The Bible in Africa: Transactions, Trajectories, and Trends

by Gerald West, M. W. Dube, Gerald O. West

Overview

Although the arrival of the Bible in Africa has often been a tale of terror, the Bible has become an African book. This volume explores the many ways in which Africans have made the Bible their own.
The essays in this book offer a glimpse of the rich resources that constitute Africa's engagement with the Bible. Among the topics are: the historical development of biblical interpretation in Africa, the relationship between African biblical scholarship and scholarship in the West, African resources for reading the Bible, the history and role of vernacular translation in particular African contexts, the ambiguity of the Bible in Africa, the power of the Bible as text and symbol, and the intersections between class, race, gender, and culture in African biblical interpretation.
The book also contains an extensive bibliography of African biblical scholarship. In fact, it is one of the most comprehensive collections of African biblical scholarship available in print.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789004106277
Publisher:	Brill Academic Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	10/30/2000
Series:	Biblical Studies and Religious Studies
Pages:	848
Product dimensions:	6.86(w) x 9.68(h) x 2.18(d)

About the Author

Gerald O. West, Ph.D. (1990) in Biblical Studies, Sheffield University, is Professor of Biblical Studies in the School of Theology at the University of Natal, South Africa, and Director of the Institute for the Study of the Bible, a joint project between socially engaged biblical scholars and readers of the Bible in poor and marginalised communities. He has published extensively on liberation hermeneutics and African biblical interpretation including, most recently, The Academy of the Poor: Towards a Dialogical Reading of the Bible (Sheffield Academic Press, 1999).
Musa W. Dube, Ph.D. (1997) in New Testament Studies, Vanderbilt University, is a New Testament Lecturer in the University of Botswana. She is actively involved in the Circle for Concerned African Women Theologians, where she heads African women biblical research. Her research interests include reading the Bible using post-colonial, feminist, divination and story-telling methods. Her book Towards a Post-Colonial Interpretation of the Bible (Chalice Press, 2000).

Editorial Reviews

'This important volume is an attempt to highlight, for a wider readership (and perhaps for biblical scholars working in "the West," in particular), the rich resources for biblical interpretation that have come, and are still coming, from the continent of Africa.'
Alistair Wilson, Review of Biblical Literature, 2005
'...this volume is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in past, present and future trends in African biblical scholarship.’
Sarojini Nadar, Journal of Theology for Southern Africa, 2002.
'This is a well-edited and really grand book on the Bible in Africa.’
Ype Schaaf, Exchange, 2002.

From the Publisher