A Latino Reading of Race, Kinship, and the Empire: John's Prologue

by Rodolfo Galvan Estrada III

Overview

This book provides a Latino reading of John’s prologue with special attention to how the themes of race, kinship, and the empire are part of the gospel’s racial rhetoric. By drawing from the insights of Latinx texts and theology, this book reveals how the prologue provides a lens to read the entire gospel with a keen awareness of Jesus’s engagement with people groups—from his own family to the Roman authorities. The prologue participates in the gospel’s racial rhetoric by shaping the reader’s racial imagination even before a person enters the narrative. By doing so, Jesus’s identity becomes constructed and defined through racial rhetoric since the opening verses of John’s gospel.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783031203077
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	01/16/2023
Edition description:	1st ed. 2023
Pages:	257
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x (d)

About the Author

Rodolfo Galvan Estrada III is the Assistant Professor of the New Testament at Vanguard University in Costa Mesa, CA. His research focuses on race and ethnicity in the Greco-Roman world, Gospel of John, Jude, and Latino readings of the New Testament.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents 

1. Revisiting the Problem of the Johannine Prologue [10,000 words]

1.1 Introduction

1.2 The Prologue Among Contemporary Interpreters

1.2.1 Elizabeth Harris: Prologue and Gospel

1.2.2 Craig Evans: Word and Glory

1.2.3 Alison Jasper: The Shining Garment of the Text

1.2.4 Daniel Boyarin: Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity

1.2.5 Other Studies on the Prologue

1.3 Guiding Questions and Focus

1.4 Defining Race and Ethnicity

1.5 Other Relevant Aspects in John

1.6 Where We Go from Here?

 

2. Reading the Ancient World through Latinx Eyes [8,500 words]

2.1 Introduction

2.2 Latinx, Latin American, Hispanic, and the Chicano/a/x

2.3 Latin American Liberation Theology (LALT) and its Influence on Latinx Hermeneutics

2.3.1 Gustavo Gutierrez

2.3.2 J. Severino Croatto

2.3.3 Juan Luis Segundo

2.3.4 LALT and the Impact on Latinx Hermeneutics

2.4 Latinx Hermeneutics

2.4.1 Fernando Segovia (Biblical Studies)

2.4.2 Justo Gonzalez (Historian)

2.4.3 Ada Maria Isasi Diaz (Mujerista)

2.4.4 Latinx Hermeneutics Defined

2.5 Reading the Ancient World through My Latino Eyes

3. Race and Representation [8,500 words]

3.1 Introduction

3.2 Edward Said’s Ethnoracial Representation

3.3 Representations in Greco-Roman Literature

3.3.1 Persians through Greek and Roman Eyes

3.3.2 Egyptians through Greek and Roman Eyes

3.3.3 Germans through Roman Eyes

3.4 Implications of Racial Representation

3.5 Conclusion

4. The Prologue’s Racialized Reality: John 1:1-18 [9,500]

4.1 Introduction

4.2 Purpose of the Prologue

4.3 John 1:4–5: Darkness as an Agent of the Empire

4.4 John 1:9-10: World as a De-Ethnicized Representation

4.5 John 1:11: Kinship and Racial Rejection

4.6 John 1:12-13: Born of God as Kinship Language

4.7 John 1:6-8, 15-18: Jewish Representation

4.8 The Prologue’s Racialized Reality

4.8.1 Racial Conflict and Rejection

4.8.2 Kinship Identity

4.8.3 Racial Representation and Imperial Agendas

4.9 Conclusion

5. The Prologue and Kinship [10,500 words]

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Family and Kinship in the Prologue

5.3 Kinship in Antiquity

5.4 The Family of Jesus in John: The De/Construction of Kinship

5.4.1 The Mother of Jesus (John 2:1-12; 6:42; 19:25-27)

5.4.2 The Brothers of Jesus (John 2:12; 7:1-10)

5.4.3 The Disciples as Children and Orphans (13:33; 14:18; 20:17; 21:5)

5.4.4 The Disciples and Community as a ‘Brotherhood’ (20:17; 21:23)

5.5 Conclusion

6. The Prologue and Race [10,500 words]

6.1 Racial Representation of the Jews

6.1.1 Jews and Judeophobia in Antiquity

6.1.2 A study of Jesus’ interaction with his own people

6.2 Racial Representation of the Samaritans [8,000 words]

6.2.1 Jewish and Samaritan questions of lineage and genealogy

6.2.2 Jesus and the Samaritans in John 4 and John 8

6.3 Racial Representation of the Greeks [8,000 words]

6.3.1 Greek and Jewish relations in antiquity

6.3.2 Did Jesus have Greek followers? A Review of Josephus’ Testimony

6.3.3 Greek visitation and outreach in John 7 & 12

6.4 Conclusion

7. The Prologue and the Roman Empire [10,500 words]

7.1 Jewish-Roman relationship in Antiquity

7.1.1 Imperial view of foreigners

7.1.2 Justification of power over the foreigners

7.2 Jesus and Pilate

7.3 Jesus and the Empire

8. A Racially Profiled Prologue [10,500 words]

8.1 Who is Jesus within the Latino Imagination?

8.1.1 Roberto Goizueta: Caminemos Con Jesús: A Theology of Accompaniment

8.1.2 David Sanchez: From Patmos to the Barrio: Subverting Imperial Myths

8.1.3 Samuel Escobar: In Search of Christ in Latin America: From Colonial Image to Liberating Savior

8.2 Review of the insights from the previous chapters in dialogue with:

8.2.1 Latinx and the family

8.2.2 Latinx and ethnicity

8.2.3 Latinx and the empire

8.3 Jesus’s Racial Reality, Representations, and Relationships in the Gospel

8.4 Conclusion

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“The more we study John’s prologue from different cultural perspectives, the more wealth of interpretations we learn from these readings. Rodolfo Estrada’s A Latino Reading of Race, Kinship, and the Empire: John’s Prologue surely completes this task. Estrada brings to bear a Latino perspective on the prologue. The volume provides an excellent example of the cultural turn in biblical studies with attention to an analysis of readings of the prologue, and with a sustained and critical analysis of the prologue in tandem with the Latinx culture and its reception in the Latin American colonial world. The result is an innovative work, with conclusions that will challenge the field of Johannine studies.” (Francisco Lozada, Jr., Charles Fischer Catholic Professor of New Testament, Latinx Studies Director: Latino/a/x Studies and Borderlands Institute, Brite Divinity School, USA)

“A complex cross section between critical theory, historical engagement, biblical studies, and cultural analysis, this book weaves together Johannine biblical concerns and Chicana/o and Latina/o questions of Identity as deeply shaped by experiences of colonization. Rodolfo Estrada helps us re-imagine spaces of identity and belonging in God through a deep reinterpretation of the gospel of John.” (Néstor Medina, Assistant Professor of Religious Ethics and Culture, Director of Master of Theological Studies, Emmanuel College of Victoria University in the University of Toronto, Canada)

“In this terrific book, Rodolfo Estrada reminds us that racial representation matters. Carefully and thoughtfully situated within his contexts as a scholar and a Chicano, Estrada challenges our assumptions about the racial imaginaries at work in the Gospel of John. This book is an important intervention in the study of rhetoric of kinship and belonging in both Latinx thought and biblical studies.” (Jacqueline M. Hidalgo, Professor of Latina/o/x Studies and Religion, Director of the Oakley Center for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Williams College, USA)