Hermeneutical Methods in Biblical Interpretation in Africa Matters Arising
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Date
2016-04
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JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIETY VOLUME
Abstract
Africa is a continent with a variety of cultures; such complexities make
any meaningful study a bit difficult. Howbeit, a careful biblical
hermeneutics will highlight the importance of the African context in
biblical interpretation. Hermeneutical method emphasizes the context
of the reader rather than that of the audience. It is from this method that
African Biblical hermeneutics has been developed. African biblical
hermeneutics is a contextual method of biblical criticism that presents a
paradigm shift because of the new demands emanating from the various
questions raised by Africans in their quest for appropriate biblical texts.
Essentially, it seeks to make a to and fro move, from reader to text and to
context (as in the traditional approach), to new context (African) to new
text (contextualization) to new reader (African reader). Focus is here
placed more on the audience in biblical interpretation. This is elucidated
in this article by looking at a few methods employed by scholars in doing
this in contemporary Africa.
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Keywords
Africa, Biblical Interpretation, Contextualization, Hermeneutics, Enculturation