeling that the connotative dress may say more than the denotative “thing” within.  The Bible is rich and subtle in its use of precisely the right word, ranging from the multiple implications of a common word like “shepherd” to the rich suggestiveness of such words as lamb, candlestick, and vine (Ibid.) 

From at least the time of the Greeks, it has been recognized -i.e. discovered, not decided-that there are certain essential characteristics of all great literature.  Terminology relating to these characteristics, and even in some cases their identity, varies harmony, and radiance.  By the first is required singleness (not simplicity) of purpose; by the second, internal congruence, absence of contradictoriness; and by the third, the effusion of light, figuratively taken to be the revelation of the beauty that shines from truth (Ibid.).

When the Hebrew tribes broke into Palestine in the long series of incursions and infiltrations that reached flood tide sometime during the fourteenth or thirteenth century B.C.E., they projected themselves into a course of culture that was already very old.  Of their own level of civilization little is known.  At times, they have been regarded as unspoiled nomads directly out of the Arabian Desert, and consequently possessed of a culture not far above the barbaric.  They have been associated with the widely diffused Habiru peoples who then lived or had lived in varying status in several of the civilized lands of the ancient Near East.  Probably the safest guess is a theory that provides room for a combination of these views.  Nonetheless, the conquest of Palestine was epochal for their culture, as it was to prove also, in the long perspective of the centuries for civilization as a whole.  The little land to which they made claim lay right athwart the great highroads of the ancient world.  Up and down its valleys and along its strip of coastal plain went the commerce as well as the pomp and circumstance of the empires of the time, rich argosies of products from the looms and shops of Egypt and Babylonia that bore also undeclared imports of spiritual treasures from the civilization of “the gorgeous East (William A. Irwin, in “The Literature of the Old Testament”( The Interpreter’s Bible.  New York: Abingdon Press, 1952, p. 175).”

Ancient Near Eastern Culture

The great story of the achievements of the older Orient is not in the theme of this book.  We restrain comment on the incredibly superb metalworking of Sumer, and the temples of Egypt and of Babylonia, different as they were in their architectural genius, yet alike in their housing of a ritual and liturgy that grew ornate and magnificent with the lengthening centuries.  The palaces, the pyramids, the splendor of well-planned royal cities, the wealth and ease and the refinement that leisure can encourage-and much more may be recalled only as colorful and pregnant background possessed of immense relevance for the quasi-barbarian invaders of Palestine’s narrow strip of fertility between the desert and the sea.  It is more acute loss, however, that we may only allude to the slow dawning of a science that in some departments presently became empirical, and to the speculative thought of these lands that age after age wrestled with the persistent problem, in course of time to become Israel’s obsession also-What is humankind?  What is humankind’s place in a world of wonder and unfathomed mystery (Ibid.)?

It was a very old and ripe culture into which the Hebrews came.  More significantly still, it was a literate civilization.  All literatures have their beginnings in oral traditions of one sort or another; and this unwritten heritage was of peculiar significance to the Orient.  Note must soon be taken of its function in Israel.  But by the time of the Hebrew conquest, the great lands of the Near East had long since passed beyond the stage of development.  Business, government, law, ritual, and the outreach of thought had all invoked the art of the scribe for so many centuries that it had become normal.  As the modern world has its classics, so then likewise, famous old poems and myths circulated afar, and won a renown which justly has revived in our own day.  In the history of human culture documents of a very high relevance (Ibid.)

THE PRE-ISRAELITE CULTURE OF PALESTINE

The immediate context of the emerging Hebrew nationality was also notable.  The Canaanites have received less than their due.  Religious practices, which rightly shocked Israel’s austere morality, have through the medium of Old Testament condemnation provoked contempt and disregard for the pre-Israelite culture of Palestine, but accumulating facts compel more generous appraisal.  The Canaanites were a people of unusual ability.  Through more than a thousand years, they had built up in Palestine a great civilization.  The wealth and refinement of their cities astonished Egyptian conquerors.  Their inventive genius originated three novel systems of writing; two of these were alphabetic, and one of these was one destined to supplant the venerable systems of Egypt and Babylonia,  and to become in its lineal descendants the medium of written record and communication for the entire Western culture even to this day. These alphabetic characters were ready, waiting when the Israelites arrived, tempting alert spirits to invoke them for expression and for annals.  But stimulus and example were at hand.  It has longed been recognized that a considerable portion of the Old Testament legal system, notably the social legislation in Exodus 21-23, was originally Canaanite, but received Israel’s characteristic stamp.  The Canaanites shared also, it would appear, in the intellectual activity of the Orient known as “wisdom.”  Yes, most astonishing is the group of documents uncovered at Ras Shamra on the northern coast of Syria in 1929 and subsequent years.  They turned out in decipherment to consist largely of ancient religious poems, epics, and myths intimately related to the cultus-nothing less in fact than a portion of the long-lost literature of the ancient Canaanites! That the documents date from the period when the Hebrews were in the early stages of their thrust into Palestine is but incidental; the significant fact is that they give us an all too tantalizing glimpse of the intellectual and religious culture that were to be Israel’s pervasive atmosphere for centuries.  Their actual influence is attested in the notable series of parallels, allusions, and even near quotations readily being recognized in the Old Testament down to its later portions (Ibid., p. 176).

The Hebrews, then, had august guides, and the stimulus of a great and ancient culture so all-comprehending as to constitute their native air, when presently they set out themselves to create a literature that was to prove itself one of the greatest achievements of the human spirit.  Yet it would be an error to limit our perspective to non-Hebraic facts and forces. Basic to all was the inherent genius of the Hebrews themselves, although it is highly dubious that as yet any of them or of their contemporaries could have suspected the possibilities that lay in germ in these uncouth shepherds and desert wanderers whose immediate purpose was to dispossess the Canaanites, the legal owners of the land.  The reality of national traits cannot be denied, even though their origin lies hidden in the mystery of human biology; and Israel’s incomparable contribution to human culture will not be comprehended if it is not recognized that they were a people of remarkable endowments (Ibid.).

