Introduction
The existing response to the modern academic approach to biblical interpretation in Africa cannot be easily assessed. Extensive research must be done to discover what African Christians make of the critical historical approach to biblical interpretation.
However, what is evident in the cry for a unique and inclusive African Christianity is the desire for particular guidance for the interpretation of scripture in the African way. It should be noted that while this may be a possibility, there are several challenges that need to be addressed. The African context poses these challenges for discussion for a few reasons. Osadolor Imasogie suggests that the average African’s commitment to Christ is superficial, often reverting to traditional practices. `
If there is no commitment to biblical scholarship, biblical interpretation would remain what it is. John Parrat mentions Dickson and Fashole Luke as Africans who “see biblical scholarship as an urgent task” in current African Christianity, which has been too neglected by the African church2
The challenge of African tradition
The African tradition as a challenge in biblical interpretation takes into account: The language model and The ancestor factor. Other traditional factors can be approached from other dimensions, but these two can far outweigh any other.
The language model
Teaching sound biblical interpretation means presenting the scriptures to Africans in their own easily understood linguistic forms. For the large African audience, the English Bible has been the main source of translations into indigenous African languages. N. Onwu looks at this problem in his essay “The Dilemma of the African Theologian.” He quotes some words from the New Testament that he says cannot easily find equivalents in the Igbo language. He says that language is a big problem in hermeneutics precisely because hermeneutics is largely meant to be linguistic and therefore contextual. Language is the soul of people, the secret of people’s culture, philosophy of life and thought; the patterns of meaning. It is through languages that reality is distorted. Biblical languages have their own characteristic linguistic models and sometimes do not easily find indigenous equivalents in some African languages.
To emphasize this point, a comparison of the English Bible wording of Ephesians 6:12, with that of the Krio Bible (Sierra Leone) would allow one to see the challenge of the language model in African biblical interpretation.
The ancestor factor
Most of the criticism leveled at the African tradition focuses on the African worldview of the ancestors. Western Christianity, in particular, has incessantly criticized African religion for refusing to abandon this aspect of the ancestors. Some Africans, for their part, so devoted to this cultural trait, have staunchly defended the ancestral way.
Charles Nyamiti, a Roman Catholic theologian from Tanzania, says that Christ can be considered an ancestor because just as the human ancestor establishes a link between the spirit world and the living, so Jesus, through His crucifixion and resurrection, establishes a mystical link. between God and the Christian community. . Nyamiti believes that in Africa the relationship between God and Jesus is more understandable when viewed as an ancestor-descendant relationship than in the traditional Christian imagery of father and son. Another African Benezet Buju agrees that Jesus is best understood as the first ancestor; by which he means that Jesus fulfills all the characteristics of the ideal ancestor but at the same time transcends them.
With the traditional Christian teaching of Christ as the divine word of God, it is made explicit that the ancestry in the teaching of a biblical hermeneutic is the challenge to be faced. There are many other traditional challenges to be found, but these are discussed in a proposed guide to doing theology in Africa. For example, questions like how to teach the presence and work of the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts to indigenous Africans, without them thinking about the many spirits that inhabit their natural environments.
The challenge of contextualization
It is widely accepted that the contemporary vehicle for making the gospel relevant is contextualization. The indigenization as it could be seen, has not worked since it only led to some forms of religious syncretism. The rigid conservative option has also not done much considering that its application leads to seeing Christianity as a foreign and upper-middle class religion.
The need for contextualization has been a consensus among many theologians. Scholarly conferences, exemplified by one organized by WATI in 1984 in Nigeria on the theme “Contextualizing Christianity in Nigeria”, bear eloquent testimony to this trend.
Contextualization may be an appropriate option for indigenization or conservatism in contemporary Christianity. But in the teaching of biblical interpretation, the questions of what to contextualize, how, by whom, and when are challenges that must be faced if we are to overcome over-contextualization or under-contextualization.
The interpreter’s challenge
With all the above challenges almost overcome, the biggest and perhaps the most important is the attitude of the proposed interpreter. From historical review we have noted that most people come to the Scriptures with their presuppositions and frames of reference. The meaning deduced from a particular text may be influenced by the interpreter’s presuppositions. Even if the interpreter confronts a scriptural text with a ‘clean slate’ mind, he still has enough questions that can leave him frustrated and empty; that in that case he may want to abandon the process. Perhaps he wants to appeal to another source, which in this case may be a subjective source that may never provide the necessary answer. In general, it is the attitude of the interpreter that will bring the answers. A pragmatic interpreter may, for example, find nothing interesting in the Song of Solomon or much of the Gospel of John. A naturalist will see very little importance in the teaching of the miracles of Jesus. An existentialist may never find anything of importance in the Exodus narrative.
Socioeconomic factors are also challenges within the broader perspective of the interpreter. An interpreter who is thinking more about the sociopolitical problems of the continent will no doubt appeal to the liberation theologian for his paradigm of interpretation. A feminist will definitely want to argue with the scriptural texts that express the submission of wives to their husbands, etc. Taken together, the attitude, thought and status of the interpreter are challenges to be faced in the hermeneutical task.
conclusion
Biblical interpretation is as profound as it is important and interesting. As an African theologian, my interest is in the proper understanding of Scripture based on sound principles of interpretation with a view to making Scripture contextually relevant to the African mind. This is the task that we now have to face and tackle fully. Exegesis and not eisegesis must be our tool.