By Revelation E. Velunta
Introduction
On July 7, 1940, the US Army requested the War Department for an all terrain reconnaissance go-anywhere vehicle that seated three and had a mount for a 30-caliber machine gun. For many Filipinos the jeep was, and still is, an imperializing “text.” The jeepney, the Philippines’ most popular mode of mass transportation, resists this “text.” Eleazar Fernandez, Renato Constantino, Reynaldo Ileto, and Leny Strobel write about how the Bible was used to rationalize, justify, and perpetuate imperialism in the Philippines. I will argue that Paul’s letter to Philemon is an imperializing text, a jeep. And I will present a reading that resists it, a jeepney.
John Lightfoot has described Philemon as an expression of simple dignity, of refined courtesy, of large sympathy, and a warm personal affection. John Knox thinks it is one of the most charming letters ever written. Donald Guthrie argues that it breathes the great-hearted tenderness of Paul, while Robert Jewett says it is one of the most subtle letters in world history, an expression of Paul’s ambassadorial style (Garland: 293). Carolyn Osiek calls it a remarkable gem (125). George Buttrick proclaims it as the seed that finally split the rock of slavery (561).
According to Martin Luther: “This epistle gives us a masterful illustration of Christian love. For here we see how St. Paul takes the part of poor Onesimus and, to the best of his ability, advocates his cause with his master. He acts exactly as if he were himself Onesimus, who had done wrong. Yet he does this not with force or compulsion, as lay within his rights; but he empties himself of his rights in order to compel Philemon also to waive his rights. What Christ has done for us with God the Father, that St. Paul does also for Onesimus with Philemon. For Christ emptied himself of his rights (Phil 2:7) and overcame the Father with love and humility, so that the Father had to put away his wrath and rights, and receive us into favor for the sake of Christ, who so earnestly advocates our cause and so heartily takes our part. For we are all his Onesimus’s if we believe” (Lohse: 188).
Robert Dunham observes: “Reading the letter of Philemon is not unlike overhearing one end of an animated and lively telephone conversation: the half we hear whets our appetite to know more.” There are at least three schools of interpretation that attempt to fill in the details of Philemon. One of the earliest, and probably most influential, in the slave-owning society of the late fourth century was John Chrysostom’s. His reading has become the traditional one: “Onesimus is a runaway slave who fortuitously finds Paul during his flight. Paul baptizes him and convinces him to return to his master with Paul’s mediating letter of recommendation. Philemon is thus placed in the awkward position of having everyone in the assembly know what Paul is asking of him, to take back his runaway slave as a brother, even though by custom and law Onesimus should be severely punished. Philemon is under strong pressure from Paul, with the knowledge of the whole house-church for which he serves as patron, to ignore outside social expectations that would prompt him to be severe with a runaway slave, even one who voluntarily returns. If Philemon does not maintain his honor by exacting punishment, however, his neighbors and friends will cry that ‘family values’ are falling apart because proper household discipline is not preserved” (Osiek: 127).
Lightfoot fleshes out the “runaway” when he remarks: “He, Onesimus, was a thief and a runaway. His offence did not differ in any way, as far as we know, from the vulgar type of slavish offences. He seems to have done just what the representative slave in the Roman comedy threatens to do, when he gets in trouble. He had ‘packed up some goods and taken to his heels.’ Rome was the natural cesspool for these offscourings of humanity. In the thronging crowds of the metropolis was his best hope of secrecy. In the dregs of the city rabble he would find the society of congenial spirits.” (Callahan: 9) John Calvin thought it was important to note the depths of Paul’s condescension in calling one who is a slave, a runaway, and a thief his own son. (Garland: 359).
David Garland argues that Philemon serves as a model of Christian compassion. The letter speaks of failure, the need for intercession, returning, forgiveness, and restoration (309). In Philemon we have a better glimpse of the real Paul, a Paul more congenial to American sensibilities. We meet in the letter a Paul who sees the best in a runaway slave and an irate master and who knows that the gospel takes root and spreads when individuals are joined in Christ (310).
