What do you think?
Rate this book
African Hermeneutics
Interpretation of Scripture occurs within one's worldview and culture, which enhances our understanding and ability to apply Scripture in the world. However, few books address Bible interpretation from an African perspective and no other textbook uses the intercultural approach found here. This book brings both an awareness of how one's African context gives a lens to hermeneutics, but also how to interpret texts with integrity despite our cultural influences. African He
- GenresTheology
301 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 28, 2019
17 people are currently reading
71 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 25, 2022
This comment sets out not to praise Mburu or condemn her, but to understand her – above all, her ideas on "African Hermeneutics", and how these find expression in his writings. The important thing about Mburu is the texts that she writes. What really matters is what the text itself says. Thus, this is not a work of synopsis, but of a short analysis of Mburu’s writing on African Hermeneutics based on my reading.
Is Mburu’s View of Hermeneutics Relativist?
I would agree with Mburu that there is a need to communicate the Christian message in the vernacular that connects with people in Africa. There is a great need to produce specific methods of communicating the message of the Bible. Mburu asserts that, “African readers of the Bible face the additional challenge that most of the models and methods of Bible interpretation, or hermeneutics, are rooted in a Western context” (p. 11). Mburu’s view of looking at hermeneutics raises questions of relativism.
For instance, does this mean that we should develop specific hermeneutical methods for each specific context? How should we determine the context of the African Bible reader? Do all Africans share the same context? I agree with Mburu that “like any art or science, it [hermeneutics] requires the use of certain methods or techniques in order to produce reliable results” (p. 72). However, I will insist in this review that, these methods should be objectives if we are to reach to the objectivity of deducing the biblical author’s intended meaning.
On the one hand, I agree that African interpreters of the Bible (specifically evangelists, teachers, and preachers) must be alert to the need of giving a theological translation that connects with where African people are in their cultures. Since the church is an interface of contact between the Christian faith and the culture, contextualization is necessary if the biblical message is to be understood for what it is. On the other hand, I will argue that the process of understanding the Bible message is not dependent on the reader’s culture.
Furthermore, if specific hermeneutical methods were bound to specific contexts, then each context should determine or create its own methods. A subjective approach on hermeneutics may lead to an epistemic relativism of the Christian message. Consequently, this may lead to what Mburu terms as “dichotomized lives.” The consequence of having “dichotomized lives” is not due, in my opinion, to the use of hermeneutical methods that are strange to the African context. But it is a problem related to the application of the message of the Bible.
The basic process of Bible interpretation follows the following steps: observation, interpretation, evaluation, and application. In observation, the reader asks, “What do I notice about the text? What questions does it raise?” This is where the reader reads and rereads the biblical text, asking himself, “what do I see.” In interpretation, the reader asks, “what is the author trying to communicate? What did this passage mean in its historical context? In evaluation, the reader asks, “how does this relate to the rest of Scripture and to the faith of the church? Does this text refer to or rely on any OT texts? Is any portion of this text repeated elsewhere in the NT?” Finally, in application, the reader asks, “how does this passage relate to my life?”
If we are to move towards an objective hermeneutics, readers should strive for objective hermeneutical methods, even if “having interpretive tools in common does not mean we all do the same thing with the tools” This means that any given biblical text has a specific God-given meaning, and the goal of a Bible reader should be to establish this meaning. To this extent, faithful interpreters should reach the same conclusions. For instance, the question “what did this passage mean to the historical audience?” clearly points the reader to an objective analysis of the text. However, application may vary depending on the context of each individual. The context of the reader may not necessarily be similar to everyone in a given society. Therefore, what we need is not so much African applications as personally appropriate applications.
Should we Aim for a “Contextualized Hermeneutics”?
I completely agree with Mburu when she writes that “it is this message to the original readers that we must endeavor to understand and then apply in our own contexts” (p. 12). However, this appears to be in tension with the idea of having “a contextualized hermeneutics” which, according to her is the remedy for a dichotomized life.
