




































1 
 

INTERFACING 

BIBLICAL 

HERMENEUTICS 

IN TEXTUAL 

CONTEXTS AND 

SOCIO-CULTURAL 

ENVIRONMENTS 
EMMA UZUEGBUNAM, Ph.D. 

 

 

 

 

 



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FIRST PUBLISHED, 2022 

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                     TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Dedication         4  

Preface          4-5 

Chapter One: Introducing Hermeneutical Models  6-17 

Chapter Two: Orthodox and Enlightenment Biblical  

      Hermeneutics      18-26 

Chapter Three: Interrogating the Historical-Critical  

                      Hermeneutical Models     27-33 

Chapter Four: Hermeneutical Colonialism    34-44 

Chapter Five: The Rise of Social Context Hermeneutics 45-62 

Chapter Six: Interface Hermeneutics for Socio-Economic      

Development: The Afro-Centric Paradigm 63-102 

Epilogue          103 

Bibliography         104-108 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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                                 DEDICATION 

I am very glad to dedicate this book to the Lord Bishop of the 

Anglican Diocese of Nike, Rt. Rev. Dr. Christian Onyeka Onyia, and 

his wife, the President of Nike Diocesan Women Ministry, Bar. Mrs. 

Nneka Onyia. I have not, as yet, found a better way of appreciating 

the immense love they have shown to me and my family. May the 

Lord, in his abundant mercies continue to bless and uphold them, 

Amen.   

 

                                PREFACE 

Hermeneutics is the study of the principles and methods of textual 

interpretation. It derives from the Greek verb hermeneuo, meaning, 

to interpret, or as the first person singular present indicative active 

verb form shows, I am interpreting, or I interpret. Hermeneutics 

deals with the principles, rules and regulations of interpreting 

sacred texts. In recent times, hermeneutical procedures have been 

broadened to include both verbal and non-verbal communication, 

as well as semiotics, presuppositions and semantics. Hermeneutical 

tools are today widely applied in the humanities, especially law, 

history and theology. 

Hermeneutics as a discipline is closely related to exegesis. Both 

share a common concern for exploration of textual meanings. 

However, while hermeneutics is a much broader discipline dealing 

with the principles, methods and models for interpreting texts, 

exegesis takes those principles and methods into the specific texts 

for purposes of “leading out” meanings. (Exegesis derives from the 

Greek word ex-egomai; the root, ago, means to lead, while the prefix 

ex, is the form of the preposition, ek, before a vowel, meaning, out.)  

Over the years, the discipline of hermeneutics has grown from basic 

orthodox patterns and systematic, doctrinal and dogmatic 

interpretation, through the era of historical-critical methods to the 



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rise of social context hermeneutics. This era of social context 

hermeneutics has taken the expedition away from its traditional 

domains to areas where the models are directly confronting existing 

cultures and interrogating existing axioms, thus discovering and 

rediscovering cultural orientations within the contexts of societal 

dynamics. When we speak of culture today, we do so, not in the 

conventional context of reversion to retrogressive societal 

orientations, but in recognition of swift societal dynamics amidst 

threats against, and efforts at ultimate societal survival and 

enrichment. 

Social context hermeneutics has opened up large vistas of 

hermeneutical avenues and, it must be admitted, released 

hermeneutics from the shackles of dogmatic limitations, otherwise 

referred to as fixation. Life is not fixed but dynamically responding 

to the tempos of socio-cultural and economic challenges and 

threats to survival. As the perplexities of life enlarge, so does the 

search for life’s meanings and interpretations. The secularizing 

trends of modern society will not succeed in, nor be the better for it 

in its attempt at, relegating or ultimately vitiating the axioms of the 

Biblical text. Rather, it is a challenge to generate new interpretative 

models that directly confront societal threats, as has been 

eloquently demonstrated in the successes of the social context 

theologies. We are happy that at last our hermeneutical models are 

directly addressing the challenges confronting us and exciting new 

models are ingeniously presenting us with new vistas of creative 

meanings. 

 

 

 

 

 



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CHAPTER ONE 

INTRODUCING HERMENEUTICAL MODELS 

What is Hermeneutics? 

According to Brown and Schneiders (1990), theGreek word, 

hermeneia (a noun) which forms the root of the word, 

‘hermeneutics’, 

Covered a wide scope of interpretation and clarification – 

a scope that modern scholars are trying to recapture and 

expand in their understanding of the hermeneutical task. 

First, it can refer to interpretation by speech itself, in as 

much as language brings to expression and interprets 

what is in one’s mind (conscious and unconscious), or 

even what constitutes one’s identity, being, and person. 

(We should conceive of this process dynamically, not 

statically; for not only does an established intention or 

identity find precise expression in language, but in the 

very act of linguistic communication, one’s identity and 

intention can grow or even come into being.) In biblical 

discussion, we must struggle with the added complexity 

of the capacity of (human) biblical language to bring to 

expression God’s “mind”, “will”, and “person”, (terms 

used analogously of God). Second, hermeneia can refer to 

the process of translation from one language to another – 

a process that goes beyond the mechanical equivalents of 



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words and enters into the issue of transference from one 

culture or world view to another. Third, hermeneia  can 

be used for interpretation by commentary and 

explanation, which is a more formal aspect. (p. 1147). 

The essence of perspective rendering arises here especially as we 

call to mind, for instance, that many early Christians knew the Old 

Testament not in its Hebrew original form, but in the Septuagint 

Greek form, that is, a perspective of it that has already undergone 

linguistic and socio-cultural mediation and transference. Similarly, 

the Gospels communicated Jesus’ message, not in his own Semitic 

tongue but in Greek.  Even specific aspects of translation can be 

from an unintelligible language to an intelligible one. A typical 

illustration of this is found in 1 Corinthians 12:10, which deals with 

a charismatic gift of tongues (glossolalia), with a revelatory 

dimension. 

 Although modern hermeneutics concerns itself with the 

meaning of the written Biblical texts, however, it is important to 

realize that initially, neither the Israelite community, nor indeed the 

early Christian community was a “religion of the book”. A set of 

experiences regarded as a divine deliverance from Egypt, the 

selection of a people, the formation of a covenant, and the promise 

of a land, gave identity to Israel’s religious orientation long before 

there came the written accounts of the experiences, which, in the 

course of time grew into the Torah or the Pentateuch. Similarly, a 

religious community was formed around the belief in God’s 



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eschatological presence and action in Jesus Christ, long before 

there were the written Gospels. In fact, the early Jewish Christians 

were in an intermediate position even before they had widely 

circulated writings of their own composition. In this interregnum 

and even after, the task of relating Jesus to the already accepted 

writings of the Hebrew and Septuagint canons (later described by 

the same Christian community as the Old Testament) was a major 

hermeneutical task. This hermeneutical assignment, it must be 

acknowledged, was assiduously pursued by the early Christian 

community, and resolved to the finite conclusion, expressed in the 

simple dictum which we relate to, today, as if it has always been 

there from the very outset; ho Iesous estin ho Christos ((John 20:31), 

(meaning, that Jesus of Nazareth, a well-known historical 

personality, having satisfied all the messianic prophecies of the 

Hebrew classical prophets, is the Messiah (Anointed One, Greek, 

Christos) whom the Hebrew classical prophets had prophesied 

about). This resolution remains the greatest hermeneutical 

contribution of the early Christian community, and without this 

resolution, a yawning gap would have existed till today between the 

operations of God in the ancient times and the religious experiences 

of the Christian community. 

Hermeneutical Models       

 We are concerned here with introducing and appraising 

hermeneutical models and perspectives, with a view to proposing 

the direction of the hermeneutical expedition in the next decade 



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and beyond. Context hermeneutics, that is, hermeneutical models 

shaped by historical, political and socio-cultural circumstances, 

have given rise to a vast array of context theologies, namely, 

Liberation Theology, African Theology, Black Theology, Feminist 

Theology, Decolonization Theology, Motivational and Inspirational 

Theology, and so on. These could be rightly referred to as 

reactionary or revolutionary theologies which contain in themselves 

polemic or conventional postures that take hermeneutics away from 

its traditional (objective) domains, creating segregational tensions 

which escalate, rather than resolve the perceived situation being 

reacted to, or contended against. 

When we speak of reactionary or revolutionary theologies, and 

hence, by that token, reactionary and revolutionary hermeneutical 

models that produced them, we unwittingly ascribe to the 

conventional hermeneutical models the status of standard models, 

whereas those models are (or at least could be) reactionary or 

revolutionary in themselves, being products of prevailing socio-

cultural contexts. We know, at least that the earliest hermeneutical 

models were basically devotional and were content to dwell in a 

deluge of uninterrogated assumptions or presumptions. We know 

therefore that the Eurocentric historical-critical hermeneutical 

models arose as an initial effort in the era, and as a product of 

scholasticism, to interrogate the assumptions or presumptions that, 

subjected to the light of empirical evidence, were already beginning 

to crumble. For instance, did Moses write the Pentateuch? Did only 

one author compose the Pentateuch? Could a man have written 



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about his death and burial? In what perspective of historiography 

would you classify the expression, “In the beginning, God created”, 

especially in the realization that the man who was reporting the 

incident, assuming he grew to maturity immediately upon creation, 

was created on the sixth day, but was reporting events that took 

place some five days before he came into existence? What do we 

make of the curious duplications in the narratives, for instance two 

different creation narratives (Gen. 1:1-2:4a and 2:4b to the end)? 

What do we make of the anachrostic expression, “to this day”, 

(Example, No one knows where Moses was buried to this day) in the 

text suggesting that the author was presenting the account in 

retrospect? What do we make of the consistent use of the different 

divine names in the different segments or pericopes of the text; for 

instance, ’elōhim is consistently used in Gen.1:1-2:4a, and from 

2:4b till the end of the periscope at the end of chapter three, 

Yahweh ’elōhim is consistently used? And so on. 

That Eurocentric historical-critical hermeneutical model 

formed the framework for conventional Biblicism till today has long 

been admitted. Adamo (2005) has succinctly stated that; 

My candid opinion is that colonization of biblical studies 

began with the establishment of Bible Colleges, Seminaries 

and Universities in Africa by the missionaries. These Bible 

Colleges and Seminaries became places where priests, pastors 

and evangelists were trained. During the early period, the 

teachers in these colleges were missionaries from the Western 



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world. Their methods of teaching were Western. In their 

enthusiasm to teach students how to communicate the Gospel 

of the Lord Jesus Christ, they also taught western culture and 

ways of life. All students must learn how to interpret the 

Christian Scripture the way it is interpreted in the West. 

African culture and religion were not important and therefore 

were not taught to the students. (p. 21). 

Even more important to Adamo’s position is the content of the 

theology of the Western Missionaries. This is what African Biblical 

Scholars have come to describe as Colonization hermeneutics 

because it is a hermeneutical model which started with a 

fundamental objective of utterly annihilating every facility of the 

African background, to the extent that to be truly converted to 

Christianity, one had to be converted to European culture. 

African Biblical studies, and hence, as enabling, formulating 

instrument, African Biblical hermeneutics, have ever since arisen as 

credible indigenous perspectives of interpreting the text. In fact, it is 

to the founding fathers of the African Indigenous Churches (AIC’s) 

that the credit must go for the formulation of what can be called the 

indigenous African reading of the missionary Christian Bible. In 

other words, the missionaries came to Africa with the Bible and 

their version of Eurocentric Christianity based on their perspectives 

of interpreting the text. The indigenous Africans received the Bible 

from the missionaries and reinterpreted it to suit the African 



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indigenous socio-cultural challenges and religious aspirations. 

Thus, Adeogun (2005) affirms that; 

The method applied by some Aladura churches is the 

application of the principles of hermeneutics, as a key to 

unlock the meaning of the Bible in relation to the African 

world view. In these churches, spiritual and physical liberation 

are intertwined; the malfunction of the one affects the other. 

These churches consider spiritual liberation as a way to the 

success of humankind, socially, economically. (p.182). 

There is so much to the reactionary hermeneutics of the African 

Indigenous Churches that deserves mention. First, it embraced the 

Eurocentric missionary Christian faith. Next, it identified that its 

religious perspectives and aspirations run counter to those of the 

indigenous Africans, for indigenous pre-Christian Africans do 

indeed have religious orientation and aspirations, definite and 

definable, contrary to the aspersions and vituperations cast on the 

African religious roots by the Eurocentric Christian missionaries. 

Next, the African Indigenous Churches (having now fully embraced 

the Eurocentric missionary Christian faith) patiently read the 

Christian Bible (since they have received sufficient Western 

education, even though such education is cast in the Western 

colonialist world view that sees nothing good in the African). And 

strangely as it may seem, the African Indigenous Churches applied 

their indigenous hermeneutical models and tools in the Christian 

Bible and found out that even the Bible of the Eurocentric 



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missionary Christian faith spoke to the indigenous African 

situation. That was how the indigenous African Christians 

formulated the character, liturgy, theology, and hermeneutical 

models of the African Indigenous Churches, a variant of the 

Christian faith diametrically and dialectically detracted from and 

opposed to the Eurocentric missionary Christian faith.  

Adeogun (2005), summaring the character of the hermeneutical 

models of the African Indigenous Churches, stated that from 

thence, African liberation has come to be a term in doing 

Contextual Biblical Studies because it makes the problems of the 

people the central axis in praxis and discussion” (P.181). The 

operation in the African Indigenous Churches is purely personalized 

and centered on meeting the need and aspirations of the individual 

persons involved, unlike that of the Euro-Christian missionary 

churches in which everyone is lost in the deluge of self-expression 

(as in modern Pentecostal ecstatic and prophetic mesmerisms) 

rather constitute a total nuisance. Even till today, the mainline 

churches still consider individual self-expressions as in prophetic 

pronouncements, visions and ecstatic mesmerisms (such as 

speaking in tongues) a complete nuisance. 

Decolonization thus became the pronounced aspiration of African 

indigenous Christian hermeneutics. To begin with, we can now 

confidently speak of hermeneutical models that are truly and 

indigenously African. West (2005) quoting Ukpon (2000) 



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assiduously captures the character of African Biblical hermeneutics 

(interpretation) thus; 

First, African biblical interpretation is predominantly 

interested in the historical and sociological dimensions of the 

biblical text. Second, African life biblical interpretation is 

always aware of the ambiguous history of the Bible’s arrival in 

Africa and so is constantly attempting to assert itself over 

against the dominant discourses of western imperialism and 

colonialism. (p. 69). 

The reference to decolonization hermeneutics is a conscious 

recognition by the African Biblical scholars, at least in part, of the 

existence of colonial intent either in the Biblical text itself (through 

a reactionary redactive means) or in its hermeneutics by the 

Eurocentric theologians. It is in this regard that Oladunjoye (2005) 

observes that; 

Some scholars have seen Christianity as a bulldozer, leveling 

the jungle of the uncivilized world in order to allow the 

builders of imperialism to come and build. Even some 

missioners taught that Africans had to be westernized before 

becoming Christians. Desmond Tutu, on the other hand sees 

the attitude of the colonial interpreters of the Bible as 

exploitation through colonialism and neocolonialism. The 

Africans were taught to despise everything African at the time 

of conversion. (p. 5). 



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Mosala (1989) looks at the Biblical text itself (not just its 

hermeneutical models) to highlight colonial intent; 

The Bible is an ideologically layered product of a series of 

historical struggles, and so what is left of the voice of landless 

peasants and other marginalized sectors has been co-opted 

and represented by the discourse of the ruling elites (West, 

2005, p. 65). 

Dube (2000) states the matter rather categorically; “The Bible is 

itself an imperial and patriarchal product”. (West, 2005, p. 65). 

Thus, the reaction of African biblical scholars both to the Biblical 

text itself and to its Eurocentric hermeneutics has been many and 

varied, ranging from the one extreme of outright repudiation and 

rejection, to the other extreme of contextual re-reading. 

Decolonization hermeneutics is therefore, at least in part, an 

attempt to see both that the Bible speaks to the African socio-

cultural situation, and to highlight how it does. 

