The Message of the Old Testament and the African Church — I

Abstract

This is the introductory article in a series which will take up in detail the relationship between the Old Testament and contemporary Africa (south of the Sahara), in relation to the communication of the gospel, and to the life and thinking of Christians. The plan is to present on the one hand the great connection between African life and that of ancient Israel, and on the other the disjunction between the two. One might use an analogy to compare modem Western life with that of the Old Testament: it is like looking out of the rear window of a moving car and seeing a hill recede in the background. When one looks at the Old Testament from the vantage point of African cultures, however, it is like two trains which are traveling in the same direction and suddenly converge upon each other. They click along the rails in close proximity for a time and then swerve apart to lose sight of each other, only to reappear again abruptly, side by side, before separating and reconverting again and again.