She suggests that this “contextualized hermeneutic begins with an exploration of African worldview” (p. 11), and I have mixed feelings about this proposal. On the one hand, I agree that it is very crucial to study the African worldviews since the proclamation of God’s word demands that we understand both our own context and the Bible. In this sense, negating the study of African worldview would create cultural barriers for the Christian message. In his book African Religions and Philosophy John Mbiti writes, "African traditional religions are a reality which calls for academic scrutiny and which must be reckoned with in modern fields of life… to ignore these traditional beliefs, attitudes and practices can only lead to a lack of understanding African behavior and problems. Religion is the strongest element in traditional background, and exerts probably the greatest influence upon the thinking and living of the people concerned."
On the other hand, I still insist that we should be very careful not to read the Bible through the eyes of the African worldview since the Bible is the authority by which we should judge all worldviews. Even though this is not Mburu’s point, her argument about “contextualized hermeneutics” can be misleading. One may quickly assume that a study of the African worldview is the first phase of hermeneutics. However, when we read the African worldview through the lenses of the Scriptures, we start with the Bible and not with the surrounding culture.
Mburu suggests that, “If Christianity is to maintain its integrity as defined by biblical revelation, it is imperative that we endeavor to understand and apply the Bible accurately, as the authors of the biblical text intended” (p. 12). I strongly agree with her since misapplication might create what she terms as a “dichotomized life.” However, a faithful application of a given biblical text is always a result of a faithful biblical hermeneutics.
The Issue of a “Dichotomized Life”
A few years ago, I was in the city of Butembo, away from my hometown in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to train pastors from warzones. My family quickly informed me that my brother-in-law was hospitalized, paralyzed from the waist down to his feet, in one of the local hospitals of that city. My sister and her husband have been prominent members of a local Baptist church. I knew them to be devoted Christians until I visited the husband at the hospital.
The following day, I left the guest house and headed to the hospital with the purpose of praying for my sick brother-in-law. I was warmly welcomed by him who seemed very excited about his health improvement. I sat on a chair next to his bed as he started to narrate his journey of healing from the sickness. He told me how he has gone to numerous prayer centres but all in vain. At last, they visited the mganga (or witchdoctor) who did a mystical surgery and gave them traditional medicines for the sickness.
I was there wondering in my head, “How can they just decide to go to the witchdoctor? They are prominent people in the local church. They should not do that.” I was confused and could not say a word. I was more confused when he later said that God has answered their prayers through the mganga. Unfortunately, I left the place without praying for the sick.
I am giving you this story to reinforce Mburu’s idea of living “dichotomized lives” in her book. It is not surprising that many sub-Sahara African believers practice syncretism as they mix Christianity with traditional practices. This observed dichotomy is not, in my view, a result of “borrowing hermeneutics methods that are strange to the African context” but a result of a lack of proper biblical hermeneutics. For instance, let us look at the idea of Neo-Pentecostalism in Congo.
The history of Christianity in Congo reveals that Pentecostalism has been contextualized within the Congolese religious worldview. Consequently, this change in Christianity affects how the gospel is currently transmitted. The prosperity gospel, for example, is widespread in Congo because it associates the traditional practices with biblical scriptures.
In April 2022, I was in my hometown and my sister told me of a preacher who came to our local Baptist church and asked congregants to sow seed of the protection of their family members. This happened through the means of giving offerings. Such a preacher and similar ones view the sowing of seed as a kind of sacrifice for one’s protection, growth, and power. This practice is consistent with the animistic ceremonies of sacrificing of material elements by the community elders so that the one making sacrifices will not live in fear of the demonic powers. Thus, giving is a sacrificial act that guarantees protection. This, in my opinion, is not a result of borrowed western methods of hermeneutics, but a violation of biblical and objective methods that must govern the process of hermeneutics for every Christian across the globe.
To deal with the consequences of misapplying the biblical message, we need a hermeneutics rooted in the world of the Bible with the aim of translating its message to the people with the African Worldview. Missionaries, Christian educators, evangelists, preachers, teachers, etc. must be alert to the need of giving a theological translation that is rooted not in culture of the people but in the world of the Bible. Translation is necessary if the gospel is to be proclaimed effectively. However, translation is the result of a faithful and objective biblical hermeneutics.
