Hermeneutical Approaches to Biblical Studies in African Context

African biblical hermeneutics is the re-reading of the Christian scripture from a premeditatedly Afrocentric perspective. Biblical Studies in African context is an amalgamation of multiple interpretive methods, approaches and foci that reflect a creative engagement of the African cosmological reality and the bible. Majority of African Christians predominantly use Eurocentric cosmology and anglo saxon as an official language of interpretation of the bible to the detriment of Afrocentric hermeneutics. The onus of this paper is an evaluation of Afrocentric interpretation of the Bible in African context. Descriptive analysis method was used to carry out this research which focuses on the development of African Biblical Hermeneutics in the region of African nations, namely: Central Africa, Eastern Africa, Horn of Africa, Southern Africa and Western Africa. Findings show that, Biblical Studies in Africa is characterized as both innovative and reactionary. Conclusively, African biblical hermeneutics is contextual since interpretation is always done in a particular context. Therefore, the analysis of the biblical text should be done from the perspective of an African world-view and culture. It recommended therefore that African Biblical Scholars and Hermeneutics should lay more emphasis on the interpretation of the bible in Afrocentric cosmology and languages in textual analysis of the scripture instead of Eurocentricism.