In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

13. The Historical Jesus and African New Testament Scholarship Grant LeMarquand And yet for us it is when he is on the cross, This Jesus of Nazareth, with holed hands and open side, like a beast at sacrifice: When he is stripped, naked like us, Browned and sweating water and blood in the heat of the sun, Yet silent, That we cannot resist Him.1 1. Introduction: African Biblical Scholarship This paper examines selected studies of Jesus, representative of the emerging discipline of New Testament studies in Africa. African biblical scholarship, not content to leave Jesus in a first-century context, is compelled by social, political and religious convictions to demonstrate his relationship to contemporary African life. After an overview of the major trends in African biblical scholarship, I turn to the works of selected scholars from South Africa and from sub-Saharan Africa (apart from South Africa) in order to discern what "Western" scholarship might gain from reading this growing literature. My claim is that Westerners may benefit from African scholarship's openness to the differing perspectives from which scholars "read texts" and "do history." It is generally recognized that all scholars are affected by their contexts; it is not so generally recognized that the contexts (social, political, religious) from which we read may actually aid us in understanding the history behind the text. Biases may blind us; biases also have heuristic value. 1.1 The Changing Global Context For most of the two millennia of Christian history the geographical centre of Christianity has been the northern hemisphere. During this century, however, a remarkable shift has been taking place. Most of the Western world is now secularized, with church membership shrinking drastically and Christian influence, for better or for worse, on the wane. The situation in the southern 1 Gabriel Setiloane, "I am an African," in John B. Taylor, ed., Primal World Views: Christian Dialogue With Traditional Thought Forms (Ibadan: Daystar, 1976), 56-59. 162 Whose HistoricalJesus? hemisphere is quite different. Particularly in Africa,2 churches have been growing at an exceptional rate. According to the World Christian Encyclopedia there were ten million Christians in Africa in 1900, mostly in Ethiopia, Egypt and South Africa. This amountedto 9.2 percent of the population. By June 1980 the figures had increased to just over two hundred million, or 45.4 percent of the population. The current growth rate of the churches is 3.55 percent, well ahead of the birth rate of 2.7 percent. If this trend continues, there will be four hundred million Christians in Africa by the year 2000, or about 50 percent of its population.3 Church structures around the world have not yet caught up to this reality. At the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops in 1988, for example, the bishops from Canada, the U.S. and England far outnumbered the bishops from Africa, in spite of the fact that there are more Anglican Christians in Nigeria alone than in all three of those Western countries combined. 1.2 The Emergence of African Biblical Scholarship In a similar way, the world of biblical scholarship, which has traditionally been dependent upon a Christian readership, has not yet caught up to the reality of African Christianity. Is it possible to imagine, for example, attempting to compile a bibliography of Western biblical scholarship, or even Canadian biblical scholarship? The task would be enormous. Yet when I mentioned to a former professor that I was compiling a bibliography of African biblical scholarship he scratched his head for a moment, then responded: "There isn't 2 "Africa" here refers to Africa south of the Sahara desert, the region sometimes known as "Black Africa." Although South Africa is something of a special case because of the history of apartheid in that country, this article will include scholarship from that region. Outside South Africa the major centres of biblical scholarship are Ghana and Nigeria in anglophone west Africa, Kenya and Tanzania in east Africa, and Cameroon and Zaire in francophone Africa. Biblical studies are by no means limited to these places. As in Europe and North America, there is diversity among biblical scholars from Africa. Enough African biblical scholars and theologians, however, have pointed to a commonality among people of various language and ethnic groups that we are justified in accepting the unifying factors which distinguish African culture. For a similar view, see: Kofi Appiah-Kubi, "Jesus Christ—Some Christological Aspects from African Perspectives," in Kofi Appiah-Kubi, Rosemary Edet, George Ehusani...

Share