In this issue of the journal Semeia, readers will find essays less concerned with what the Bible says about Asian American lives than by how Asian Americans read biblical texts. Pulling together Asian American historians, rhetoricians, sociologists, biblical scholars, and theologians, the collection questions assumed understandings and challenges accepted practices of established disciplines in ways that are both transgressive and transformative. Essays in the first section deal with the Bible’s role in constructing Asian American identity. The second section delves into how the Bible is read and interpreted in Asian American literature and churches. The third section includes a response. Contributors include Antony W. Alumkal, Rachel A. R. Bundang, Patrick S. Cheng, Peter Yuichi Clark, Eleazar S. Fernandez, Mary F. Foskett, Jane Naomi Iwamura, Russell M. Jeung, Eunjoo Mary Kim, Jung Ha Kim, Uriah (Yong-Hwan) Kim, Tat-siong Benny Liew, Leng Leroy Lim, Fumitaka Matsuoka, Russell G. Moy, Henry W. Rietz, Roy I. Sano, and Timothy Tseng.

Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial/ethnic population in the United States. Especially since the 1990s, readings by Asian American biblical scholars have been increasing to meet the particular theological and pastoral concerns of their Christian racial/ethnic seminarians, clergy, and churches. Gale A. Yee is one of their major interpreters, becoming the first Asian American and first woman of color president of the oldest professional guild devoted to the critical study of the Bible, the Society of Biblical Literature. This book is an anthology of her major, ground-breaking essays on Asian American theorizing and analysis of the biblical text. It is a retrospective of her growth of over almost three decades in wrestling with questions like "What is Asian American biblical hermeneutics and how does one undertake it?"

The first reference resource on how Asian Americans are currently reading and interpreting the Bible, this volume also serves a valuable role in both developing and disseminating what can be termed as Asian American biblical hermeneutics. The volume works from the important background that Asian Americans are the fastest growing ethnic/racial minority population in the USA, and that 42% of this group identifies as Christian. This provides a useful starting point from which to examine what may be distinctive about Asian American approaches to the Bible. Part 1 of the Handbook describes six major ethic groups that make up 85% of Asian population (by country of origin: China, Philippines, Indian Subcontinent, Vietnam, Korea, Japan) and outlines the specific concerns each group has when its members read the Bible. Part 2 of the Handbook examines major critical methods in biblical interpretation and suggests adjustments that may be helpful for Asian Americans to make when they are interpreting the Bible. Finally, Part 3 provides 25 interpretations by Asian American biblical scholars on specific texts in the Bible, using what they consider to be Asian American hermeneutics. Taken together the Handbook interprets the Bible both with and for the Asian American communities.

"Liew is one of the most articulate, creative and sophisticated biblical scholars in North America. What Is Asian American Biblical Hermeneutics? has not caused me to question that judgment. A set of provocative questions, arguments, issues, and problems, the book opens a window onto what it means for human beings to try to negotiate a rather complex contemporary world, with evidence of increasingly blurred but also thick ideological and social-cultural boundaries and overlapping but also recognizable and isolable identity formations. That Liew does this by using and bringing together the category "Asian American" and the phenomenon of the reading of "the Bible" as sharp analytical wedge is all the more fascinating. This impressive book represents the collapse of the center and a major shift in orientation to the peripheries. It is a major achievement and a major challenge." —Vincent L. Wimbush, Claremont Graduate University "A groundbreaking achievement! Dr. Liew uses his amazing breadth of scholarship to challenge Eurocentrism in biblical studies and secularism in Asian American studies at once. Like Gender Trouble, The Future of an Illusion, and other original work, this book will become a classic in Asian American biblical hermeneutics, setting the terms of debate for years to come. After Liew, reading the New Testament will never be the same again."—Kwok Pui-lan, Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts This is the first single-authored book on Asian American biblical interpretation. It covers all of the major genres within the New Testament and broadens biblical hermeneutics to cover not only the biblical texts, but also Asian American literature and current films and events like genome research and September 11. Despite its range, the book is organized around three foci: methodology (the distinguishing characteristics or sensibilities of Asian American biblical hermeneutics), community (the politics of inclusion and exclusion), and agency. The work intentionally affirms Asian America as a panethnic coalition while acknowledging the differences within it. In other words, it attempts to balance Asian American panethnicity and heterogeneity, or coalition building and identity politics.

