"Thy Law Is within My Heart" (Ps 40)

(7). Sacred Tradition in the Hebrew Psalter and in African Indigenous Texts

Bibliographic Data

ID3150976
AuthorsMichael Kodzo Mensah (0000-0002-2959-7969, University of Ghana, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume14
Issue10
Pages1227
Publication date2023-09-25
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueReligions (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel14101227
OpenAlexW4387024905
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited12

Every society possesses systems for accessing, preserving, and transmitting its traditions. These are meant to ensure that privileged knowledge entrusted to reliable custodians is passed on unchanged between generations for the preservation of society. In Africa, scholars have advocated new hermeneutical approaches to the study of the Bible, arguing that the adoption of traditional methods of exegesis served as another instrument in the colonialists' toolkit to undermine the reception and preservation of Africa's sacred traditions. Using African Biblical Hermeneutics, this paper studies the processes for preserving Sacred Tradition in Psalm 40. Similar processes are found in African Indigenous Sacred Texts such as the mate masie of the Adinkra textual system. I argue, therefore, that a complementary reading of the texts of the two traditions could serve to de-link from the monocular vision of traditional exegesis and offer a much more fruitful approach to interpreting these texts and making them relevant to the contemporary African reader

Archaeology · Art · Custodians · Exegesis · Hermeneutics · Indigenous · Linguistics · Literature · Sociology · Theology · African cultural and philosophical studies · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Christian Theology and Mission · History · Philosophy

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