Louis Jonker

Louis Jonker est invité par l'assemblée du Collège de France sur proposition du Pr Thomas Römer.

Présentation

What does the biblical book Chronicles have to do with changing biblical interpretation in a context of social-political transformation, such as the South African context? This question is closely related to another question that should be answered in the negative: "Is the meaning of the Bible fixed and valid for all historical circumstances?"

In the first lecture the issue of changing biblical interpretation in the South African context since the 1990s when Nelson Mandela was released and the ANC party unbanned, and since 1994 when the first democratic post-apartheid elections were held, will be scrutinised. The starting point will be how the Bible was interpreted by South Africans from different political persuasions in the apartheid era. It will further expound the question that came up since the 1990s in particularly white Afrikaans environments (such as in the Dutch Reformed Church): "Why did pastors tell us a few decades ago, with the Bible in their hands, that apartheid was the will of God? And why do they tell us now, with the same Bible in their hands, that apartheid is a sin?"

The second lecture will focus on the book Chronicles as a rewriting of older historical traditions in changed and changing imperial-political environments. It will be shown that Chronicles was (and is) "reforming history" that contributed immensely to the identity negotiation processes of the communities in the Persian province of Yehud where returnees from the Babylonian exile lived together with remainees who have never gone into exile. It will be shown how this book responded to the new political dispensation on different levels: on the overarching imperial level, on provincial level, on the level of tribal memories of old, on cultic level at the temple in Jerusalem, and on the level with diasporic Jews who never returned to the land after the exile.

These two lectures will jointly lead over to a discussion of the dynamic nature of biblical interpretation. The historical epoch within which we live in presently, seems to be in constant flux and transformation. What impact does our present international context have on how people use (and abuse) the Bible?