Interpreters who find the runaway theory problematic include Sarah Winter who suggests that Philemon was written to a church and was only formally addressed to Philemon as the congregational overseer. The references to the situation between Philemon and Onesimus are explained as not so much dealing with personal matters as framing a paradigm for changing master/slave relationships into new opportunities for manumission and shared fellowship” (Felder: 886). “Peter Lampe argues that Onesimus knowingly fled from the household of Philemon because of conflict between them, but has fled to a friendly third party, Paul, to intercede for him with Philemon. In the legal discussions of such a case, the slave is not to be considered a fugitivus or runaway” (Osiek: 128).
Ver Miranda paints this Onesimus-is-not-a-runaway-slave scenario: Paul is put in prison for the sake of Christ. Philemon hears of Paul’s imprisonment and dispatches one slave from his household to attend to the apostle’s needs. This slave is a trusted one, reliable, and very helpful. He proves true to his name, Onesimus. His talents and capabilities impress Paul. He sees in the latter a potential brother/co-worker for the service of the faith. The apostle is fully pleased and refreshed. For this he gives full credit to Philemon, the slave’s master. Paul decides to reward Onesimus with freedom. Within the given legal possibilities, Paul, as a Roman citizen, can do this by adopting Onesimus. He proceeds and adopts Onesimus who has been with him for quite some time. His begotten child proves to be an efficient co-worker. Paul senses a possible legal battle in case Philemon would not approve of what he has done. He writes a letter that sounds like a legal pleading for the case of Onesimus. Onesimus is dispatched by Paul as his child and a beloved brother to bring the letter (19-20).
A third option is offered by Allen D. Callahan who seeks to dispel the idea that Onesimus was a slave at all, suggesting that he and Philemon were estranged biological brothers whom Paul sought to reconcile (Felder: 886). According to Callahan, the only indication from which to conclude of Onesimus’ servile status is verse 16 which has been exploited since the late fourth century by powerful interests in slave-owning societies against its real meaning in order to justify theirs (Osiek: 130).
Callahan’s reading goes like this: “Once upon a time there was a man named Paul. He had a colleague named Philemon, who worked together with him in the service of their common lord, Jesus Christ. Philemon had a brother named Onesimus, whom Philemon despised because of some past injustice for which Onesimus had failed to compensate him. One day Paul was thrown into prison, and so could no longer work with Philemon on their common project ordered by their common lord. But Paul wanted very badly to help Philemon and the others working with him at his house. Incarcerated and in chains, Paul had no alternative but to send a surrogate. Having no one else to send, he decided to dispatch Philemon’s brother, Onesimus, who happened to be close at hand. But knowing the seriousness of Philemon’s estrangement with his brother, he also decided to write Philemon a letter. Paul wrote that he was sending a surrogate to work in his stead. He wrote that the surrogate would be Onesimus, whom Paul loved like a son. He wrote that he, Paul, would pay the damages for Onesimus’ past injustices. And he wrote that he, Paul, would see Philemon later, though he was not sure when, and at that time he would pay Philemon in full. Finally he signed the letter himself. He then sent the letter, and Onesimus, to Philemon, confident that love would correct everything, for justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love” (69).
For Cain Hope Felder, the main point of the letter concerns the difference the transforming power of the gospel can make in the lives and relationships of believers, regardless of class and other distinctions. Unfortunately, the way slavery has figured prominently in modern history has obscured this deeper, more essential meaning, and veiled the perennial significance of the letter. During the European and American slave trade, many slave owners and other defenders of the system who laid claim to Christian leadership appealed to the letter of Philemon to justify the racial stereotypes they held and the compliance they believed that Scripture requires from those under the slavery system. Close study of the text makes clear that Paul’s primary focus is not on the institution of slavery but on the power of the gospel to transform human relationships and bring about reconciliation. The way Paul’s letter is viewed provides excellent opportunity for a case study about the ways in which a person’s social location can serve as tacit rationale for reading inappropriate values into the text, distorting the document’s original intent (885-886).
Dunham notes that the “Letter to Philemon appears only once in the Revised Common Lectionary and it is coupled with Luke 14:25-33 on hard sayings of Jesus on the demands of discipleship. The pairing may suggest a sermon that moves from a general consideration of the costs of being a disciple to the particular relinquishment that God may be asking of any of us, with Philemon as the case study of the day.”
