Biblical hermeneutics: an Afrocentric perspective
Gosnell L Yorke*
Biblical hermeneutics is a complex undertaking...
J N K Mugambi 1
AbstractSince it is now acknowledged that all theology is practised from a certain perspective, a space is cleared for an Afrocentric reading of biblical scriptures. Afrocentrism is an attempt to re-read Scripture from a premeditatedly Africa-centred perspective which breaks the hermeneutical hegemony and ideological stranglehold of Western biblical scholarship. It is shown, furthermore, that an Afrocentric reading of the Old and New Testaments and an Afrocentric understanding of the figure of Jesus Christ undercut all Eurocentric pretensions.
INTRODUCTIONAllow me to begin my article the African way; and that is with a story. It takes me back some years ago when I was an undergraduate theology student in a Protestant college in the Caribbean or West Indian island-nation called Trinidad and Tobago. On that memorable day my theology instructor invited a Hindu priest to our class in comparative religions to give us neophytes an overview, from the inside, of what Hinduism as a Weltanschauung or worldview is essentially all about. At the end of his presentation our Hindu guest allowed us to ask him a few questions which he handled with great care, calm and competence. He then asked us an epistemologically and hermeneutically loaded question, namely, how do you people know that your interpretation of the Bible is correct? While we were struggling in silence to formulate a credible response, our instructor himself decided to take up the challenge posed by the question and retorted: `It is simple. The Bible is its own interpreter. We do not interpret the Bible per se. Through the enabling and the enlightenment of the Spirit, we simply allow the Bible, as the inspired and, therefore, authoritative word of God, to speak to and through us.' `Nonsense!' yelled the Hindu priest who, in so doing, showed us that he could lose his calm or equipoise if and when he considered it necessary. `How can a book interpret itself? It is we as human beings who do the interpreting!' End of story.
Those of us who are heirs of the Protestant Reformation sometimes fall prey to the human tendency to reduce complex human issues and concerns to simplistic terms -- especially perhaps when it comes to biblical hermeneutics, `a complex undertaking'. Alongside the `sola energy' of the Reformation, namely, sola gratia, sola fide, and sola Scriptura, is at least one other slogan, to wit, Scriptura sacra sui ipsius interpres (Scripture as its own interpreter).2
As captivating as this hermeneutical principle might sound, however, the truth as that it does not stand up to close empirical scrutiny even when judged against the backdrop of the Reformers themselves. Robbins, for example, is quite right in pointing out that the last two decades alone `have exhibited significant divisions of the house in New Testament interpretation'.3I quote him in extenso:
One group of interpreters emphasizes above all else the inner discursive nature of New Testament texts. Even here there is a parting of the ways: some emphasize formalist, structuralist and linguistic approaches, some emphasize reader-response approaches, some emphasize various kinds of rhetorical approaches, and some give prominence to postmodern approaches ... Other circles of interpreters champion intertextual analysis and interpretation, and here again there is a parting of the ways. Some interpreters insist on limiting intertextuality to generically antecedent texts ... while others explore cultural texts of various kinds in a framework guided by a perception of culture as text ... Still other interpreters use various social sciences to investigate New Testament texts. Here also there are divisions of the house. Some interpreters stay at the level of social history ... some emphasize the use of sociology ... and some feature cultural and social anthropology, and social psychology ... In this area, there are divisions among people who use models in interpretation ..., people who use traditional modes of interpretation ..., and people who use postmodern modes of historical and literary interpretation ... There is still one more circle of interpreters -- a group that emphasize ideology. Feminist criticism appears to have started the emphasis on this aspect of texture in New Testament texts ... Latin American liberation interpretations emerged, at first using German literary -- historical methods ... African-American New Testament interpretation is now making an additional rich contribution to this area.4
It is little wonder that Robbins concludes by saying: `The presence of variety within these circles of interpretation is enervating, on the one hand, and bewildering, on the other.'5
To better appreciate what is to come later in this article, then, I consider it of cardinal importance to devote some time, though briefly, to a discussion of and justification for the use of one of the operative words in the subtitle of the paper, namely perspective.
