Rereading the Bible in the Wake of Colonisation

This book explores the complex relationships between the Bible, colonisation, and ecology in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Pasifika, and parts of Asia.Bringing together theologians, biblical scholars, and activists, the volume critically engages with the historical and ongoing uses of biblical texts in colonisation and the reshaping of environmental contexts. The book also showcases some ways in which scholars have recently been developing alternative hermeneutical approaches and ways of contesting these texts. Ecological hermeneutics has, at times, unhelpfully created a dichotomy between human and other-than-human beings, separating humanity from environmental contexts. Central to the contributions in this book is an intentional re-casting of human beings within the so-called ecological realm. By focusing on coloniality and the conquest of Indigenous communities, this volume broadens understandings of 'ecology' and aims to attend to how the colonisation of human beings goes hand-in-hand with ecological conquest and domination.Rereading the Bible in the Wake of Colonisation is of great use for students and scholars interested in decolonising ecological histories and theologies, as well as those studying the Bible and ecology more broadly.

About the Author

Emily Colgan is from Aotearoa New Zealand. She lives in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland), under the shadow of Ōhinerua maunga (mountain) where Ngāti Whātua-o-Ōrākei are mana whenua (the tribal authority). She is acting principal and Ranston Lecturer in Biblical Studies (Hebrew Bible) at Trinity Methodist Theological College, Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. She is the author of Jeremiah: An Earth Bible Commentary (forthcoming) and co-editor of the multi-volume work, Rape Culture, Gender Violence, and Religion (2018).

Brian Kolia is a lecturer in Old Testament studies at Malua Theological College and an ordained minister of the Congregational Christian Church, Samoa. He is an Australian-born Samoan whose roots go back to the villages of Sili Savaii and Satapuala. He holds a PhD from the University of Divinity and is author of Carrying Qoheleth's Maota (House): An Australian-Samoan Diasporic Reading (2024).

Michael Mawson is a Pākehā (white) theologian who lives in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa New Zealand. He is the Maclaurin Goodfellow Associate Professor of Theological and Religious Studies at Waipapa Taumata Rau/ the University of Auckland, and also a research fellow at the University of the Free State, South Africa. His recent books include Standing Under the Cross: Essays on Bonhoeffer's Theology (2023) and Unsettling Theologies: Memory, Identity and Place , co-edited with Brian Kolia (2024).