Our aim here is to, at least, attempt to propose the direction in 

which African and indeed socio-cultural context hermeneutics will 

proceed in the next decade and beyond. Having studied the basic 

principles of Biblical hermeneutics, what do we make of it in our 

multiple socio-cultural, historical and political environments with 

all its nuances and challenges? Non-Western beneficiaries of 

Western education have often been accused of revolving around the 

basic principles, axioms and maxims which they memorize, turn 

around in their minds, even translate to local facets, but do not 



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progress beyond that. It has often been argued that the bane of the 

underdevelopment of the third world, in spite of the large volume of 

existence of Western education and its beneficiaries, is the fact that 

these beneficiaries have no clue for translating these basic 

principles and axioms into facilities and instruments for dealing 

with their local challenges, whether it be in engineering and 

technology, medicine and pharmacy, or arts and humanities. 

In proposing the direction for the application of our vast 

facilities of hermeneutics in dealing with Africa’s under-

development, I take a cue from Professor Manus’ hint, quoted in 

Oladunjoye (2005); 

The Bible having been brought to us Africans by the Colonial 

Church, has been read to us with the eye of the colonial and 

missionary slaves. In our post-colonial and post-modern 

contexts in Africa, re-reading the texts often implies letting 

African religio-cultural, the socio-political and economic 

situations of Africa to interface with the Bible. In other words, 

the location of African biblical scholarship is the social, 

political, and ecclesiastical contexts of Africa and real life 

issues. Biblical scholarship belongs in the church and the 

community, not only in the academy. (p. 6). 

This may seem to have the same orientation with what some 

strands of scholars commonly propose as enculturation 

hermeneutics. Even this enculturation hermeneutics has acquired 

diverse forms, depending on the extent of detraction from the locus 



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that the exegete is prepared to allow, within the ambient of 

traditional religious sentiments. Even scholars who propose an 

adaptation of liturgical procedures using local facilities are content 

to consider that a sufficient act of enculturation. If that was all that 

the African Indigenous Churches did, changing the language of 

Euro-Christian Mission Churches to local language, and engaging 

local musical instruments, that would hardly have earned them any 

mention in enculturation hermeneutics. However, as is evident, 

they brought in whole structures of African personality into the 

faith and made the Scriptures to speak to the African religious 

tensions and aspirations. That is holistic enculturation. 

In interface hermeneutics we bring the elements and 

phenomena face to face with each other, in a situation in which the 

concepts themselves acquire new contextual connotative meanings 

in the new socio-cultural circumstance. Thus the yesua and soteria 

or salvation of the Old and New Testaments would, translated into 

the African context, acquire such meanings that liberate him from 

his socio-economic quagmire, rather than stop at a euphoric, forlon, 

unrealized expectation of the other-worldly condition of eternal 

bliss, in the hope that this new understanding will begin, in the 

here and now, to attack and dismantle the unjust structures of 

greed and exploitation, including the tyrannical exploitative church 

leadership and theology that breed the socio-economic crises of 

deprivation and impoverishment. 

 



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                                 CHAPTER TWO    

ORTHODOX AND ENLIGHTENMENT BIBLICAL HERMENEUTICS 

In this chapter, we look at orthodox biblical hermeneutics which 

became rather thoroughly developed in the Enlightenment period, 

and therefore suffered an accidental indenture at the hands of 

Enlightenment philosophy, to the extent that today, when we talk 

about orthodox biblical hermeneutics, if we are not careful, we 

present Enlightenment biblical hermeneutics because, admittedly, 

the Enlightenment era took upon itself, the task of articulating 

biblical concepts, and in so doing, coloured it with its traits. This is 

in fact what has happened with much of biblical concepts. Such 

concepts are defined within certain periods of learning in which 

they have been articulated and documented, and in addition, such 

periods have coloured such concepts with the prevailing 

philosophical orientation and disposition, such that it is no longer 

possible, except with careful study, to deliver such concepts from 

the encapsulating philosophical character of the period in which 

they have been articulated. For instance, when you say 

“eschatology”, you are already speaking in the language framework 

of 1st Century AD Greek, and by implication, New Testament 

philosophical framework; (eschatos – Greek second declension 

masculine noun for “last” or last things). But, ironically, for 

purposes of fundamental definition, you must necessarily go to the 

Old Testament in search of the concept that clearly owes its origin 

to a New Testament framework or thought. If you now say to a 



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person that within the historical terminus ad quiem of the Old 

Testament, all that is known about the last things, that is life in the 

hereafter, is the Še’ōl, he will argue that it is not so. In the 

argument, he would lean heavily on the books and redactional 

interjections placed in the Old Testament later than the historical 

period of the Old Testament. Such books and interjections, referred 

to as apocalyptic writings, have their origin in the later second 

century BC, a period referred to as “Inter-testament”, beyond the 

historical dating of the last event of the Old Testament, which is 

Ezra’s national (endogamy) reforms. Because of the character of the 

period in which the Jews faced persecution, possibly as a result of 

the Anti-Semitic reactions generated by Ezra’s endogamic 

exclusivist reforms, the apocalyptic writers predicted the soon 

collapse of the kingdoms of the persecutors and a coming future 

bliss for the persecuted, as they endured in the faith. It is these 

features of the apocalyptic writings that are interpreted as 

eschatological and, in any case, the period of such writings is 

beyond the Old Testament. 

So, anyway, in this section, we shall attempt to make out what 

biblical hermeneutics was like, prior to the Enlightenment period in 

which, admittedly, a lot of Biblical exegetical issues became 

carefully articulated and documented. We shall now see how that 

period ended up bringing a preposterous colouring to orthodox 

biblical hermeneutics, and in fact presenting Enlightenment biblical 

hermeneutics as the authentic orthodox biblical hermeneutics. 



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1. Orthodox Biblical Hermeneutics 

Orthodox biblical hermeneutics actually encompasses both the 

theory and methodology for all forms of communication, verbal and 

non-verbal. Orthodox biblical hermeneutics stems from a 

standpoint of firm belief and utmost confidence in God. In other 

words, it is wholly theistic. It is conducted from the context of basic 

relationship to, and dependence upon God. It is hermeneutics done 

from the basic standpoint of the Bible as revealed word of God. 

Such fundamental position and disposition governs and 

characterizes the entire hermeneutical expedition, affecting and 

influencing its ethos, its devices and its deductions. In other words, 

the outcome (theology or doctrinal position) precedes the process. It 

is, if you don’t mind, a hermeneutical procedure done from answer 

to question. In other words, it is a hermeneutical process done from 

a fundamental position in which certain theological conclusions or 

deductions are taken for granted. In biblical orthodox 

hermeneutics, the outcome cannot be other than the basic 

theological and doctrinal axioms resolved ab initio, prior to the 

hermeneutical process. 

Orthodox hermeneutics does not intend to confront or 

investigate God’s word. As St. Anselm put it, in his book, Faith 

Seeking Understanding, orthodox biblical hermeneutics is done 

from the standpoint of belief in the Bible as God’s word. It is not an 

effort to understand in order to believe. It is that having believed, 



21 
 

one seeks deeper understanding to consolidate that already 

accepted as fact. 

Orthodox biblical hermeneutics seeks to understand, first, 

what the scripture communicated to the original audience, and 

secondly, what timeless principles and applications there can be for 

the contemporary audience. The objective is basically to help one 

grow in confidence to read and study the Bible as God’s word. 

Orthodox hermeneutics consists of four basic components, 

namely; 

1. Understanding the historical and cultural context of the text. 

2. Understanding the literary context of the text. 

3. Making observations around the text and 

4. Drawing valid contemporary applications from the text. 

We can look at these in some details. 

1. Historical and Cultural Context: The Setting of the Text.  

This preliminary hermeneutical step asks questions about the 

book as whole; the author, the audience, the dating of the 

book, the purpose for its writing as well as its theme. Although 

in most cases, questions surrounding the authorship and 

dating may be conjectures supported by some references, 

however, the outcome becomes valid for understanding the 

text. 

 



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2. Literary Context (That is the Literary Style) 

It is now believed that to some extent, the literary style of a 

text can give very valid information about its authorship and 

dating. Styles are often associated with prevailing 

philosophical ethos. For instance, the Gospel of John opens 

up with the expression; “In the beginning was the word (logos) 

and the word was with God, and the word was God”. This 

alone has helped a great deal in assigning Hellenistic 

character to the book, and this speaks volumes of it authorial 

background, dating and intended audience. The Bible contains 

many biblical styles or genres, and one book may contain 

many of these styles. 

3. Observation (The Content of the Book) 

Here, we are concerned with the details of the technical 

content of the text. An awareness of this detailed content 

provides much information for its interpretative process. 

4. Application (The Contemporary, Present-day Application 

of the Text) 

Here, we identify the situation in present life similar to that in 

the primary audience that necessitated the text in the first 

instance. From here, we deduce the contemporary value and 

validity of the demands that the text makes to its present day 

audience. 

It must be stated therefore that orthodox biblical 

hermeneutics was primarily for devotional purposes. It was 



23 
 

not an exercise undertaken for academic value. Its ultimate 

objective was to deepen devotional relationship with God. 

Issues that tended to create confusion or raise critical 

questions are rather avoided or deferred until, in the light of 

other scripture, or with benefit of greater insight or revelation, 

they could be better understood. The ultimate aspiration of 

orthodox biblical hermeneutics was to draw out the moral 

value of the text, in other words, to make the hermeneutical 

audience more enhanced in terms of conduct and relationship 

with God. 

2. Enlightenment Hermeneutics 

The 18th century AD became the age of Enlightenment. This is 

largely because the 18th century was the period of scientific 

development, as well as the era of technological revolution in 

Europe. It was an era of great learning and reason. Reason as 

proclaimed by this era of Enlightenment became opposed to faith. It 

was an era of investigation of the scriptural claims. This therefore 

became the era of questioning the scriptural claims until they are 

justified by valid proof. For these reasons, this period of 

Enlightenment contributed to hermeneutics the historical-critical 

methods of textual interpretation. These historical-critical methods 

include textual criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism, source 

criticism and so on. In this era, the traditional beliefs about 

authorship of the Bible books were discarded for the documentary 

hypothesis. 



24 
 

The theologians thrown up by this age became, in the main, 

naturalist theologians. These naturalist theologians were those who 

did not want to approach biblical hermeneutics from the 

fundamental standpoint of belief and faith. It is in fact the other 

way round. They started the hermeneutical process from the 

standpoint of unbelief. Being naturalist, they believed that only 

nature exists, and whatever does not conform to the facets of 

nature does not exist. Their attitude to the scripture is that it is 

simple natural events that authors of the Bible narratives disguised 

and clothed with the garb of mysterious happenings. Their attitude 

to biblical hermeneutics is to reinterpret the miraculous events as 

disguised natural events. Some of such naturalist theologians are 

Julius Wellhausen, Gerrard von Rad, W. Albright, Rudolf 

Bultmann, Gunther Bornkamm, Jurgen Moltmann etc. In fact, 

Rudolf Bultmann, a New Testament naturalist theologian started a 

project of demythologization of the gospel stories in which he set 

out to reinterpret the miraculous occurrences as over-blown natural 

events. For instance, the miracles regarding the raising of the dead 

were interpreted as arising from the special art in identifying and 

resuscitating someone in coma, an art prevalent in the 1st Century 

AD Greco-Roman society. 

So, the major contribution of Enlightenment to biblical 

hermeneutics is the removal of the elements of faith in biblical 

interpretation and elucidation. It was an era in which faith in 

scripture was discarded and replaced with reason. Ironically this 

period also became the period of great expansion in learning, 



25 
 

documentation and literature. Much of the literature produced in 

this period reflected the prevailing philosophical notion of rise of 

reason above faith. While the preceding era had little or no 

documentation of its hermeneutical ethos, the Enlightenment era, 

being an era of learning and writing soon filled everywhere with 

publications which reflected this hermeneutical position. For that 

reason, whenever we talk about hermeneutical models, all that is 

readily available is the historical-critical hermeneutical models 

produced by the Enlightenment era. It is to the extent that when we 

talk about orthodox biblical hermeneutics, because the preceding 

era has little or no write-ups to show what traditional orthodox 

hermeneutics was, all that one can lay hands on is the historical-

critical methods produced by Enlightenment era. 

It is also very important to place on record that the 

Enlightenment era preceded the coming of Christianity into Africa. 

Therefore, the Euro-Christian churches that came to Africa were 

actually products of the Enlightenment, the era in which reason 

was exalted above faith. The Euro-Christian churches that came to 

Africa were therefore scientific in orientation. They were miles away 

from the African orientation of belief in mysteries, and recourse to 

spiritual avenues in the search for solution to the challenges and 

mishaps of life. The Euro-Christian churches were already exposed 

to the scientific world in which occurrences were interpreted 

through scientific models. The world view of the African is that 

every mishap, and that includes the slightest illness or fever, has a 

spiritual cause. For these reasons, the indigenous Africans quickly 



26 
 

rejected the Euro-Christian churches, but ironically did not 

completely reject Christianity. Soon after the establishment of the 

mission churches, the indigenous Africans, having read the 

Christian Bible themselves, devised their own Christianity which 

clearly satisfied the religious aspirations of the Africans. 

So, it is important to note that, Enlightenment historical-

critical hermeneutical model is not the traditional orthodox biblical 

hermeneutics. It is instead the first organized reaction to the 

orthodox biblical hermeneutics. 

Secondly, the African hermeneutics, as originally made 

manifest in the hermeneutical models of the African Indigenous 

Churches, was not necessarily a reaction against orthodox biblical 

hermeneutics. It was instead a reaction against the Enlightenment 

historical-critical hermeneutical model which threw the faith of the 

Bible overboard and exalted reason over and above faith. When we 

place issues in the right perspectives, then it is possible to classify 

the aspirations of the hermeneutical models appropriately. Then it 

is possible to appraise reaction hermeneutics correctly. 

 

 

 

 

 



27 
 

                            CHAPTER THREE 

INTERROGATING THE HISTORICAL-CRITICAL 

HERMENEUTICAL MODELS 

According to Collins (2016), historical criticism is the name usually 

given to what may be termed “mainline” biblical criticism over the 

last three centuries or so. Historical-critical methods are those 

which take account of the fact that the biblical texts were written 

long ago in a cultural matrix very different from our own, and hence 

attempt to understand the texts first of all in the context of that 

ancient setting. Historical considerations are a necessary part of 

that discussion because it requires at least an approximate idea of 

the time, place and circumstances of composition. The goal of this 

enquiry however, is not necessarily historical in a narrow sense. It 

might just as well be the theology or rhetoric of the text seen in the 

light of its historical context. 

Historical-critical hermeneutical method dates back to 1753 

when Jean Astruc first published the thesis that Moses composed 

the Pentateuch from two ancient memoires, and that the key for 

discerning the memoires lies in the use of the divine names, 

Yahweh and ’elohim. Alexander Gedds followed up the indication 

and identified two written sources to the Pentateuch, namely, the J 

(Yahwist source, dated 10th to 9th Century BC) and the E (Elohist 

source, dated 9th Century BC). The third source called the D or Dtr 

(Deuteronomist source dated 7th to 6th Century BC) was later 

identified, and lastly, the P (Priestly source, dated 6th to 5th 



28 
 

Century BC). In 1864, Julius Wellhausen in his, Prolegomena to the 

History of Israel concisely articulated the nearly one hundred years 

of study of the sources (called Source Criticism or Documentary 

Hypothesis) of not just the Pentateuch but also of the entire Old 

Testament. An investigation which initially started by interrogating 

the presumption of Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, held for 

nearly three thousand years from the tenth Century BC to the 18th 

Century AD, continued to broaden in scope and content until it had 

created a consummate position held till today regarding the 

authorship of the Old Testament. 

In 1901, Herman Gunkel, a folklorist, opined that the books of 

the Old Testament were composed from existing oral forms, thus 

giving vent to a new dimension of historical-critical hermeneutical 

method called Tradition or Form Criticism, also credited to him, 

concerned about the existing oral forms that predate the written 

materials. Redaction Criticism which is complementary to Tradition 

or Form Criticism examines how the authors of the written 

materials utilized the oral (or written) forms available to them. 