EARLIEST FRAGMENTS OF HEBREW LITERATURE

It is more directly to the point, however, to speak of the Hebrew literary heritage so old as apparently to antedate the settlement in Palestine.  Poetic scraps, such as the Song of the Well, the taunt against Heshbon, and the vivid bit of description of the boundaries of Moab, preserved in Numbers 21, are placed by the narrator in the time of the Wandering, a date there is no good reason for disputing.  How long before the Conquest the Song of Lamech (Genesis 4:23-24) and the Curse of Canaan (Genesis 9:24-27) may have originated no one can say.  But it is freely admitted that some nucleus of the Song of Moses (or Miriam?) in Exodus 15 was actually composed of the triumphant celebration it materializes.  Balaam’s oracles (Numbers 23-24) are other extended poetic traditions which can with reasonable confidence be assigned in greater or lesser bulk to the period with which the record associates them.

The earliest Hebrews also accumulated a body of traditions about the great figures and events of their history.  To these we are indebted in some undetermined measure for our stories about the patriarchs.  The superb character of these narratives is, consciously, or otherwise, recognized by all; but the critical study of them is yet far from finality; indeed, much further than was once supposed.  Even among prominent scholars, opinions differ widely, as reflected in a relative conservatism (H. H. Rowley, From Josephus to Joshua.  London: Oxford University Press, 1950).

There is also a belief that the stories have grown up in a way typical of most early traditions: a small nucleus of historic events-which cannot now be precisely determined-overlaid with legendary embellishments (Aage Bentzen, Introduction to the Old Testament. Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gad, 1948).

However, this may be, the account of Abraham’s successful pursuit of the four marauding kings who had carried off his nephew Lot (Genesis 14) has archaic features that indicate dependence on an actual historical source.  The whole body of these narratives has indeed received in recent years small, quite indefinite, but significant corroborative support from various aspects of our growing knowledge of the ancient East.  We can no longer doubt their factual basis, but he/she would be a bold spirit who would undertake to delineate that basis.  Much the same is to be said about the stories of Jacob; they fit at numerous points what we know from other sources.  Yet we wrong this whole body of literature when we appraise it primarily or exclusively as history, for it was composed for a variety of purposes, most of them quite apart from systematic record of the past.  Nonetheless it is apparent that the origins of these stories carry us far back in Israel’s career, so that the traditions provided a significant portion of the nation’s cultural heritage when at length the Hebrew tribes emerged into actual history. It is highly improbable that any of these various elements had been committed to writing before the Conquest; they existed rather as an oral literature, more accurately, as folk traditions.  The art of writing was already very ancient and was widely diffused; it had been practiced in Palestine.  But such meager knowledge as we possess relevant to the point does not encourage the assumption that literacy was general at this time in Israel (Irwin, op. cit., p. 177).

Style of Old Testament Literature

A literature so diverse as that of the Old Testament may well baffle rational appraisal and in addition to its diversity of type and theme, it possessed also a wide range of merit.  Nevertheless, the important matter is to realize its prevailing existence.  For those who possess historic perspective, it stands out easily as the greatest literature of the ancient East.  The writers of Egypt and of Mesopotamia, notwithstanding their indisputable importance in the history of culture, yet at their best only imperfectly approached the level where Israel’s literary persons moved easily as masters.  Nor is this all.  The Old Testament has continued to this day a high treasure of our cultural heritage by reason of its historical significance, it is true, but primarily through its literary beauty and power (Ibid.).

After all that has transpired in more than two thousand years, we must yet appoint a place with the mighty for these unknown persons of the rugged hills of Judah and the narrow vales of Israel.  They lived in conditions of stark simplicity; but herein they set themselves a symbol of their own meaning: human life consists not in things, but “out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks (Ibid.).

The curse of not a few contemporary writers is that with notable mastery of their art they have nothing to say.  To their qualities of great expression, the Hebrews added robust and profound thought.  Their theme was one, whatever their immediate topic; and it is the greatest theme that can engage human thought.  In some way, the mystery of human life had been impressed upon them.  What is humankind?  Humankind, in their deepest being, humankind over against and in relation to that supreme mystery of Being from which all things and all beings proceed?  Here lay their interest, their obsession.  Age after age, in varying mood, form and emphasis, the Hebrew writers discussed directly or through implication this and this only.  Some lost the greatness in a petty selfishness; some were content to mouth ancient sentiments, and at best to stand on the gains of former ages.  But, overall, they were thinkers of the highest order (Ibid.).

THE LANGUAGE AND STYLES OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

The New Testament is a monument of the Greek language as it was spoken in the first century C.E., not of the artificial and sophisticated style.  Its heritage includes classical Greek, the Old Testament in Hebrew and in Greek translation, and the speech of the common people.  The New Testament, moreover, originated new classes of literature, which are not “literature” in any actual formal sense.  The Gospels, for example, were a new type of work, they are not biography, for they do not give personal descriptions nor an analysis of the principal characters, nor a full-life story of Jesus.  Neither the Gospel accounts nor Acts are primarily “history.”  Paul’s Epistles, while more than mere personal letters, are not literary oratory.  The motivation throughout the New Testament was not to produce literature or promote its authors, but to proclaim the message of salvation through faith in Christ (J. Harold Greenlee in “The Language of the New Testament.”  The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Frank E. Gaebelein and J.D. Douglas, eds.  Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1979, p. 414).

