AFRICAN CONTEXTUAL HERMENEUTICS: READERS, READING COMMUNITIES, AND THEIR OPTIONS BETWEEN TEXT AND CONTEXT (original) (raw)
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African Contextual Hermeneutics
Religion and Theology, 2015
ABSTRACT The role of the missionaries and their widespread dissemination of the Bible in the process of colonisation of Africa problematized the interpretation of its text, particularly in South Africa, where it was used both to legitimate apartheid and in the struggle for liberation. This paper documents the emergence of the ‘Tri-polar Model’ (Grenholm and Patte, as modified by Draper) in African Contextual Hermeneutics, problematizes it in terms of the hegemonic role of the reader’s ‘ideo-theological orientation’ (West). A new way forward is sought through emphasizing this role of the reader, but also the possibility of a ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ (Coleridge) in the construction of the ‘othered self’ through ‘conversation’ with the text (Gadamer) and the role of ‘reading communities’ (Fish) in demanding accountability from reader(s).
The promise of attending to literary context for contextual biblical hermeneutics in Africa
Acta Theologica, 2021
For important reasons, African contextual hermeneutics raises the main question: “What does the Scripture mean to us and our community?”. This article asserts that the reader-centred approach tends to allow the voice of the community to ring louder than the voice of Scripture. Repercussions can include a limited role of Jesus Christ and a heightened role of material prosperity in some African expressions of Christian faith. The article argues that contextual hermeneutics needs to make room for the inductive analysis of biblical texts, especially their literary contexts. The heart of a combined inductive and contextual approach is inviting readers to a dialogue between text and context, asking questions that help them use literary context to observe the main aims, themes, and lines of thought of passages of Scripture, and that foster a deep identification between biblical texts and the readers’ context.
The Agikuyu, the bible and colonial constructs: towards an ordinary African readers’ hermeneutics
2010
Recognising the paradigm shift in African biblical studies where the image of a “decontextualized and non-ideological” scientific Bible reader is slowly being replaced with one of a “contextualized and ideological” reader, this research seeks to explore and understand the role of the “ordinary readers” in the development of biblical interpretation in colonial Kenya. It seeks to understand whether the semi-illiterate and illiterate can engage the Bible as capable hermeneuts. The study uses postcolonial criticism to recover and reconstruct the historical encounters of the Agĩkũyũ with the Bible. It reveals that ordinary African readers actively and creatively engaged biblical texts in the moment of colonial transformation using several reading strategies and reading resources. Despite the colonial hegemonic positioning, these Africans hybridised readings from the Bible through retrieval and incorporation of the defunct pre-colonial past; creating interstices that became sites for assi...
In a recent article I characterised the biblical hermeneutics of James H. Cone as a hermeneutic of radical reception and the biblical hermeneutics of Itumeleng Mosala as a hermeneutic of radical production. In this article I argue that though a hermeneutic of reception is the distinctive feature of African biblical hermeneutics, a hermeneutic of production is a particular and distinct contribution by South African biblical scholarship to African biblical scholarship. The article then reflects on how these two hermeneutics might intersect through the inclusion of ordinary African readers of the Bible in both the reception process and in a collaborative analysis of the contested sites of the Bible's production.
The reconstruction of forms of African theology:towards effective biblical interpretation
1999
This thesis sets out to investigate current reconstruction of forms of African theology that is taking place in parts of Africa. The specific interest is to identify emerging biblical interpretative modes from these theologies and seek to suggest ways of making them effective for the benefit of African communities of readers and the biblical academia as a whole. After a brief consideration of the contribution of historical critical interpretation, this thesis then focused specifically on the development of African scholarly readings. The specific interest in these African readings is• to provide the necessary criteria which will ensure that critical scholarly readings can both be differentiated and derived from popular readings. My interest in popular readings is because of the major role they play in the provision of contextual components or the missing links that can only be obtained from ordinary readers, that the scholarly reader needs in hislher reconstruction of• African self-understanding. I have therefore looked at the attempts to structure the relationship between ordinary readers and scholarly readers and out of that has come the contribution to the theologies of reconstruction in Africa. In summary, to respond to the quest for acceptable critical models of reading the Bible using African cultural texts and world view, it has become necessary to provide recommendations for African hermeneuts which would enhance their readings in order to make their contributions to scholarly biblical interpretation to the global community more effective. This is exactly what this thesis aims at achieving.