Streeter (1924) discussed in detail the synoptic problem in the New 

Testament, settling the matter of dependency, first of the Synoptic 

Gospels, in which he established the point of Markan Priority, 

showing evidence of how Matthew and Luke used Mark and a 

material, called Q (Quelle, a German word for Source) to compose 

their Gospel versions. He showed in fact that the version of Mark 

used by Matthew and Luke was in fact a more crude version, which 

he called Ur-Markus, and showed evidence of how Mark formed the 



29 
 

profile for Mathew and Luke, a profile which they occasionally 

deviated from, to accommodate their peculiar materials, and to 

which they returned afterwards. He further showed that the author 

of John used Luke as starting material for his composition. 

Elsewhere, (Uzuegbunam, 2017), we have presented a much fuller 

discussion on Biblical Criticism in textual exegesis. 

From the foregoing, it is evident that the historical-critical 

hermeneutical framework has interrupted and nearly distorted the 

nearly three thousand years of traditional devotional hermeneutics 

that had existed prior to its inception. In the period of preceding the 

18th century Enlightenment-based hermeneutical model, biblical 

hermeneutics took the form of, and had the following features: 

1. The Bible as God’s Word (debar-Yahweh) 

The starting point for doing hermeneutics in the period 

preceding the historical-critical hermeneutical method was the 

point of understanding of the Bible as God’s word. Thus both 

derived from, and enhanced the traditional devotional attitude 

to the Bible. On the contrary, the historical-critical 

hermeneutical model has fundamentally debunked and 

demystified this critical axiom, reducing the Bible to mere 

literature. Rudolf Bultmann, New Testament Redaction 

Scholar, has in fact gone ahead to carry out a project he titled, 

Demythologization of the Gospels, (see Jesus Christ and 

Mythology by Rudolf Bultmann). The crux of his argument is 

that it was the disciples of Jesus who weaved a theological 



30 
 

Christological (messianic) garment upon an ordinary good 

man, Jesus of Nazareth. No wonder, Adamo (2005) clearly 

warned; 

I strongly believe that African scholars must not repeat 

the mistakes of the West in emptying Jesus of his power. 

(p. 26). 

2. The Bible as Sacred Writing (Hagiographa) 

Hermeneutics in the period preceding the historical-critical 

hermeneutical methods started from the fundamental premise 

that the Bible is sacred writing. What this meant was that its 

study would both take this axiom into primary account and 

endeavour to maintain it at all costs. Critics of the historical 

critical hermeneutical methods have indeed observed that 

biblical hermeneutics has been approached using the methods 

and genres meant for secular literature. Indeed, at the onset of 

the 18th century period of Enlightenment, a clear distinction 

could still be perceived between the sacred and the secular 

writings. After the era of historical-critical studies, the dividing 

line became blurred, sacrificed, as it were on the altars of what 

was rightly or wrongly conceived as objectivity. Goldengay 

(1981) had in fact asserted that; 

Objectivity, distancing and concentrating on the 

descriptive may help us to avoid imposing our present 

beliefs, interests and questions on the text. But faith, 

involvement and commitment may open us to other 



31 
 

aspects of the text’s own concerns and enable us to avoid 

the barrenness of “objectivity”. (p. 23 – 24). 

Barren objectivity, that is in fact the price to pay for an 

empirical historical-critical hermeneutical model which has in 

fact, in casting asunder the sacredness of the hagiographa, 

entered it with secular literary genres, ridding it of its sacred 

values. 

3. Hermeneutics as Revelational 

In the period prior to that of the historical-critical biblical 

models, biblical interpretation was basically revelational. It 

was believed and expected to flow from the very source of the 

scripture which is from above. The historical-critical 

hermeneutical model took the essence of biblical hermeneutics 

from the domain of revelation to the domain of sense and 

reason. By so doing, it broke its vital power of depth and 

profundity and reduced biblical hermeneutics to an issue of 

mere mental gymnastics. 

4. Hermeneutics from Allegorical Framework  

The biblical text itself is saturated with the beauties of 

allegories and typologies, for instance, the typology of Joseph 

depicting the suffering Messiah, sold by his brethren; the 

typology of the scarlet chord of the house of Rehab, likened to 

the blood of the lamb on the door lintels of the Exodus eve, 

that warded off the angel of death, culminating in the grand 



32 
 

scheme of the great Passover Lamb slain on the eve of Jewish 

Passover. It was this beautiful array of glorious allegories and 

typologies that the faith devotional community reveled in, in 

the days prior to the critical assault of the sacred literature 

with the secular devices of the historical-critical hermeneutical 

models.  

The Revulsion of the African Indigenous Church Hermeneutics. 

Let it be placed on record that the first and most original reaction to 

the historical-critical hermeneutical model that the left the text 

completely rid of its power, was the theology and hermeneutical 

pattern of the African Indigenous Churches. It can in fact be said 

that the Bible was brought to Africa to be restored of its health and 

reclothed with its glory which it lost at the hands of the Eurocentric 

hermeneutical scholars. The African indigenous Christian 

worshippers took the Christian Bible, the same book that 

Eurocentric historical-critical hermeneutical models had reduced to 

mere literature, not any different from any other literature, and 

raised it to the height of glorious deification. See the height to which 

the African indigenous Christian worshippers raised the Christian 

document of faith, in this pictorial elucidation in which Madueke 

(2000) points to the various ways the book is employed.  

The Bible is;  

the most widely translated book, it makes a contribution 

to the construction of indigenous grammars and texts; it 



33 
 

is a basic textbook in primary and higher education; 

literacy has been closely tied to Bible reading and 

memorization, it is the most accessible basic vernacular 

literature text, a story book, a compilation of novels and 

short stories, a book of prose and poetry, a book of 

spiritual devotion, (i.e. the word of God), as well as a 

“science” book that explains the origin of all creatures. In 

some parts of Africa, the dead are buried with the Bible 

on their chests, and the Bible is buried with the concrete 

foundations on which new houses are built. In many 

African Independent Churches, it is the physical contact 

between the sick and the Bible that is believed to hasten 

healing. (pp. 91 – 92). 

In other words, irrespective of what value the Euro-Christian 

missionaries attached to the Bible, the indigenous African Christian 

congregation embraced it with a glorious sense of certification, a 

fact which also became central to indigenous African hermeneutics 

and theology, because you cannot separate a person’s 

interpretation of a thing from his attitude to it, and vice versa. 

Indigenous African hermeneutics therefore took on from this 

holistic embrace of the Bible and built up a wholesome theology 

which culminated into the restoration of the power and glory, not 

just of the scripture, but also, more importantly of the faith 

community that issued it. We shall return to this matter a little 

more lucidly. 



34 
 

                             CHAPTER FOUR 

                   HERMENEUTICAL COLONIALISM 

African Biblical scholars have variously advanced the thought that 

the Christian Bible lends itself, or, at least, is lent as a tool for the 

advancement of the course of colonialism. Oladunjoye (2005) has 

succinctly argued that: 

Some scholars have seen Christianity as a bulldozer, leveling 

the jungle of the uncivilized world in order to allow the 

builders of imperialism to come and build. Even some 

missioners taught that Africans had to become westernized 

before becoming Christians. Desmond Tutu the other hand 

sees the attitude of the colonial interpreters of the Bible as 

exploitation through colonialism and neo-colonialism. The 

Africans were taught to despise everything African at the time 

of conversion. (p. 5). 

Pratt (1997) further argued that; 

In the early phase of Western expansion, the churches were 

allies of the colonial process. They spread under the protection 

of the colonial powers. They benefitted from the expansion of 

the empire. In return, they rendered special service to Western 

imperialism by legitimizing it and accustoming their new 

adherents to accept compensatory expectations of an external 

reward for terrestrial misfortunes, including colonial 

exploitation. (p. 3). 



35 
 

On the whole, two different perspective issues have been raised in 

relation to the association of the Christian Bible with the colonial 

experience. 

1. In-Text Evidence: Does the Bible contain materials that are 

in anyway colonial in orientation; that is supporting unjust 

structures? 

2. Colonial Hermeneutics: Is the Bible or portions thereof being 

interpreted in such a way as to promote the tenets of social 

stratification and discrimination? It is to these two issues that 

we shall now turn attention. 

1.  Evidence of Colonial Materials in the Bible 

Ukpong (2005) has already sufficiently discussed this matter 

and so we can firmly rely on his submissions here. According to 

him; one vital approach in dealing with this hermeneutical 

colonization is concerned with correcting negative images about 

Africa and African peoples embedded in certain traditional readings 

of some biblical texts. He went further to state that; 

An important theme in this regard is the so called curse of 

Ham whose descendants are listed in Gen. 10:1-14 and 

1Chron.1:8-16 as the Cushites (Ethiopians), Mizraimites 

(Egyptians), Putites, and Canaanites. In Gen. 9:18-27, Ham 

sees the nakedness of his drunken father, Noah, but instead of 

covering him, reports this to his two brothers, Shem and 

Japhet who cover their father. According to Hebrew tradition, 



36 
 

Ham has committed an act of great disrespect towards his 

father. Noah wakes up and learns of the action of his children, 

he pronounces a curse, not on Ham, but on Canaan, Ham’s 

son who was not yet born. A fifth century Midrash on this 

narrative places Noah’s curse directly on Ham and adds: “Your 

seed will be ugly and dark skinned”. Also, the 6th century CE 

Babylonian Talmud states, “The descendants of Ham are 

cursed by being black and are sinful with degenerate progeny”. 

From these came the idea that Africans are black because of 

the curse of Ham. (p. 41). 

This text has been lent to profound use by the Whites in South 

Africa and South America in support of their subjugation of the 

Blacks in those places. Ironically, the missionaries who brought 

Christianity and by implication the Bible to Africa are the kith and 

kin of the same Whites who colonized Africa and inflicted such 

untold pains of exploitation and subjugation on the Africans. And 

as has been shown, these missionaries not only benefitted from the 

logistic assistance provided by these colonialists and imperialists 

but also used the platform of the church to provide the atmosphere 

for fellowship and interaction with these colonialists and 

imperialists in such a manner that makes it impossible for an 

objective analyst to effectively draw a line between the missionaries 

on one hand, and the colonialists and imperialists on the other. In 

fact, in South Africa, the very same people who brought the church 

and the Christian Bible were the ones who orchestrated, supported 

and supervised the ugly Apartheid policy, a form of internal 



37 
 

colonization. It is on record that the Dutch Reformed Church in 

South Africa openly taught that inequality was an act of nature, 

and that just as God deliberately created the fingers to be unequal, 

so the inequality between the Whites and Blacks in South Africa 

was a deliberate act of God. 

To begin with, those who are conversant with the genres of 

Biblical exegesis know that some stories in the Bible are referred to 

as aitiological. Such stories are those which are deliberately 

composed in order to, at least, attempt to explain a seemingly 

inexplicable phenomenon. Thus, the story of Lot’s wife looking back 

to Sodom after the deliverance by the angels, in contravention of the 

specific warning to the contrary, and consequently turning into a 

pillar of salt (Gen. 19:26), was composed in order to explain the 

seemingly inexplicable feature of the Pillar of Salt. The story of the 

collapse of the wall of Jericho in Joshua 6 was composed to explain 

the huge mound of rubbles which the Israelites met on arrival at 

Jericho. Now, look at the story of the purported curse on Africa. The 

man who sinned was Ham. Noah woke up from sleep and learnt 

how Ham had seen his nakedness, and he said; “Cursed be 

Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren” (Gen. 

9:25). Anyway, this is even absurd in itself, but in fact portrays the 

true character of Biblical aitiological illustrations. A man commits 

an offence, and his father places a curse on his unborn child. This 

is also a confirmation of the retrospective nature of Old Testament 

narratives. A man could not be so certain of what would be the 

name of his son’s unborn child, but anyway, the narrator who was 



38 
 

reporting this in retrospect had already known the descendants of 

Ham and knew the one, out of the descendants, that was not doing 

well and seemed to be under a curse. Biblical aitiologies actually 

start from the answer and attempt to raise the matching question. 

For instance, why is Canaan manifesting the traits of perennial 

slavish orientation and bondage? It is because his father saw his 

father’s nakedness and made a mockery of him, instead of covering 

him. That is how Biblical aitiology works. 

The gruesome irony of that text, particularly when placed side 

by side with the hermeneutical 5th century Midrash, is that Canaan 

(Ham’s son purportedly cursed) refers to the thriving area of 

Palestine or Persian Gulf which accounts for about eighty-five 

percent of the world’s crude oil deposits; and has been massively 

beautified with the proceeds of crude oil exports to Europe, America 

and Asia. On the contrary, the son of Ham that is the father of 

Africa and can be associated with the description “dark-skinned” 

and (perhaps) “ugly” is Cush. 

The Cushites, according to Wikipedia.org, are “a grouping of people 

who are primarily indigineous to Northeast Africa”. So if anybody 

was cursed in the text or in the words of the hermeneutical Midrash 

or even the Babylonian Talmud, it should have been Cush, and 

then, by implication Africans. But thank God, the Bible did not say 

that God cursed Africa. 

The truth is that God never cursed Africa, never came close to 

wishing to do so, and never will. Africa is a blessed continent. God 



39 
 

blessed Africa and placed all the natural mineral resources under 

the African soil – gold, silver, precious stones, crude oil, etc. It was 

in fact these abundant natural resources that attracted the 

Europeans to Africa, and to be able to freely excavate these mineral 

resources, they had to use all kinds of mechanisms to subdue the 

Africans. 

The African skin, deliberately the product of years of subjection to 

the intense scorching heat of the sun, is tough and impervious to a 

vast array of micro-organisms. You will not appreciate the blessing 

of the African skin until you see the ravaging impact of skin cancer 

in Europe and America. 

The African environment is not cursed. It is in fact a blessing. 

It is already clear that in the recent bout of the global pandemic of 

Covid-19 disease, the only continent in the world where its 

influence is rated in mere trickles is Africa. The total one-year 

record of deaths from Covid-19 in Nigeria, in spite of the deliberate 

escalation to attract foreign aid, still falls short of what was once a 

daily record of deaths in Italy, Britain or Ecuador. God in deed loves 

Africa. 

The only problem with Africa today is that the African is like a 

man caught at the middle of the road. Having experienced 

European values, he wishes that he could suddenly transmutate 

into a European, which is impossible. On the other hand, the vital 

tangible and intangible elements of his traditional roots, despicably 

criminalized and tabooed by the Euro-Christian missionaries, are 



40 
 

exerting a pressure on him, daring him to be “Honest to (his) 

African Heritage” (Apologies, Prof. Jude Emeka Madu). Needless to 

say, the African attitude to life is that of endless vacillation. Today, 

ironically, Africans are travelling all the way back to their 

traditional religious roots, repudiating years of consolidated 

Christianization, which, but for some insincere and exploitative 

activities of some of the missionaries, would have brought him to a 

place of new discovery. 

Europe has totally and finally broken the ethos of the 

cherished communal life in Africa and left in its wake a generation 

of Africans who are unleashing on each other the exploitive 

mechanisms they have acquired from their European mentors. Is it 

not ironical that in Africa where per capita income, standard of 

living and quality of life are at the lowest ebb, that is where also you 

have the wealthiest church leaders in the world? Pastors and 

church leaders in Nigeria, for instance, are in the midst of the most 

impoverished congregations whom they recklessly milk and extort 

in tithes and sacrificial seeds, while cruising about in their private 

jets. In this regard, church leaders are not doing any better than 

the political leaders who stash away in foreign bank accounts, huge 

resources meant for developing the African nations and improving 

the lots of the people, leaving the people in perennial penury, 

starvation, illiteracy and disease. If this is the adduced effect of the 

purported curse on Africa, it certainly makes a lot of sense to agree. 

. 



41 
 

2. Adapting the Bible to Colonial Interpretation. 

At the centre of African scholars’ grievance against the Euro-

Christian missionaries is the disdain with which the missionaries 

appraised the African indigenous religious values, and the avowed 

commitment of the missionaries to annihilate the African heritage. 