There are, of course, several levels of language and styles in the books of the New Testament.  At one extreme, the Epistle to the Hebrews with careful progression of argument and arrangement of words, is a model of the “koine (common Greek)” in good written, as opposed to spoken form.  Luke and Acts, too, reveal Luke’s knowledge of literary Greek.  Luke can vary his style, making it more colloquial, more Jewish, or more elegant. (Ibid., p. 415).

Certain scholars have had a “field day” pointing out instances that they maintain show that John’s Gospel account is filled with Semitic expressions and with Greek ‘mistranslations’ of an underlying Aramaic original.  Yet one of the most remarkable features of these investigations is the almost total disagreement of such scholars with one another concerning the specific examples of these “Semitisms,”  John’s style, rather, is the style of a person of some education, using a conversational form (Ibid.).

The grammar of Revelation is so inferior that many scholars have questions about its authorship.  Revelation has been said to be the work of a Semitic-speaking person who was just learning Greek, as evidenced by its poor Grammar.  It is true that Revelation is full of ideas and imagery of the Old Testament.  Yet its grammatical “blunders” are not Semitic idioms translated into Greek; they have parallels in colloquial Greek papyrus texts, many of which are grammatically inferior to Revelation (Ibid.).

The Gospel account of Mark is considered the primary document from which the other Gospel writers may have derived their information for composing their accounts.  It has a simple and vivid style.  The author uses the word “immediately” about forty times (Ibid.).

The style of Paul stands in contrast, in various ways, to those of John, Mark, Hebrews, and Revelation.  Paul is thoroughly steeped in the Old Testament, but he speaks the Greek of an educated man.  In contrast with Hebrews, Paul’s style exhibits the irregularities and broken constructions to be expected in letters that were more personal, than formal presentations that were often written in response to other letters, dictated without later revision, and sometimes written out of deep feelings.  More than once Paul begins an argument, digresses to a different matter, and either never returns to his original point or returns by a different grammatical route (Ibid.).

Paul’s Greek vocabulary, moreover, is permeated by the Old Testament and by Christian concepts.  Though this is evident in all the New Testament books, it is probably more extensive in Paul’s writings (Ibid.).

The style of the Greek New Testament has implications for translations into other languages.  If the original was written in the language of common speech, then a translation into English or any other language should likewise be in the language of common speech. Part of the genius of the Greek New Testament is that it was not written in the archaic and artificial style that many secular writers and even later Christian writers, affected (Ibid., p. 416).

Summary

As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the Bible must be recognized as a document of literature.  The questions that we pose about other literary documents can, and in fact, must be asked about the Bible.  We cannot avoid or dodge the questions simply because it is a document of faith considered to be “The Word of God.”  For us to be responsible with the biblical message, we must maintain the highest degree of intellectual and literary honesty.

Introduction

The idea for examining the theme of decolonizing the Bible is rooted in the author's (yours truly) desire to maintain intact the belief in the sacredness of the text, while at the same time acknowledging the human element in it with all its flaws, short-comings, and weaknesses. In addition, I wish to stress the liberating element in the biblical message.  This I propose to do by taking the approach of utilizing the biblical hermeneutics of Liberation Theology.

Liberation Theology focuses on the issues of human rights, oppression, and suffering in the countries of the so-called "Third World" of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America.  Liberation theology represents a paradigm shift in terms of how these socio-economic and political issues are addressed within the framework of theology.  Liberation Theology reverses the hermeneutical approach of the Western countries relative to how they utilize the Scriptures and traditions of the Christian faith in order to deal with these issues.  While classical Western theology approaches these issues by examining them in the light of Scripture and tradition, Liberation Theology does just the opposite, i.e. it examines the Scriptures and the traditions in the light of the experiences of suffering and also in the light of the issues generated by that suffering.

PREFACE

This book is designed to make a case for stripping the Bible of its colonial elements, both in its writings, and also in its recording of the actions of the "people of the book" relative colonization, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.  The writers of the book were members of a colonial and genocidal nation-state (ancient Israel) who justified these actions by saying that they were "God-ordained," and "God-mandated."

This writer seeks to debunk and deconstruct those theological paradigms which justify and sugar-coat human atrocities in the name of God.  In so doing, I realize that I risk being alienated and ostracized by my fellow-members of the community of faith who only see the sacred element in the text, but fail to take into account its flaws by virtue of the fact that the book is a human enterprise written by flawed people.

As a Liberation theologian, I work from the premise that oppression and suffering are the starting points for biblical interpretation and theological reflection. For the purposes of this book, I will include colonization, ethnic cleansing, and genocide as forms of human oppression.

I wish to express my gratitude to the Rev. Dr. Chong-gyiau-Wong, President of the Tainan Theological College and Seminary for having allowed me the privilege of serving for two years as a Visiting Scholar/Professor of theology, during which time, I engaged in research preparing to write this book.

I dedicate this book to my beloved wife Ruth who is constantly prodding me to be the best scholar and writer that I can be.  I so appreciate her affirmation and constant encouragement.

I also dedicate this book to our six children, i.e. Dr. Geoffrey Antonio Carmona-Baez, Jennica Carmona-Arandia, Jessica Carmona-Baez, Cinnamon Ruth-Leggett, Jeremiah Louis Ramos, and Adora-Rae Ramos and their beloved children.  To them we dedicate this book with love and with the hope that they too, will pursue their careers and passions with the same intensity that Ruth and I have.



                                                                                                 Juan A. Carmona
                                                                                                 September 27, 2019

DECOLONIZING THE BIBLE

                                                                ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Juan Antonio Carmona is an ordained minister in the Reformed Church in America and a theologian with a concentration in Liberation Theology.  He was born and raised in New York City to parents of Puerto Rican background.  He has served as a pastor, educator, and prison chaplain.

