The Biblical Text in the Context of Occupation - A new book

Last week, a new book came out with the title: "The Biblical Text in the Context of Occupation. Towards a New Hermeneutics of Liberation." The book is a collection of 19 articles, and is edited by Rev. Mitri Raheb, who this year received the prestigious international award “Deutscher Medienpreis”. The articles  were all part of a conference organized last year in Bethlehem by Diyar Consortium, under the title "Biblical Texts, Ur-contexts, and Contemporary Realities." The conference brought together professors and theologians from 16 countries from all over the world.

I have contributed an article to this book. It was a critique on how some Arab Evangelical Christians interpreted the book of Daniel.  I have surveyed 5 commentaries on the book of Daniel written in Arabic by Arab pastors and writers, and showed how they simply copied the Dispensational scheme of interpreting prophecy, and ended up with a very pessimistic worldview and a separation from the world mentality. I then offered a contextual reading of the book - reading the book as a minority in a context of oppression. It is amazing how much the book has to offer to the Arab Church today. The idea of the article of course came after I finished writing a whole commentary on the book of Daniel as a part of new series coming out in the Arab world called "Contemporary Arab Commentary on the Bible."

Back to the book. This is from the back cover:
"The book is the first comprehensive attempt to study and develop a hermeneutics of Liberation in the context of the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian land. It analyses the importance of culture, ethnicity, race, gender, ideology, theology, and politics vis-a-vis the process of comprehension, analysis, interpretation, and contextualization of the Bible. The scholars from 16 countries bring not only an international scope of persuasions and perpectives, but also foster ecumenical, inter-disciplinary, multi-ethnic, and multi-cultural dialogue and philosophy. The book identifies a new path for theology that is responsible to its original source and that is relevant to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

The table of contents of the book is here.