Sabine Bieberstein argues that, “like many other New Testament texts, Paul’s letter to Philemon is connected with a long history of Christian guilt… The letter was used in an especially terrible way in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a quarry for arguments against the struggle of African American slaves to attain liberation and human dignity” (105). Bieberstein suggests abandoning the perspective of history written by Christian victors in order to make visible the history of injustice. For her, Philemon has been misused to perpetuate systems of domination (105). Read against the backdrop of the Pax Romana the epistle offers Apphia as a witness (115). She sees Apphia as active in the community’s relational network, speaking out vigorously against the structures of slavery. Apphia sees to it that the uncomfortable topics of justice and liberation are not overlooked, nor those without voices forgotten (116). She further argues that Philemon “creates a critical public which becomes the guarantee of a new mutual relationship between slaves and free persons… Our concern today must be to use such individual cases to unmask systems that show contempt for human beings, and to tell the story of the victims” (116).
On July 7, the US Quartermaster Corps issued the eighteen specifications for its all-terrain, reconnaissance vehicle to 135 manufacturers. Major requirements included three bucket seats and a mount for a 30-caliber machine gun. “Readings” submitted include Ford, Bantam, and Willys models. The War Department selected the Willys model a year later.
“Imperializing texts take many forms and are written by a variety of people, even by the colonized, either collaborating with the dominant forces or yearning for the same power. Regardless of who writes imperializing texts, they are characterized by literary constructions, representations, and uses that authorize taking possession of foreign spaces and peoples” (Dube, 1996:41-42). This section asks the following questions (Dube, 2000:57-58): (1) Does Philemon have an explicit stance for or against the political imperialism of its time? (2) Does the epistle encourage travel to distant and inhabited lands and how does it justify itself? (3) How does the epistle construct difference: is there dialogue and liberating interdependence, or is there condemnation and replacement of all that is foreign? Is there celebration of difference authentic or mere tokenism? (4) Does the text employ representations (gender, ethnicity, sexuality, divine, etc.) to construct relationships of subordination and domination? Dube points out that the problem of reproducing imperial strategies of subjugation is also evident among interpreters (2000:26). As I will show, many of Philemon’s interpreters perpetuate its imperializing rhetoric. As Kwok Pui-lan posits, “They operate more from a hermeneutics of consent than a hermeneutics of suspicion. They have not dealt adequately with the harsh reality that the Bible discloses a hierarchical social order in which slavery and male domination are seldom challenged” (42).
Bieberstein argues that Christians, at the time of Paul, were part of the Jewish minority, firmly inserted into the system of domination of the Roman Empire with its specific structures of power and values, which included the divisions of society into free and unfree people. Paul’s struggles in I Cor. 7:22-24, Gal. 4:1, 8-11, or Romans 13, and professions of faith in I Cor. 12:13 or Gal. 3:26-28, show the extent of the challenge that the communities faced when the message of the gospel confronted this societal order (109). As far as Paul’s letter to Philemon is concerned does Paul challenge, condone, or perpetuate, even mimic, the imperial structures of power and values?
In this brief, 25-verse, 335-word, letter Paul constructs an alternative empire dominated by male masters, where men discuss issues of profitability, debts, and payments, where slaves, whose very hearts could be possessed, are tools, and where people can only be useful when they become Christian. With rhetoric like this it is not surprising, as Ali Mazrui points out, that Christianity, the religion of the underdog, became an imperial religion (Dube, 2000:11).
Does
Philemon have an explicit stance for or against the political imperialism of
its time?
Imperial metaphors pervade the epistle. It pays homage to the Lord, the Master of the community, Jesus, throughout the letter (vv.3, 5,16,20,25). Felder notes that Paul saw himself as a soldier of Christ, under orders, captured while in battle (vv. 1, 9, 23). He mentions Archippus (v. 2) as a fellow soldier (2000:892). This community has a hierarchy of at least four levels: Master Jesus is on top, then Paul (vv.8, 9, 19, 22), then Philemon, Timothy, Apphia, Archippus, Epaphras, Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke (vv.1, 2, 23, 24), the Onesimus, the Christian slave (vv. 10, 11), and, by inference, other slaves in Philemon’s household, Christian, useful, and non-Christian, useless (vv.2, 11).
