DECOLONIZING AFRICAN BIBLICAL STUDIES

1 DECOLONIZING AFRICAN BIBLICAL STUDIES The 7th INAUGURAL LECTURES OF DELTA STATE UNIVERSITY, ABRAKA DELIVERED BY The Rev Prof. David Tuesday Adamo Department of Religious STUDIES The Vice- Chancellor The Principal Officers Deans of Faculties Professors Archbishops and Bishops Men and Women of God The Military Officers Hon. Commissioners The Royal Highnesses The Counselors Members of Academia, Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen INTRODUCTION I give thanks to God for the opportunity to deliver the first inaugural lecture from the Department of Religious STUDIES , the second in the Faculty of Arts, and the 7th in Delta State University, Abraka.

2 I know that the Lord has been good to me because I thought I would have been buried long time ago. I say, ; ~l'A[l. yK His mercy endures forever (Psalm 136). This title looks some how but I deliberately chose it because of my experience during my training and my practice of scholarship. I have chosen this topic as a result of a close examination of my theological training in Nigeria and the United 2 States. I felt that all the theological training that I received in those universities have great elements of colonization.]

3 I felt dissatisfied with the colonization of my thought and the thought of my people and the methods of BIBLICAL interpretation imposed on us. During the period of my training, I struggled with this fact and tried to find out ways to make a difference in DECOLONIZING BIBLICAL STUDIES in Africa. The process of this did not start until I was at the final stage of my doctoral training. I insisted, despite all threats and rejection, on doing my doctoral research on Africa and Africans in the Old Testament and Its Environment.

4 In my academic career, I have been trying to pursue this aim of DECOLONIZING AFRICAN BIBLICAL STUDIES in Africa. In this paper therefore, my aim is to demonstrate the ways in which the study of the Bible in Africa has been colonized and various ways of DECOLONIZING AFRICAN BIBLICAL STUDIES . My purpose is also to work out some proposal of how AFRICAN BIBLICAL STUDIES can be decolonized. I also hope to challenge my academic colleagues on the necessity of DECOLONIZING AFRICAN BIBLICAL STUDIES .

5 3 WHAT IS AFRICAN BIBLICAL STUDIES ? Is there any thing that can be distinctively called AFRICAN BIBLICAL STUDIES ? If so, what is AFRICAN BIBLICAL STUDIES ? An AFRICAN BIBLICAL study is the BIBLICAL interpretation that makes AFRICAN social cultural context a subject of interpretation. 1 It means that an Africa BIBLICAL study is contextual since interpretation is always done in a particular context. Specifically, it means that analysis of the text is done from the perspective of AFRICAN world-view and It is the rereading of the Christian scripture from a premeditatedly Africentric perspective.

6 The purpose is not only to understand the Bible and God in our AFRICAN experience and culture, but also to break the hermeneutical hegemony and ideological stranglehold that Eurocentric BIBLICAL scholars have long This is a methodology that reappraises ancient BIBLICAL tradition and AFRICAN world-view, culture, and life experience with the purpose of "correcting the effect of the cultural ideological conditioning to which Africa and Africans have been subjected.

7 4 A casual glance at the history of BIBLICAL hermeneutics will reveal that there has never been an interpretation that has been 1 David Tuesday Adamo, Reading and Interpreting the Bible in AFRICAN Indigenous Churches (Eugene, Oregon: WIPF and Stock Publishers, 2001); Adamo, AFRICAN Cultural Hermeneutics, Vernacular Hermeneutics, ed. Sugirtharajah (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 5. Justin Ukpong, Inculturation Hermeneutics:An AFRICAN Approach to BIBLICAL Interpretation, The Bible in A World Context: An Experiment in Contextual Hermeneutics, eds.

8 Walter Dietrich and Ulrich Luz (Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002), 17-32. 2 Adamo, Explorations in AFRICAN BIBLICAL STUDIES (Eugene, Oregon: WIPF and Stock Publishers, 2001), 6 3 David Tuesday Adamo, Explorations in AFRICAN BIBLICAL STUDIES . Yorke calls this Afrocentic Hermeneutics which is very legitimate since all interpretations and theologies are perspectival. Gosnell L. Yorke, BIBLICAL Hermeneutics: an Afrocentric Perspective, Journal of Religion and Theology, vol 2, no 2(1995), 145-158.

9 4 Ibid. 4 without references to or dependent on a particular cultural code, thought patterns, or social location of the There is no individual who is completely detached from everything in his or her environment or experience and culture so as to be able to render one hundred percent objectivity in everything done. The fact is that every interpreter is biased in some What I am trying to say is that there is an AFRICAN BIBLICAL study because persons who are born and raised in AFRICAN culture will normally interpret scriptures in ways that are unique to them and different from western interpreters.

10 Therefore, to talk of uniform, unconditional, universal, and absolute interpretation or hermeneutics is unrealistic. Such does not exist anywhere in this world. One who interprets tends to bring his or her own bias to bear, consciously or unconsciously, on the way in which the message is perceived. Like the Third World BIBLICAL Hermeneutics, AFRICAN BIBLICAL STUDIES have two main characteristics: It is liberational, and culturally sensitive. It also has some other methodological characteristics such as narration, orality, theopoetic, and imagination.