Dr. Carmona served for two years as a Visiting Scholar/Professor of Theology at the Tainan Theological College and Seminary in Tainan, Taiwan.  At the time of this writing, he is serving as Resident Theologian at the St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Raleigh, North Carolina.  He is married to Ruth Ayala-Carmona, a friend from his late teenage years.  They have six children.

Dr. Carmona received his B.A. in Comparative Religions from the State University of New York in 1976, his M.Div. from the New Brunswick Theological Seminary in 1978, and his D. Min. in Liberation Theology from the Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in 1982.

He has taught in the areas of religion, church history, biblical studies, and theology at various institutions.  He also served as a Protestant Chaplain with the New York State Department of Correctional Services for twenty-one years.

DECOLONIZING THE BIBLE

                                                                TABLE OF CONTENTS


About the Author

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Bible as an Historical Piece of Literature

Chapter 2  The Bible as a Document of Faith

Chapter 3  The Bible as Tool of Oppression


Bibliography

The Cuban Diaspora: A Theological Conundrum

This essay focuses on something that is more complex than what we encountered in the previous one of the Puerto Rican Diaspora.  While Puerto Rico remains an unincorporated territory of the U.S.A., Cuba is an independent and sovereign republic.  It does share, however, a colonial history with the U.S.A., just like Puerto Rico does.  However, the historical dynamics of becoming a diasporic community are different.  I will briefly cover the relationship between Cuba and the U.S.A., and then point out the difference between that historical relationship and the historical relationship between Puerto Rico and the U.S.A.  I will also focus, briefly, albeit, on the socio-economic conditions of the Cuban Diaspora in the U.S.A., and then offering a theological view of the situation.

It is difficult to overstate the importance and impact of the Cuban Revolution on Latin America and the world.  After his rebel army toppled the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in January 1959, Fidel Castro and his comrades transformed Cuba from a capitalist ally of the U.S.A. into a fully socialized economy closely linked to and heavily subsidized by the Soviet Union.  The Cuban revolutionaries carried out one of the most sweeping land reforms in Latin American history, radically redistributed wealth, providing all Cubans with basic health care, education, and social services, and became an important inspiration and ally in the export of Marxist revolution to other parts of the Americas and the Third World.  The Unites States organized a failed attempt to invade Cuba and overthrow Castro in April 1961, and the bitter conflict between the United States and Cuba brought the world to the brink of nuclear war in October of 1962.  It is hard to imagine another country of its size (seven million inhabitants in 1960) that has played such a pivotal role in world politics in the last half century (Marshall C. Eakin, The History of Latin America: Collision of Cultures. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007, p.308).

One of the most striking aspects of the Cuban Revolution was the triumph of such a radically anti-Unites States, Marxist revolution in a country so close to the U.S.A. (90 miles off the coast of Florida) and with such a long history of integration into the U.S.A. economy.  Observers have often noted that the extreme anti-Americanism of the Cuban regime was a direct result of decades of US cultural, economic, and political domination of this small island nation.  The same holds true of the anti-Americanism of the Nicaraguan Revolution of 1979.  The strong economic ties between the U.S.A. and Cuba go back to the eighteenth century.  The raid expansion of sugar cultivation in the nineteenth century made Cuba the great sugar exporter of the world, and much of that production was controlled by U.S.A investors and corporations.  Sugar dominated Cuba, and the U.S.A. dominated Cuban sugar.  The sudden and dramatic U.S.A intervention in the Cuban-Spanish War in 1898 temporarily derailed Cuban independence, as the US Army occupied and ran Cuba until 1902.  For the next three decades, the US Marines intervened repeatedly to "stabilize" Cuba, and to "protect American lives and property."  After 1934, the U.S.A. strongly supported Fulgencio Batista, an army sergeant/stenographer who rose to power and maintained it through the control of the Cuban Army (Ibid,).

Ironically, the Cuban Revolution helped propel forward another fundamental change-this one in the U.S.A.  Although Cubans had long moved  back and forth between the U.S.A. and Cuba, in the early 1960's, some 250,000 Cubans fled into exile, mainly to south Florida and the New York-New Jersey areas.  These exiles were largely white middle and upper-class Cubans who were well educated.  They transformed the politics of both regions and created a very powerful political lobby in Washington that has played a role in U.S.A. politics for more than fifty years (as swing votes in more than one state.).  In the early 1980's, facing internal and political challenges, Castro allowed another 125,000 Cubans to flee the island, and most again went to south Florida.  The so-called Marielitos (named after the Mariel, the key point of departure in Cuba) were largely darker-skinned and less educated than those of the 1960's wave.  Their arrival created serious rifts within the Cuban community in the U.S.A. The hundreds of thousands of Cuban exiles have also played a prominent role in the growing "Latinamericanization" of U.S.A. culture and society.  The bilingual and bicultural Cubans have been incredibly successful in academia, government, and the private sector.  One of the great unintended consequences of the Cuban Revolution has been the diversification and enrichment of U.S.A society and culture as the country has become "Hispanicized (Ibid. p. 314).

On November 2, 1966, the U.S.A. Congress adopted the Cuban Adjustment Act, which gives all citizens of Cuba admitted or paroled into the U.S.A. after January 1, 1959, and present in the country for at least one year, the special status of "political refugees," with the right to automatic permanent residence.  Under the Cuban Adjustment Act, refugees face none of the restrictions governing immigration to the U.S.A., such as presenting proof of persecution at home, and are virtually guaranteed permanent resettlement in the U.S.A. (unless they are convicted criminals), whether they simply overstate their tourist visas, or arrive anywhere on U.S.A. shores (and not just designated ports of entry) with no documentation at all.  The Cuban Adjustment Act has remained in effect to this day, though it has come under challenge at times from those who believe that Cubans should not be afforded special status (Himilce Novas, Everything You Need to Know About Latino History. New York: Penguin Group, 2008, pps. 194-195).

