ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the meaning of biblical texts for lived realities in Caribbean biblical hermeneutics is itself a critical response to one of the legacies of colonialism to the church: failure to come to grips with the meaning of faith and challenges to faith in its context. Attention in Caribbean biblical hermeneutical practice, therefore, needs to concentrate on the interests and practices that shaped the biblical writers' version of the realities they are interpreting. Caribbean hermeneutes do contextualize faith out of their reading of biblical texts. Even so, for Caribbean biblical hermeneutics to be truly resistant to oppressive structures of spirituality and theologies, it cannot focus less on the socio-ideological interests and social practices that have influenced the theological shape of the biblical text and more on contextual realities.
