The Marginal person: politicizing differences within the human family

Group cleansing has roots well beyond modern-day horror stories in Germany, Rwanda, Bosnia, the Sudan, and religious enclaves extending into the present day. Particularly ironic is the claim that purity exists within privileged group boundaries save for corrupting elements that require elimination for the good of the whole. This phenomenon has come to be known as scape-goating, as Jews were blamed for spoiling the European economy, Slavs for corrupting the gene pool, and homosexuals for destroying the family. What is particularly sad is when religionists join forces with societal bullies in robbing people of their human dignity so that the privileged may take unwarranted pride in being somehow pure, legends in their own minds so to speak.

The three articles in the current issue of BTB help clarify the use of restrictive boundaries to separate the in-group from the out-group within biblical texts. In the first article, Having Men for Dinner: Deadly Banquets and Biblical Women, Nicole Duran explores biblical stories about women killing men. Except for John the Baptist, the dead men were all enemies of the storytellers. John the Baptist's murder might well have been similarly cast save for the tradition that followed him, which recounts the story in which he is a martyred saint. Differentiating killing from murdering in these stories poses a problem, which may best be resolved by knowing who is telling the tale. The enjoyment comes when knowing that tables have been turned, making the victim the victor.

In the second article, Dennis Duling examines meanings and usages in Ethnicity, Ethnocentrism, and the Matthean Ethnos. The recently coined term ethnicity is a catch-word for a wide ranging set of phenomena set in ancient contexts in which marginalizing was a routine function of in-group boundary maintenance. R.E. Park described the "marginal man" as "one who is 'condemned' to live between two different, antagonistic cultural worlds without fully belonging to either one, one who is 'caught' between two competing cultures." J. M. Billson observes that others may be similarly targeted through social role marginality, "the product of failure to belong to a positive reference group." In either case, marginalizing identity is not new to human society and shares a long history of tragic consequences. Human differences, however real, fare poorly in self-absorbed interest groups.

Addressing the present cultural climate of alienation and suspicion in the world, Michael Trainor reflects on Intertextuality, the Hermeneutics of "Other," and Mark 16:6-7: A New but Not New Challenge for Biblical Interpreters. The author notes the current proliferation of global terrorism. He brings the topic home by witnessing that "many in my nation are treated as different and alien." The recognition of this experiential relativity and connection is important for him as a scholar and educator: "As I seek to understand a biblical text, I must acknowledge that I am not the definitive or permanent center of its meaning--no matter how much I might construct or manipulate its interpretation." Thereupon rests a challenge to know the role that culture and society played in the construction of literary meaning and expression, and continues to play in the existential reading of biblical episodes such as the death and resurrection of Jesus. When society and the churches disgorge "the other," the dispossessed are left with the resurrection story as the hope that the biblical God provides for those that culture, society, and even the churches seek to marginalize.

David M. Bossman

Editor

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