PERSPECTIVEIn some Christian theological circles it is now a truism (an axiom, as it were) that God may have made us in God's own image (Gen1:26) but that in our theologising about who God is, we inevitably end up, to varying degrees, making God in our image as well -- be it consciously or subconsciously.
Human language, the limitation of the human imagination, the `imprisonments' imposed on us by culture, personality, gender and upbringing, the particularities of our own socio-economic and other contexts, plus the presence of sin in the life of the believer-theologian, one who is simul iustus et peccator, are all factors and forces that make what we see and say inevitably perspectival in nature. And that seems true even when aided in our Christian theological reflections by the Holy Spirit himself. The profusion of doctrinal positions and the (mindless?) proliferation of Churches within Protestantism alone is clear empirical testimony to the validity of this claim. As human beings, we seem able, ultimately, but to see `through a glass darkly (1 Cor 13:12)'. Our presuppositions, preunderstandings and biases of whatever kind, invariably impose limits on us -- limits which no amount of formal education or life-experience seems able to eradicate entirely. It is this fact of life which John Elliott, the white American New Testament scholar, captures in his own creative way. He says: `All perception is selective and constrained psychologically and socially; for no mortal enjoys the gift of ``immaculate perception.'' '6
This is a basic hermeneutical lesson we have also learned, a basic insight gleaned, from those Christian theologians now committedly engaged in theologising `from below', in theologising from the perspective of the oppressed; of the poor and the powerless, women and the weak. Reference is here being made, of course, to those theologies often referred to as Liberation theologies, or those which I choose to refer to as `Third world' Christian theologies,7 pointing to the experiences and expectations of those who now constitute the vast majority of the world's population but who find themselves, for the most part, at its periphery. Felder, an African-American New Testament scholar, for example, makes the point as follows:
European/Euro-American biblical scholars have asked questions that shaped answers within the framework of the racial, cultural, and gender presuppositions they held in common. This quiet consensus has undermined the self-understanding and place in history of other racial and ethnic groups.8
And this undermining of one's self-understanding, especially that of blacks, not only tended to breed feelings of self-doubt and even self-contempt, but also fostered a profound respect bordering on awe and fear of those doing the interpreting. Feelings generated were not alike those which Mr Mandela describes in his recent autobiography. He writes: `These whites appeared as grand as gods to me, and I was aware that they are to be treated with a mixture of fear and respect.9
But no more! The point is essentially this: in our post-colonial and now post-apartheid era, African Christians of all denominational labels, whether they are here on the continent or there in the Diaspora, are `coming of age' and are therefore no longer willing to appropriate wholeheartedly and then submit obsequiously to any hermeneutical model that seemingly emanates from, and resonates with, the experiences and expectations of the privileged and the powerful, that is those who are perceived as being mostly `Western' in orientation, white in colour and male in gender. Because of our particularities, presuppositions, pre-understandings and therefore our limited perspective on things, our `maculate perceptions', as it were, we are being admonished to avoid the pretentious claim that it is possible for any one person or a homogenised group of persons to mount a hermeneutical strategy that is timelessly applicable in its appeal or all-inclusively embracing in its scope.10 It is for this reason, then, that I must now turn to the next operative term in the title of the article, namely, Afrocentric.
