Autism and Biblical Studies: Establishing and Extending the Field beyond Preliminary Reflection

Abstract

This article considers core issues of practice, method and hermeneutics, as they bear upon the development of a scholarly field concerned with "Autism and Biblical Studies. " A small body of scholarship has begun to bring biblical studies into dialogue with research into autism, and to reflect on the pertinent methodological issues; this article acknowledges the preliminary character of this and reflects upon what might be necessary for this emergent area of interest to be established as a mature field of research. The extending of the discussion to incorporate a range of sub-disciplines, each operating with different core "identifications" of the biblical material, is crucial to this, as is the careful use of insights from postcolonial and ideological critical approaches. Pivotally, however, research must also be shaped and led by those who are themselves autistic, so that autism is properly the subject and not merely the object of research.

Fleshing Out the Strength of Weakness: Intercorporeality in the Theological Discourse on Disability

“…Speaking from experience, Macaskill does not consider autism a "deficit." 67 He affirms autism as a "difference" that does not align with binaries like weakness and strength. 68 For him, that is insufficiently reflected in cultural evaluations of ASD that cluster around psychological descriptions-not least theological ones that see ASD in misleading proximity to psychopathy 69 -yet, at best, these do not warrant more than preliminary indications.…”