To justify their action, the missionaries described the African 

religious roots in the most pejorative and despicable terms – fetish, 

idolatrous, heathen, magical, idol worship, and so on. 

In appraising the missionary styles of the Euro-Christian 

missionaries in Africa, the easiest starting point is from the product 

end, an examination of the African product of the Euro-Christian 

missionary enterprise. A cursory look reveals an African clad in the 

European garb but still intrinsically and fundamentally, and 

functionally and even religiously African. He goes to the church on 

Sunday, but his soul is still in his African religious roots where his 

confidence is still deeply embedded. Recently, in Anambra State in 

South East Nigeria, a political god-father was going to invest his 

money in campaigns for the election of a political contestant to the 

office of the Governor. As is the practice, the terms of the agreement 

would be drawn up to show how the constant would reward the 

god-father with the State resources when elected. Ironically, the 

two, contestant and god-father, are Knights of the church, that is, 

by implication, highly exalted church members. Having drawn up 

the agreement among themselves, the two men needed to seal it 

with an oath. And to ensure the unalloyed effectiveness of their 



42 
 

oath, they knew where to go; not to the church altar, nor indeed to 

the church Bishop, but to the shrine of a popular deity in Anambra 

State. This is just to show that when the chips are down, the 

African knows where his religious conscience, confidence and 

affinity lie. 

 In its over one hundred and sixty years of existence in Africa, 

the church has made converts, but the African has remained 

essentially and intrinsically whom he is and his allegiance remains 

to his traditional roots. The explanation for this is obvious and 

those who teach missiological models are already learning, from the 

Euro-Christian missionaries models, how not to engage the local 

population in a missionary enterprise. To begin with, because the 

missionaries were too much in a haste to plant their new religion, 

they did not care to engender an atmosphere of communication and 

communion with the indigenous Africans. If they had done that the 

first thing that would have happened is that they would have been 

exposed to the religious values and aspirations of the Africans. 

Because they had no communication or communion with the 

Africans, they quickly concluded that Africans were a people 

without religious roots, values and aspirations. Nothing could be 

further from the truth. In fact, the fact that less than seventy years 

after the establishment of the Euro-Christian Missionary Churches 

in Africa, the indigenous African Christians not only rejected the 

European Christian orientation but also established their own 

version of the Christian church where their core religious values 

and aspirations were to be catered for. Next, in their sensitivity to 



43 
 

hermeneutical models, they interpreted the Christian Bible in such 

a way that it squarely addressed the African roots, challenges and 

aspirations. So, indigenous pre-Christian Africans had a set of core 

religious values and aspirations, and when they could not find 

those values and aspirations in the Euro-Christian Missionary 

Churches, they resolved not to compromise their religious roots. 

They created their own versions of the Christian church (called 

African Indigenous Churches, AIC’s) and moved swiftly to use them 

to address their peculiar religious challenges and aspirations. 

For the avoidance of doubt, indigenous African religious 

facilities had a potency by which the society was ordered and crime 

was prevented. Recently, as his contribution to the raging debate 

about how to eradicate corruption that is threatening to wipe out 

the nations of Africa, General Jerry Rawlings, great revolutionist 

and one-time Ghanaian Head of State, asked a very pertinent 

question; “Why swear in potential public office holders in Africa, 

using the Bible and Quran, when it is clear to you that they have no 

atom of regard for those instruments?” And he went ahead to 

suggest; “Instead, take them to swear before their local deities that 

they will never steal public funds, and if they do, the deities should 

kill them”. Has it not been variously admitted that the African 

society was much better and more morally ordered in the pre-

Christian era than in the post-Christian era? So, at least from that 

premise, those who wrote off African traditional values as altogether 

inexistent have clearly missed it.  



44 
 

So, part of what the African biblical scholars consider colonial 

hermeneutics on the part of the Euro-Christian missionaries is 

their pejorative and disdainful attitude to the religious roots of 

Africa, a stance which justified their calculated resolve to wipe out 

and utterly annihilate everything African in the African society. And 

you want to ask; with over one hundred and sixty years of the 

church in Africa, has it now succeeded in wiping out the indigenous 

religious roots of Africa? The answer, most clearly, is no. 

It is a colonial orientation that makes a missionary vastly 

superior to the people he has come to minister to. Such a 

missionary then ascends the lofty ecclesiastical heights, far 

withdrawn from the people, lest they pollute or desecrate him. And 

from such ecclesiastical heights, he doles out strings “do’s” and 

“don’t’s”, invoking curses on people who dare disobey the orders. 

Modern missionaries now know that in a true missionary 

enterprise, there is no difference between the leader (missionary) 

and the people. Why was there the need for a betrayer to identify 

Jesus from his disciples? It was because, ordinarily, you would not 

be able to tell Jesus from his disciples. What great lesson for the 

pontifical, plutocratic, callous exploitive leaders that have hijacked 

the church today. In their own case, you certainly won’t need a 

betrayer to identify them. From afar, you will be able to distinguish 

them by their aristocratic flamboyance and their despotic stance, 

surrounded by multiple slaves who bear modern titles while playing 

the same ancient slavish roles. 



45 
 

                             CHAPTER FIVE  

           THE RISE OF SOCIAL CONTEXT HERMENEUTICS 

As already seen in hermeneutical colonialism (otherwise called 

colonial hermeneutics) recipients of the diverse approaches to 

Biblical interpretation have accused the proponents of these 

approaches, (and not without cause, anyway) of deliberately 

applying the tenets of hermeneutics unto discriminatory and 

exploitative objectives. This has in fact led to the pronounced 

critical outlook on the Bible as an instrument designed for racial 

oppression. Some have stated categorically that the laws of the 

Bible are deliberately designed to hold down the oppressed from 

taking up arms against the oppressor(s). Thus, the expectation of a 

blissful life in eternity, for those who remained calm in the face of 

oppression, is seen as serving no other purpose except the bidding 

of the callous oppressors. 

Over the years, therefore, a stream of social context 

hermeneutics has arisen specifically for the purpose of addressing 

these hermeneutical anomalies – subjugations, intimidations and 

oppressions. The idea essentially is to embattle and utterly resist 

and subdue any hermeneutical position that grants impetus to 

oppression. These hermeneutical perspectives have given rise to 

context theologies that are named after the perspectives, namely; 

Liberation Theology, Black Theology, Feminist Theology, African 

Theology, Decolonization Theology, Motivational and Inspirational 



46 
 

Theology, and so on. A few of these hermeneutical perspectives and 

the main thrusts of their position deserve brief mention here. 

1. LIBERATION HERMENEUTICS 

By far the most popular and most epoch-making of the social 

context hermeneutics is that which arose in Latin America in the 

1960’s, the major proponents of which were Julian Segundo (a 

Catholic Priest) and Gustavo Gutierrez. The situation that led to the 

emergence of Liberation hermeneutics was the existence of a 

condition of abject poverty, deprivation and marginalization of the 

poor by the rich and affluent in the Latin American society. It was 

rather ironical that both the wealthy oppressors and the deprived 

and oppressed, downtrodden poor, belonged to the same 

congregations of the thriving Roman Catholicism in the society. It 

thus became very clear that there was an ideological sharp divide 

between the message doled out from the church pulpits and the 

actual condition of living (particularly the disconnect between the 

affluent oppressor Christians and the impoverished deprived 

Christians). It was this situation that catalyzed this new approach 

of doing hermeneutics in line with the Bible’s protection of the poor 

from the oppressive rich. According to Sabrino (1978), “The poor are 

the authentic theological source for understanding Christian truth 

and practice” (p. 56). In other words, liberation hermeneutics 

represents a slant of biblical interpretation in which the welfare and 

protection of the deprived, down-trodden poor form the central, 

focal point. As Bonino (1975) puts it; “God is unequivocally on the 



47 
 

side of the poor” (p. 17). Liberation hermeneutics asserts that the 

starting point of Biblical interpretation is the point at which the 

welfare of the suffering, distressed poor is given the utmost pride of 

place. Thus, this perspective of Biblical interpretation condemned 

as utterly out of place, the prevailing alliance between the 

authorities of the church and the ungodly ruling powers of Latin 

America. 

One common feature of liberation hermeneutics which also 

applies to all the social context hermeneutical models is the resolve 

to model hermeneutics towards the solution of societal challenges, 

in this case, the exploitation of the poor by the rich. In other words, 

social context hermeneutics believes that Biblical interpretation 

cannot, and should not be done in a vacuum, but must be made to 

address and redress the existing social anomalies in the society. It 

is important to place on record that in response to the demands of 

the proponents of liberation hermeneutics in Latin America, the 

Conference of the Catholic Bishops of Latin America held in 1968 in 

Columbia, unanimously condemned the prevailing alliance between 

the church and the ruling powers in Latin America. 

The vital Biblical textual basis for liberation hermeneutics is 

the Exodus story which contains the practical proof that God takes 

sides with the oppressed against the oppressors. Liberation 

hermeneutics, however, interprets the Exodus story as a violent 

action embarked upon by the oppressed to regain their freedom 

from the oppressors, thus urging the oppressed not to give in to 



48 
 

oppression. It nonetheless brings God into the picture, in the sense 

that the oppressed cannot do so much on their own to regain 

freedom from the powerful oppressors, but would require divine 

assistance.  

It is important, however, to note here that the major failure of 

liberation hermeneutics arises from its advocacy for violence by the 

oppressed to regain freedom from the oppressors. Being a social 

context hermeneutical model, liberation hermeneutics quite often 

takes hermeneutics outside the rational ambits of Biblical 

interpretation and ends up as a social movement entirely, 

advocating and adopting methods and strategies that the Bible 

certainly cannot endorse. To take hermeneutics out of the text it 

intends to interpret becomes nothing but an aberration. 

 

2. BLACK THEOLOGY HERMENEUTICS 

This perspective to hermeneutics has its origin in the 

experiences of the Blacks in North America and South Africa who 

were going through all forms of discriminatory oppression at the 

hands of their White counterparts. Ironically, they presumably 

shared the same faith and worshipped in the same faith 

communities with these agents of class distinction and oppression. 

Yet, not even the commonality in the community of worship in any 

way mitigated the oppressive practices of these privileged elements. 

Black theology hermeneutics thus became a hermeneutical slant to 

the sporadic Civil Rights (or Black Rights) Movements that sprang 



49 
 

up in North America and South Africa in the 1960’s. These societies 

at the time had one thing in common and that was racial 

discrimination against the blacks by the whites. Elements of black 

theology hermeneutics can still be seen in the decolonization 

hermeneutics being championed in the main by African scholars. A 

significant component of this perspective to hermeneutics is the 

feeling that the Bible itself is a colonial document and that it 

contains textual substance that lends support to the discrimination 

against the blacks. One of such references is the so-called curse of 

Noah to his son Ham which, in a complex pseudo-hermeneutical 

maneuver translates to a curse of the black race. Another common 

reference is the content of Exodus 12 to the effect that God 

commanded the Israelites through Moses to borrow items of gold 

and silver from the Egyptians (Africa or the Black race) at the point 

of leaving Egypt, and by so doing laid the prophetic foundation for 

the impoverishment of the black race by Europe and America. The 

other dimension to this perspective of hermeneutics is the 

insinuation that the biblical reference to idolatry, graven images, 

heathenism, is basically a reference to African religious roots. 

Modern African scholars are already profusely refuting this 

vituperative and pejorative description of African indigenous 

religious orientation. The impression that the Black race did not 

know God, and had no tangible religious orientation prior to their 

coming in contact with the European missionaries is already being 

treated as erroneous and highly provocative by the stream of 



50 
 

contemporary African scholars. Parrat (1997) laments this 

deliberate denigration of the black race, thus: 

The worst crime that can be laid at the door of the White 

man… is not our economic, social and political 

exploitation, however reprehensible that might be; no, it 

is that his policy succeeded in filling most of us with a 

self-disgust and self-hatred. This has been the most 

violent form of colonialism, our spiritual and mental 

enslavement, when we have suffered from what can only 

be called a religious or spiritual schizophrenia. (p. 37). 

Black theological hermeneutics thus became the reaction of the 

black race to the fallouts of the long periods of enslavement of the 

black race by their white counterparts in North America, South 

Africa and Europe. Essentially the black race in Europe and North 

America represent the offsprings of the scores of slaves purchased 

from Africa and ferried into Europe and North America in slave 

cargoes. They were second class personnel at that time, hardly 

qualified to be called citizens of their host nations when they 

evidently did not share in the rights and entitlements of citizens of 

those nations. Well, the era of civil rights agitations, complemented 

with the hermeneutical and theological corollary to the civil rights 

agitations, have produced a fairer society. Racial discrimination 

has, at least in principle, been outlawed in North America, and the 

discriminatory Apartheid Policy in South Africa has been 

dismantled. South Africa has gained total Independence from their 



51 
 

British colonial masters, and is now under the rule of indigenous 

leaders. 

Black theology hermeneutics has in essence focused on the 

anti-discriminatory declarations in the Biblical text such as “In 

Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek”. (Gal. 3:28). The slave 

masters of North America had adopted as a policy a system of de-

culturizing and de-religionizing their victims (African slaves) while 

introducing them to the tenets of Christianity, and employing them 

as mere tools. The slaves eventually studied the Christian Bible by 

themselves and then found no tenable biblical basis for the 

dehumanization that was being meted out to them. Black theology 

hermeneutics saw through to the existence of an impartial, non-

discriminately, just and righteous God, as variously attested to in 

the Christian Bible. These ideas they advanced over and above the 

colonial exploitative and dehumanizing practices being meted out to 

them by their White overlords. However, later, two different 

perspectives to black theology hermeneutics arose. One was 

passive, patient and peaceful, believing that with more 

understanding and commitment to the tenets of the Scripture of the 

Christian Faith, the discriminatory policies would ultimately 

collapse. The other stance was rather violent, believing that the 

unjust structures in society that bred the exploitation of the less 

privileged by the privileged few on whatever basis would not 

collapse on their own but would bow to pressure when sufficient 

pressure is brought upon them. Thus, it would not be surprising 

that black theory hermeneutics eventual produced the 



52 
 

hermeneutical credence to the spite of wild agitations and violent 

actions that eventually compelled the operators of the 

discriminating policies to back down, giving rise to a more 

egalitarian society. 

3. FEMINIST HERMENEUTICS 

The growing concern and agitations for women liberation gave 

birth to a hermeneutical component aimed at dismantling the 

textual elements that hold down women in subjugation and make 

them accept a position of inferiority to their male counterparts. This 

is in brief what Feminist hermeneutics is all about. To begin with, 

feminist hermeneutics started with textual interpretation from the 

critical standpoint that even the Biblical text, as other documents of 

faith, is male chauvinistic, and is a deliberate instrument for 

furthering male domination in the society. God is conceived of, and 

described as masculine, with a masculine gender pronoun used for 

him, and there is no modicum of mother figure around him. In the 

Old Testament, God reveals himself through the patriarchs, and the 

patriarchal dispensation soon gives way to a prolonged, male-

dominated monarchical era. The prophets who stood between God 

and humans were all male. Even in the New Testament, in the 

ministry of Jesus, in spite of the huge contributions made by the 

highly sacrificial women, all the apostles appointed by Jesus are 

male. Thus, even in the New Testament rather more reformed 

religious traditions, the elements of male chauvinism are not 

jettisoned. On a number of instances, Jesus is said to feed four or 

five thousand men, including women and children, signifying that 



53 
 

women are too insignificant for anyone to expend efforts in 

counting. 

Feminist hermeneutics in fact starts from the standpoint in 

which the Biblical text, in accordance with the traditions of the 

environment that gave birth to it, is disdained as structurally 

patriarchal, calling in fact for its revision in order to eliminate the 

patriarchal elements inherent in it. 

There is no doubt that, not just Israel, but also the entire 

society of the Ancient near East is fundamentally patriarchal in 

orientation. In fact, many of them, till today, practice a system of 

government described as Patrimonialism, a system of government 

presided over by family heads who are all male. No one dares 

prescribe democracy in those societies. One king rules until old age 

and eventual death, and is replaced by a brother or close male 

relation. In that system of government, some families are treated as 

royal and they alone must produce the kings, who must be male, 

even if the only available mature male in the family, at the time of 

vacancy in the office is an imbecile. This is the same administrative 

situation found in the Old Testament. 

