In recent years the language of intertextuality has surfaced in many approaches to biblical interpretation. These approaches often rest on divergent and sometimes contradictory assumptions about the nature of texts. A survey of the use of intertextuality in New Testament Studies provides a snapshot of the battle lines which divide biblical scholarship today. As intertextuality is explored, the interpretive limits of historical, literary and ideological approaches are brought into focus. Concluding this survey, I argue that fiirther productive interpretation will depend on an honest confrontation with the contradictory textual assumptions held within biblical scholarship and theology more generally.

The rhetorical resistance to Apartheid in South Africa appealed to many sources of authority. In Christian communities, the New Testament was brought into creative conversation with traditional “confessional” texts, modern scholarship, and Marxist class analysis in order to develop contextually-located theologies and practices of resistance. This article highlights the important insights of Allan Boesak, Albert Nolan, and Itumeleng Mosala, which served the Apartheid struggle. After noting key differences in the methods and conclusions of these scholars, I suggest that another look at their insights may well be critical in developing Christian responses to the deep structural injustices of the post-Apartheid period.

Marxist theory provides a set of tools to analyze the material conditions and social forces behind biblical texts and the contexts of their interpreters. Although often overlooked within biblical studies, an important scholarly movement in Marxist and materialist biblical criticism continues to challenge liberal and capitalist assumptions in historical-critical, social-scientific, and literary approaches to the Bible. This study examines the broad parameters of Marxist biblical criticism and how it might enrich readings from the margins collected under the tent of postcolonial biblical criticism. The chapter also notes the divergence between postcolonial and Marxist criticism in recent decades and looks to the work of Fernando Belo and Itumeleng Mosala to find common ground. Their analyses may challenge the tendency in postcolonial biblical criticism not to engage Marxism criticism deeply.