Cuban Americans generally have nothing good to say about the Castro regime (Fidel Castro died in January 2017). They seem him as the dictator who stole their country, forced them into exile, and caused them incalculable suffering and pain.  They call him the "tyrant, the devil, the grime ball" and other choice names. As for the U.S.A. sponsored embargo against Cuba, the majority of Cuban Americans are of the conviction that the only strategy for bringing  an end to the Castro regime (Raul Castro, Fidel Castro's brother, was the defacto leader of Cuba from 2006 until 2018), and at the same
protecting the international community from potential acts of terrorism (especially bioterrorism, given that Cuba has invested heavily in biotechnology), is a continued economic blockade of the island (Ibid., p. 208).

How does one evaluate the situation of the Cuban Diaspora from a theological standpoint?  As previously stated, it is a very complex situation.  Latin American Liberation Theology addresses the issues of oppression and suffering generated by colonization, homophobia, imperialism, racism, sexism, and xenophobia.

Cuba, for a long time, was an economic (though not directly political) colony of the U.S.A.. Their economy was controlled by U.S. economic interests, resulting in a wide gap between the "haves" and the "have nots."  As a result, there was widespread poverty.  Liberation Theology denounces poverty, and calls for a total revamping of the economic structures so that poverty can be eradicated.

The economic and indirect political colonization of Cuba came as a result of U.S.A. imperialistic interests and the quest for hegemony.  The concepts of the Monroe Doctrine and "Manifest Destiny" legitimized and sugar-coated this imperialistic venture.  Liberation Theology denounces the concept of one country "lording it" over another.

The migration of Cubans to the U.S.A. in 1959 was generated by economic factors.  However, it should be noted that the migration that  took place, was carried out primarily by those who were members of a privileged socio-economic class who exploited the working class in Cuba.  The migration was generated by the redistribution of wealth by the Castro regime.  This redistribution promoted expanded benefits for the majority of the population.  Liberation Theology denounces the hoarding of the resources by a few who use them for their own benefit at the expense of the many.

The privileged class who migrated was primarily white.  They fled a government which was now moving to implement racial equality in Cuba.  Liberation Theology denounces people being assigned and confined to social conditions the basis of race.

The more "well to do" Cubans of the Diaspora are the same ones who kept and maintained their fellow black Cubans on the island in a condition of subservience and secondary-class status.  In essence, they seek to replicate the same socio-economic conditions which gave them a status of privilege on the island.  Liberation Theology denounces the concept of "privilege" and advocates for an promotes the Gospel concept of equality.

En fin, Liberation Theology, in its application to the Latinx Diaspora in the U.S.A. takes on a different twist in the Cuban American community.  The Puerto Rican and other Diasporic Latinx communities in the U.S.A. consist primarily of people who came to U.S.A. shores as a result of economic havoc wreaked by U.S.A. foreign policy.  Cubans in the Diaspora constitute a community that led a country that gave them and their oligarchies the same country that all along was giving them protection and support.

A genuine Liberation Theology in the Cuban Diaspora would call for a community organizing that would mete out justice to all Cuban Americans and not just a select few.  It calls for the Cuban American community to pursue a system in which all can equally participate in "the good of the land."

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Dr. Juan A. Carmona

Theology from a Puerto Rican Diasporic Standpoint

In this essay, I will be dealing with a very complex situation. This essay focuses on the Puerto Rican community in the U.S.A., otherwise known as the "Puerto Rican Diaspora."  This community has both differences and similarities with other Hispanic (Latinx) communities in the Diaspora of the U.S.A. The basic similarities are ones of colonial history, language, religion, and second-class treatment as citizens and residents of the U.S.A. Puerto Ricans are U.S.A. citizens by both imperialistic imposition and by birth.

In order to address the issues of theological relevance to the Puerto Rican community in the Diaspora, one must first take into account their colonial history and how that history, in turn, generated migration to the U.S.A.  In addition, one must consider and evaluate the economic, political, and social condition of Puerto Ricans living in the U.S.A. The role of religion also plays a part in making a theological assessment of the Puerto Rican community in the Diaspora.

Puerto Rico has a peculiar status among the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.  As one of Spain's last two colonies in the New World (along with Cuba), Puerto Rico experienced the longest period of Hispanic influence in the region.  On July 25, 1898, U.S. troops invaded the Island during the Spanish-American War. In 1901, the U.S. Supreme Court defined Puerto Rico as "foreign to the United States in domestic sense," because it is neither a state of the union nor a sovereign republic.  In 1917, Congress imposed citizenship to all persons born in Puerto Rico, but did not incorporate the island as a territory.  Until now, Puerto Rico has remained a colonial dependency, even though it attained a limited form of self-government as a Commonwealth in 1952 (Jorge Duany, Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island and in the United States.  Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002, p. 1).

As an overseas possession of the United States, the Island has been exposed to an intense penetration of American capital, commodities, laws, and customs unequaled in other Latin American countries.  Yet today, Puerto Ricans display a stronger cultural identity than most Caribbean people, even those whose who enjoy political independence.  In the early part of the twenty-first century, Puerto Rico presents the apparent paradox of a stateless union that has not assimilated into the American mainstream.  After more than one hundred years of U.S. colonialism, the Island remains a Spanish-speaking Afro-Hispanic Caribbean nation.  Today, the Island's electorate is almost evenly spit between supporting Commonwealth status and becoming the fifty-first state of the union.  Only a small minority advocates independence (Ibid., p. 2).

