Abstract
“Africa has a long association with the Bible…At the time of Jesus, the Bible was being read in Africa…Since then, the Bible has continued to be read in Africa” (Mbiti 1994:27). Jesus Christ is the key character with which many who come to the Bible are concerned, academics as well as countless ‘ordinary’ readers. Beyond the methodological considerations wherein this leading African chronicler of African Biblical Hermeneutics has made an immense contribution, what specific insights might we glean from Justin Ukpong’s work about the Jesus of the canonical evangelists vis-a-vis our work as organic intellectuals? What does Ukpong’s Jesus offer present-day South Africa, if one with a missiological interest may extrapolate?
Highlights
Having only admired the professor from a distance, I must defer reflection on the contours of his no-doubt colourful life to those who knew him much better and for far longer than I did
The very little I have seen persuaded me that a careful reading of his work should be of some assistance as South African Christians endeavour to rediscover their mandate in the post-Mandela era
For whereas “the Western and the African methods of reading exist side by side” among “academic readings of the Bible in Africa”, the overtly “African readings”, unlike their “intellectualist” counterparts, “are existential and pragmatic in nature, and contextual in approach” (Ukpong 2002a:17, italics original). He must have been concerned to assuage the concerns raised over the decades by a growing number of African scholars whether African scholarship has much to show beyond euphoric prognostications and cerebral pontifications as such
Summary
Having only admired the professor from a distance, I must defer reflection on the contours of his no-doubt colourful life to those who knew him much better and for far longer than I did. “Evidence of inculturation in the NT include[s] the fact that the account of Jesus’ life is given in four different versions (Gospels) reflecting the situation of the evangelists” (Ukpong 1993:163). In this fairly straightforward claim, Ukpong betrays his hermeneutic vis-à-vis the NT in general and Jesus in particular. Differences in the presentation of the significance of Jesus’ life, serve to remind us of the important hermeneutical role of context and background These points just enunciated are not alien to the South African theological landscape, the multifaceted contextual theology stream which competently championed various forms of liberation theologies most poignantly in the 1980s. My present goal is to tease out from a single African thinker’s hand those articulations of Jesus which might prove useful for our current quandary
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