AFROCENTRICThe term Afrocentric is an adjectival spin-off from the terms Afrocentrism and Afrocentricity (used interchangeably); and such terms are of relatively recent vintage. Afrocentrism appears, for example, in the most recent work, in English, of one of Kenya's foremost writers now in exile, namely Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Speaking about his own experience in his book, Moving the centre: the struggle for cultural freedoms, he wrote in 1993 as follows:
I was horrified, when I returned [from the University of Leeds, England] to Kenya in 1967, to find that the Department of English [at the University of Nairobi] was still organized on the basis that Europe was the centre of the universe. Europe, the centre of our imagination? Ezekiel Mphaphlele from South Africa, who was there before me, had fought hard to have some African texts introduced into the syllabus. Otherwise the department was still largely oblivious to the rise of the new literatures in European languages in Africa let alone the fact of the long existing tradition of African-American literature and that of Caribbean peoples. The basic question was: From what base did African peoples look at the world? Eurocentrism or Afrocentrism?11
Cain Hope Felder, already mentioned in the paper, is an African-American and New Testament scholar who teaches at Howard University, Washington, DC, USA. Howard is one of the foremost black universities in the world. In addition, Felder is not only the editor of the Journal of Religious Thought but is also the founder and chairperson of the Biblical Institute for Social Change attached to Howard University; author of the groundbreaking book, Troubling biblical waters: race, class and family;12 editor of a collaborative work with other African-Americans, Stony the road we trod: African American biblical interpretation;13 and general editor of The original African heritage study Bible14 based on the King James Version. In his book chapter entitled, `Cultural Ideology, Afrocentrism and Biblical interpretation', which appears in the text, Black theology: a documentary history, volume two (1993), Felder writes as follows:
An examination of the term Afrocentricity will make clear what I and other Black Biblical scholars have found helpful in correcting the effects of the cultural ideological conditioning to which we have all been subjected. Afrocentricity is the idea that the land mass that the ancient Romans routinely called Africa and the peoples of African descent must be understood as having made significant contributions to world civilization as prospective subjects within history rather than being regarded as merely passive objects of historical distortions. Afrocentrism means reestablishing Africa as a center of value and source of pride, without in any way demeaning other people and their historic contributions to human achievement. The term was coined by [the African-American] Molafi kete Asante of Temple University [USA] and as used [in Biblical Studies] it refers to a methodology that reappraises ancient biblical traditions, their exegetical history in the West, and their allied hermeneutical implications..., [demonstrating] clearly that we have arrived at a new stage in Biblical interpretation.15 Afrocentricity or Afrocentrism, in short, is an attempt to re-read Scripture but from a premeditatedly Africa-centred perspective and, in doing so, to break the hermeneutical hegemony and ideological stranglehold that white `Western' biblical scholars have long enjoyed in relation to the Bible. Early attempts so far have sought to put Africa and blacks back into the Bible by amplifying the voice of the blacks who are already there and by raising their profile and visibility.16 Afrocentric hermeneutics, as conceived and practised, is meant to be both a hermeneutics of suspicion ideologically17 and a hermeneutics of liberation psychosocially-cum-politically.18
To shift from the sphere of the relatively abstract, from the realm of principles, propositions and postulates, to that of particulars and `practicals', then, let me now demonstrate what an Afrocentric hermeneutics of suspicion and liberation would mean for the Bible as a whole, and what in specific terms it might mean for the New Testament in particular. I will consider briefly the colour of Jesus as a case in point.
