Abstract
The use of the social sciences in the interpretation of the New Testament emerged from the 1970s and has become a standard methodology for interpreting the New Testament. However, it has not been significantly used in the interpretation of the New Testament in Nigeria by biblical scholars. This article discusses what social-scientific criticism is and the need for its application in the interpretation of the New Testament by Nigerian New Testament scholars for a better understanding of the New Testament and the people, beliefs and teachings it presents and contextualisation in the face of changing contexts of Christianity in Nigeria.Contribution: As far as we know, this article is the first one written on using social-scientific criticism to interpret the New Testament in the Nigerian context. It therefore contributes to the need for a multidisciplinary approach to interpreting the New Testament in Nigeria in particular and Africa in general. It therefore contributes also on methodological considerations with regard to interpreting the New Testament.
Highlights
Description: This research is part of the research project ‘Africa Platform for NT Scholars’, directed by Prof
With the formation of the context group, which is a group of international scholars committed to using social-scientific criticism (SSC) in interpreting the New Testament, as we have shown above, some South African scholars entered into the use of SSC in interpreting the New Testament
As far as we found out, these are the few works performed by Nigerians in interpreting the New Testament using SSC both in the Nigerian context and beyond
Summary
Description: This research is part of the research project ‘Africa Platform for NT Scholars’, directed by Prof. This article discusses what social-scientific criticism is and the need for its application in the interpretation of the New Testament by Nigerian New Testament scholars for a better understanding of the New Testament and the people, beliefs and teachings it presents and contextualisation in the face of changing contexts of Christianity in Nigeria. The belief that the texts of the New Testament are products of specific social systems (Elliott 2011:1–2) and that the use of social scientific models and theories will make for better understanding of the social systems out of which the New Testament texts grew is very strong This belief was the driving force of scholars who began to adopt social-scientific approaches in interpreting the New Testament as from the 1960s and 1970s () (Loumanen 2010:2) as shall be discussed in this article
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