The Brahmin and his Bible: Rammohun Roy's Precepts of Jesus 200 Years On

Description

On the bicentenary of the publication of Raja Rammohun Roy's Precepts of Jesus, R. S. Sugirtharajah situates Roy's compilation of the moral teachings of Jesus in its social, cultural and political context and analyses the hermeneutical issues it generated. In doing so, he documents the often acrimonious exegetical exchanges between Roy and the missionaries over the standing and status of the Bible; their often differing hermeneutical suppositions and strategies; their contradictory consturals of Jesus; and disputes about translations. Sugirtharajah addresses issues such as the place of the Precepts among earlier Gospel Harmonies, Roy's use of the Improved Version, a highly contentious Unitarian Bible, and his motives for translating his own Hindu texts. Sugirtharajah also demonstrates how Roy's work was a precursor to de-mythologization which the West took up later, and how Roy's identification of Jesus as an Asiatic, and his idea of a moral union between Father and Son, were routinely reused by later Indian writers. An additional feature is a critical look at Thomas Jefferson's The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, which appeared in the same year and which had a similar interpretative aim and aspiration. This volume also includes Roy's Precepts in full. There have been popular perceptions of Roy as someone who strongly disapproved of various Christian doctrines and was highly rationalistic in his outlook. Sugirtharajah demonstrates that Roy was much more complex in his writings. His initial rationalistic energy and passion, displayed in his Precepts, gave way to something much more intuitively and emotionally based which, ironically, did not disturb the foundations of Christianity but made them stronger and safer for Christians. Sugirtharajah brings to the fore a forgotten but significant work which raised important issues for biblical studies and the power relations between colonized and colonizer over the control of texts and interpretation. He draws lessons from this 19th-century colonial religious controversy for a postcolonial world where religious texts are manipulated to provoke religious hatred and violence.

R.S. Sugirtharajah is Emeritus Professor of Biblical Hermeneutics at the University of Birmingham, UK.

Sugirtharajah's book may well be the most comprehensive study of Rammohun Roy's (a Brahmin by birth and practice) biblical hermeneutics to date. The author's in-depth, postcolonial look at Roy's admiration for the teachings of Jesus, and the sustained and spirited exchanges with the missionaries over key Christian doctrines and church teachings, contribute to an engaging as well as eye-opening reading. * D. N. Premnath, St. Bernard's School of Theology and Ministry, USA * Erudite as ever, Sugirtharajah gives the Hindu-Renaissance a new twist against the grain of present Indian identity politics, be it Hindutva or Dalit and White Western Christian Supremacy alike. * Volker Kuster, Johannes-Gutenberg University, Germany; author of The Many Faces of Jesus Christ * It was Sugirtharajah that first began to introduce, in his previous work, the significance of Roy to modern Biblical scholarship, especially on Asian expressions of, or commentary on, Christianity and especially the New Testament portraits of Jesus. Now, in this volume, he follows up with another fascinating gift - further and striking evidence why Roy is a voice not to be ignored or overlooked. Furthermore, in this most recent work guiding us to an important voice in recent history, Sugirtharajah shows us once again why he himself is one of the most creative, insightful, and critically important voices in modern Biblical Studies, and this recent work is yet another example of a stunning career of giving us consistent intellectual surprises, serious contributions to thinking about Scripture in the modern context, and profound insights. * Daniel L. Smith-Christopher, Professor of Old Testament, Loyola Marymount University, USA *