Does the
epistle encourage travel to distant and inhabited lands and how does it justify
itself? We know the expansionist rhetoric of most New Testament books. There
are no explicit travelogues in Philemon. What it has is possession of people’s
souls. The useless, becomes useful (v.11) only when they are begotten (v.10)
and possessed (v.12). According
to Freire each act of conquest implies a conqueror and someone who is
conquered. The conqueror imposes his objectives on the conquered, and makes of
them his possession. He imposes his own contours on the vanquished, who
internalize this shape and become ambiguous beings “housing” another (134).
Onesimus is a vessel, a “house” for Paul’s heart (v.12).
How does
the epistle construct difference: is there dialogue and liberating
interdependence, or is there condemnation and replacement of all that is
foreign? Is there celebration of
difference authentic or mere tokenism? Dube notes that Rudyard Kipling’s
articulation of imperialism in “The White Man’s Burden” insists that
imperialism is a duty, a burden, a cross that the white man must carry, not for
his sake but for another’s profit. The colonizer has become the liberator—a
Moses, a Jesus setting people free from the night of their own shortcomings
(Dube, 2000:85). As Bieberstein notes: “Although Paul says he is entitled to
issue commands (v. 8) and refers t his age (v.9) and his imprisonment on behalf
of Christ (9-10, 13) in such a way that it is surely difficult to resist his
authority, he chooses instead to make a request (v. 9) (115). Paul acts the benevolent
benefactor. Onesimus, as constructed in the epistle is basically worthless
until he became a Christian (v.11). He
now represents the ideal slave who has received so much, a Christian that owes
both Paul and Philemon (v.12-20).
Does the
text employ representations to construct relationships of subordination and
domination? Dube posits that colonizer and colonized are constructed as
acute opposites of superior and inferior, Godly and ungodly, civilized and
barbaric, manly and womanly, adult and childish, developed and underdeveloped,
Christian and un-christian, white and colored…(2000:64-65) And in Onesimus’
particular case: useless but now useful.
“Onesimus” is the Greek term for “useful.” His being a Christian has
made him worthy of his name (Knox: 567). Useless, a;crhston, occurs only here in the New Testament.
Useful, eu;crhston,
appears only twice in the NT, here and in 2 Timothy 2:21, and both denote
household utensils (Callahan: 35).
I agree with Bieberstein who argues that Paul acts within
the system of slavery and does not infringe on Philemon’s authority to dispose
of his slave (109). She points out that
the epistle reads like “man to man” communication with Paul addressing Philemon
who has two witnesses beside him (Apphia and Archippus) (111). Paul does not
question the calculations of profitability, he does not condemn slavery as
such; and always negotiates about Onesimus, without letting him appear as an
autonomous person (115).
As the literary creation of the colonizer’s pen, Onesimus acts as mouthpiece of their agenda. The colonizer’s ideal dream is that the colonized will proclaim the colonizer’s superiority, pledge absolute loyalty, and surrender all rights voluntarily” (Dube, 2000:78). The epistle’s rhetoric (vv.8-20) argues that Onesimus has received so much from his benefactors, his master/owners, and is thus in a much better place.
I agree with Callahan who says that “the story of Philemon’s history of interpretation focused on Paul interceding on behalf of a thieving slave in flight from his noble master. It is the ‘once-upon-a-time-there-was-a-slave-named-Onesimus’ story, with a moral commending genteel despotism and service obedience” (69).
As a further illustration, William Barclay, whose multi-volume Daily Study Bible series is a staple in many Filipino preachers’ libraries, proclaims: “In Christ the useless person has been made useful… Christianity produces people who are of use and can do a job better than they ever could if they did not know Christ.” (280).
Philemon’s reception history is an expected response to its imperializing rhetoric. Back to my metaphor, the epistle is a jeep. And most of its interpretations are jeeps. On the other hand, Bieberstein’s, Callahan’s, and Miranda’s are not.
Each of the readings I have surveyed above represent particular and perspectival readings. All these are legitimate for the communities that found and find them relevant. For the engineers at Ford, their “reading” of the jeep’s specifications was the best. I am sure Bantam and Willys engineers thought the same way as far as their “readings” were concerned. I am equally sure that there are faith communities that find Barclay’s and Garland’s “Paul-more-congenial-to-American-sensibilities” readings edifying.
