scholarly journals Reading the Bible in the African context: Assessing Africa’s love affair with prosperity Gospel

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ntozakhe Cezula
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Prosperity Gospel ◽  
Bible Translation ◽  
African People ◽  
Traditional Religions ◽  
The Bible ◽  
African Context ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Bible Reading ◽  
Socio Economic Factors

The aim of this article is to examine Bible reading in the African context and the willingness and enthusiasm to embrace prosperity gospel in Africa. To achieve this objective, a discussion on the developments in biblical interpretation in Africa will first be presented. This will be done by examining three historical periods: colonial, independence and democratisation periods. This will be followed by an outline of migrations that have taken place from traditional religions to different versions of Christianity in different times in Africa. These migrations will be examined in connection with Bible translation. The relationship between prosperity gospel and African people in Africa will be discussed by considering the tools prosperity gospel uses to appeal to African people, namely the religio-cultural and socio-economic factors. The article will then provide its assessment of contextual reading in the prosperity gospel and a conclusion will follow.

Biblical Interpretation in the Majority World

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. K. Yeo
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Majority World ◽  
Multiple Contexts ◽  
Spirit World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Bible Reading

This chapter challenges the ‘received’ view that traces the expansion of the dominant theologies of the European and North American colonial powers and their missionaries into the Majority World. When they arrived, these Westerners found ancient Christian traditions and pre-existing spiritualities, linguistic and cultural forms, which questioned their Eurocentric presumptions, and energized new approaches to interpreting the sacred texts of Christianity. The emergence of ‘creative tensions’ in global encounters are a mechanism for expressing (D)issent against attempts to close down or normalize local Bible-reading traditions. This chapter points to the elements which establish a creative tension between indigenizing Majority World approaches to the Bible and those described in the ‘orthodox’ narrative, including: self-theologizing and communal readings; concepts of the Spirit world and human flourishing; the impact of multiple contexts, vernacular languages, sociopolitical and ethno-national identities, and power/marginalization structures; and ‘framing’ public and ecological issues.

scholarly journals Reading the Bible with the marginalised: The value/s of contextual Bible reading

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald West
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
The Bible ◽  
History Of ◽  
Interpretive Practices ◽  
Bible Reading

There is a long history of collaboration between “popular” or “contextual” forms of biblical interpretation between Brazil and South Africa, going back into the early 1980’s. Though there are significant differences between these forms of Bible “reading”, there are values and processes that cohere across these contexts, providing an integrity to such forms of Bible reading. This article reflects on the values and processes that may be discerned across the Brazilian and South African interpretive practices after more than thirty years of conversation across these contexts.

scholarly journals The First Catholic Bible in Chinese: Gabriele Allegra and His Translation

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-23
Author(s):  
Raissa De Gruttola
Keyword(s):  
Textual Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Greek Text ◽  
Bible Translation ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Study ◽  
Study Centre ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Christian missionaries play an important role in the history of the relationship between China and Europe. Their presence in China has been widely explored, but little attention has been paid to the role played by the Bible in their preaching. From 13th to 19th century, although they did not translate the Bible, Catholic missionaries preached the Gospel orally or with catechisms. On the other hand, the Protestant missionaries had published many version of the Chinese Bible throughout the 19th century. It was only in the 20th century that the Franciscan friar Gabriele Allegra decided to go to China as a missionary to translate the Holy Scriptures into Chinese. He arrived in China in 1931 and translated from 1935 to 1961. He also founded a biblical study centre to prepare expert scholars to collaborate in the Bible translation. Allegra and his colleagues completed the translation in 1961, and the first complete single-volume Catholic Bible in Chinese was published in 1968. After presenting the historical background of Allegra’s activity, a textual analysis of some passages of his translation will be presented, emphasizing the meanings of the Chinese words he chose to use to translate particular elements of Christian terminology. This study will verify the closeness of the work by Allegra to the original Greek text and the validity of some particular translation choices.