Recent studies of Puerto Rican cultural politics have focused on the demise of Puerto Rican nationalism on the Island, the rise of cultural nationalism, and the enduring significance of migration between the Island and the U.S. mainland.  Although few scholars, have posited an explicit connection among these phenomena, they are intimately linked.  For instance, most Puerto Ricans value their U.S. citizenship and the freedom of movement that it offers, especially unrestricted access to the continental U.S.  But as Puerto Ricans move back and forth between the two countries, territorially grounded definitions of national identity become less relevant, while transnational identities acquire greater prominence.  Constant movement is an increasingly common practice among Puerto Ricans on the Island and the mainland.  We can raise questions of Puerto Rican identity, articulation, and definition.  Reconsidering the Puerto Rican situation can add much to scholarly discussion on colonialism, nationalism, and transnationalism (Ibid.).

The original name of the Island of Puerto Rico was Boriquen (some pronounce it Borinquen).  It means "land of the brave lord."  It was the name given to the Island by its original inhabitants, the Taino, who were a subgroup of the Arawak, the collective name of the indigenous people inhabiting the West Indies (the islands in the Caribbean Sea, which are divided into the Lesser Antilles, Greater Antilles, and the Bahamas). The Taino, a seafaring people, inhabited not just Puerto Rico, but also the other islands of the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Hispaniola, and Jamaica), as well as the Bahamas and some islands of the Lesser Antilles (an island group to the east and south of Puerto Rico).  In actuality, the native peoples of Puerto Rico did not call themselves "Taino" before the Spanish conquest of the America.  Christopher Columbus christened this subgroup of Arawak indigenous people "Taino" meaning "peace," because it was the first word they uttered when they laid eyes on the conquistador (Himilce Novas, Everything You Need to Know About Latino History.  New York: Penguin Group, 2008. p. 130).

Since all Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens-no matter if they dwell in San Juan or San Francisco-and are not foreigners, they can travel freely back and forth between the island and the mainland United States without passports or visas.  In other words, their movement constitutes the internal migration of Americans, not immigration.  Confusion abounds in mainstream society about Puerto Rican citizenship status.  Most Puerto Rican mainlanders have a story or two to tell about the time they were asked to give their green card or about Puerto Rico's currency, or Puerto Rico's president.  Some may even raise questions about the issue of "illegal" Puerto Rican immigrants in America (Ibid., p. 155).

Puerto Ricans first came to the United States in the 1860's.  After Puerto Rico was ceded to the United States at the end of the Spanish-American War, more Puerto Ricans began making their way to the United States, and after 1917, when they were given U.S. citizenship, to the U.S. mainland-to settle or to sojourn, an experience fraught with risks, uncertainty, and obstacles, including a language barrier, poverty, social isolation, and overt discrimination.  In the early days, the majority went to Florida and New York to labor in cigar-making shops.  Forty percent of those who arrived between 1890 and 1910 eventually returned to Puerto Rico (Ibid.).

The first great wave of migration from Puerto Rico to the mainland United States took place in the aftermath of World War II and lasted until 1967.  The reasons were many, but they essentially boiled down to one issue: economics.  During World War II, about one hundred thousand Puerto Ricans served in the U.S. armed forces.  Military life exposed these islanders to the "superior quality" of life on the mainland, fueling their desire to move north.  In addition, Puerto Rico's population doubled in size to two million during the first quarter of the twentieth century, and continued to grow at a rapid pace due to improvement in medical services.  With so many more people on the island, the standard of living did not rise substantially and the unemployment rate soared.  By contrast, jobs on the mainland were plentiful.  New York City was a major destination for Puerto Rican workers who found low-paying, labor intensive jobs in the manufacturing sector-which eagerly hired unskilled and semi-skilled workers-making apparel, shoes, toys, novelties, and electrical goods, and assembling furniture and mattresses.  They also went to work in the food and hotel industries, the meatpacking and baking industries, distribution, laundry service, and domestic service.  About half of these were women (Ibid.).

Since 1967, islanders have settled on the mainland in spurts, depending on the health of the U.S. economy and mainland job market.  Those who went to New York City in the 1960's, generally wound up in manufacturing, even though this sector had already began as a gradual decline as early as the 1950's.  Then in the 1970's, New York City was gripped by a major fiscal crisis as businesses packed up and headed south and overseas in search of low-wage non-union labor.  This shrinking of the manufacturing sector had a devastating impact on New York City's Puerto Ricans, who generally did not have the formal education needed to fill the white-collar jobs that were opening in the city's growing service sector (Ibid.,, 156).

Puerto Ricans have historically been amongst the most socially and economically disadvantaged of all Hispanics.  In 1998, for instance, a full 30.9 percent of mainland Puerto Ricans lived in poverty, and 43.5 of Puerto Rican children were below the poverty line, and in 2000, approximately 40 percent of New York City's Puerto Ricans had slipped to or below the poverty lines.  The depressed economic status mainland Puerto Ricans has been attributed to a number of phenomena, such as the disproportionate number of poor Puerto Rican migrants settling stateside as compared to immigrant groups, owing to the fact that :Puerto Ricans' citizenship removes all obstacles to entering the mainland United States.  Low levels of educational attainment, limited jobs skills, disease disparities (including a high incidence of diabetes, high blood pressure, and depression), and drug abuse have also been frequently cited as reasons for the economically underprivileged class of Puerto Ricans on the mainland.  Some social observers have suggested that the culprits underlying all these social circumstances are rampant ethnic and racial discrimination, the language barrier, and the process of transculturation, of straddling two cultures and two languages, which is commonly accompanied by a disorienting sense of being neither "here nor there" (Ibid. p. 157).