A Short Analysis of Mburu’s Four-legs Tool
Mburu argues that “a stable or accurate interpretation of the biblical text requires four legs, which in this case are (a) parallels to the African context, (b) the theological context, (c) the literary context and (d) the historical context” (p. 72). Throughout the book, Mburu suggests that, in our interpretation process, we should start with the African worldview. She writes, “knowing our African cultures and worldviews is a valuable first step in interpreting the Bible” (p. 96). Again, I agree that there is a need for us to understand our African context if we are to apply the biblical text. However, this, as I argue below, is a later part of the process compared to interpretation.
I do not agree that our African worldview should be the first process of our hermeneutical journey. Mburu writes, “When we begin our process of interpretation, we must always begin with leg 1 (the African context) because that is what we know, and having that firmly in place will enable us to move from the known to the unknown” (p. 73). The danger with this is that the students of the Bible might end up feeding their own pre-understandings that they naturally bring to the biblical text.
Furthermore, if we are to start with the African worldview, then there will be a need of an African theological compendium of the African traditional religions to help us during our Bible study. In this sense, this compendium must be part of our collection of bible tools for Bible study such as Atlases (or maps), Bible dictionaries, etc. if we are to understand the Bible accurately. But Mburu does not suggest that in her book.
In my opinion, we do not need to understand the African worldview to interpret the Bible accurately. First, perspectives differ from one human being to another. It is true that Africans have both communal worldview and individualistic worldview. However, I will still insist that it is hard to determine our own worldviews since we are dynamic creatures living in a changing world. Secondly, even the basic task of defining Africa presents a challenge: who is an Africa? What part of Africa should we be talking about? Is all Africa the same? This makes the African context a fragile place to insist that we must begin our interpretation.
Having said that, I suggest a reversal order where we start with what Andreas J. Köstenberger and Richard D. Patterson terms as the “hermeneutical triad” in which we start with history, literature, and then theology. They suggest these interpretive steps, which I consider to be objective steps, in their book:
Step 1: Preparation
Step 2: Interpretation: History
Step 3: Literature: Canon (determine the place of your passage in the overall storyline of Scripture)
Step 4: Literature: Genre (determine your passage’s genre and interpret it in light of genre characteristics)
Step 5: Literature: Language (break your passage into discourse units, study key words, and properly identify and interpret figurative language)
Step 6: Theology
Step 7: Application & Proclamation
These steps fit into “the three inescapable realities for the biblical interpreter” that Köstenberger and Patterson share in their book: (1) The reality of God and his revelation in Scripture (theology); (2) The existence of texts requiring interpretation (literature); (3) The reality of history: revelation in cultural context (history). Remarkably, step 7 (Application & Proclamation) is not part of the “hermeneutical triad.” It is the last step that serves as a link between the intended author’s meaning and meaning to the contemporary context.
Conclusion on Mburu’s Book
There is a lot we can say in interacting with Mburu’s ideas on hermeneutics. Mburu’s book would not have raised lots of questions if she would explain in details what she terms as the “western” hermeneutical methods. Good argumentative writing begins not with an act of assertion but an act of listening. Mburu would have done a great job if she would explain the “western” hermeneutical methods by showing their pitfalls in the African context.
Furthermore, Mburu should have analyzed places different from Africa, where western missionaries reached to see the impact of “western” hermeneutic models. Much of what she writes has to do with application more than the other three basic steps of Bible interpretation: observation, interpretation, and evaluation. If I would give a title to Mburu’s book, it would be “A Contextual Application of the Bible” or “Applying the Bible in Sub-Saharan Africa.”
Is Mburu’s View of Hermeneutics Relativist?
I would agree with Mburu that there is a need to communicate the Christian message in the vernacular that connects with people in Africa. There is a great need to produce specific methods of communicating the message of the Bible. Mburu asserts that, “African readers of the Bible face the additional challenge that most of the models and methods of Bible interpretation, or hermeneutics, are rooted in a Western context” (p. 11). Mburu’s view of looking at hermeneutics raises questions of relativism.