At this point Daniel Patte and Cristina Grenholm’s suggestions (34-37) are helpful, especially in accounting for the differences among the “non-jeep” readings. First is social location. They argue that interpreters, whether they admit it or not, set out to address, challenge, or transform concrete situations. Callahan wants to “make history” (ix) by memorializing abolitionist readings (x). Miranda wants Paul to “challenge our ways of living our faith in Christ” (viii). Bieberstein wants to “see the struggle for survival of those men, women, and children within the dominant system of Pax Romana” and “ask what visions are contained within the text” (106). Patte and Grenholm point out that the term scripture means different things to different people. There are those who read scripture for guidance, like a canon for a faith community. There are those who read it to address situations of powerlessness or lack of vision. There are others still who read it as corrective glasses. Callahan argues that the text itself corrects the centuries-old argument, perpetuated in commentary after commentary, that Onesimus was a fugitive. He remarks that there are no verbs of flight in the entire epistle (5). Bieberstein looks at Philemon as resistance literature that offers a vision of “a rupture in the normal reality of slavery” grounded on a woman’s presence, Apphia, as witness to the liberating praxis of the evkklhsi,a (105).
Grenholm and Patte also argue that readers locate meaning either behind the text, within it, or in front of it. Those who locate meaning behind the text use historical and social-scientific theories to construct arguments about texts’ sources, tradition history, and redaction. Those who locate meaning within the text use literary theory to construct authors and readers and story worlds. Readers in front of the text, whom Patte calls advocacy readers, explicitly use feminist, gay/lesbian studies, queer theory, cultural studies, and other methods, to locate meaning relevant for diverse communities. Bieberstein is explicit about her reading as a contribution in the “direction of a creative reconstruction of women’s history” (116). Miranda uses a “socio-literary approach to make Philemon speak to us today” (viii). Callahan, using the text as a window, remarks,” On the basis of the text of Philemon, Chrysostom told a story about slavery. There is little evidence, however, that his original reading was the original reading…. There is another story to be told… the reconciliation of the estranged Philemon and Onesimus” (118-119).
Again, all of the readings I have presented are legitimate readings. They are relevant to communities that find them relevant. But Good news is always relative. Interpretations that perpetuate Philemon’s imperial rhetoric are products of the hermeneutics of consent. Interpretations that challenge the epistle’s history of interpretation are products of the hermeneutics of suspicion. But are they jeepney readings?
“When it comes to the connection of the Bible, its readers, and its institutions to Western imperialism, there is no call for special pleading. The evidence is overwhelming” (Dube, 2000:15). Laura Donaldson asks: “What civilization invented the most brutal system of conquest and exploitation the world has ever known? Christian. Who made slavery the basis for capitalist expansion? Christians. What religion has been the most responsible for the genocide of aboriginal peoples? Christianity. In my view the Christian church has a much more substantial record of pure evil than any final good” (7).
Canaan Banana posits that the Bible is an important book of the church and that it includes liberating messages; nevertheless, there remains the sense in which, unless one embraces the Christian concept of God, one is not fully a person of God (Dube, 2000:14). Mary John Mananzan points out that the Bible in spite of all the reinterpretations, remains a book written from a patriarchal, dominator, imperial perspective and thus must be used to inform and not define Filipino life and struggles (176-177). How then does one do a decolonizing reading of an imperializing text? In other words, “how does one read the Bible without perpetuating the self-serving paradigm of contracting one group as superior to another?” (Dube, 2000:15) How do Asian Christians, particularly Filipinos, “overcome the alienation they feel as they try to relate the biblical world, colonial Christianity, and their own reality”? (Kwok: 42). I suggest jeepney hermeneutics.
Most Filipino readings fall within a spectrum: at one end are interpretations that fundamentally mimic European-American exegesis. Thus, it is a common practice for many pastors to lift out materials from Barclay’s Daily Study Bible series, the multi-volume Interpreter's Bible, even the devotional Our Daily Bread for their sermons and Bible studies. Carlos Abesamis remarks that nothing is the matter with foreigners doing foreign theology (for themselves). The issue is that Filipino theology is a photocopy of Euro-American theology (1997:23,33). At the middle is the more widespread interpretive practice of using local illustrations with foreign, mostly Western, analytical tools and methods. In other words many Filipino readings present data from the local context yet, to echo Tinyiko Maluleke, “its explanatory strategies are seldom, if ever, fashioned out of local practices, beliefs, and cultures” (243). Filipino Bible scholar Ver Miranda, for example, is explicit when he describes his methodology as “socio-literary” and “historical-critical.” Maluleke cautions: “There is something wrong when analytical frameworks must almost always be derived from outside”(243). At the other end of the spectrum is jeepney hermeneutics that draws its inspiration from the Filipino practice of “fishing.”
“Fishing”
is the term that best describes what underpins many Filipino resistance symbols
and rituals. Leny Strobel points out that the invitation, “Mangisda tayo”
(Let’s go fishing), aside from the obvious meaning describes the Filipino
practice of fishing out words or phrases from a stream of unintelligible
discourses and proceeding to weave a relevant narrative that oftentimes have
little or no relation to the discourse that produced it. As A.J. Levine puts
it: “It is like Jacob wrestling with the angel, in darkness, not knowing
whether it is friend or foe, but determined nevertheless to extract a blessing
from it.”
Isagani Cruz asks of any text, “Whose story is it?” If it is not the Filipinos’, then are they able to “fish” out something from it and create their own stories? They are able and they have. On the shores of Mactan stands a monument erected in 1941 by the US commonwealth commemorating Ferdinand Magellan’s death. It reads: “On this spot Ferdinand Magellan died on April 27, 1521 wounded in an encounter with the soldiers of Lapulapu, chief of Mactan Island. One of Magellan's ships, the Victoria, under the command of Juan Sebastian Elcano, sailed from Cebu on May 1, 1521, and anchored at San Lucar de Barrameda on September 6, 1522, thus completing the first circumnavigation of the earth.” In 1951, Filipinos “fished” out Lapulapu from that story and created another story, another monument, one they can call their own. This one reads: “Here, on April 27 1521, Lapulapu and his warriors repulsed the Spanish invaders, killing their leader, Ferdinand Magellan. Thus, Lapulapu became the first Filipino to have repelled European aggression.”
A jeepney is a “fished” out reading of a jeep. At the end of the Second World War, Americans had a problem: what to do with the surplus of jeeps rotting and rusting at various depots in the Philippines (Nofuente, 1998; Ravenholt, 1962). Thus was born the jeepney. What the Americans thought useless, Filipinos found useful. A jeep’s transformation into a jeepney begins when its original intent, its imperializing function, is set aside. First, its machine gun mount is removed. Then, its body is stretched to create more space, to accommodate more people. Today’s sixteen or more -seater PUJ (public utility jeep) has more than five times the capacity of the three-seater jeep. Most jeepneys have a radio, an eight-track, a tiny electric fan, photographs pasted on the walls, window drapes, even an altar: a Filipino home on wheels. The jeepney is akin to what Elsa Tamez calls “a house in which there is room for everybody” (1996:205). Valerio Nofuente takes pride in the jeepney’s elasticity; there is always room for one more. He notes: “If a child is in the jeep and an adult gets in, he or she is offered a lap (not necessarily a relative's) to sit on in order to make space. If a woman laden with a market basket and a chicken gets in, hands reach out for her basket, and feet are moved aside to find a place for it. The passengers seem to be performing a ritual. They are, as a matter of fact, not facing the direction of their destination, but each other… It is something like the Filipino home. If one arrives while the family is at table, an extra place is immediately laid, and the rice and fish somehow are enough for all, for everyone to adjust his or her intake for the guest.” Simply put, in jeepneys Filipinos have created a vehicle of their culture out of a vehicle of war.
Jeepney hermeneutics as a decolonizing reading, thus involves at least three elements. First, it involves reading texts by disregarding, setting aside, or resisting imperial rhetoric, its agents and those who mimic them (getting rid of the machine gun mount). This means privileging the “random aberrant outbursts in a world otherwise rigidly held together by its patriarchal attitudes and androcentric perspective” (Weems, 1991:76). This means privileging the subaltern in texts, what Leela Gandhi describes as “the ones who disappear because we never hear them speak. They only serve as medium for competing discourses to represent their claims,” like the pai/j in Matthew 8:5-13 and Onesimus.
