VTS Colloquium on Chinese Biblical Hermeneutics

Before attending the lovely reception and dinner this evening, I heard two excellent talks this afternoon at the Conference on Chinese Biblical Hermeneutics being held here at the Seminary this week. The first paper was by Philip Chia of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who addressed reading Amos 5 as a "social text" rather than a text for reading as a personal, spiritual exercise. By a "social text" he meant a text to be read with a sense of social responsibility, consciously aware of social needs within our current global realities. The second paper I heard was by Li Zhe, also of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She looked at the Rape of Daughter Zion in Lamentations 1 (see v. 10b and cf. Ezek 23:39&44), comparing it to modern literature and films on the Japanese atrocities against women at the fall of Nanking during World War II. I was reminded again of the stories we were told when in China of the terrors inflicted on China by the Japanese, of which most Americans have little knowledge.