All religious texts, modern or ancient, are ultimately part of power play and power structures, serving an agenda of one kind or another. Sometimes these texts serve the powerful and sometimes the powerless – and sometimes both.

This is according to postcolonial critical theory, which was extensively covered during the inaugural lecture of Old Testament and Hebrew Scriptures scholar Professor Esias E. Meyer of the University of Pretoria’s (UP) Faculty of Theology and Religion.

“We only have to look at our own history of apartheid to understand how the Bible functioned as both supporting and resisting apartheid,” said Prof Meyer, highlighting the ambivalence of the Hebrew Bible in particular.

The ancient empires of Babylon and Persia were the focus of his address on 13 October, specifically in relation to the Priestly Text, which underlies the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, known as the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy).

However, Prof Meyer drew parallels with more recent instances of empire and colonialism, as well as apartheid, describing the ambivalent role the Bible played in these eras – at times supporting colonialism and at times undermining it.

On the one hand, the Bible can be interpreted as the book of white European Christian superiority, he said, while on the other, the Hebrew Bible is ambivalent about slavery to the point that it enabled some enslaved people to gain at least some agency.

Parallels between modern times and antiquity

Prof Meyer said the ambivalent role the Bible had played in the Dutch and British empires could be compared to a similar ambivalence in the Priestly Text, which starts with the creation narrative and continues with the flood and post-flood cycles, followed by the cycles of Abraham, Jacob and Joseph, as well as the exile of the Judean elite and their subjugation under Babylonian and Persian rule.

This is where the idea of the Priestly Text as both “resistance literature” and “appeasement of empire” comes into play.

Prof Meyer said an argument could be made that, under Babylonian rule, the Judeans had taken over ideas from Babylonian thinking and “reworked them into something that resists Babylonian hegemony”.

He warned, though, that scholars should “become suspicious when we argue that biblical texts always resisted oppression and colonialism. Thanks to postcolonial criticism, we are reminded of our more recent history, where the Bible was often a tool in the hands of powerful colonising empires.”

This is borne out by the interpretation that, in the Persian period, the Priestly Text became a “document of collaboration”. It can be read as heavily invested in the Judeans’ Persian-built temple, Prof Meyer said, adding: “We should also not forget that priests were part of the elite, as all biblical scribes were, and their interests lay with those who maintained the elite.”

‘Reminding us of the margins’

He emphasised the importance of continuing to study ancient empires, which UP does at both the Faculty of Theology and Religion and the Faculty of Humanities, and then went on to highlight the role of biblical criticism, especially postcolonial criticism.  “Postcolonial criticism does challenge us, by reminding us of the margins, of the colonised, of the subalterns, of the fact that texts are often complicit in the exploitation of the marginalised,” he said.

“Just as the scribes, whether priests or others in the ancient world, were members of the elite, so are we as modern interpreters of the text. Postcolonial criticism reminds us to read carefully and responsibly, highly conscious of our privileged status.”

Following the inaugural lecture, Prof Rantoa Letšosa, Dean of the Faculty of Theology and Religion, said it was a “shining example” of what scholars aspire to in speaking with truth and integrity of the moral and intellectual life of society.

Prof Francis Petersen, UP Vice-Chancellor and Principal, who presided over the event, said an inaugural lecture is a celebration of individual academic achievement and a reaffirmation of shared commitment to the advancement of knowledge.