Two Stories in Confluence

Two Stories in Confluence

It is story that makes minjung theology unique. The author begins the discussion by claiming that stories affect the subjectivity of an individual or people. People usually hear stories from others, and time to time tell their own stories. Hearing and telling stories contribute to creating our consciousness and unconsciousness. Then stories need to be reviewed and interpreted critically. The author selects two stories, one from Korean tradition, and the other from the Hebrew Bible: the story of Shim-chong and the story of the daughter of Jephthah. The confluence of two stories is one of the major methods of minjung theology by the late minjung theologian Suh Nam-dong. The author here promotes the encounter or confluence of the two stories and tries to discover the converging point at which the two stories interrelate, intersect and affect mutually. In this paper, the author suggests that the converging point of the two stories is justice and that justice can be seen as a metaphor for resurrection. In the story of Shim-chong, resurrection takes place. In the story of the daughter of Jephthah, the commemoration of the victim has the vestige of resurrection, because in the act of commemoration the victim is made alive. The author here argues that metaphor as a figure of speech can express aspects of new reality alternative to the present dominant reality.