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If we want to read the Bible as a resource for liberative fights against systemic oppression, how can we learn to interpret it differently? Liberating Our Imaginations presents an answer. David Janzen demonstrates the possibilities for liberation produced by reading biblical texts alongside works of contemporary literature by minoritized authors. While contemporary examples of oppression are not identical, the process of reading ancient and contemporary texts together can nonetheless open up imaginative and liberative interpretations of biblical texts. This approach allows people from any community to use the Bible as a resource in different struggles against oppression.

A theoretical and exegetical exploration of trauma in the Hebrew Bible

David Janzen discusses the concepts of history and trauma and contrasts the ways historians and trauma survivors grapple with traumatic events, a contrast embodied in the very different ways the books of Kings and Lamentations react to the destruction of Jerusalem. Janzen’s study warns that explanations in histories will tend to silence the voices of trauma survivors, and it challenges traditional approaches that sometimes portray the explanations of traumatic events in biblical literature as therapeutic for victims.

Features:

• Exploration of history as a narrative explanation that creates a past readers can recognize to be true
• Examination of how trauma results in a failure of victims to fully experience or remember traumatic events.
• A case for why the past is a construction of cultures and historians