Filipino activists report that in the mid-70s, at the height of the US-sponsored Martial Law regime of Ferdinand Marcos, “Christ is the Answer” banners flooded Metro Manila. On one of these banners one wrote, in red ink, “What is the Question?” The second element of jeepney hermeneutics involves acknowledging that the answers the Bible provides (like the three-seater jeep) are not enough and may even be wrong for the questions being asked by many communities, thus the need to create space for other texts that help inform—not define—peoples’ lives and struggles (therefore, the necessity of the sixteen or more passenger jeepney). Jeepney hermeneutics creates space for other voices, for Filipino “traditions, myths, legends, to harness insights, values and inspiration towards the full flowering of communities and persons” (Mananzan, 1991:176-177).
Edicio dela Torre pushes the boundaries of texts. For example, he engages the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-31) in conversation: What if the Samaritan arrived on the scene ten minutes earlier while the mugging was still ongoing, would he have helped? What if the Samaritan was on the scene even before the mugging started, would he have done anything to stop it from happening? What if that road from Jerusalem to Jericho was made safe so that anyone can come and go freely and safely? For Dela Torre, the normative reading of the Samaritan story—and similar stories—beg extrapolation because unchallenged they perpetuates the cycle of institutionalized victimization. Someone is victimized. Someone comes to the rescue of the victim. Nothing is done so that the victimizers stop victimizing, victims stop being victimized, and rescuers stop coming at the end of the victimization. The cycles of violence need to be broken. To read from Dela Torre’s perspective is to look at a jeep and the Bible and ask: do these completely address Filipino life and struggles?
Third, jeepney hermeneutics involves “reading like a Canaanite” (Donaldson: 10; Weaver: 169), “re-invading the land” (Guardiola-Saenz), re-claiming stolen spaces, and building homes (jeepneys as vehicles of culture). “The Canaanites are, of course, the much vilified people who occupied the ‘promised land’ before the arrival of the wandering Israelites. Yet they also stand in for all peoples whose lands have been conquered and expropriated (Donaldson: 12). Filipinos as one of the most colonized peoples in the world (Fernandez, 2001) are modern-day Canaanites. Majority remain squatters in their own land. For the “homeless” Filipino in the Philippines whose bed was last night’s cardboard box, tonight’s underpass, and tomorrow’s park bench, a jeepney ride, though fleeting, is the closest experience of being “at home.” Reading the Bible inside a jeepney simply means creating space, offering a home for “Canaanites” to think, to speak, to sing, to commune in Canaanite languages.
Jace Weaver argues that Native American peoples, dispossessed of their homeland and annihilated by a foreign invader, emphatically, call for de-colonizing the Gospel. Their perception of time, space, and nature, remarkably different from that of the West’s, define their interpretation. For many of them basileia tou theou (the realm of God) is read in spatial not temporal terms, asking “Where?” and not “When?” They interpret Moses’ trudging up Sinai as a vision quest. They recognize Mary, the mother of Jesus because she is White Buffalo Calf Woman, or Corn Mother, or La llorana refusing to be consoled at the death of her child (169-173). Musimbi Kanyoro points out that “even a ‘women’s reading’ of the Bible does not answer the questions that bother us. In the Martha and Mary stories (Luke 10:38-42; John 11:1-44), we have found liberation in the affirmation by Jesus of Mary’s desire for knowledge…. But what about Martha? A majority of women in Africa are Marthas” (108). African women ask questions different from those in theological debate in general and in women’s theology in particular. They ask about Oprah’s plight, a question even the Bible does not answer (105). A reading of Romans through the Filipino value of utang na loob (debt of the heart) might bear little or no connection to the epistle’s rhetoric, yet it is a reading that creates space for Filipinos (Velunta, 1998).
