The Hermeneutics of Hospitality for Epistemic Justice

Abstract

Although we live in a diasporic world, we need interpretive strategies for reading the Bible through the eyes of history and the experiences of marginalized groups, most of whom are still on the margins. Attempts to bring diverse voices without exclusion, discrimination, and disregard into biblical interpretation in the diasporic world have been linked to the study of epistemic injustice. I consider signifiers of those norms that make the power/knowledge of ‘others’ inferior through the contemporary hospitality perspectives. I consider how reading and interpreting the Bible, without dualistic language, plays a role in creatively participating in new situations, and not claiming absolute ownership of fixed spaces, discourses, and movements. In particular, by reading Lot’s story of biblical hospitality as a discourse on hostility and hospitality, this study will examine how an interpretive lens of contemporary hospitality can expand and apply to encourage epistemic justice in a more relational and plentiful way.