For instance, does this mean that we should develop specific hermeneutical methods for each specific context? How should we determine the context of the African Bible reader? Do all Africans share the same context? I agree with Mburu that “like any art or science, it [hermeneutics] requires the use of certain methods or techniques in order to produce reliable results” (p. 72). However, I will insist in this review that, these methods should be objectives if we are to reach to the objectivity of deducing the biblical author’s intended meaning.
On the one hand, I agree that African interpreters of the Bible (specifically evangelists, teachers, and preachers) must be alert to the need of giving a theological translation that connects with where African people are in their cultures. Since the church is an interface of contact between the Christian faith and the culture, contextualization is necessary if the biblical message is to be understood for what it is. On the other hand, I will argue that the process of understanding the Bible message is not dependent on the reader’s culture.
Furthermore, if specific hermeneutical methods were bound to specific contexts, then each context should determine or create its own methods. A subjective approach on hermeneutics may lead to an epistemic relativism of the Christian message. Consequently, this may lead to what Mburu terms as “dichotomized lives.” The consequence of having “dichotomized lives” is not due, in my opinion, to the use of hermeneutical methods that are strange to the African context. But it is a problem related to the application of the message of the Bible.
The basic process of Bible interpretation follows the following steps: observation, interpretation, evaluation, and application. In observation, the reader asks, “What do I notice about the text? What questions does it raise?” This is where the reader reads and rereads the biblical text, asking himself, “what do I see.” In interpretation, the reader asks, “what is the author trying to communicate? What did this passage mean in its historical context? In evaluation, the reader asks, “how does this relate to the rest of Scripture and to the faith of the church? Does this text refer to or rely on any OT texts? Is any portion of this text repeated elsewhere in the NT?” Finally, in application, the reader asks, “how does this passage relate to my life?”
If we are to move towards an objective hermeneutics, readers should strive for objective hermeneutical methods, even if “having interpretive tools in common does not mean we all do the same thing with the tools” This means that any given biblical text has a specific God-given meaning, and the goal of a Bible reader should be to establish this meaning. To this extent, faithful interpreters should reach the same conclusions. For instance, the question “what did this passage mean to the historical audience?” clearly points the reader to an objective analysis of the text. However, application may vary depending on the context of each individual. The context of the reader may not necessarily be similar to everyone in a given society. Therefore, what we need is not so much African applications as personally appropriate applications.
Should we Aim for a “Contextualized Hermeneutics”?
I completely agree with Mburu when she writes that “it is this message to the original readers that we must endeavor to understand and then apply in our own contexts” (p. 12). However, this appears to be in tension with the idea of having “a contextualized hermeneutics” which, according to her is the remedy for a dichotomized life.
She suggests that this “contextualized hermeneutic begins with an exploration of African worldview” (p. 11), and I have mixed feelings about this proposal. On the one hand, I agree that it is very crucial to study the African worldviews since the proclamation of God’s word demands that we understand both our own context and the Bible. In this sense, negating the study of African worldview would create cultural barriers for the Christian message. In his book African Religions and Philosophy John Mbiti writes, "African traditional religions are a reality which calls for academic scrutiny and which must be reckoned with in modern fields of life… to ignore these traditional beliefs, attitudes and practices can only lead to a lack of understanding African behavior and problems. Religion is the strongest element in traditional background, and exerts probably the greatest influence upon the thinking and living of the people concerned."
On the other hand, I still insist that we should be very careful not to read the Bible through the eyes of the African worldview since the Bible is the authority by which we should judge all worldviews. Even though this is not Mburu’s point, her argument about “contextualized hermeneutics” can be misleading. One may quickly assume that a study of the African worldview is the first phase of hermeneutics. However, when we read the African worldview through the lenses of the Scriptures, we start with the Bible and not with the surrounding culture.
Mburu suggests that, “If Christianity is to maintain its integrity as defined by biblical revelation, it is imperative that we endeavor to understand and apply the Bible accurately, as the authors of the biblical text intended” (p. 12). I strongly agree with her since misapplication might create what she terms as a “dichotomized life.” However, a faithful application of a given biblical text is always a result of a faithful biblical hermeneutics.