Till today, as a result of the inherent patriarchal orientation of 

the Biblical text directly inherited by the churches, most churches 

cannot see the possibility of female clergy. This situation is more 

predominant in the orthodox churches. The New Religious 

Movements freely admit women into their clergy but even this 

situation is not acceptable to many societies. 



54 
 

Whilst feminist hermeneutics seeks a reinterpretation of the 

biblical text in order to assert the relevance of women, and to 

eliminate the facets of male chauvinism or patriarchalism domiciled 

in the text, it would appear that the terminus ad quiem of its 

aspiration will be an outright discarding of the Biblical text 

altogether, in favour of another that is, at least, more admissible of 

the role and relevance of women in the religious context. The 

credibility of the product of such a venture remains to be 

ascertained. It has remained our cardinal assertion that any 

hermeneutics that will qualify to be described as Biblical 

hermeneutics, must begin at the point at which the sanctity and 

centrality of the Biblical text must be acknowledged.  A Biblical 

hermeneutics which seeks an outright repudiation of the Biblical 

text and its replacement with another has certainly obscured the 

valid point of critical Biblicism, and could, to that extent, be 

anything but biblical in its hermeneutical orientation. 

 

4. REVISIONIST HERMENEUTICS 

The term “revisionism” has been employed in recent 

hermeneutical studies in two diverse perspectives. The first is the 

perspective which looks at it, not as a distinct perspective of 

hermeneutics, but as umbrella term that embraces all 

hermeneutical positions advocating a radical updating or 

emendation of the biblical text in line with contemporary 

challenges. Thus, in a broad sense, revisionist hermeneutics refers 



55 
 

to such recent hermeneutical movements as process theism, and 

various forms of political and socio-cultural hermeneutics which 

include feminism, liberation hermeneutics, black theory and third 

world and other related theological perspectives, including 

perspectives in African enculturation hermeneutics. What these 

hermeneutical perspectives have in common is their attempt, or at 

least advocacy, to reformulate from various critical perspectives the 

meaning and claims of the Biblical texts, as well as the central 

theological or doctrinal notions advanced by the text. 

The second perspective of application of the term revisionism, 

and hence, revisionist theology or hermeneutics is the one which 

refers to the specific formal model of fundamental hermeneutics. In 

this perspective of use, the term was first put forward by David 

Tracy, in his work; Blessed Rage for Order. This work has remained 

the primary source for the most refined and detailed exposition of 

the model. For Tracy, a revisionist fundamental Christian theology 

is best described as philosophical reflection on the meanings 

present in common human experience and those present in the 

Christian tradition. 

Revisionist hermeneutics as a formal model or hermeneutical 

method is characterized by a specific understanding of the web of 

commitments which define the standpoint of the individual 

scholar’s approach to the Biblical text. This methodological 

commitment at the level of fundamental hermeneutics finds its 



56 
 

embodiment in the sphere of systematic theology, and to the 

contemporary hermeneutical and theological movements. 

For revisionist hermeneutics, the primary responsibility of 

biblical theology is unto the community of scholarly enquiry and its 

respective canons of enquiry, (which include the philosophical, 

historical, literary-critical, ideological-critical, and so on) as well as 

the morality of the critical enquiry. Revisionist hermeneutics asserts 

a commitment to the spirit of enquiry; a commitment to asserting 

only that for which warrants are provided; and a willingness to 

follow the evidence wherever it may lead, in the spirit of 

investigation of the present meaning and defensibility of the truth – 

claims of that tradition. 

Thus, understanding of the hermeneutical expedition is aptly 

described as revisionist because it represents a critical corrective to 

the dominant neo-orthodox understanding of the process. In 

response to Paul Tillich’s position that “the task of the theologian is 

to show that the Christian message contains answers to the 

questions implied in the human situation”, revisionist hermeneutics 

maintains that such a correlation is insufficiently critical. Indeed it 

is simply a juxtaposition, as it derives the questions for theology 

from only one source – the human situation; and its answers from 

another one source – the Christian message. It falls grossly short in 

that it does not allow for a correlation and interplay of the principal 

questions and answers of each source. Thus, revisionist 

hermeneutics reaffirms the commitment to the principal values, 



57 
 

cognitive claims and existential faiths of classic liberal 

hermeneutics. 

Essentially, the concern of revisionist hermeneutics is the 

deconstruction or deformulation of orthodox textual meanings. Far 

from an advocacy for an abdication or a reconstruction of the text, 

as the name may suggest, revisionist hermeneutics seeks a 

broadening of the tenets for dogmatic interpretation. Orthodox 

hermeneutics begins by a dogmatic fixation of the tenets and 

regions of meaning, a fact which revisionism considers absurd in 

itself. For revisionism, the exploration of textual meaning should be 

an ongoing expedition, and in this process, contexts of exploration 

need necessarily not to be fixatively constrained, but remain elastic 

as the search for new meanings and new contexts is admitted as an 

interminable phenomenon. 

5. MOTIVATIONAL AND INSPIRATIONAL HERMENEUTICS  

“It was a harsh summer, the summer of 1982. For many, it 

was as if the clock had rolled back to the thirties, the time of the 

Great Depression. Company upon company declared bankruptcy. 

Unemployment soared. The ‘severe and prolonged recession’, as it 

was dubbed by the media sent ripples of depression across 

America. No one could deny that the country had problems. But the 

biggest problem we had was our attitude toward the economic 

problem. Negative thinking spread like a plague through all levels of 

society. It was not easy to protect oneself from the infection of 

negative thinking which spread by word of mouth, by conversation 



58 
 

with friends as well as strangers, by television screens and by news 

reports. It spread quickly because in recessive times, the tendency 

is to react negatively. Once an organism, a business, a life, or a 

country is infected with negative thinking, the infection attacks the 

mind, the heart and the soul like termites that secretly gnaw at the 

emotional support system. It was in the midst of this national mood 

that I arrived at the Hilton Hotel in downtown Chicago. I was there 

to present a motivational lecture at a major convention. Delivering 

lectures of inspiration as well as on successful management 

principles was nothing new to me. Each year I travel from coast to 

coast, giving nearly one hundred talks to doctors, executives, 

educators, you name it. However, I was particularly fascinated by 

this engagement. My audience would be members of the Ag-

Industry. (“Ag” is, of course the abbreviation for agriculture). This 

industry represents those who are involved in farming enterprise in 

the Midwest States of Iowa, Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota. My 

anticipation of a warm inspirational evening was quickly doused by 

a couple of somber-looking gentlemen. The convention badges 

pinned to their dark lapels identified them as the men for whom I 

was looking. They greeted me with restrained enthusiasm. These 

men were losing their farms. Their businesses were going bankrupt. 

Terrible pressures were being placed on their marriages and 

families.”  

This was the story that formed the setting for the rise of 

Motivational and Inspirational hermeneutics. It was a real problem 

that faced real people on the threshold of total annihilation. The 



59 
 

man who stood at the very point of dealing with this challenge 

shown above was Dr. Robert H. Schuller, at that time the Pastor of 

Crystal Cathedral in the United States of America. The real 

challenge that faced him in the circumstance was to take up the 

Bible and look through it for a word to reignite the shattered lives of 

these men at the peak of a disaster-ridden economic depression, in 

such a manner that could at least draw out the lingering innate 

potentials in them, to enable them survive the threatening storm. 

Hermeneutics is not static. It is a progressive, living expedition 

that endeavours to adapt itself in new circumstances, in the 

ongoing search for meaning in the overall journey of life. 

Hermeneutics must therefore lend itself, creatively and ingeniously 

to new situations and circumstances in the ongoing quest to 

provide meaning to life’s intricate perplexities. The Bible, as shown 

above, has been adapted to the process of mental and emotional 

incarceration and colonialism. It can also be adapted to the process 

of awakening dormant innate potentials in the inside of human 

persons, until such potentials, having been woken up, are 

assiduously unleashed at the challenging situation, and tangible 

positive results are yielded. 

Motivational and inspirational hermeneutics thus became that 

perspective of the search for meanings of Biblical texts that seeks to 

apply the biblical text as quickening tonic to awaken latent 

strengths in the inside of the human person, for the purpose of 

effectively dealing with a challenging situation. As Robert Schuller 



60 
 

himself put it, “When you have exhausted all possibilities, 

remember this; you haven’t”. Dr. Schuller’s book, “Tough Times 

Never Last But Tough People Do” became a classical epitomization 

of the tenets of Motivational and Inspirational hermeneutics.  

Robert Schuller’s contemporary in the Motivational and 

Inspirational hermeneutics is Dr. Norman Vincent Pearle, the 

author of the classical best seller, “The Power of Positive Thinking”. 

Pearle’s under-guarding philosophy, which also became the title of 

one of his best-selling books is, “You can, if you think you can”. His 

favourite Scripture, “I can do all things through Christ who 

strengthens me” (Phil. 4:13) speaks volumes of the positive 

confession that turns innate discouragement into budding strength.  

6. AFRICAN INCULTURATION HERMENEUTICS 

Strangely, and highly worthy of note, Afro-centric 

hermeneutics has prospered exceedingly in the last couple of 

decades. Afro-centric hermeneutics has progressed from the point 

of primitive textual colonialism to a neo-romantic posture in which 

the African can identify in the Biblical text, no longer a motif of 

racial colonialism but one of consanguinity, universal affinity, and 

mutual integration. This progress, it must be admitted, has been 

largely the product of the years of process hermeneutics and 

theologies. For instance, it was a great eye-opener that the 

proponents of liberation theology could discover for themselves that 

the Biblical text presents Yahweh as identifying with the cause of 

the oppressed, and indeed takes sides with the oppressed against 



61 
 

their oppressors. A vital technical tool of liberation theology, the Old 

Testament Book of Exodus, presents the vivid picture of Yahweh, 

taking up the cause of the oppressed against the oppressors, till all 

the oppressors became drowned, through Yahweh’s drastic 

intervention, in the Red Sea, while the oppressed were mysteriously 

delivered. Similarly, modern Afro-centric hermeneutics has 

completely obliterated the impressions of racial colonial 

hermeneutics, and is willing to explore the universal humanity 

posture of the text; ouk eni Ioudaios oude Ellen en Christo Ieso 

(Neither Jew nor Greek in Christ Jesus; Gal.3:28). This implies a 

total abdication of the traces of racial discrimination, in favour of 

united universal humanity. Modern Afro-centric hermeneutics can 

presently identify a common provision in the biblical text, in spite, 

anyway, of the present socio-economic inequalities in the world. It 

is to this situation that modern African theologians are addressing 

their minds with a view to detangling the African mind from the 

orthodox mental inclinations that hold the people down perpetually 

in socio-economic bondage, in favour of more pragmatic mental 

orientations that would enable the African people to take their 

destinies in their own hands and liberate themselves from the 

circumstantially induced socio-economic slavery that pervades the 

African environment presently. It is to these issues of interface 

hermeneutics for socio-economic liberation that we turn our 

attention in the next and concluding chapter of this book. But for 

the purposes of an introduction, it needs to be stated that basically, 

the purpose of hermeneutics is essentially to generate such 



62 
 

perspectives of textual interpretation that create in a people an 

appropriate mental orientation necessary for dismantling the 

internal dissuasions and mobilizing the vast innate human 

resources for socio-economic growth of the human society. Today, 

as we anticipate the conclusion of the first quarter of the 21st 

Century, hermeneutics should now go beyond the traditional 

primitive concerns of whether God is White or Black, male or 

female, Jew or Greek, and address itself much more to those mental 

frameworks necessary for confronting the real human 

developmental challenges of poverty, under-development, disease 

and dwindling life expectancy, and how these developmental 

challenges can be dealt with as mankind progresses into the second 

quarter of the 21st Century. Modern hermeneutics, it must be 

advocated, has now to have contemporary, pragmatic creative 

value. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



63 
 

CHAPTER SIX  

INTERFACE HERMENEUTICS FOR SOCIO-ECONOMIC 

DEVELOPMENT: THE AFRO-CENTRIC PARADIGM 

For clarity purposes, interface hermeneutics takes the context of 

the hermeneutical model beyond the socio-cultural. Whilst not 

ignoring the social and cultural tensions altogether, it engages an 

interface context which is rather more holistic in outlook. As has 

been hinted, the sole objective of hermeneutics is to create, by 

textual elucidation, a mental framework which interfaces with the 

basic challenges of society, and fully mobilizes the intra-psychic 

resources against such challenges. Whereas the hermeneutics of 

the previous ages have lent themselves only to mere academic 

elucidation, the process theology hermeneutics has shown us that 

hermeneutics can be directed to addressing socio-cultural contexts, 

that is, doing hermeneutics from the basic standpoint of socio-

cultural inequalities, these inequalities being the making of human 

frailties. In interface hermeneutics, the inequalities are rather 

played down on as though they don’t matter anymore, so that the 

anti-human tensions generated by them, which break down human 

society along the lines of such tensions, instead of mobilizing whole 

human resources for the resolution of the challenges, can be 

avoided. Thus, while the socio-cultural hermeneutical contexts 

place human beings at the receiving end of the vituperations, 

interface hermeneutics sees the human family as unbroken and 

undivided, for the purpose of mobilizing the whole human family 



64 
 

towards the resolution of the human challenges. We can now take a 

look at some biblical texts randomly chosen, for the purpose of 

applying the interface hermeneutical models of interpretation, in 

the Afro-centric socio-economic development paradigm. 

We start with 2 Kings 4:1-7 

Now there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of 

the prophets unto Elisha, saying; Thy servant my husband is 

dead; and the creditor is come to take unto him my two sons 

to be bondmen. And Elisha said unto her, what shall I do for 

thee? Tell me, what has thou in thy house? And she said, 

Thine handmaid hath not anything in the house, save a pot of 

oil. Then he said; Go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy 

neighbours, even empty vessels; borrow not a few. And when 

thou art come in, thou shalt shut the door upon thee and 

upon thy sons, and shalt pour out into all those vessels, and 

thou shalt set aside that which is full. So she went from him, 

and shut the door upon her and upon her sons who brought 

the vessels to her; and she poured out. And it came to pass, 

when the vessels were full, that she said unto her son, Bring 

me yet a vessel. And he said unto her; There is not a vessel 

more. And the oil stayed. Then she came and told the man of 

God. And he said; Go sell the oil, and pay thy debt, and live 

thou and thy children of the rest. 

 To begin with hermeneutics that is not targeted at changing 

the mental orientation of a people for creatively addressing and 



65 
 

redressing their fundamental challenges, is useless. Twenty-First 

Century hermeneutics must interface the critical developmental 

challenges of the human society with a view to creating a healthier 

happier human society. 

To begin with, the problem presented here is one of poverty. A 

certain widow cried to a religious leader (hermeneutical agent); her 

husband died a debtor, and two of her sons were the collateral 

security for the debts, and the creditor had come for her sons. The 

widow in this context, in our Afro-centric paradigm model, is Africa, 

a continent endowed with resources, yet basking in poverty, as a 

result of inability to apply the right systems and methods for 

deriving the necessary financial benefits from the natural resources. 

Low per capita income, low standard of living, high rate of inflation, 

low level of amenities, unavailability of electric power supply for 

production purposes, lack of access roads for evacuating 

agricultural produce from the hinterland, huge post-harvest losses 

as a result of lack of processing and preservation facilities, 

ineffective educational system for tackling developmental 

challenges, these are the bane of African development. The fact of 

low level of industrialization coupled with high debt burden imply 

that these crises will persist for a long time to come. It must be 

admitted candidly that, unlike the traditional notion in the typical 

quasi-religious setting, poverty pertains more to unjust social 

structures rather than mysterious spiritual omens, and unless it is 

tackled from that perspective, it will never be resolved. 