AFROCENTRIC HERMENEUTICS AND THE OLD TESTAMENTBasic to the position of Afrocentric hermeneutics is the contention that the Genesis account of Creation not only serves a useful function but undercuts any and all Eurocentric pretensions. Eden, for example, is best situated in Africa, since two of the four rivers of the Garden, namely the Pishon and the Gihon, have their provenance in Cush or Ethiopia (see Gen 2:10--14). Further, the other two rivers, namely the Hiddekal (Tigris) and the Euphrates, are situated in Mesopotamia where the Garden itself is reported to have been planted. That is, Eden as a larger area was located somewhere on the African mainland, whereas the Garden itself, planted `eastward in Eden', was located between the Nile in Africa and the Euphrates in Mesopotamia, now roughly equivalent to present-day Syria and Iraq. And even Mesopotamia itself should be regarded as a northeast extension of Africa since it then constituted one unbroken land mass with the continent. With the fairly modern construction of the Suez Canal (in 1869) has come the false cartographical separation between the African continent and the so-called `Middle East', a designation that has become quite fashionable since World War II but one which makes no sense geographically. A place cannot be located `middle' and `east' concurrently. This false separation may have been motivated by a Eurocentric desire to disconnect the `Bible lands' from Africa, more anciently known as Alkebu Lan, meaning the Mother of Humankind or of all Lands.19
The fact is, in spite of subconscious and perhaps even concerted Eurocentric efforts to de-Africanise the Bible, the Bible is replete with references to Africa and people of African descent. Ethiopia, for example, is mentioned more than forty times and Egypt over one hundred times. Many biblical and extra-biblical sources in ancient times make mention of Egypt and Ethiopia, at times interchangeably, sometimes using Ethiopia as synecdochic shorthand (pars pro toto) for the continent as a whole.20
In spite of this, however, and as Randall Baily has rightly pointed out:
...the tendency in Old Testament scholarship has been to deny that African nations and individuals either play a role in the text of the Hebrew Canon or had an influence upon it. Sometimes the methods used to deny the presence of Africans within the text have been subtle. Other times they have been not so subtle.21 As Bailey goes on to illustrate, this denial and de-Africanising tendency manifests itself in `current introductions to the Old Testament and histories of Israel', `maps of the Bible lands', `dictionaries of the Bible', and `in the work of church historians and theologians.'22 The Eurocentric tendency is either to take Egypt and even Ethiopia out of Africa altogether by locating them in the so-called Near or Middle East or to concede begrudgingly that one or both are in Africa after all, but that their `cultural influence on Palestine was modest' at best. But this could hardly be the case, of course, since, as has been suggested, Eden itself must have been located at least partially in Africa, making Adam and Eve of African or, perhaps more correctly, of Afro-Asiatic descent. Moreover, the children of Israel spent centuries in Egypt and the apartheid policy was not such that it totally shielded the Israelites, themselves of Afro-Asiatic extraction, from the strong cultural forces of the Egyptians. Moses, for example, was nurtured in Egyptian court circles and would later marry an Egyptian maiden. (Ex 2:19; Num 12:1; also see Lev 24:10--16; 1 Chron 2:34f).
It is little wonder, then, that the African presence in the Old Testament is anything but superficial. It is substantial. Nimrod, the founder of Mesopotamian civilisation, for example, was of African descent, being the son of Cush, the African (Gen 10:8--12); and so was Zephaniah the prophet, who is identified as the son of Cushi (Zeph 1:1). In addition to Bailey, Copher has also demonstrated that the African presence in the Old Testament is not a token one. If anything, it is total.24
It means, essentially, that an Afrocentric hermeneutical approach to the Old Testament is justified, if for no other reason than that the African presence there is so pronounced. In the Old Testament Africa is not peripheral but central to an understanding of what God's will was for God's ancient people in the then known Afro-Asiatic world. To deny or minimise the African presence in the Old Testament is to fall prey to the Eurocentric bias and to perpetuate the racist and pathological ethos of the West.25
AFROCENTRIC HERMENEUTICS AND THE NEW TESTAMENTThe New Testament is incomplete without some knowledge of the Old. Augustine, the African, put it rather well. For him, the New is in the Old concealed; the Old is in the New revealed. And this distum, poetically expressed, is also applicable when it comes to an Afrocentric hermeneutical approach to the New Testament as a whole. The truth, however, is that denials and attempts at de-Africanisation or the minimalisation of the African presence have come to mark and mar not only Old Testament scholarship but also New Testament studies. What Bailey said of Old Testament scholarship is essentially what Felder says of New Testament studies. For him:
New Testament scholarship limits itself to focusing upon the Greco-Roman world. Hence, modern readers of the Bible take it for granted that maps of the New Testament lands appropriately eliminate the continent of Africa. Even the modern creation of the so-called Middle East can only be seen as the extension of the Western tendency to de-Africanize this section of the world. Thus it has trivialized the ancient contribution of Africa in the shaping of the peoples and cultures of the entire region. Clearly, we are dealing with a modern ideological set of hermeneutical assumptions that suggests that nothing good has ever come out of Africa. What we must remember is that this thinking constitutes nothing short of fraudulent historiography on the part of Eurocentric Bible scholars.26
THE COLOUR OF JESUS: A CASE IN POINTOf the three Synoptic gospels, Matthew alone records that Joseph, Mary and Jesus were once refugees in Egypt in their attempt to foil Herod's murderous plot and ploy (Matt 2:1--18); and further that their escape to and return from Egypt (Africa) was in providential fulfilment of Hosea 11:1, namely, `out of Egypt (Africa) have I called my Son.' The fact that Herod, the Roman puppet king, chose to execute `all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men,' (v 16--RSV), must mean, at least, that Jesus and his family spent more than a fleeting moment in Egypt. It is not inconceivable, for example, that Jesus might well have learned to walk and talk right here in Africa. Further, Jesus and his Jewish family, being Afro-Asiatic in colour and culture, would have appeared more chocolate-brown than Caucasian in complexion -- more like a typically miscegenated African American, Kenyan Kikuyu or South African `coloured'. That is, Jesus would not have `looked like someone from Great Britain and Scandinavia'.27 Felder further writes:
If one lends any historical credence to this [Matthean] tradition, imagine the divine family as [white] Europeans hiding in [black] Africa! This is rather doubtful. After all, Egypt has always been part of Africa, despite centuries of European scholarship that have diligently sought to portray Egypt as an extension of Southern Europe.28
The Afrocentric hermeneutical implication of this Matthean tradition is that the clarion call for the contemporary contextualisation of Christology and Christianity in Africa is entirely justified, if for no other reason than that Jesus himself in his early years was not only in Africa itself but most likely looked less like the Leonardo da Vinci depiction of him and more like an African American or its equivalent29 Also useful, and as was true of the Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible), is the pervading presence of Africans in the New Testament as a whole. Luke, in spite of his Eurocentric focus and fixation on Rome as the centre of his own narrative world, especially in his second volume,30 agrees with Matthew and Mark that an African helped Jesus carry his cross (see Matt 27:32; Mark 15:21; and Luke 23:26). Luke also makes mention of Simeon (perhaps Simon of Cyrene) who is called black (Simeon hou kaloumenos Niger) and Lucius of Cyrene (of Africa) as being among the Antiochene church leadership (Acts 13:1), as well as implying that the first Gentile convert to early Christianity was not Cornelius the European (Acts 10) but the eunuch of Ethiopia (Acts 8).
CONCLUSIONAfrocentric biblical hermeneutics, as a hermeneutics of suspicion and liberation, is still in its infancy, although a spate of books and articles have seen the light of day in recent years. As a hermeneutical strategy it is informed by the conviction that all biblical interpretation, however scientific and `objective' it purports to be, is perspectival in nature, sociopolitical in effect, and ideological in thrust. There is no such thing as a value-free biblical hermeneutics which exists in some abstract, absolute or autonomous realm far removed from the biases and blind spots to which we are all susceptible as fallible, `fallen' human beings.
The hegemonic hold that Eurocentric hermeneutics has long had on biblical studies, therefore, is now being openly challenged and gradually broken not only by feminist, womanist and other liberationist hermeneutics in general,31 but by Afrocentric hermeneutics in particular. In the words of Mosala: `Aluta continua'32
NOTES1 J N K Mugambi, From liberation to reconstruction: African Christian theology after the Cold War, Nairobi, Kenya: East Africa Educational Publishers Ltd, 1995, p 143.
2 See Bernard Ramm, Protestant biblical interpretation. Third Revised Edition (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1970), p 107; and A Berkley Mickelsen, Interpreting the Bible, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm B Eerdmans, 1963, p 38.
3 That statement is true of the Bible as a whole. See Vernon K Robbins, Using a socio-rhetorical poetics to develop a unified method: the woman who anointed Jesus as a test case, Seminar Papers: Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting 1992, Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1992, p 302. For a history of the ups and downs in interpreting the New Testament, see S Neill et al, The Interpretation of The New Testament: 1861--1986, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1988.
