Full Description
Andrew M. Mbuvi makes the case for African biblical studies as a vibrant and important emerging distinct discipline, while also using its postcolonial optic to critique biblical studies for its continued underlying racially and imperialistically motivated tendencies. Mbuvi argues that the emergence of biblical studies as a discipline in the West coincides with, and benefits from, the establishment of the colonial project that included African colonization. At the heart of the colonial project was the Bible, not only as ferried by missionaries, who often espoused racialized views, to convert "heathens in the distant lands," but as the text used in the racialized justification of the colonial violence. Interpretive approaches established within these racist and colonialist matrices continue to dominate the discipline, perpetuating racialized interpretive methodology and frameworks.
On these grounds, Mbuvi makes the case that the continued marginalization of non-western approaches is a reflection of the continuing colonialist structure and presuppositions in the discipline of biblical studies. African Biblical Studies not only exposes and critiques these persistent oppressive and subjugating tendencies but showcases how African postcolonial methodologies and studies, that prioritize readings from the perspective of the marginalized and oppressed, offer an alternative framework for the discipline. These readings, while destabilizing and undermining the predominantly white Euro-American approaches and their ingrained prejudices, and problematizing the biblical text itself, posit the need for biblical interpretation that is anti-colonial and anti-racist.
Contents
Abbreviations
Part 1: The Bible, Colonialism, and Biblical Studies
Chapter One: Introduction
Chapter Two: Colonialism and the European Enlightenment
Chapter Three: (Western) Biblical Studies and African Colonialism
Part II: The Bible, Colonial Encounters, and Unexpected Outcomes
Chapter Four: Bible Translation as Biblical Interpretation - The Colonial Bible
Chapter Five: The Bible and African Reality
Chapter Six: Emerging African Postcolonial Biblical Criticism
Part III: African Biblical Studies: Setting a Postcolonial Agenda
Chapter Seven. Decolonizing the Bible: A Postcolonial Response
Chapter Eight: The Bible and Postcolonial African Literature
Chapter Nine: Re-Writing the Bible: Recasting the Colonial Text
Chapter Ten: Eschatology, Colonialism, and Mission: An African Critique of Linear Eschatology
Chapter Eleven: "Ordinary Readers" and the Bible: Non-Academic Biblical Interpretation
Chapter Twelve: Gender, Sexuality, and the Bible In Africa
Chapter Thirteen: Christology in Africa: "Who Do You Say That I Am?"
Chapter Fourteen: Conclusion: Towards a Decolonized Biblical Studies
Index
Bibliography