66 
 

Debt Burden: This widow’s husband had died, and she had 

inadvertently inherited the debt, more so, when her two living sons 

were the collateral security for the debts, and the creditors had 

come for them. Africa’s debt burden in the first quarter of the 21st 

Century is reaching an alarming state, estimated in hundreds of 

billions of dollars. It has been reported in the dailies that the 

Chinese government has taken over the major international airport 

in Uganda because of that nation’s inability to repay the huge debts 

owed to China. In Nigeria, as at the beginning of 2022, the debt 

burden of the country stands at 32.7 trillion naira, about 17 billion 

US dollars. In the 2021 Nigerian National Budget, about 80 percent 

of the budget was devoted to debt servicing, and the same applies to 

the 2022 budget. The creditors are really coming for the throats of 

the poor masses of Africans as a result of years of poor 

management of the resources of the African nations. 

Your Servant Feared the Lord: (Empty Religious Propensities). 

The double crises of the African situation is the extreme religious 

propensities which do not translate to genuine morality, on one 

hand, and the ethical orientation that does not promote genuine 

honest socio-economic growth and wealth creation. The only 

industry in Africa is religion. In fact, it is only on matters of religion 

that Africans are willing to stick out their necks and fight till the 

last drop of the blood. African leaders critically exploit their nations 

and cart away huge volumes of wealth of their nations to Europe 

and America. The same criminal leaders walk freely on the streets 

without fear of molestation. No one would attack them. The 



67 
 

religious orientation of Africans teaches them that only God can 

judge the ungodly. For that reason, criminal leaders stark away the 

huge wealth of the nations in foreign countries, and no one cares. 

But ironically, whisper a little uncomplimentary remark about a 

religious figure long dead and gone, and Africans will not be content 

to let God fight for himself. They march out in the streets and burn 

down houses and kill and main fellow human beings on the other 

side of the religious divide. For goodness sake, those who 

committed heavier atrocities against generations yet unborn are 

walking about freely on the streets, and only a little 

uncomplimentary remark about a man cooling off in the grave long 

ago is causing such national upheaval. Who bewitched us in Africa? 

The Widow Appealed to the Religious Leader (An Appeal unto a 

Hermeneutical Perspective) 

The appeal here stands at the very critical point of interface 

hermeneutics. It is like asking; “What hermeneutical perspective 

shall be most appropriate for dealing with Africa’s poverty and high 

debt burden which is crippling the continent, with a threat of 

perpetual slavery staring everyone in the face? Afro-centric 

hermeneutics must now be deliberately and consciously engaged in 

this search for the hermeneutical models that fundamentally 

address the real-life developmental challenges of Africa, with a view 

to redressing them and creating a better, healthier African society. 

It will be an act of critical foolhardiness if African exegetes 

preoccupy themselves with the same Euro-centric colonial 



68 
 

hermeneutical orientations which have left Africans full of 

education, including religious education, without any moral 

disposition to the liberation of Africa from the shackles of 

denigration, underdevelopment and socio-economic lethargy.  

What hermeneutical model, sir, would you recommend for freeing 

us, widow and sons, (in this case, Africa and unborn generations) 

from the shackles of underdevelopment, poverty, and huge debt 

burden? That is the interface hermeneutical implication of the 

widow’s appeal to the religious leader (in this case, the Prophet 

Elisha). 

What Do You Have? 

The Prophet (hermeneutical agent) started with a question 

equally cardinal in this interface hermeneutical context; What do 

you have? What does Africa have to the bargain? What are Africans 

placing on the bargain table in its bid to secure its liberty from the 

shackles of denigration and bondage? “What do you have?”  

“Your servant has but a little oil”. 

Africa is the homestead of industrial raw materials and production 

inputs. As a result of the trade imbalance, a crisis which Walter 

Rodney has already sufficiently explained in his book; How Europe 

Underdeveloped Africa, the Europeans have carted away large 

volumes of Africa’s industrial raw materials, which are in fact 

processed and re-exported to African nations. Till today, sixty one 

years after Nigeria’s so-called Independence, Nigeria still exports 



69 
 

crude oil to some African and first world countries where they are 

refined and imported into the country as premium motor spirits and 

other products. Every two or three months, Nigerian government is 

discussing what percentage of petroleum subsidy it could remove, 

and what quantity it can retain. Cartels of fraudulent businessmen 

are capitalizing on the shady deals to defraud the country of billions 

of naira every month. That is the crisis the nation finds itself in. 

Now the prophet, the hermeneutical agent, in this story proposes a 

model of mass production of the oil for commercial purposes. 

Borrow Empty Vessels, Not a Few. 

This is the point where orthodox hermeneutics misses it and 

misleads the people. People lock themselves in the house and 

expect oil to grow. Yet, Israelites who gave that Biblical text to us do 

not revel in such mental stupor. Israelites, in line with the 

hermeneutical model propounded by that hermeneutical agent, 

engage in industrial mass production of consumer items for 

commercial purposes. Orthodox hermeneutics teaches people to 

jettison their mental resources, and lock up themselves in a room, 

expecting a pot of oil to grow into pots of oil. Far from it! The 

hermeneutical model proposed here, in the context of the Afro-

centric interface paradigm for socio-economic development, is the 

use of machines for the mass production of consumer items for 

commercial purposes. The point about borrowing empty vessels 

refers, in the hermeneutical context, to mass production of 



70 
 

packages for the packaging of the mass produced consumer 

products. 

Go and Sell the Oil (Exporter of Finished Products) 

The point is further confirmed in the fact that the Prophet, 

(hermeneutical agent) said: Go and sell the oil. The point here is 

that Africa would not be in the predicament it is in today, if she was 

a marketer of finished products. The major problem with Africa is 

that she is a marketer of industrial raw materials and production 

inputs. Now, because Africa has no industries, she does not 

consume the raw materials. If the first world countries which have 

the industries do not buy those raw materials, they will be wasted 

because Africa does not have the industries that can process the 

raw materials to consumer items. This is the major reason for the 

trade imbalance between Africa and the European and Asian trade 

partners. The reference to borrowing of empty vessels, going into 

the room and “processing” of the oil into the many empty vessels 

signifies, in the peculiar Afro-centric context of interface 

hermeneutics, the manufacturing process for which technology 

provides both the intuitive knowledge and, as a consequence, the 

machines. The bane of African underdevelopment, it has been 

acknowledged, is the low level of technological growth and 

industrialization. Africa’s production processes operate at manual 

levels, which lack the potentials for mass production. What the 

prophet therefore prescribes, speaking contextually, is a mass 

production from the raw material base, which technological 



71 
 

development alone can achieve, and which is, in itself, the only 

solution to poverty and high national debt burden. And the prophet, 

in this sense a hermeneutical agent, orders the widow (depicting 

Africa in a state of poverty and high debt burden); “Go and sell the 

oil, pay your debts, and you and your children (depicting future 

generations of Africans), live on the rest (implying a new system of 

economic growth and material prosperity). 

A Response to Orthodox Miraculous Orientation 

Without doubt, interface hermeneutics does not really 

completely vitiate or altogether abdicate the tenets of orthodoxy, nor 

does it deride its hermeneutical models and conclusions. Interface 

hermeneutics, which brings context peculiarity to the forefront, 

instead acknowledges the gains of orthodoxy, but posits that 

meanings should be further sought within the larger frame of what 

is presently available, insisting that the limitations of orthodox 

hermeneutics are in historical and circumstantial, rather than 

discretional. 

Orthodox orientation to textual issues that border on the 

miraculous and the mysterious are no doubt, to a large extent 

responsible for the abysmal levels of underdevelopment in Africa. 

Osundare (2022) lamented over this matter, thus: 

We lost the 20th Century to ignorance and allied disabilities, 

and we are about three short years to the end of the first 

quarter of the 21st. Shall we end this century too, still striving 



72 
 

heroically to trace ancient cattle grazing routes across 

impossible distances, still feeling so smug, so secure behind 

our shield of ignorance and medieval darkness? Shall we 

continue to beg God to build our country for us, while we the 

people lie chloroformed by excessive supplication and 

mindless expectation of illusional miracles? Miracles do not 

build bridges or erect skyscrapers; miracles will not build and 

secure our national power grid and rescue us from 

incapacitating outages that have turned Nigeria into a land of 

interminable darkness. Miracles do not build oil refineries and 

keep them in regular unfailing repair. Miracles will not 

construct the network of roads and rails and air routes Nigeria 

so sorely needs to become a mobile, enterprising, and 

infrastructurally connected country with wheels on the path to 

modernity and progress. Miracles will not accomplish the 

fundamental equitable restructuring that is needed to correct 

Nigeria’s presently fated “federalism”.  

Osundare’s pain is shared profoundly by African elites, the 

pains that, alas, the religious class has deluded the people into a 

state of mental incapacitation and stupor. What a tragedy! 

The problem here is purely, wholly and entirely a 

hermeneutical, an interpretative problem. Hermeneutics, orthodox 

hermeneutics, is wholly accountable for the perspective of thought 

which keeps people enslaved in their state of mental delusion, while 

looking up to heaven for manna. Is God altogether obverse to 



73 
 

raining down manna from heaven to hungry humanity? Certainly 

not! After all, he sends rain upon the earth at its season. And 

science has not been able to create rain outside of its season; 

except that science has devised alternative sources of water, with 

reservoirs and storage tanks and pumps that can ensure 

availability and distribution of water all the year round. Is this not a 

part of divine miracle? Is the scientific discovery of alternative 

sources of water and means of reticulation not a part of the grand 

programme of divine miracles? Orthodox hermeneutics is too 

constrained to appreciate this. Interface hermeneutics broadens its 

scope to appreciate this. 

Orthodox hermeneutics is responsible for the feeling among 

African elites that religion has deluded the people into a state of 

mental stupor. You want to build a house in your village, you 

declare a ninety-day fast for the land to appear from the blues; then 

twenty-one days dry fast for the money to be provided for the 

project. And the cycles of these unrealized expectations keep the 

people perpetually enslaved in their state of penury. No wonder, 

Africans, in spite of living in the most under-developed part of the 

world, are the most religious: using religious sentiments to nurse 

into unwholesome perpetuity their innate state of mental indolence 

and psychosomatic stupor. 

Our text under consideration actually contains in it a 

pragmatic response to the orthodox hermeneutical notion of 

miracles. First, notice that the widow (depicting the poor, hungry, 



74 
 

deprived and burdened) had gone to the Prophet (the Pastor and 

agent of hermeneutical transformation), expecting a miracle. But 

she did not get the conventional miracle of the prophet detaining 

her for ninety-day dry fast. Instead, the prophet quickly turns her 

back to herself. “What can I do for you? What do you have?” This is 

called introspection – looking inwards. The miracle you are running 

around for can be found. But where? Inwards! What do you have? 

Orthodox hermeneutics presents the miracle seekers as completely 

helpless, relying on the grace of the miracle worker for the slightest 

favour. But that is not the position here. “What can I do for you? 

What do you have?” The miracle begins and ends with you. 

The first miracle that Africa needs is the miracle of 

introspection, looking inwards. Years of Euro-centric colonialism, 

including Euro-centric colonial hermeneutics, has reduced the 

African to a mentality of total and absolute dependence on 

European values. When we thought that colonialism had ended, it 

was in fact only taking a new form. It was continuing in the 

exacerbated foreign taste of Africans. Nothing of Africa is good for 

the African; only that which is foreign. In the post-colonial era, 

Africa depended almost entirely on imported materials for her 

survival. From the health sector to the educational, the military, 

transportation, you name it, Africa is littered with foreign goods. As 

Africans consume these foreign goods, they invest heavily in the 

growth of the industries and economies of Europe and America. 



75 
 

“What can I do for you? What do you have?” The first miracle of the 

deliverance of Africa is at the point of introspection. Until Africans 

develop an appetite for home-grown values, it will remain enslaved 

to foreign values, and to that extent, continue to grow in debt 

burden, while her economy and capacity to defray the external 

debts will continue to dwindle. 

The critical point of deviation between orthodox hermeneutics and 

the interface model being proposed here is at the point of 

interpretation of the nature of engagement between the divine and 

the human in the miracle process. When the prophet turned the 

widow back to herself, she was required to go into her room and 

close the door behind her and then begin to empty her little jar of 

oil into empty vessels. Orthodox hermeneutics posits that she 

prayed to the God of miracles who came down and multiplied the 

oil. That is wonderful. Interface hermeneutics, whilst not vitiating or 

deriding the conclusions of orthodoxy, concentrates on this point of 

engagement and interaction, to make way for the emergence of 

ingenuity, mental resources, scientific interventions that can in 

turn lead to a process of mass production of the available original 

raw material. God is also the author of scientific and technological 

ingenuity. This is not any less so, even if the ingenuity is turned 

into destructive end; after all, man has always been at liberty to 

deploy divine ingenuity to productive or destructive ends. What this 

means is that even the scientific process of invitro-fertilization for a 

woman having difficulties of conception, is part of the divine 

scheme of miracles, contrary, as it were, to the narrow constraints 



76 
 

of orthodoxy. Therefore, while orthodox hermeneutics may keep 

scores of women in several weeks of dry fasting for miraculous 

conception, the interface perspective, while not deriding other 

perspectives of miracles, considers scientific aids to conception as 

part of the workings of divine miracles. 

Similarly, rather than engage in 21 days dry fast for miraculous 

fund for erecting a structure, or, in fact, complementary to the dry 

fast, the man may employ God-given initiative and creative faculties 

to produce goods and services which are exchanged for wealth, 

through divinely provided opportunities. Such wealth is still, in fact, 

a vital component of the working of divine miracles. In fact, in the 

Afro-centric interface hermeneutical models, miracles are re-defined 

with the vital components of human and divine contributions in 

place, for, as the text even clearly presents it; “It is God who is at 

work in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Philippians 

2:13). 

Let us for purposes of comparison look at a second passage, 

employing the tenets of interface hermeneutics in the Afro-centric 

context. 

Joshua Chapter Seven 

The story here is rather long. It was the event that took place while 

the Israelites, under the leadership of Joshua, had just arrived from 

Egypt into the land of Canaan which God had promised to give 

them. They had started series of wars with the nations resident in 



77 
 

the region and God had promised to grant them victory in all the 

wars. Anyway, it at a primitive time in human history, before the 

delineation of national boundaries and recognition of the 

sovereignty of nations by global umbrella organizations. Nations of 

the world prospered by invading other nations and slaughtering the 

people and taking away their possessions by force. The God of 

righteousness could not have endorsed such barbarism, neither 

does he endorse it even now. 

Anyway, suddenly, a small nation called Ai defeated Israel, 

contrary to expectation, and against divine prediction. Joshua the 

leader of the Israelites was troubled, and he tarried before the 

presence of the Lord all day, until the Lord revealed to him why they 

suffered such humiliating defeat; “There is an accursed thing in the 

midst of thee oh Israel: thou canst not stand before thine enemies, 

until ye take away the accursed thing from among you” (Joshua 

7:13b). Thereupon, the Lord made Joshua marshal out all the 

Israelite families for a lot to be conducted, to discover the family of, 

and eventually the man who had committed the act of theft (theft of 

a property of the inhabitants of the region, against divine 

command). It turned out to be Achan, of the son of Carmi, son of 

Zabah of the family of the Zarhites. The man Achan was stoned to 

death and burnt with fire, and a great heap of stones was raised 

over him, perhaps, for a memorial. 



78 
 

Examining this passage in an Afro-centric interface 

hermeneutical sense, a number of issues stand out here, and these 

can be considered a little more closely: 

1. Theft Precipitating National Calamity 

The story tells of an act of theft committed by an Israelite, and the 

result of it was a national calamity in the sense that the nation, 

Israel, was humiliatingly defeated in war by a much smaller nation 

called Ai. Theft and fraud, otherwise called corruption, are the bane 

of African underdevelopment. In the 1990’s, it was estimated that a 

whooping sum of over one hundred and fifty billion US dollars has 

been stolen by African leaders and stashed away in foreign banks in 

Europe. Many of those leaders have now died and because of the 

coded records of those accounts, they cannot be accessed by 

anybody. Up till the year 2021, Nigerian government is still 

negotiating for, and receiving the repatriation of funds illegally 

deposited in foreign bank accounts by a former military Head of 

State. In 2015, shortly after ascending office as Nigerian Head of 

State, President Muhammadu Buhari started investigating the 

military activities of the previous regime of President Goodluck 

Jonathan, and discovered that a whooping sum of 2.1 billion US 

dollars had been approved for purchase of arms, in the critical days 

of terrorist activities ravaging the Northern parts of the country. It 

was shocking that rather than have the money deployed for the 

purpose for which it was approved, the investigation revealed that 

the money was shared between government office holders and 



79 
 

political party members. And yet everyone was wondering why the 

insurgents were proving insurmountable, when in fact, funds 

provided for strengthening the military against the insurgents were 

being diverted. 

Theft of public fund is indeed the real bane of African 

underdevelopment, and unless there is a change of spirit in this 

regard, African will never make any headway. 

2. Concerted Action to Identify the Culprits 

The second issue evident in that text was the fact that although the 

Israelites were engaged in war at the time, everything had to be 

suspended until the culprit of the act of theft had been fished out. 

That is exactly how Africa has to treat theft and misappropriation of 

public fund, if it is ever going to make any progress at all. In this 

regard, there is a fundamental difference between Africa and the 

developed nations of the world. The developed nations of the world 

have institutions which are far stronger than the individuals, no 

matter how strong and powerfully connected the individuals could 

be. A case in point was the 2020 Presidential election in America. 

The sitting President, Donald Trump, was not at peace with the 

outcome of the election, and tried by all means to use his position 

as sitting President to overturn it. The Americans cooperated with 

him, but only within the ambits of the law. His subordinates and 

retinue of aides took orders from him, provided that in doing so, 

they did not contravene the existing laws of the nation. All the 

legitimate avenues of verifying the election results were put in place, 



80 
 

and nothing beyond that. That is the power of strong institutions. 

In Africa unfortunately, there are weak institutions and strong 

persons. Individual persons who commit crimes against the State 

use their positions and high-level connections to beat the system, 

and walk away unscathed. This is in the main reason why Africa is 

the way it is. There are many people who hold public offices, who 

should in fact be serving prison sentences. But they walk about 

freely because they can beat the weak institutions. As long as this 

situation remains, Africa will never make any headway at all. 

3. Drastic Punishment 

Achan’s theft brought national calamity to Israel, but he did not live 

to do it again, nor did anyone gather from that an impetus to 

commit crime. The attraction to crime in Africa is mainly by the fact 

that criminals acquire wealth that places them above the system. 

Why would someone not want to commit crime when, evidently, all 

those who committed crime in the past are walking about freely, 

and are being celebrated on account of their ill-gotten wealth? In 

the case of Israel, as shown in the text, and as we see in developed 

societies, those who commit crime do not escape the strong arm of 

the law. In developed societies, wealthy business owners are jailed 

for tax evasion, and it becomes engraved in the hearts of all that no 

one is above the law. 

African pre-Christian societies were run on the basis of devotion to 

deities that guarded the morality of the land. The deities had such 

overwhelming influence that they did not have to depend on the 



81 
 

manipulatable testimonies of human beings. They just acted, and 

even people who committed crimes in utmost secrecy were fished 

out and punished. This kept the people in fear. It was this fear that 

maintained the moral framework of African societies in the period 

prior to the immigrant religions (Christianity and Islam). 

Today, that traditional moral framework has been dismantled, 

without a matching system being put in place. That is exactly why 

African morality is deteriorating. People commit all kinds of blood 

rituals to acquire money, and having gotten the money, they elevate 

themselves above the institutions and can then commit more crime 

without anyone daring to call them to question. In a society where 

criminals cannot be punished, greater impetus is given for more 

people to engage in criminal activities. 

 

The third illustration is to be taken from 2 Kings 6 and 7. 

Thus: 

Then the king of Syria warred against Israel, and he took    

counsel with his servants, saying, In such and such a place 

shall be my camp. And the man of God sent unto the king of 

Israel saying; Beware that thou pass not such a place for 

thither the Syrians are come down. And the king of Israel sent 

to the place which the man of God told him and warned him 

of: and saved himself there, not once nor twice. (6:8-10).  



82 
 

And it came to pass after this, that Benhadad king of Syria 

gathered all his hosts and went up and besieged Samaria. And 

there was great famine in Samaria: and behold, they besieged 

it until an ass’s head sold for four score pieces of silver, and a 

fourth part of a cab of dove’s dung for five pieces of silver. And 

as the king of Israel was passing by upon the wall, there cried 

a woman unto him saying; Help, my lord, O king… And the 

king said to her, What aileth thee? And she answered, this 

woman said unto me; Give thy son, that we may eat him 

today, and we will eat my son tomorrow… And it came to pass 

when the king heard the words of the woman that he rent his 

clothes… Then he said, God do so and more also to me, if the 

head of Elisha the son of Shaphat shall stand on him this day. 

(6:24-31). 

Then Elisha said, Hear ye the word of the Lord; Thus saith the 

Lord, Tomorrow about this time shall a measure of fine flour 

be sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, 

in the gate of Samaria. … And there were four leprous men at 

the entering in of the gate; and they said one to another; Why 

sit we here until we die?... And they rose up in the twilight to 

go unto the camp of the Syrians, and when they were come to 

the uttermost parts of the camp of Syria, behold, there was no 

man there; for the Lord had made the hosts of the Syrians to 

hear a noise of Chariots and a noise of horses, even the noise 

of a great host … (7:1-6). 



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We can now look at the issues a little closely. 

1. Political Relevance of a Religious Personality 

Our main concern in discussing these hermeneutical models 

is to show that in actuality, the biblical text speaks directly to our 

peculiar socio-economic and political situation in Africa. As it 

affects the text under consideration, the bane of religious operation 

in Africa is the gulf between the political class and the religious. The 

only meeting point of the political class and the religious class in 

Africa is the point at which the religious leaders go cap in hands 

after the politicians who have looted the nation’s economy. The 

politicians are invited to special religious worships and 

programmes, and given all the prominence and honour as a way of 

providing the avenue for the religious leaders to get their own share 

of the fraudulent loot of the politicians. That done, the religious 

leaders now sacrifice their role and position as the conscience of the 

society, and take sides with the oppressors of the masses and 

agents of impoverishment, denigration, and societal 

dehumanization. Little wonder religion has completely lost its 

cutting edge as instrument of societal transformation. African 

people now know whom their real enemies are. When African people 

count their oppressors and exploiters, they include the religious 

institutions in the number. A society in which the religious leaders 

receive gratification from the fraudulent political class and showers 

praises on the evil agents of dehumanization, such a society is 

permanently doomed. The religions which provide such callous 

platforms for fraudulent politicians and leaders to receive accolades 



84 
 

and praises are thoroughly evil and inimical to the collective 

aspirations of the people, and even more inimical to the purpose of 

God in setting up the religious institutions for ethical 

transformation of the society. 

In our text under consideration, the religious personality is not 

aloof from the process of governance. He is, in fact, directly 

involved. He employs his devices of spiritual discernment, insight, 

foresight, to get directly involved in the ordering of the society to 

which he belongs, knowing that if any evil befalls the nation, he 

would not be spared the destructive ordeals. 

Notice also that the religious personality had attained such envious 

height, a height of personal integrity and character flawlessness, 

that the leader of the country deferred to him, and not the other 

way round. In Africa, religious leaders go to lick the booth of the 

political leaders, throwing decency and morality to the dogs. In our 

text, the religious leader is exalted by integrity and character, above 

the ominous charade of the political leaders, such that when the 

religious leader speaks, the political leaders have no option than to 

tremble. Great lesson! The bane of religion in Africa is that the 

religious leaders have subordinated their positions to the fraudulent 

political class, the callous exploiters of the society. African religious 

leaders are even not sensitive to the fact that they have lost the 

people’s confidence. They are deceived by the fact that the people 

have not yet given up their age-long tradition of attending religious 

activities as part of a cherished social responsibility. Some day, the 



85 
 

masses of Africa will take up arms against their exploiters. And 

sadly, the religious leaders will not be spared the impact of the long 

accumulated venoms of the people.  

Talking about discernment, orthodox hermeneutics restricts 

revelation to the direct divine summoning for giving a specific 

message. By so doing, orthodox hermeneutics restricts revelation to 

the highly religious or spiritual. Yet, in diverse parts of the Bible, 

such divine revelations were given to the irreligious and unspiritual. 

For instance, it was Nebuchadnezzar who received the vision about 

seven years of prosperity in Egypt, to be followed by seven years of 

chronic scarcity of food all over the world. And by divine inspiration, 

Joseph, the Hebrew interpreted the vision and was mandated to 

preside over the pragmatic programme for response to the 

revelation. 

The point anyway, is that in Hebrew cosmology, there is a fluid 

connection between revelation (the propensity of the spirit) and 

perception (the effective operation of the active, working mind). 

Again, in this wise, orthodox hermeneutics has altogether obscured 

the enormous resources of the human mind in favour of that which 

is exclusively of the spirit. The Bible says concerning the human 

Jesus: 

And the child grew, and waxed strong in Spirit, filled with 

wisdom; and the grace of God was upon him. (Luke 2:40). And 

Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with 

God and man. (Luke 2:52). 



86 
 

Both texts identify four components of domains or dimensions of 

human development, namely, the physical, the mental, the social, 

and the spiritual. Orthodox hermeneutics has tended to show that 

the only way a person can be directed by God is through the 

working of the Spirit. That is why religion, particularly in Africa, has 

been often accused of inflicting upon the people an affliction of 

mental delusion and operational stupor. Once people acquire, or get 

involved in a religion, their behavior turns bizarre; their relationship 

turns queer. African elites tear themselves and each other in pieces 

over such mundane issues as whether prayers should be made 

through Jesus or through Mary. Meanwhile the elite professional 

class in other climes are making space aircrafts and exploring life in 

other planets. Africans are tearing each other in pieces as a result 

of religious primitiveness. If we who belong to the elite religious 

class do not succeed in redirecting the minds of our African people 

towards finding solutions to the critical challenges that threaten our 

ultimate survival as a race, what have we really achieved, and of 

what creative value is all our study and education? 

In our text under consideration, the religious personality is, by 

perspicacity and discernment, deeply involved in the challenges 

facing the society, and providing an informed guidance that helps to 

save the society from utter annihilation. This is a great challenge to 

the religious elites of our age. 

 

 



87 
 

2. The Political Siege and the Economic Down-turn 

The text under consideration goes ahead to show that Benhadad, 

the Syrian king, mounted a siege over Samaria until the level of 

inflation in the country became utterly unbearable. Again, this 

situation speaks to the African situation. Rodney (1972) has already 

shown in some detail how Europe, through the instruments of 

colonialism, and beyond that, the devices of neo-colonial 

manipulation, has not only massively exploited Africa, but also set 

the premise for the perpetual impoverishment, exploitation and 

underdevelopment of Africa. That in itself amounts to a siege. Also, 

Siollun (2021) has shown in gory details how Britain sowed the seed 

of perennial ethno-centric conflicts in Nigeria, while harvesting of 

the conflicts. In other words, while Nigerians are busy slaughtering 

each other over useless issues of religious leanings, avenues are 

provided through such evils, for the economic prosperity of Britain 

and other European nations. That in itself is a siege. The civil war 

that was fought in Nigeria between 1967 and 1970 cost the Federal 

Government of Nigeria a whopping sum of eight hundred and forty 

million British pounds. All of that money went mainly to Britain, 

and some to Russia and other nations of Europe that participated. 

The siege against Africa is far from lifted. As a result of the 

collective facets and factors of underdevelopment, Africa has 

become a dumping ground for foreign goods and service. 

Occasionally, African nations have engaged Europeans for the 

setting up of mega technological projects in Africa, and all that one 



88 
 

finds as evidence of such huge investment is a collection of 

abandoned, fraudulently acquired equipment. Who would ever 

believe that the Ajaokuta Steel Plant in Nigeria which has gulped up 

well over five billion Us dollars would still be in such a state where 

there is little or nothing to show for it? 

Africa is a nation under siege. While Africans are slaughtering 

themselves over useless issues of whether Jesus or Mohammed is 

the authentic prophet, or whether prayers in the church should be 

made through Jesus or Mary, Europeans are siphoning the wealth 

in Africa, and African leaders are collaborating with callous foreign 

agents of impoverishment to gobble up the future of our nations. In 

Nigeria, the foreign debt as at the end of 2021 is now about thirty-

three trillion naira. In the 2021 national budget in Nigeria, about 

eighty percent of the budget was devoted to debt servicing. This 

means that only twenty percent of the budget was actually to be 

spent on the capital and recurrent expenditures in the country. 

This situation is also retained in the 2022 budget. It is estimated 

that by 2023, Nigeria’s external debts would have reached fifty 

trillion naira, as the National Assembly is fast approving more 

foreign loans for the country. And yet, rather than come together 

and sink their differences, and strategize about how to save the 

nation from imminent collapse, religious leaders are busy injecting 

in their followers divisive venoms that will get them at each other’s 

throats, while the exploiters are busy exploiting, with hardly any 

one raising eyebrows at their callous exploitive activities. 



89 
 

3. The Barbaric Option 

The text under consideration also mentions the typical African 

barbaric option to surviving difficult times. Two women had done a 

deal to take turns to eat their children. They had already eaten one 

of the women’s children before the pact broke down, and the 

offended party brought the report to the king. 

Although African elites are quick to point out the crimes 

committed against the African society by the European imperialists, 

yet, however, they lose sight of the painstaking risks taken by the 

Europeans to sanitize the African environment; to deliver the 

Africans from themselves. Historical records, corroborated by 

African authors, attest to the existence in Africa of barbarian 

communities that regularly descend upon other communities, 

plundering them, and in most cases, eating the meat of the slain. 

African communities are still not any less barbaric even today. In 

times of economic adversity, Africans reinvigorate their old nature, 

descend upon one another and slaughter, maim and destroy. 

Actually, in many African countries, especially Nigeria, the 

slaughter of human beings for money rituals is on the increase. 

Kidnap is on the rise, and once people are kidnapped, if the ransom 

is not paid urgently, they end up on the money ritualist’s slaps, 

where they are dismembered and parts of them used for money 

rituals. It is needless being deceived by the profuse religious 

tendencies of Africans. Barbarism is enormously on the rise. Many 

of those who have prospered by blood money rituals dominate the 



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religious gatherings, receive all kinds of accolades and investitures 

on religious platforms where they part with some of their bloody 

loot to the “prosperity” of the religious leaders. Admittedly, in the 

traditional African societies, prior to the era of the immigrant 

religions, human beings were offered, alive or slain, to the deities, 

for the prosecution of certain functions in the society, and often for 

the coronation and burial of kings. Those acts were done to 

empower the shrines of native doctors, and presumably for the 

ultimate good of the human society, such as in the case of 

communal wars or control of strange omens. There was, at that 

time, no indication that individuals slaughtered fellow human 

beings for rituals for personal prosperity. Today, young men in their 

late teens and early twenties slaughter fellow human beings, 

including close relations, for the purpose of money rituals. 

Why is it that the religion we practice in Africa does not have 

an ethical, moral face? The reason is not far-fetched. The river has 

been polluted from the very source. The larger proportion of the 

religious practitioners in Africa are fraudulent-minded people who 

have discovered that the simplest way to conceal crimes is to give 

them a religious covering. Because of mental declivity and rational 

primitiveness, Africans are very sentimental about issues of 

religion, so anything that receives a religious coloration, no matter 

how criminal it is, receives approval. Robbery, battery (during 

deliverance), even rape, becomes sanctified if it is done on religious 

platform. It is only in Africa that two equally hungry, marginalized, 

exploited, deprived, depraved people, victims of the same group of 



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vampire leaders, are deceived into a silly argument about the 

authenticity of religious doctrines, and they suddenly forget that 

they have one common enemy, their exploiter, and suddenly, they 

take up arms against each other, while their exploiters, who in fact 

are not as much worried the doctrine in question, are having a field 

day. The task before African elite hermeneutics is to take the texts 

to the very critical points of African underdevelopment, and apply 

the texts, hermeneutically, unto the development strategies that will 

deliver, at least, the future generations of Africans from the mental 

quagmires of the present and the past generations.  

