The Stolen Bible: From Tool of Imperialism to African Icon

638 Pages·2016·3.02 MB·English

by  Gerald O. West

20 mm
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The Stolen Bible tells the story of how Southern Africans have interacted with O to
the Bible from its arrival in Dutch imperial ships in the mid-1600s through to . l
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contemporary post-apartheid South Africa. E n
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The Stolen Bible emphasises African agency and distinguishes between African T B
receptions of the Bible and African receptions of missionary-colonial Christianity. i
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Through a series of detailed historical, geographical, and hermeneutical case-studies l
e
the book analyses Southern African receptions of the Bible, including the earliest
African encounters with the Bible, the translation of the Bible into an African
language, the appropriation of the Bible by African Independent Churches, the
use of the Bible in the Black liberation struggle, and the ways in which the Bible
is embodied in the lives of ordinary Africans.
Reading the Bible
GERALD O. WEST, Ph.D. (1990, University of Sheffield) is Professor of African
The Stolen Bible
Biblical Interpretation at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Among
across Contexts
his publications is the edited volume with Musa W. Dube on The Bible in Africa:
Transactions, Trajectories, and Trends (Brill, 2000).
FROM TOOL OF IMPERIALISM
TO AFRICAN ICON LUKE’S GOSPEL, SOCIO-ECONOMIC MARGINALITY,
AND LATIN AMERICAN BIBLICAL HERMENEUTICS
BI
NS
ISBN: 978-90-04-32275-2 144
GERALD O. WEST
BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION SERIES, 144
ISSN 0928-0731
brill.com/bins
9 789004 322752
The Stolen Bible
Biblical Interpretation Series
Editors in Chief
Paul Anderson (George Fox University)
Yvonne Sherwood (University of Kent)
Editorial Board
A.K.M. Adam (University of Oxford)
Roland Boer (University of Newcastle, Australia)
Colleen M. Conway (Seton Hall University)
Jennifer L. Koosed (Albright College, Reading, USA)
Vernon Robbins (Emory University)
Annette Schellenberg (Universität Wien)
Carolyn J. Sharp (Yale Divinity School)
Johanna Stiebert (University of Leeds, UK)
Duane Watson (Malone University, USA)
Ruben Zimmermann (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz)
VOLUME 144
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/bins
The Stolen Bible
From Tool of Imperialism to African Icon
By
Gerald O. West
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: West, Gerald O., author.
Title: The stolen Bible : from tool of imperialism to African icon / by
 Gerald O. West.
Other titles: Biblical interpretation series.
Description: Boston : Brill, 2016. | Series: Biblical interpretation series |
 Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016018776 (print) | LCCN 2016019339 (ebook) |
 ISBN 9789004322752 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9789004322783 (E-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Bible—History. | Africa—Church history. | Christianity and culture—
 Africa—History. | Bible—Versions, African.
Classification: LCC BS447.5.A35 W47 2016 (print) | LCC BS447.5.A35 (ebook) |
 DDC 220.096—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016018776
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Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 0928-0731
isbn 978-90-04-32275-2 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-32278-3 (e-book)
Copyright 2016 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and
Hotei Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system,
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Contents
Acknowledgements ix
List of Figures x
Introduction: The Distinct Bible 1
Prologue: The African Bible 9
The African Bible: Mediterranean North Africa 9
The African Bible: Coptic, Nubian, and Ethiopian North Africa 12
The Imperial Bible: Sub-Saharan or Tropical Africa 14
1 The Imperial Bible 19
The Empires’ Bibles: Portuguese East Africa and Dutch South
Africa 21
The Folk Bible: Religion at Sea 31
The Constrained Bible: Bartering Cattle 35
The Prescribed Bible: The Role of the Sick-comforter 44
The Retributive Bible: Towards Seizing African Cattle 48
The Mundane Bible: Company Rhythms at the Cape 63
The Indigenous Bible: Land and Cattle as Religion 66
The Local Bible: Religions of Extraction and Subsistence 72
The Irrupting Bible: Religion in an African Context 75
2 The Revealed Bible 85
The Bartered Bible: Trader-missionary Travellers 85
The Covered Bible: Burchell’s Visit 88
The Uncovered Bible: Campbell’s Visit 95
The Probed Bible: Conversations with Mothibi 113
3 The Dislocated Bible 120
The Unsettled Bible: Negotiating Place 123
The Relocated Bible: Hamilton’s Mundane Mission 137
The Embroiled Bible: Hamilton Manages the Mission 150
The Eternal Bible: Hamilton’s Message 156
The Disruptive Bible: An Unstable Interior 159
The Observed Bible: The African Gaze 162
vi contents
4 The Translated Bible 164
The Theological Bible: Moffat’s Message 166
The Vernacular Bible: Moffat’s Language Labours 179
The Military Bible: Moffat’s Mixed Message 193
The Short and Simple Bible: Moffat’s ABC 197
The (M)aligned Bible: Moffat’s Temporal and Eternal Message 203
The Instructive Bible: Moffat’s Mode of Translation 208
5 The Appropriated Bible 232
The Cultural Bible: African Culture as Africa’s Old Testament 234
The Liberating Bible: Isaiah Shembe’s Bible 244
The Oral/Aural Bible: Shembe’s Law 260
The Re-written Bible: Shembe’s Teaching 271
The Liturgical Bible: Maidens Performing the Bible 298
The Communal Bible: Corporate Interpretation 307
6 The Contested Bible 318
The Trustworthy Bible: The Book of Hope 326
The Ideological Bible: The Oppressive Voices of the Bible 328
The Black Bible: What it Means ‘to have’ the Bible 339
The Africans’ Bible: Other African Theologies 348
7 The Embodied Bible 363
The Marabi Bible: Corporate Preachings of the Bible 364
The Sung Bible: The Cadences of Death 369
Mbuli’s Bible: Re-citing the Bible 375
The Hiv Bible: The Wages of Sin and a Word of Hope 377
The Aids Bible: The Beast in the Bible 393
The Narrative Bible: African Commentary in Art 410
The Apocalyptic Bible: The ‘Son of Man’ in South Africa 420
8 The Public Bible 445
The RDP Bible: the Bible Re-enters the Public Realm 449
Mbeki’s Bible: Separating the Moral and Economic Spheres 463
The Church Theology Bible: After Prophetic Theology 491
Mandela’s Bible: Mandela’s Methodism 495
The ANC Bible: The RDP of the Soul 498
Zuma’s Bible: A More Popular Religion 512
Ramaphosa’s Bible: The Re-redeployed Bible 536
Contents vii
Epilogue: The Iconic Bible 543
The Football Fans’ Bible: Conjuring the Bible 543
Abahlali’s Bible: The Bible Among the Social Movements 545
The People’s Bible: Getting the Cattle Back 555
Bibliography 563
Index of Biblical and Quranic Texts 595
Select Subject Index 599

