What Shall I Read? How Korean Christians in Diaspora Read the Hebrew Canon

Abstract

When readers read a text, they do not just understand the text mechanically, but are influenced by their personal ideology. The ideology of the readers is composed of ‘their living environments’ as well as their personal reading circumstances. The aim of this paper is to identify an emerging method in reading a text that proposes a new way of interpreting a Christian text. Korean Christian diaspora readers1(KCDR) are not critical readers like literary professionals, but are sincere readers in their communities of faith, apart from the social group of their homeland and new land. What kind of biblical text is popular among this ethnic diaspora group? Why do they predominantly read a particular text when there are many other texts? This paper, in a sociological context, investigates the identification of the KCDR dwelling in non-motherlands including Australia, the United States and South America and three transnational phenomena of geographical change, pilgrimage into a new land and a life of cultural diversity, arguing that the origin of religio-cultural ideology of the KCDR lies in their reading process.