ABSTRACT
The final chapter synthesizes the study’s findings and offers further reflections on intercultural Bible reading by revisiting the central research question and its sub-questions in relation to the generated empirical data. It first evaluates the five exchanges by identifying three outcome profiles (highly satisfactory, satisfactory, and non-satisfactory) and analyses the multiple factors (at the different code systems) that shaped these results. The chapter highlights how successful encounters were marked by cognitive–affective motivation, openness, sensitivity to partners’ disclosures, or self-vulnerability, while the only unsuccessful exchange exhibited apologetic defensiveness, poor dialogical engagement, and accusations of textual manipulation, among other characteristics. Further thematic explorations consider the opportunities and limitations of IBR on virtual format, the participant’s rereading of Acts 15 as a “new” shared story, and the resonance of IBR with current models of transcultural and receptive ecumenism. The chapter concludes by addressing the normative dimension of “common” Bible interpretation, arguing for a model of “distributed normativity” in which scholarly and ordinary readings mutually inform one another, thus positioning IBR as a dialogical bridge between academic theology and lived hermeneutical practice.