The Issue of a “Dichotomized Life”
A few years ago, I was in the city of Butembo, away from my hometown in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to train pastors from warzones. My family quickly informed me that my brother-in-law was hospitalized, paralyzed from the waist down to his feet, in one of the local hospitals of that city. My sister and her husband have been prominent members of a local Baptist church. I knew them to be devoted Christians until I visited the husband at the hospital.
The following day, I left the guest house and headed to the hospital with the purpose of praying for my sick brother-in-law. I was warmly welcomed by him who seemed very excited about his health improvement. I sat on a chair next to his bed as he started to narrate his journey of healing from the sickness. He told me how he has gone to numerous prayer centres but all in vain. At last, they visited the mganga (or witchdoctor) who did a mystical surgery and gave them traditional medicines for the sickness.
I was there wondering in my head, “How can they just decide to go to the witchdoctor? They are prominent people in the local church. They should not do that.” I was confused and could not say a word. I was more confused when he later said that God has answered their prayers through the mganga. Unfortunately, I left the place without praying for the sick.
I am giving you this story to reinforce Mburu’s idea of living “dichotomized lives” in her book. It is not surprising that many sub-Sahara African believers practice syncretism as they mix Christianity with traditional practices. This observed dichotomy is not, in my view, a result of “borrowing hermeneutics methods that are strange to the African context” but a result of a lack of proper biblical hermeneutics. For instance, let us look at the idea of Neo-Pentecostalism in Congo.
The history of Christianity in Congo reveals that Pentecostalism has been contextualized within the Congolese religious worldview. Consequently, this change in Christianity affects how the gospel is currently transmitted. The prosperity gospel, for example, is widespread in Congo because it associates the traditional practices with biblical scriptures.
In April 2022, I was in my hometown and my sister told me of a preacher who came to our local Baptist church and asked congregants to sow seed of the protection of their family members. This happened through the means of giving offerings. Such a preacher and similar ones view the sowing of seed as a kind of sacrifice for one’s protection, growth, and power. This practice is consistent with the animistic ceremonies of sacrificing of material elements by the community elders so that the one making sacrifices will not live in fear of the demonic powers. Thus, giving is a sacrificial act that guarantees protection. This, in my opinion, is not a result of borrowed western methods of hermeneutics, but a violation of biblical and objective methods that must govern the process of hermeneutics for every Christian across the globe.
To deal with the consequences of misapplying the biblical message, we need a hermeneutics rooted in the world of the Bible with the aim of translating its message to the people with the African Worldview. Missionaries, Christian educators, evangelists, preachers, teachers, etc. must be alert to the need of giving a theological translation that is rooted not in culture of the people but in the world of the Bible. Translation is necessary if the gospel is to be proclaimed effectively. However, translation is the result of a faithful and objective biblical hermeneutics.
A Short Analysis of Mburu’s Four-legs Tool
Mburu argues that “a stable or accurate interpretation of the biblical text requires four legs, which in this case are (a) parallels to the African context, (b) the theological context, (c) the literary context and (d) the historical context” (p. 72). Throughout the book, Mburu suggests that, in our interpretation process, we should start with the African worldview. She writes, “knowing our African cultures and worldviews is a valuable first step in interpreting the Bible” (p. 96). Again, I agree that there is a need for us to understand our African context if we are to apply the biblical text. However, this, as I argue below, is a later part of the process compared to interpretation.
I do not agree that our African worldview should be the first process of our hermeneutical journey. Mburu writes, “When we begin our process of interpretation, we must always begin with leg 1 (the African context) because that is what we know, and having that firmly in place will enable us to move from the known to the unknown” (p. 73). The danger with this is that the students of the Bible might end up feeding their own pre-understandings that they naturally bring to the biblical text.
Furthermore, if we are to start with the African worldview, then there will be a need of an African theological compendium of the African traditional religions to help us during our Bible study. In this sense, this compendium must be part of our collection of bible tools for Bible study such as Atlases (or maps), Bible dictionaries, etc. if we are to understand the Bible accurately. But Mburu does not suggest that in her book.