It is tempting to classify Callahan’s, Bieberstein’s, and Miranda’s readings as examples of jeepney hermeneutics. All three resists the imperializing rhetoric of Philemon’s interpreters and argue for alternative, liberating readings. Jeepney readings, as decolonizing interpretations, suspect both text and interpretation. Callahan’s, Bieberstein’s, and Miranda’s readings do employ a hermeneutics of suspicion as far as Philemon’s reception history is concerned. There’s no doubt about that. Unfortunately, they employ a hermeneutics of consent as far as the “source text” is concerned. The Bible remains authoritative, normative, archetypal, God’s special revelation, blameless. Paul remains the model apostle. Those responsible for Christianity’s sins are the Bible’s and Paul’s interpreters.
Lloyd Lewis argues that traditional scholarship has misunderstood Paul. “One needs only to consider the fact that a second generation of ‘Paulinists’ took up Paul’s mantle to address their problems and that successive generations interpreted Paul according to their contexts and problems. Because of this, biblical scholars, and African-American biblical scholars in particular, have often had to strip away layers of interpretation of Paul by church fathers, preachers, and politicians in order to let Paul himself speak” (233). Winter is more explicit: “The text itself is not a function of the interpreter or of the interpretive process” (209).
Bieberstein opens her essay by pointing out that “as with the household codes, Philemon has been misused in order to stabilize systems of domination that despise human beings, and to keep slaves enslaved (105). Miranda wants to “open up a world that is… formative for us all.” He suggests adopting the stance of listeners allowing the text to unfold and reveal treasures of wisdom and experience (viii). Callahan’s alternative reading begins with establishing what the letter meant to its first audiences in order to draw out what it means for today (x).
Gomang Seratwa Ntloedibe-Kuswani cautions that an imperial ideology—that Christianity is the superior religion over all others and its God the real God—underpins the colonialist communication theory of “source text and receptor languages.” The Bible is the given and cannot be changed, languages, cultures, and peoples can and must be changed to make room for the Bible. Thus, even in translation work, there exists the colonizing ideology that renders receptors into slaves of the “source text” (80-81). Ntloedibe-Kuswani quotes Aloo Mojola who argues that translation is never neutral. It is an instrument of ideological and theological formation grounded on fidelity and faithfulness to the source text (81).
Like the pai/j of Matthew 8:5-13 that I have argued as symbolic of Filipinos (2000:25-32, 2002), Onesimus can also represent the continuing plight of Filipinos. He is objectified in the rhetoric. He is a child, useless before he became a Christian, characterized in utilitarian, economic terms, a commodity. Fred Atkinson, the first American General Superintendent of Education in the Philippines inaugurated over a century of racist public education in the islands when he remarked: "The Filipino people, taken as a body, are children and childlike, do not know what is best for them ... by the very fact of our superiority of civilization and our greater capacity for industrial activity we are bound to exercise over them a profound social influence"(Schirmer: 43-44).
Paul possessed Onesimus’ soul. The Filipino’s soul is equally possessed. Fernandez points out, “The vanquished person, in the long history of oppression, without his or her knowledge, has become a house of the soul of the conqueror… This is glaring among the Filipino people who have begun to think of themselves as ‘little brown Americans’—comparable to the ‘black white men’ of Africa or what Fanon has called ‘black skin, white masks—and are confused regarding their identify as a people” (1994:84).
As a Christian, he
is not just a slave anymore, but a u`pe.r dou/lon —a super slave.
Before he was just Philemon’s slave, now he is a super slave to both
Paul and Philemon and the community. Following Walter Benjamin’s argument that
“it is precisely an individual case that can let us see reality as a whole,”
(Beiberstein: 115) Does Philemon’s household include more “useless”
non-Christian slaves and useful Christian slaves? According to Epifanio San Juan Jr. there are today over seven
million Filipino overseas contract workers. Rhacel Salazar Parreñas points out: “Filipino women are the quintessential servants of globalization.”
“Useless” is a relative term. The tens of thousands of rusted military jeeps the US Army thought useless at the end of World War II in the Philippines, Filipinos found useful as raw materials for what was to become the most popular mode of public transportation in the islands, the jeepney. Paul’s letter to Philemon is explicit--that for a while, Onesimus was “useless.” I read that to mean that for a while he ceased being a tool to either Paul or to Philemon or even to Christ. For a while, Onesimus was not Paul’s child, not a part of Philemon’s household, nor Christ’s slave. For a while, Onesimus was free.
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