However, it is also important to point out that the socio-economic status of mainland Puerto Ricans is advancing at a steady pace.  Large numbers of mainland Puerto Ricans hold professional, managerial, technical, and administrative support jobs, which are part cornerstones of economic well-being.  Interestingly, Puerto Rican mainlanders who live outside the Northeast, have shown better socio-economic outcomes than their counterparts in the Northeast, owing to their human capital and labor market characteristics (Ibid., p. 158).

What would a model theology look line for the Puerto Rican Diaspora?  This is a very difficult question to answer, in that, religious practices among Puerto Rican-Americans vary from one community to another.  Furthermore, there appear to be some points of similarity among the different communities. For example, the worship practices in Puerto Rican Pentecostal communities are similar to those of Santeria and Espiritismo (Spiritualism).  Spiritualism, which has a strong focus on communicating with the spirits of the dead) is a practice that dates back to biblical times.  We find in the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) divine prohibitions of this practice.  Yahweh, the God of Israel, commands the death penalty for those engaged in this practice.

Santeria has its roots in African spirituality.  It emphasizes the veneration of the ancestors, some of whom are considered to be "saints" or as is said in Spanish "santos" from which the word Santeria comes.  The major similarities between Pentecostalism and these other two forms of spirituality are the emphasis on individuals being possessed by external forces or spirits, and also speaking in other languages (tongues) other than the vernacular as a means of conveying the divine messages.  In all these three faith groups, possession by external forces leads to manifestations such as dancing and trances.  Pentecostal Christians will tend to get offended at this comparison, because they believe that these occurrences in their communities stem from a moving of the Holy Spirit, whereas, in the other two communities, they are considered to be prompted by demonic or diabolical spirits.  The book "Masked Africanisms" by Dr. Samuel Cruz, a Professor of Religion and Society at Union Theological Seminary in New York, is a very good resource for information the link between Pentecostalism and the other two faith groups.

Liberation Theology is relevant to the Puerto Rican community in the Diaspora of the U.S.A.  As in Latin America, and other parts of the so-called "Third World, Liberation Theology addresses the issues of socio-economic and political alienation and marginalization.  "Essays from the Margins," written by Dr. Luis Rivera-Pagan, Professor Emeritus of Ecumenics at Princeton Theological Seminary, provides much helpful insight in this regard.  The Puerto Rican community in the Diaspora suffers from the historical legacy of colonialism, imperialism, discrimination, and second-class treatment in the U.S.A.  How then, we ask, does Liberation Theology address the situation of the Puerto Rican Diaspora? I humbly submit the following:

1.  As I have emphasized in previous essays, Liberation Theology emphasizes that theology should emerge from the "bottom up," and not from the "top down."  In other words, theology should emerge from those who are alienated, marginalized, and powerless, not from those who are in positions of authority and power.  Since the Puerto Rican community the Diaspora is a subjugated and marginalized group, their theological mindset and perspective must emerge from their experiential and existential reality, and not from the dictates of Western theological hegemony.

2.  Those who are in a condition of powerlessness and subjugation are in a privileged position to receive and understand God's revelatory acts in history.  This means, then, that Puerto Ricans in the Diaspora, together with all oppressed people, have been "chosen" to be not only the recipients, but also the conveyor belts transmitting God's salvific acts.   It is through the Puerto Rican Diaspora and other oppressed groups and nations, that God's liberating acts are mediated.

3.  Oppression and suffering are the starting points for biblical interpretation and theological reflection.  The Puerto Rican community has to understand the message of Scripture in the light of its experience as a colonized and suffering people.

Although Liberation Theology, in the modern sense of the word, emerged within a Christian context, it offers a message of hope for the Puerto Rican Diaspora, regardless of the variety of religious practices within our community.  It does not seek to demonize any particular religious expression, but rather to identify the liberating elements in all religious traditions, and to establish ties of solidarity with all those individuals and social movements whose goal is to dismantle structures of injustice and work for the construction of the Beloved Community.  Our Puerto Rican sisters and brothers in the Diaspora, as descendants of our colonized parents, and as a people who have been treated as second-class citizens in the U.S.A., have in Liberation Theology, the call and the hope for a society of full equality, justice, and peace.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen!

Dr. Juan A. Carmona

Theology from a Mexican-American Standpoint

The next three essays will focus on the three largest groups of Latinx people in the U.S.A. Hispanics in the U.S.A. prefer to be identified by their country of origin.  And though there are at least three generations of Hispanics, in general, they tend to hold on to their national roots and cultural perspectives.  We will begin with Mexican Americans, the oldest and largest groups of Hispanics in the U.S.A.

We might begin by asking, "How did Mexicans originate in the U.S.A?  Why did they come here in the first place?" The truth of the matter is that Mexicans have always been here.  They did not originate in the U.S.A. per se, but indeed, originated in the land, much of which was stolen from them by the U.S.A.  The mentality is as someone has said "We never crossed the border: The border
crossed us."

The presence of Mexicans in the U.S.A. is due primarily to the conquest and subsequent occupation of Mexico by Spain in 1519, and also the westward movement or expansion across North America by English-speaking people not long after the thirteen British colonies on the continent's seaboard won their independence from Britain.  With the exhortation "Go west young man" ringing in their ears, the Anglo colonists settled the territory up to the banks of the Mississippi River between 1776 and 1800. A track of land extending from British North America and from the Mississippi River to the Rockies caused the American republic to be doubled in size.  The young nation was well on its way to consummating a mission in the making, a mission that would later be called Manifest Destiny, an expansion westward-to spread democracy and freedom-which would culminate in the occupation by Anglo-Saxon Americans of a territory stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific (Himilce Novas, Everything You Need to Know About Latino History.  New York: Penguin Group, 2008, p.66).