Biblical Exegesis and Early Modern Legal History in Calvin’s Mosaic Harmony

2020 ◽  
pp. 165-195
Author(s):  
Barbara Pitkin
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Biblical Exegesis ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Relationship

The chapter examines John Calvin’s commentary on Exodus through Deuteronomy (1563) through the lens of sixteenth-century historical jurisprudence, exemplified in the works of Calvin’s contemporaries François de Connan and François Baudouin. Recent scholarship has demonstrated how Calvin’s historicizing exegesis is in continuity with broader contemporary trends in premodern Christian biblical interpretation; this chapter explores another essential context for Calvin’s approach to the Bible. The intermingling of narrative and legal material in these four biblical books inspired Calvin to break with his customary practice of lectio continua and apply his historical hermeneutic more broadly and creatively to explain the Mosaic histories and legislation. Calvin’s unusual and unprecedented arrangement of the material in this commentary and his attention to the relationship between law and history reveal his engagement with his generation’s quest for historical method.

Erasmus' Plea for Bible Reading in the Vernacular. The Legacy of the Devotio Moderna?

2008 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-120
Author(s):  
Wim François
Keyword(s):  
Gospel Of Matthew ◽  
Public Access ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Common People ◽  
Initial Exposure ◽  
Bible Translation ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Devotio Moderna ◽  
Bible Reading

AbstractErasmus has written several pleas for Bible reading in the vernacular, perhaps the most visible being his introduction to the Paraphrases on the Gospel of Matthew. Comparable apologies were already to be found in the milieu of the Dutch Devotio Moderna in the works of, among others, Zerbolt van Zutphen (1367–1398), especially his De libris teutonicalibus and Circa Modum. Erasmus' defences of vernacular Bible translation do not contain verbatim similarities with Zerbolt's works, but the parallels both at the level of the argumentation and the biblical-patristic authorities invoked are striking. There are good reasons to assume that Erasmus was indebted to arguments in favour of the lay Bibles that were already circulating in the milieu in which he was educated in the Low Countries, a milieu that was deeply influenced by the Devotio Moderna. Particular attention is given to a Middle Dutch collation book from the years 1417–1443 (Berchmanianum ms 12 B I), now preserved in the Maurits Sabbe Library of the Leuven Faculty of Theology. The third collation takes Zerbolt's Circa Modum as its basis but provides some supplementary argumentation for the reading of the Bible and other devout books in the vernacular. The argumentation employed exhibits an interesting degree of resemblance with Erasmus' later pleas for a lay Bible. Perhaps Erasmus heard or read the piece when he was a student in Deventer. It should also be observed that Erasmus kept his distance from the inheritance of Devotio Moderna by radicalizing the arguments of Zerbolt. He did not want to reserve individual Bible reading to laici spirituales (those living in semi-religious communities) but wanted to open it to all lay people living in the world. Moreover, he did not only want to place the Gospels, Acts and Psalms at the disposal of the common people but desired to grant the reading public access to all the books of the Bible. The most obvious conclusion is that the Devotio Moderna provided an initial exposure to the ideas that Erasmus apparently reinforced and elaborated as he grew more involved in biblical and patristic studies.

scholarly journals CROSSING BOUNDARIES. THE TRANSFORMATIVE POTENTIAL OF INTERCULTURAL BIBLE READING IN SECULAR / POST-SECULAR CONTEXTS

Scriptura ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 120 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Louis Jonker
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Biblical Hermeneutics ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
Values And Beliefs ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
Bible Reading

Intercultural biblical hermeneutics is a fairly recent development in biblical scholarship in general. It emphasises that biblical interpretation almost always takes place in contexts where an array of cultural values and beliefs determine the outcome of the interpretative process. Although this branch of biblical hermeneutics emerged from the need to reflect theoretically on how Christians from different socio-cultural and socio-economic contexts engage the biblical texts, and one another on account of those texts, this approach may also be widened to include the interpretation of the Bible in non-Christian contexts (including the contexts of other religions and secular contexts) or even to engage in discourse on the interpretation of authoritative texts of different traditions (such as the Qur’an in Islam, in addition to the Tenakh of Judaism, and the Old and New Testament of Christianity). In research on intercultural biblical hermeneutics, it has been noticed that intercultural interpretation holds enormous transformative potential. My paper will examine how this could be of use in engagements between religious, secular and post-secular contexts.

