Serving the Sighs of the Working Class in South Africa with Marxist Analysis of the Bible as a Site of Struggle

Abstract

In 1987 the South African biblical scholar Itumeleng Mosala was the first black theologian from either the United States or South Africa to argue that the Bible was intrinsically a site of class struggle. Mosala’s argument recognized the value of redaction criticism, which Mosala extended to include an ideological recognition of the class sectors engaged in ideological contestation, providing him an entry point into the ideological contestation inherent within the biblical text. Likewise, Marxist sociological categories, particularly notions around mode of production, gave Mosala resources with which to assign a particular class identity to a particular redacted “voice.” This essay reflects on Mosala’s contribution and its significance thirty years later, particularly in the South African context, and considers Mosala’s use of Marxist concepts such as “mode of production,” his understanding of the relationship between biblical text and interpretive context, and his “prophetic” warnings about working with an ideologically uncontested Bible.