4 Ibid, pp302--303. Also see L M Poland, Literary criticism and biblical hermeneutics: a critique of formalist approaches, Chico, California: Scholars Press, 1985. Of course, two standard works in the area of the whole hermeneutical discussion are A C Thiselton, The two horizons: New Testament hermeneutics and philosophical description, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm B Eerdmans, 1980; and A C Thisleton, New horizons in hermeneutics: the theory and practice of transforming biblical reading, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1992. Unfortunately, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, a Prefect of the Roman Catholic Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the Holy Office, and before that the Holy Inquisition) has a very low view of feminist exegesis and hermeneutics. For him, they are `symptoms of the disintegration of interpretation and hermeneutics, carried on by those who are no longer interested in ascertaining the truth, but only in whatever will serve their own particular agendas'. In fact, he lumps `materialist and feminist exegesis' together. An example of the former method of exegesis and hermeneutics can be found in 1 Mosala, Biblical hermeneutics and black theology in South Africa, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm B Eerdmans, 1989. For the Ratzinger quote, see Richard J Neuhaus, (gen ed), Biblical interpretation in crisis: the Ratzinger Conference in Bible and Church, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm B Eerdmans, 1989, p 5. Perhaps it is not at all surprising either that Osborne, the `evangelical' scholar, makes no mention whatsoever of feminist and other liberationist hermeneutics in his work in spite of the rather pretentious title it bears. See G R Osborne, The hermeneutical spiral: a comprehensive introduction of biblical interpretation, Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1991. Cf Thisleton, Ibid, pp 410--470; and that `sin of omission' is also true of an even more recent evangelical text. See W Kaiser et al An introduction to biblical hermeneutics: the search for meaning, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1994), pp 229ff.
5 Ibid, p 303.
6 Emphasis mine, See J H Elliott, Social-scientific criticism of the New Testament and its social world: more on method and models, in SEMEIA: An Experimental Journal in Biblical Criticism, Decatur, Ga: Scholars Press, 1986, p 5; also see J H Elliott, What is social-scientific criticism? Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 1993; Ian Barbour, Myths, models, and paradigms: a comparative study of science and religion New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1974; Peter Berger et al, The social construction of reality: a treatise in the sociology of knowledge, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967; Max Black, Models and metaphors: studies in language and philosophy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1962, E E Hindson, The sociology of knowledge and biblical interpretation, Theologia Evangelica 17 (1984):33--38; Carolyn Osiek, What are they saying about the social setting of the New Testament? New York, NY: Paulist Press, 1984; and Philip Rechter, Recent sociological approaches to the study of the New Testament, Religion 14 (1984):77--90. Carson makes a point similar to Elliot. He writes: `No human being living in time and speaking any language can ever be entirely culture-free about anything.' See D A Carson, Factors determining current hermeneutical debate, in Biblical interpretation and the Church: the problem of contextualization, edited by D A Carson, Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 1984, p 19; and J Botha, Reading Romans 13: aspects of the ethnics of interpretation in a controversial text Dissertation, University of Stellenbosch, 1991, p241. An abbreviated version of this dissertation has since been published by Scholars Press, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 1994.
7 The literature about such issues is already vast and continues to grow at a steady pace. For me, Third World Christian theologies include (at least): Latin American Liberation Theology, Feminist Theology, Womanist Theology, Black Theology, Caribbean Emancipatory Theology and, of course, African Theology (ies). For illustrative purposes, see E Fiorenza, In memory of her: a feminist theological reconstruction of Christian origins, New York, NY: Crossroad, 1983; J Grant,White woman's Christ and black woman's Jesus: feminist christology and womanist response Atlanta, Ga: Scholars Press, 1989; J Cone et al, eds, Black Theology: a documentary history (Volume One -- 1966--79; Volume Two -- 1980--1992), New York, NY: Orbis, 1980; 1993; I Mosala, Biblical hermeneutics and black theology in South Africa; K Davis, Emancipation still comin': exploration in Carribean emancipatory theology, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1990; D Hopkins, Black theology USA and South Africa, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1989; Paul Grant et al, eds, A time to speak: perspectives of black Christians in Britain, Nottingham, UK: The Russell Press, 1990. For a review of the last book mentioned see G Yorke, Journal of Ecumenical Studies 28(1991):646f. As for Latin American Liberation theology, see, for example, Dean W Ferm's two books, namely Third World Liberation Theologies: a reader and Third World liberation theologies: an introductory survey, MaryKnoll, NY: Orbis, 1986; also A T Hennelly, Liberation theology: a documentary history, MaryKnoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990; and A F McGovern, Liberation Theology and its critics: toward an assessment, MaryKnoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1990; M Oduyoye et al, eds, With passion and compassion: Third World women doing theology, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988; Ambrose Moyo et al, eds, Theology and the black experience: the Lutheran heritage interpreted by African and African-American theologians, Minneapolis, Minn: Augsburg, 1988; G Yorke, AfriCanadian theology: a newcomer, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Quarterly Review: An Ecumenical Witness, 1986; and K C Abraham, ed, Third World Theologies: commonalities and divergencies -- Papers and Reflections from the Second General Assembly of the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990. For a review of this book, see G Yorke, Journal of Ecumenical Studies 28(1991):341f. For a fairly balanced and basically appreciative appraisal of Third World Christian Theologies from a white, male and Western perspective, see Per Frostin, Liberation theology in Tanzania and South Africa: a First World interpretation, Lund, Sweden: Lund University Press, 1988; W Dyrness, Learning about theology from the Third World, Grand Rapids, Mich: Academic Books, 1990; and Theo Wityliet. The way of the black messiah: the hermeneutical challenge of black theology as a theology of liberation, London, UK: SCM Press, 1987.