A resource ideal for students as well as general readers, this two-volume encyclopedia examines the diversity of the Asian American and Pacific Islander spiritual experience. Despite constituting a fairly small proportion of the U.S. population—roughly 5 percent—Asian Americans are a widely diverse group with equally heterogeneous religious beliefs and traditions. This encyclopedia provides a single source for authoritative information on the Asian American and Pacific Islander religious experience, addressing South Asian Americans, such as Indian Americans and Pakistani Americans; East Asian Americans, including Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, and Korean Americans; and Southeast Asian Americans, whose ethnicities include Filipino Americans, Thai Americans, and Vietnamese Americans. Pacific Islanders include Hawaiians, Samoans, Marshallese, Tongan, and Chamorro. The coverage includes not only traditional eastern belief systems and traditions such as Buddhism, Confucianism, and Hinduism as well as Micronesian and Polynesian religious traditions in the United States, but also the culture and religious rituals of Asian American Christians.

In Envisioning Religion, Race, and Asian Americans, David K. Yoo and Khyati Y. Joshi assemble a wide-ranging and important collection of essays documenting the intersections of race and religion and Asian American communities—a combination so often missing both in the scholarly literature and in public discourse. Issues of religion and race/ethnicity undergird current national debates around immigration, racial profiling, and democratic freedoms, but these issues, as the contributors document, are longstanding ones in the United States. The essays feature dimensions of traditions such as Islam, Hinduism, and Sikhism, as well as how religion engages with topics that include religious affiliation (or lack thereof), the legacy of the Vietnam War, and popular culture. The contributors also address the role of survey data, pedagogy, methodology, and literature that is richly complementary and necessary for understanding the scope and range of the subject of Asian American religions. These essays attest to the vibrancy and diversity of Asian American religions, while at the same time situating these conversations in a scholarly lineage and discourse. This collection will certainly serve as an invaluable resource for scholars, students, and general readers with interests in Asian American religions, ethnic and Asian American studies, religious studies, American studies, and related fields that focus on immigration and race.

This textbook is an interdisciplinary collection of scholarly and religious articles about Asian American Christianity. Its four sections -- contexts, sites, identity, and voices ? offer in-depth understanding of both Catholic and Protestant traditions, practices, theologies, and faith communities. It also highlights diversity and complexity across lines of gender, generation, denomination, race and ethnicity in Asian American Christianity.

As the first major encyclopedia of its kind, The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Gender Studies (OEBGS) is the go-to source for scholars and students undertaking original research in the field. Extending the work of nineteenth and twentieth century feminist scholarship and more recent queer studies, the Encyclopedia seeks to advance the scholarly conversation by systematically exploring the ways in which gender is constructed in the diverse texts, cultures, and readers that constitute "the world of the Bible." With contributions from leading scholars in gender and biblical studies as well as contemporary gender theorists, classicists, archaeologists, and ancient historians, this comprehensive reference work reflects the diverse and interdisciplinary nature of the field and traces both historical and modern conceptions of gender and sexuality in the Bible. The two-volume Encyclopedia contains more than 160 entries ranging in length from 1,000 to 10,000 words. Each entry includes bibliographic references and suggestions for further reading, as well as a topical outline and index to aid in research. The OEBGS builds upon the pioneering work of biblically focused gender theorists to help guide and encourage further gendered discussions of the Bible.

MisReading America presents original research on and conversation about reading formations in American communities of color, using the phenomenon of the reading of scriptures--''scripturalizing''--as an analytical wedge. Scriptures here are understood as shorthand for complex social phenomena, practices, and dynamics. The authors take up scripturalizing as a window onto the self-understandings, politics, practices, and orientations of marginalized communities. These communities have in common the context that is the United States, with the challenges it holds for all regarding: pressure to conform to conventional-canonical forms of communication, representation, and embodiment (mimicry); opportunities to speak back to and confront and overturn conventionality (interruptions); and the need to experience ongoing meaningful and complex relationships (reorientation) to the centering politics, practices, and myths that define ''America.''

In this one-volume commentary, a multiethnic team of scholars holding orthodox Christian beliefs brings exegetical expertise coupled with a unique interpretive lens to illuminate the ways social location and biblical interpretation work together. These diverse scholars offer a better vantage point for both the academy and the church.