| abstract | This dissertation examines the constructed and contested Christian-Jewish identities in Hebrews and 1 Peter through the lens of the "New Negro," a diasporic identity similarly constructed and contested during the Great Migration in the early 20th century. Like the identity "Christian," the New Negro emerged in a context marked by instability, creativity, and the need for a sense of permanence in a hostile political environment. My investigation into these constructs highlights both their coherence and complex internal diversity, as well as the ways that the rhetoric of place, race, and gender were integral to this process of inventing a way of being in the world that was seemingly not reliant on one's physical space. Methodologically, this project develops a diasporic and dialogical imagination based in diaspora theory and African American, postcolonial, and feminist hermeneutics. I assert that the texts of Hebrews and 1 Peter construct their audiences as dis/placed, that is, both in place and out of place. I argue that recognizing the spatial-ethnic reasoning of these texts does not fix identity so much as it invents a flexible but also bounded identity that can be responsive to its political, social, and ethical context while making a space in which to resist it. Thinking with New Negro discourses also brings a broader view of Christian identity negotiation around the letters into focus and allows for thinking beyond the letters' authors to an imagined and diverse audience. As a dialogical cultural study, this project contributes to Hebrews and 1 Peter scholarship by extending the social scientific studies of the construction of the audience's identity beyond the Gentile/Jew divide and asserting that a diasporic identity, both Christian and African American, is constantly shifting between resistance and acculturation. Moreover, for Africana biblical hermeneutics and African American biblical scholarship specifically, this project demonstrates how diasporic identity is a fertile and fruitful area of investigation. It provides a starting point, other than slavery, to explore the diversity and complexity of African American identity. This project identifies the ways in which such a construction makes resistant identity possible but often requires the subordination of difference and diversity within the community to produce a coherent, if always unstable, collective identity. |