4. The Prophetic Turn-around 

The critical high-point of this narrative is the prophetic turn-

around. The prophet eventually made a declaration: “Tomorrow, 

about this time, shall a measure of fine flour be sold for a shekel, 

and two measures of barley for a shekel in the gate of Samaria” (2 

Kings 7:1). This is amazing. First of all, notice that towards the end 

of the previous chapter when the king received the report of the 

barbaric activity going on in his kingdom, the king took it all out on 

the prophet. He must have asked himself; “How come we have a 

prophet of God in this land and we are going through such crisis?” 

He, in fact, followed up his declaration by sending his aides to go 

and arrest the prophet Elisha. So it is known everywhere that the 

prophetic instrument is a blessing to the community. Wherever 

prophetic devices are engaged with an honest intent, and not with a 

dubious intent, the community is richly blessed. The king’s 



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confidence in the power of the prophetic instrument to change the 

lots of a community from affliction to blessing was not in any doubt. 

Even today, the destiny of Africa lies in the power of prophetic 

declaration for a turn-around, provided Africa, both its people and 

its religious ministers, will repent of their criminal and fraudulent 

roles, and embrace and God with a sincerity of purpose. 

Elisha finally, prompted by the king’s declaration of his 

confidence in his prophetic oracle, was awakened from his 

ministerial slumber and lethargy. African ministers today must be 

awakened from ministerial slumber and lethargy, which are as a 

result of brazen criminality and spiritualized fraud. Unless African 

ministers, and then all Africans repent of deep-seated criminality 

and spiritualized fraud, Africa will never make a headway. Every 

day, Africans, in their exacerbated superfluous religiosity devoid of 

morality, troop to the religious houses where they receive bouts of 

prophetic declarations. But unfortunately, these bouts of 

declarations, wonderful as they are, flow from filthy, corrupted, 

callous lips; the same lips that have “prophesied” the electoral 

victory of criminal and fraudulent political aspirants, and poured 

encomiums on the same vampire leaders that have milked the poor 

masses to death by their avaricious looting. Prophetic declarations 

of blessings which flow from filthy, callous and corrupted lips can 

certainly not be blessings. The filth and callous corruption of the 

lips from which they flow, radically reverse whatever blessings they 

may have intended to convey. Africa remains gruesomely imperiled, 



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as long as its religious class is made up of men of unclean lips 

dwelling among men of unclean lips. 

Notice also something that happened in the next verse of the 

text; 

Then the Lord on whose hand the king leaned answered the 

man of God and said; Behold, if the Lord would make windows 

in heaven, might this thing be? And he said; Behold, thou 

shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat there of… And 

the king appointed the lord on whose hand he leaned to have 

charge of the gate: and the people trode upon him in the gate, 

and he died, as the man of God had said… (2 Kings 7:2, 17). 

Amen. The lord on whose hand the kind leaned… These are the 

agents of the callous leaders whom the leaders use to perpetrate 

their callous exploitations. Many of them are even more callous 

than the leaders they represent. This is because, in addition to their 

over-bloated fraudulent salaries, they escalate the callous 

extortions in order to get their own avaricious portions. They are 

agents of the denigration and impoverishment and they profit 

heavily from the economic declivity in the country. For this reason, 

they will question, and radically oppose every step towards 

economic emancipation. They are the wicked servants of the callous 

leaders, and are the ones who service the evil system. You think 

they do not know the right things to do? Haven’t you noticed that 

when the relation of a highly connected person is kidnapped, all of 

a sudden, the police will become very efficient and deliver instant 



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result? So, it is not that they do not know what to do. It is that the 

people they take orders from are accredited agents of the evil 

system from which many are profiting. You will be surprised that 

robbery, fraud, banditry, kidnap, terrorism, etc. are escalating in 

Africa in spite of all the claimed efforts of the agencies of 

government, because the so called leaders and commanders of the 

combat forces are part of an evil system from which many are 

profiting. And who are you to attempt to halt an evil system that is 

making many people wealthy and prosperous? Of course, they will 

interrogate any effort to halt the evil trend. “Will this thing be?” But 

thank God for the prophetic reply; “Behold, thou shalt see it with 

thine eyes, but thou shalt not eat thereof”. Amen. All the callous 

agents of the vampire leaders of Africa who, by their roles are aiding 

and abetting the evil systems because they profit from them; they 

shall see the evil system collapse; they shall see the true prosperity 

of Africa; but they shall not eat of it; Amen. All the agents of the 

corrupt systems of African nations who do not mind totally 

annihilating the entire nations; they shall see the return of the 

economic glory of these African nations; but they will be trodden 

under foot by the revolting masses of these African nations, as 

these masses match to their glorious liberty and economic 

prosperity. Amen. These great words of the prophet are about to 

come to pass in Africa. The text indeed speaks eloquently to the 

African situation. The downtrodden masses of Africa are rising and 

in a glorious march to their liberty and prosperity will tread down 

their callous exploiters under their feet. Amen.  



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5. The Activated Step of Faith 

One thing which a prophetic declaration does is to activate a 

step in the direction of the prophetic declaration. The words spoken 

by the Prophet Elisha activated in the four leprous men at the gate 

a nudge for an action, a faith action, a step of faith. The logic of the 

leprous men in line with their intended action is indeed stimulating. 

Why sit we here until we die? 

Literally, paraphrasing their logic; An action, a faith step is 

indispensable. But in which direction? Simple logic makes every 

step a deadly option, even as remaining here is a deadly option. We 

stay here; we die. We move into the city; we die of hunger. The two 

are certainties. We move into the camp of the Syrians. There, death 

is a possibility, though not a certainty, as in the two other options. 

The logic is great. Who told us that faith obscures logic? Orthodox 

hermeneutics presents faith as the eradication of logic. The text in 

question disapproves of this. Even faith has a logical basis. 

The leprous men opted to take a step of faith. This point is 

vital. Divine operation is impossible without human contribution, 

human action; human step of faith. This is the point at which 

African religious orientation has translated to a mental delusion. 

You want promotion, elevation, open doors, breakthroughs, you 

declare twenty-one days dry fast at the end of which you do nothing 

and a miracle happens. That is why, in Africa, millions of people 

hang around places of worship believing that to be the only way to 



96 
 

receive a breakthrough. In contrast, the nations that have far less 

robust, far less pronounced religious orientation are the ones which 

have very high GDP (Gross Domestic Product – a measure of 

national productivity); high foreign reserves, low level of debt, high 

per capita income, and high quality of life. Orthodox hermeneutical 

presentation of miracles has left human contribution completely out 

of it. This is the error that has left Africans deluded in their 

religious profession. 

The four leprous men took a step. Though unsure what to 

expect and what was going to happen, but they took a step all the 

same. But it was at that point that God provided the miracle; “For 

the Lord had made the host of the Syrians to hear the noise of 

chariots, and a noise of horses, even the noise of a great host: and 

they said one to another, lo, the king of Israel hath hired against us 

the kings of the Hittites, and the kings of the Egyptians to come 

upon us”. 

So, it was when the leprous men took a step of their own that the 

Lord made available his divine help. The lesson of this is that God 

cannot (or at least does not) work until we humans work. How then 

can the scores of miracle chasing Africans be delivered from the 

mental delusion of sleeping in the place of worship for weeks of dry 

fasting in expectation of God’s miracle. The text here is very 

instructive. God will not work for us until we rise up and work, do 

our own bit. It is in the context of doing our own bit that God 

works. Africans who are waiting for God to build our collapsing 



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nations are waiting in vain. Africans who are waiting for God to 

change their leaders are basking in empty euphoria. Africans who 

are waiting for God to deliver them from economic collapse are 

waiting in vain. It is when Africans rise up and disgrace evil leaders 

out of office by turning out in mass at the electoral polls to vote 

them out, not by holding twenty-one nights of vigil. It is when 

Africans rise up and demand account from fraudulent leaders, and 

ensure that corrupt leaders are brought to book according to the 

law. It is when Africans embrace the tenets of morality and honesty 

and ensure that only men and women of virtue are entrusted with 

the destinies of the people. It is only then that the God of the dry 

fastings and night vigils will appear and deliver Africa from the 

shackles of denigration, impoverishment, economic stagnation, 

servitude and perpetual bondage. That is exactly what that text is 

saying, hermeneutically applied to the African context. 

Let me conclude this section by taking one text from the New 

Testament; John 9:1-7; from verse 6; 

When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made 

clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man 

with the clay; and said unto him; Go, wash in the pool of 

Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent). He went his way 

therefore, and washed, and came seeing. 

I shall discuss this passage alongside another, an Old Testament 

passage; 2 Kings 2:19-22. 



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And the men of the city said unto Elisha, Behold, I pray thee, 

the situation of this city is pleasant, as my lord seeth; but the 

water is naught, and the ground barren. And he said, Bring 

me a new cruse, and put salt therein. And they brought it to 

him. And he went forth unto the spring of the waters and cast 

the salt in there and said; “Thus saith the Lord: I have healed 

these waters, there shall not be from thence any more death or 

barren land: so the waters were healed unto this day, 

according to the saying of Elisha which he spake. 

In this concluding segment, I turn attention to the use of 

materials in doing miracles, especially healing miracles. For the 

avoidance of doubt, interface hermeneutics does not deny the 

mysterious element in miracles, as naturalist (or liberal) 

hermeneutics does. Naturalist or liberal hermeneutics posits that 

what is presented in the Bible as miracles are nothing but mystified 

natural occurrences. Rudolf Bultmann, New Testament redactionist 

theologian is one of the greatest proponents of this position. 

Bultmann has done an extensive work to achieve what he calls the 

“demythologization” of the New Testament miracle stories, by which 

he hoped to take away the mystery elements in the miracle 

narratives and present them as over-bloated natural occurrences. 

Bultmann would take the expression, “Give place; for the maid is 

not dead but sleepeth” (Matt. 9:24), as literally an indication of 

Jesus’ insight by which he could differentiate a dead person from 

one in a state of comma. Gunther Bornkamm, Bultmann’s disciple, 



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has further advanced the tenets of naturalist hermeneutics, in the 

New Testament. 

Interface hermeneutics is not naturalist hermeneutics, in the sense 

that while naturalist hermeneutics completely denies the 

mysterious elements in the text, in favour of the natural, interface 

hermeneutics, in its broad concern for varying contexts, 

accommodates the naturalist and the mysterious elements in the 

Biblical text. 

In this segment, we are concerned with the place of materials 

of nature in the performance of miracles. In the New Testament 

text, Jesus met a blind man, and was going to do a healing miracle 

on him. He spat on the ground, and using the soil and the spittle, 

he moulded clay. Then he rubbed the clay on the eyes of the blind 

man and asked him to go and wash, not with tap or rain water, or 

well or borehole water, or in any river or stream, but in the Pool of 

Siloam. The specific combination of these naturally occurring 

materials could be quite instructive for the context of our 

discussion. Similarly, the Prophet Elisha received a complaint about 

the state of the land, and was going to carry out a curative 

ministration. He asked for a new cruse, then some salt, which he 

used, along with a prophetic declaration, to achieve the curative 

ministration. 

When the Christian missionaries came to Africa, they met a 

vast array of curative practitioners. For purposes of differentiation, 

we can classify these practitioners into three categories, namely: 



100 
 

1. Diviners: These were people who inquired into the mysteries 

behind unpleasant occurrences in order to discover what 

needed to be done to bring healing and deliverance. 

2. Curators (Herbalists): These were people who had 

extraordinary insight into the use of roots and herbs for the 

purpose of healing all kinds of ailments. They also had 

apprentices who gradually “learnt” the art and practiced it, as 

their mentors grew old and passed away. 

3. Wizards: These were people knowledgeable in all kinds of 

destructive spiritual devices, and could be consulted to raise 

spiritual afflictions against fellow human beings. 

When the Christian missionaries came, they branded all of 

these practitioners as fetish, satanic, idolatrous and evil, and wrote 

them all off as ungodly. For these Christian missionaries, whatever 

is not orthodox medical procedure is evil and satanic. It is in fact 

this type of position that should be rightly described as colonial 

hermeneutics or hermeneutical colonialism. What then has 

happened to the deep insight into the vast collection of roots and 

herbs that God has given to Africans for nutritional and curative 

purposes? Ironically, these Euro-Christian missionaries have 

hidden from the Africans the fact that even orthodox 

pharmaceutical formulations are made up of extracts from roots 

and herbs occurring in Europe. So, consuming processed roots and 

herbs is godly, but consuming the same roots and herbs in their 



101 
 

natural form in Africa is satanic and idolatrous. Nothing can be 

more discriminatory and colonialistic. 

 So, when African theologians talk about decolonization 

hermeneutics, they should begin from this fundamental attitude of 

use of natural materials in Africa, in such a manner as to create the 

needed mental shift. Thankfully, in Africa, traditional medical 

practitioners did not allow themselves to be cowed in. They have 

instead taken their practice one step forward, also employing the 

tenets of scientific insight to process and preserve their roots and 

herbs. It is well known today that there are some heath challenges 

in Africa for which orthodox medicine does not have an answer. 

Besides, in many areas of medical practice, the orthodox exists side 

by side with the traditional. For instance, the traditional 

orthopaedic management exists side by side with the orthodox, and 

in some cases, the traditional (bone setting) homes have proved 

more effective than the orthodox. 

In China, as in India, both of them Asian countries that had 

suffered the same European imperialism as did African countries, 

orthodox medical practice exists side by side with the traditional, 

and both are recognized under the law. Thankfully also, in Nigeria, 

for instance, the National Agency for Food and Drugs 

Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has started to test the 

traditional pharmaceutical formulations, and to grant official 

approval for their use in the country. In 2020, at the peak of the 

Covid-19 pandemic, an African country, Madagascar, was the first 



102 
 

country in the world to claim to have produced a cure to the Covid-

19 disease. The formulation was made from local roots and herbs. 

The World Health Organization indicated interest to subject the 

formulation to analysis before granting official approval for its 

usage, but unfortunately, never got around to publishing its 

findings until European nations have come up with their own drugs 

and vaccines for Covid-19. This clearly smacks of colonial or 

imperial denigration. 

In conclusion, Jesus clearly could have done the stated 

miracle without any naturally occurring material, but in this 

instance, he chose to use a naturally occurring material for the 

miracle on the blind man. African trado-medical practitioners are 

not committing any act of ungodliness by exploring the use of 

naturally occurring roots and herbs for curative purposes. In fact, 

more research should be conducted into the curative functions of 

the vast occurring roots and herbs in Africa, before the few 

stigmatized people who have exclusive insight into their functions 

pass away without any replacement in the on-going 

“Christianization” of the African environment which stigmatizes the 

use of naturally occurring roots and herbs for curative purposes. 

 

 

 

 



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                        EPILOGUE 

Hermeneutics is a living, discipline which responds to the 

changing dynamics of human life. As the complexities and 

perplexities of life escalate, so does the search for new meanings 

and the expansion of models for textual interpretation. One of the 

major achievements of hermeneutics in our age is the removal of 

technical fixation which orthodoxy had compelled on the 

hermeneutical process. Social context hermeneutics which made a 

drastic incursion into the discipline in the late 20th Century has 

opened up large vistas of adaptation of hermeneutics to the social 

challenges of the human society. Social context hermeneutics has 

taught us that hermeneutics ought not be performed in a vacuum 

but must be creatively adapted to confront the threats and errors of 

the human society. The enormous gains of social context theologies, 

products of social context hermeneutics, bring to reverberating 

heights the fact that the whole essence of learning is to elevate the 

human conditions. In the years ahead, the discipline of 

hermeneutics will obviously progress in such dimensions and 

directions that will completely rid it of empty doctrinal and 

dogmatic fixative frivolities, and channel all of its strengths and 

resources to dismantling the social maladies and structural 

inequities that perennially marginalize and demobilize the human 

race, in favour of more progressive and liberating perspective, for, 

the ultimate end of all learning is the upliftment and elevation of 

the human society. 



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