8 C H Felder, Troubling biblical waters: race, class, and family, Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1989, p xi. For an Asian reaction to the Western hermeneutical hegemony, see R S Sugirtharajah, Introduction and former thoughts on Asian Biblical Hermeneutics, Biblical Interpretation: A Journal of Contemporary Approaches 11(1994):251ff.
9 Long walk to freedom: the autobiography of Nelson Mandela, Great Britain: Little, Brown & Co, 1994, p 11. In terms of how African cultures and customs were systematically denigrated and even demonised to justify their destruction, see Simon Maimela, Religion and culture: blessings or curses? [A keynote address given at the Pan-African Conference of the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians, Harare, Zimbabwe, 6 January 1991], Journal of Black Theology in South Africa 5 (1991):4--5. For a similar observation, see A Furioli, Mission and Church, African Ecclesial Review 34 (1994):176. Also see the particularly perceptive and instructive discussion of Western imperialism and its racist underpinings in A T Davies, On Imperialism, ARC: The Journal of the Faculty of Religious Studies, McGill University 29(1992):71--77; and John Holder, The issue of race: a search for a biblical/theological perspective, Journal of Religious Thought 49(1992--1993):44--59.
10 Such convictions and contentions are not unlike those being made by those now actively engaged in rewriting, from an African perspective, the history of Christianity in Africa. For that, see Gerdien Verstraelen-Gilhuis, A new look at Christianity in Africa: essays on apartheid, African education and a new history, Gweru, Zimbabwe: Mambo Press, 1992. As for the Bible itself in one African country, see 1 Mukonyore et al, eds, `Rewriting' the Bible: The Real Issues -- Perspectives from within Biblical and Religious Studies in Zimbabwe, Gweru, Zimbabwe: Mambo Press, 1993.
11 Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Moving the centre: the struggle for cultural freedoms, Nairobi, Kenya: East Africa Educational Publishers, 1993, p 8. Also see the article on Charles Copher, Professor Emeritus at the Interdenominational Theological Center, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, viz, The Atlanta Journal, Saturday, January 26, 1991. Copher is a pioneering African American Biblical scholar dealing with blacks and their contribution according to the Bible, especially the Old Testament. See also A G Dunston, Jr. The black man in the Old Testament and his world, Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 1992.
12 See n 8 again.
13 C H Felder, ed, Stony the road we trod: African American biblical interpretation, Minneapolis, Minn: Fortress Press, 1991.
14The Original African Heritage Study Bible: King James Version Nashville Tenn: The James C Winston Publishing Company, 1993.
15 Cain Hope Felder, Cultural Ideology, Afrocentrism and biblical interpretation, in Black theology: a documentary history, volume two, p 188.
16 See G Yorke, The Bible among English-speaking blacks in the Diaspora; links with African Christianity, in The Bible in African Christianity, edited by H Kinoti et al, Nairobi, Kenya: Uzima Press, Forthcoming 1995.
17 In that sense, Afrocentric biblical hermeneutics is quite similar to feminist biblical hermeneutics as articulated by E Schüssler Fiorenza et al. See n 7 again. Also quite instructive is Ursula King, Voices of protest and promise: women's studies in religion: the impact of the feminist critique of religion, Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 23 (1994):315--329.
