The Critique of Wealth in Psalm 49 and in African Indigenous Sacred Texts

Biblical Scholarship in Africa has consistently argued for the complementarity between the scientific study of the biblical text and the adoption of suitable hermeneutical approaches, which is necessary for the transmission of its message and the transformation of contemporary African society. African Biblical Scholars have thus shown the way in bringing various aspects of Africa’s rich culture, proverbs, rituals, and moral norms, among others, into dialogue with the biblical text, bringing this text closer to the African reader, on the one hand, and facilitating the transformation of the receptor culture on the other. One of the less explored ways through which these same goals might be achieved is to bring the results of the exegesis of the biblical text into dialogue with African Indigenous Sacred Texts. This paper, using the distinctive interest approach to African Biblical Hermeneutics, studies the critique of wealth in Psalm 49 and in the Adinkra text, Owuo mpɛ sika (death accepts no money), an indigenous text of the Akan people of Ghana and La Côte d’Ivoire. It argues that these two sacred texts both call attention to the risks of absolutizing wealth instead of the well-being of the human person, thus urging an evaluation and reimagination of the concept of wealth in contemporary Ghanaian society

African culture · Biblical studies · Complementarity (molecular biology) · Exegesis · Indigenous · Scholarship · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Christian Theology and Mission · Development, Ethics, and Society

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