It is ironic that this westward expansion and subsequent land-theft took place soon after the thirteen colonies gained their independence and sovereignty while at the same time repeating the very same colonial history that they had been subjected to.  It was truly a case of formerly occupied people now becoming the occupiers.  It was the historical repetition of the oppressed becoming the oppressor.  At this juncture, we can truly allude to the saying that those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed  to repeat its errors.

A good deal of that territory between the Atlantic and the Pacific belonged to Mexico, and thus it was not long before the Anglos came into contact with the Mexicans.  Around 1790, Kentucky mountain men trespassed on Spanish-American land in New Mexico to trap beavers, which were coveted for their fur.  They trapped without licenses, and they traveled where they pleased.  Sometimes their loot was confiscated, but no matter, they kept coming back for more.  These frontier beaver trappers were grubby, bearded, and uncouth; they cussed and spat and picked fights willy-nilly.  Often, the native peoples and mestizos of New Mexico would hold perfume to their noses if they had to stand next to the Anglo trappers.  And so, the relationship between the fledgling United States and Mexico got off to a rough start (Novas, op. cit.).

In an editorial he wrote in support of the annexation of Texas that ran in the July-August 1845 edition of the United States Magazine and Democratic review, a political and literary journal that was published monthly in Washington beginning in 1837, John O'Sullivan, the magazine's cofounder and editor, put into words what the citizens of the nascent American republic had been feeling from the start and coined "Manifest Destiny."  In his editorial, O'Sullivan maintained that "our manifest destiny is to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions."  In a nutshell, Manifest Destiny was an Anglo-American version of the national supremacy theory and justified the aspiration of the United States to extend its borders "from sea to shining sea."  The phrase took, and so did the sentiment.  Politicians of all persuasions made mention of Manifest Destiny in articles and speeches everywhere, and they felt as full of imperialist zeal and purpose as the Spanish conquistadores had (Ibid., p. 67).

In the first half of the nineteenth century, the American republic would work especially hard at manifesting its destiny.  Acquiring Mexican territory seemed like a logical step in American expansion, although the more extreme opponents of Manifest Destiny spoke of pushing America's borders as far north as the Arctic Circle and as far as Tierra del Fuego.  Several Mexican observers have remarked that viewed from a different perspective, Manifest Destiny could have been called the "Mexican Fate," since that nation that suffered the most from this doctrine was Mexico (Ibid.).

In the 1960's, 1970's, and 1980's, some undocumented Mexicans crossed the border without guides, an extremely dangerous undertaking, then roamed the Southwest and California until finding work.  Others were led or transported across the border after paying a large sum to smugglers, known as "coyotes," who profited in the millions in this human traffic.  These practices continued in the 1990's, and are still prevalent today, but a policy of stricter law enforcement in urban areas along the U.S.-Mexico border, first implemented in 1994 under Operation Gatekeeper, forced border crossers farther and farther of the beaten path and into remote desert areas of Eastern California and Arizona to avoid detection, making the crossing all the more perilous.  In the years 1993 to 1996, almost 1,200 persons by official counts, lost their lives in border crossings because of exposure to heat and cold, dehydration, snakebites, injury and murder (Ibid., p. 102).

Some with border crossing cards have managed to remain in the United States by buying round-trip airline tickets to a destination far from the border as they enter the country.  Once in Chicago, Detroit, or some other place, they join friends or relatives who may have found them a job.  In the old days, when security at U.S. ports was lax, they would sell their return airline tickets which provided enough money until the first paycheck.  The new arrivals would then lose themselves in the crowd and join the vast underground economy-but, of course, without legal recourse, and always under the threat of discovery, arrest, and deportation (Ibid., p. 103).

From this history of land-theft, economic havoc, forced migration, and second-class treatment in the Diaspora of the U.S.A., we are faced with the need for a theology which will be relevant in addressing the needs of our Mexican sisters and brothers.  The theology needs to emerge from their historical and present-day experiences.  It cannot be a "top-down" theology imposed by the colonizers, who in fact, have forced them to migrate to the U.S.A.  It has to be a theology that in essence says that God has heard the cry of the people.  It must be a theology that puts God in solidarity with these victims of injustice and oppression.

Out of this reality, Mexican-Americans (Chicanos) will have to insist on their theology recognizing the process of liberation.  This theology will have to introduce and include the concept of "mestizaje (cultural/racial blend)."  Mexican-Americans have been discriminated against and considered inferior because of the mixtures of the three races: indigenous, African, and Spanish.  Chicano theology must take a new positive by using mestizaje symbolically to reinforce their identity and their positive cultural attributes.  This will have to be done in the same way that "Black" once negative and derogatory, was symbolically given a positive and liberating meaning by Black leaders (Aime Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972, p. 74).

Chicano leaders have to redirect the phenomenon of mestizaje, strengthening their identity, toward letting the phenomenon give rise to the struggle for equality and dignity.  No one can do this for them; they must do it themselves (Andres Guerrero, A Chicano Theology.  Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1987, p. 160).

Theologically speaking, Mexican Americans must look for some alternatives for strengthening their history, culture, language, and dignity as human beings.  The Church is one vehicle they can utilize provided they see the process of liberation going on concerning education.  There is a need to organize or institutionalize endeavor to move leadership back into the barrios of the Southwest and wherever Mexican Americans live in the Diaspora (Ibid., p. 162).

Only as long as theology addresses the condition of our Mexican American sisters and brothers in the Diaspora, can it be considered faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Any theology which disregards or ignores these conditions and experiential realities, is a "pseudo-theology," to which the Church cannot adhere.  The theology has to be a liberating theology which stresses God's salvific activity in the midst of agony, injustice, oppression, and suffering.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Dr. Juan A. Carmona