18 In that sense, Afrocentric biblical hermeneutics is congruent not only with the challenge issued by Mr Mandela to the Free Ethiopian Church of Southern Africa in 1993 on the occasion of its centennial celebrations, commending it for its historic role alongside other churches in the anti-apartheid struggle, but also with the new `interim' constitution of the Republic of South Africa itself predicated, as it does, on some fundamental constitutional principles such as non-discrimination on the grounds of race. For the former, see Mandela's challenge to the Church, in Challenge: Church and People 12 (February 1993); 20--21; and for the latter, see G Bindman, The New South Africa -- a revolution in the making, New Law Journal 144 (1994):647--648; and L M du Plessis, The genesis of South Africa's first Bill of Rights: a few observations from a moral and theological perspective, Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 86 (1994):52--66. Also relevant are Richard Bauckham, The Bible in politics: how to read the Bible politically, Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989; and K Nürnberger, The royal-imperial paradigm in the bible and the modern demand for democracy: an exercise in soteriological hermeneutics, Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 81 (1992):16--34.
19 For a fuller treatment, see The Original African Heritage Study Bible, pp ix--xi, and 102--107.
20 Ibid, p x.
21 Randall Bailey, Beyond identification: the use of Africans in Old Testament poetry and narratives, in Stony the Road We Trod, p 165.
22 Ibid, p 166--168.
23See Harper's Bible Dictionary, New York: Harper & Row, 1986, 248, s v `Egypt', as quoted by Bailey, ibid, p 168.
24 See C B Copher, The black presence in the Old Testament, in Stony the road we trod, pp 146--164.
25 As Felder has correctly and repeatedly pointed out, the relatively modern notions of race and colour (seventeenth century) are not to be foisted upon the Bible. The Bible is a thoroughly multicultural document and does not, in any way, support the hierarchicalisation of people based on race. The Bible knows of no colour prejudice. See, for example, Race reason, and the biblical narratives, in Stony the road we trod, pp 127ff, and The Original African Heritage Study Bible, p xii. Also see Frank Snowden, Jr, Before colour prejudice: the ancient view of blacks, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1970.
26 Felder, ibid, p 143. One example of a South African text that clearly demonstrates the Eurocentric bias, perhaps unwittingly, is Ferdinand Deist et al, From Eden to Rome: the narrative literature of the Bible: story, composition and author's point of view, Cape Town, South Africa: J L van Schaik, 1982.
27 Felder, Cultural ideology, Afrocentrism and biblical interpretation, in Black theology: a documentary history, vol two, p 192.
28 Felder, ibid; also see The Original African Heritage Study Bible, p xiv.
29 For a brief but useful overview of some of the various iconic depictions of Jesus (including some non-European), see Albert Nolan, The human face of Jesus, Challenge, December/January 1993, pp 2--4. Current attempts to re-Africanise or contextualise Jesus include the following: J N K Mugambi et al eds Jesus in African Christianity: experimentation and diversity in African Christianity, Nairobi, Kenya: Uzima Press, 1989; J Onaiyekan, Christological trends in contemporary African theology: a challenge to Nigerian Theologians, The Nigerian Journal of Theology (1991): 11--27; and P N Wachege, Jesus Christ our muthamaki (ideal elder): an African Christological study based on the Agikuyu understanding of elder, Nairobi, Kenya: Phoenix, 1992.
30 For an insightful discussion of Luke's own Eurocentric tendencies, see Felder, Race, racism and the biblical narratives, in Stony the road we trod, pp 140--145; and J A Loubser, Wealth, house churches and Rome: Luke's ideological perspective, Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 89(1994):59--69.
31 Gerald West, Biblical hermeneutics of liberation: modes of reading the Bible in the South African context, Monograph series Number 1, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa: Cluster, 1991.
32 I J Mosala, Biblical hermeneutics and black theology in South Africa, p x.
Professor Gosnell L Yorke
Faculty of Theology & Religious Studies
University of Eastern Africa Banaton
Kenya
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