A Case Study for Study Bibles: The Book of Haggai

2018 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Ogden
Keyword(s):  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Bible Translation ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Relationship

This article makes a case for properly defining “Bible translation” as nothing less than the preparation of a study Bible. Rendering the text of a biblical book into another language without providing the reader with adequate tools for understanding that text within its ancient culture is providing only half the material necessary for the work to be called a “translation.” The article seeks to illustrate the thesis by example from the book of Haggai and the several difficult issues it raises, issues that inevitably cause deep concern for serious readers of the Bible—the nature of God, the relationship between natural crises and human behaviour, the writer’s use of hyperbole while attributing everything written as coming from the godhead.

scholarly journals Lessons from the Early Church for Today’s Evangelical Christianity

Kairos ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-90
Author(s):  
Ervin Budiselić
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Evangelical Christianity ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
Rule Of Faith ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

Presuming that within Evangelical Christianity there is a crisis of biblical interpretation, this article seeks to address the issue, especially since Evangelicals view the existence of the church as closely connected to the proclamation of the Truth. Starting with a position that Evangelical hermeneutics is not born in a vacuum, but is the result of a historical process, the first part of the article introduces the problem of sola and solo scriptura, pointing out some problematic issues that need to be addressed. In the second part, the article discusses patristic hermeneutics, especially: a) the relationship between Scripture and tradition embodied in regula fidei and; b) theological presuppositions which gave birth to allegorical and literal interpretations of Scripture in Alexandria and Antioch. In the last part of the article, based on lessons from the patristic era, certain revisions of the Evangelical practice of the interpretation of Scripture are suggested. Particularly, Evangelicals may continue to hold the Bible as the single infallible source for Christian doctrine, continue to develop the historical-grammatical method particularly in respect to the issue of the analogy of faith in exegetical process, but also must recognize that the Bible cannot in toto play the role of the rule of faith or the analogy of faith. Something else must also come into play, and that “something” would definitely be the recovery of the patristic period “as a kind of doctrinal canon.”

Anti-Witchcraft Cults in Asante: An Essay in the Social History of an African People

1981 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 125-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
T.C. McCaskie
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Time Perspective ◽  
Social Anthropology ◽  
African People ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
African Context ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Causative Link

There is a considerable literature dealing with the phemenon of twentieth-century anti-witchcraft cults among the Akan peoples of Ghana, and notably the Asante. This literature is written from the disciplinary perspective of social anthropology and it may be divided into two interpretative views of the matter. The first espouses the theory that such cults are ‘new’--creations of the twentieth century--in that they represent a reflexive response to the social disorientation assumed to have been engendered by colonial overrule. The second questions the causative link between the twentieth century and increased anomie, and suggests the location of such cults in a time perspective reaching back into the distant--but undefined--pre-colonial past. For a social historian interested in the problem of witchcraft and its suppression this literature presents a resistant difficulty. It concerns itself with the material appurtenances and the impressionistic ‘psychohistory’ of cult practices, but it is almost entirely bereft of historical data and it indulges in generalizations erected upon the flimsiest of factual considerations. McLeod, who has ably reviewed this literature, has commented upon this deficiency with regret, but--at least so far--has done little to rectify it.In this paper I am concerned with the discrete history--social, economic and political--of three important anti-witchcraft cults that flourished in Asante between the late 1870s adn the late 1920s; in chronological order these were, domankama (‘The Creator’), aberewa (‘The Old Woman’) and hwe me so (‘Watch Over Me’). In discussing these cults as historical phenomena I seek to explicate or otherwise to dissolve some of the generalizations evident in the existing literature. I seek too to say something concerning the construction of a valid Asante (and African) social history, the relationship between social history and social anthropology in the African context, and the significance for the historian of Africa of socio-cultural phenomena such as witchcraft.

Reading the Bible in Africa

Exchange ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 174-191
Author(s):  
David T. Ngong
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology ◽  
Central Element ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Standard Of Living ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The People ◽  
African Context ◽  
Scientific Imagination

Abstract This paper describes inculturation biblical reading in a narrow way to include mainly that reading of the Bible that takes for granted what is believed to be a peculiarly African spiritualistic cosmology. A central element of this method includes pitting a supposedly African spiritualized cosmology against a supposedly Western rationalistic and disenchanted cosmology. Proponents of this method claim that a relevant biblical interpretation in the African context should enable Africans to deal with issues arising from their belief in an enchanted world. This essay problematizes the focus on this enchanted cosmology and argues that the African condition can be effectively addressed through interpreting the Bible in ways that encourage the development of the scientific imagination, which could lead to the development of science and technology and an improved standard of living for the people.

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