In my opinion, we do not need to understand the African worldview to interpret the Bible accurately. First, perspectives differ from one human being to another. It is true that Africans have both communal worldview and individualistic worldview. However, I will still insist that it is hard to determine our own worldviews since we are dynamic creatures living in a changing world. Secondly, even the basic task of defining Africa presents a challenge: who is an Africa? What part of Africa should we be talking about? Is all Africa the same? This makes the African context a fragile place to insist that we must begin our interpretation.
Having said that, I suggest a reversal order where we start with what Andreas J. Köstenberger and Richard D. Patterson terms as the “hermeneutical triad” in which we start with history, literature, and then theology. They suggest these interpretive steps, which I consider to be objective steps, in their book:
Step 1: Preparation
Step 2: Interpretation: History
Step 3: Literature: Canon (determine the place of your passage in the overall storyline of Scripture)
Step 4: Literature: Genre (determine your passage’s genre and interpret it in light of genre characteristics)
Step 5: Literature: Language (break your passage into discourse units, study key words, and properly identify and interpret figurative language)
Step 6: Theology
Step 7: Application & Proclamation
These steps fit into “the three inescapable realities for the biblical interpreter” that Köstenberger and Patterson share in their book: (1) The reality of God and his revelation in Scripture (theology); (2) The existence of texts requiring interpretation (literature); (3) The reality of history: revelation in cultural context (history). Remarkably, step 7 (Application & Proclamation) is not part of the “hermeneutical triad.” It is the last step that serves as a link between the intended author’s meaning and meaning to the contemporary context.
Conclusion on Mburu’s Book
There is a lot we can say in interacting with Mburu’s ideas on hermeneutics. Mburu’s book would not have raised lots of questions if she would explain in details what she terms as the “western” hermeneutical methods. Good argumentative writing begins not with an act of assertion but an act of listening. Mburu would have done a great job if she would explain the “western” hermeneutical methods by showing their pitfalls in the African context.
Furthermore, Mburu should have analyzed places different from Africa, where western missionaries reached to see the impact of “western” hermeneutic models. Much of what she writes has to do with application more than the other three basic steps of Bible interpretation: observation, interpretation, and evaluation. If I would give a title to Mburu’s book, it would be “A Contextual Application of the Bible” or “Applying the Bible in Sub-Saharan Africa.”
March 1, 2020
This volume presents an approach to hermeneutics contextualized for African interpreters. As such it includes background material describing different facets of African culture, and then seeking to consider how those cultural considerations play into the hermeneutical process. The author is NOT doing special-interest hermeneutics, Liberation Hermeneutics or Feminist Hermeneutics, in which the meaning of the text is freely distorted to fit the desired goals. Indeed, the author is actually quite conservative in approach, maintaining the singularity of the author's intended meaning though a variety of applications. As such I was a little surprised that she brings in so many of the cultural considerations at the beginning of the interpretative process, rather than at the end. While there is value on the front end of identifying biases and assumptions, it would seem better to place many of the cultural concerns on the end in considering the application of the text's meaning, once that has been established. Another note is that this text does not replace standard hermeneutics texts, as it's consideration of normal exegetical tools is very brief, so it would need to be supplemented with those works. That said, the work is highly commended in its presentation of a vision for how a conservative approach to hermeneutics can go together with considering deeply the context in which the text is being studied and taught, and deserves a wide readership.
November 25, 2021
A basic evangelical hermeneutics book. I was expecting more “African” thought than was here. A little disappointed in the first chapter when the author says that Christianity has only been in Africa for 100 years. Such a limited view of Christianity!
November 17, 2025
Perhaps more appropriately titled "Hermeneutics for Africans," still an excellent introduction to the world of hermeneutics from an African perspective.
October 26, 2025
Good introduction, not only to hermeneutics in general, but also looking at the different genres of the Bible (using both a biblical hermeneutical framework and African context) from an African context. There was a lot to learn from the way that the African culture interprets Scripture, based on how different genres are utilized in their culture more broadly and then specifically with Scripture.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews