Journal: Journal of Dispensational Theology
Volume: JODT 24:68 (Spring 2020)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous

JODT 24:68 (Spring 2020) p. 103

Book Reviews

African Hermeneutics by Elizabeth Mburu. Nigeria: Hippobooks, 2019. 234 pp. + xviii, paper, $23.99.

Elizabeth Mburu is African by birth but received her theological training at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (Ph.D.). She is a professor of New Testament and Greek and on the board of the Africa Bible Commentary. She is well suited, both by her personal background and by her education and experiences, to address the vital subject of hermeneutics within the African context.

Reading this work began with serious apprehension due to its title because this reviewer rejects any concept that there is an African hermeneutic, or an American, or Asian hermeneutic, for that matter. There is only a biblical hermeneutic and all cultures must determine the meaning of the biblical text as God intends. To entertain the idea that Africans can interpret the Bible differently from Westerners must be quickly rejected. At times, however, this appears to be what Mburu is suggesting. She claimed that millions of Africans use “foreign” approaches to the interpretation of the Bible (p. xiii). Mburu blamed colonialism for introducing westernization (p. 4) and Western reading of the Bible (pp. 22, 29). Missionaries, she claimed, brought an approach to biblical interpretation that fails to consider African culture and worldview (p. 211). The reader is, therefore, prepared to be instructed in a radically different approach to hermeneutics – one from an African perspective – a contextualized approach (pp. 5, 6, 211). The goal would be to teach African believers how to truly understand and apply the biblical text (pp. 7, 19).

Strangely, however, given such an accusation, when Mburu addressed her actual subject, she delivered a standard volume on hermeneutics that is fully consistent with Western evangelical works. There is little if any, difference between the interpretative method Mburu prescribed and that of Ramm, Terry, Virker, Duvall, or Hays. The reader, whether African or otherwise, determines the meaning of the text using normal, literal-historical-grammatical hermeneutical principles and then applies this meaning to his or her life. The difference between a Western and an African interpretative process lies not in the authorial intent of the biblical text, but in the starting place of the reader, and in its application.

For this reason, Mburu wrote a chapter on the worldview of Africans, informing the reader that traditional Africans are more communal than individualistic (pp. 21–43). However, the author repeatedly

JODT 24:68 (Spring 2020) p. 104

admitted that the African culture is changing, becoming more modernized and Western and that, in fact, today there...