Postcolonial Woman’s Encounter with Moses and Miriam

Angeline M.G. Song is a former newspaper journalist turned biblical scholar. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Otago, New Zealand, and is an Honorary Research Associate of Laidlaw College in Auckland, New Zealand. She also works with students with disability issues in tertiary education in Auckland. Her research interests include Empathy studies, Postcolonial studies, Focalization Narratology, and biblical contextual interpretation.

"This study is an example of contemporary biblical criticism at its best. It is a sophisticated exercise in interdisciplinary criticism, placing Hebrew bible studies in dialogue with cultural, literary, and postcolonial studies.The result is a novel approach to Exodus 2, and beyond. I recommend this book most highly." - Fernando F. Segovia, Oberlin Graduate Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity, Vanderbilt University, USA, and Professor Extraordinary, Old and New Testament Department, Stellenbosch University, South Africa "Song offers a nuanced analysis of the concept of empathy in multiple disciplines and uses her autobiography as entry point for sophisticated empathic reading of Moses and Miriam in Egypt with a theoretical post-colonial optic. Her personal history is embedded effectively into the larger context of the colonial and postcolonial history and culture of Singapore, even as Moses and Miriam are embedded in the Egyptian colonial context." - Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, Princeton Theological Seminary, USA "Song employs focalization to gain new insights into the story of Moses, the adoptee of an Egyptian, colonizer, single royal woman; and Miriam, Moses's sister, who saves him by playing the colonized's role. The methodological and the personal are woven together to give new insight into the biblical story in a way hitherto un-attempted. This book represents a significant contribution to biblical contextual interpretation." - Athalya Brenner-Idan, Professor of Biblical Studies, Tel Aviv University, Israel 'In a very personal voice, Song shares her own story as she reads the narratives about Moses and Miriam. Combining two seemingly contradictory impulses into what she calls an 'empathic, postcolonial optic,' Song offers a 'focalized' and refreshing reading of two familiar biblical characters in order to ask some tough questions about identity and survival struggles in an imperial context.' - Tat-siong Benny Liew, Class of 1956 Professor in New Testament Studies, College of the Holy Cross, USA

• Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction 1. Confessions of a Chinese-But-Not-Chinese Adoptee 2. A Strangely Familiar Reading Strategy 3. An Upside-Down or Right-Side Up View of the World? 4. Bal's Focalization Methodology 5. Analyzing the Power (Im)Balance in Exodus 2 6. Encountering and Reimaging Moses and Miriam Conclusion Notes Selected Bibliography Index