Acknowledgements
The seeds of this project were sown as long ago as 1993, when Vincent
Wimbush talked to me about a project he was embarking on, a hermeneu-
tic history of the Bible among African Americans. Though occupied with the
struggle against apartheid at this time, those of us working within the frame of
South African Black Theology, foremost among us Tinyiko Maluleke, began to
recognise that a more historical analysis was required if we were to understand
what was being done with the Bible in the South Africa of the 1990s. So my own
work began to take this turn, eking out time from the more pressing demands
of working with the Bible as a resource for liberation to reflect on how the
Bible had become an African book, and what had become of this African book.
This work has had many dialogue partners, most of whom have done their
work within the broad terrain of African biblical and theological scholar-
ship. However, it has been the work of the Ujamma Centre for Community
Development and Research within the School of Religion, Philosophy, and
Classics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, that has kept me
connected with ‘ordinary’ African readers of the Bible.
The University of KwaZulu-Natal has supported this research by way of
research grants and sabbatical leave. But the bulk of funding that has enabled
these sabbaticals and regular visits to the archives of the School of Oriental and
African Studies (SOAS) in London has come from the South African National
Research Foundation (NRF). The Council for World Mission (CWM) have also
been generous in allocating some funding towards this research and in grant-
ing me access to their archive. However, none of these institutions should be
held accountable for the outcomes of this research; the work is my own.
Some of the work in The Stolen Bible has been published in part elsewhere,
but all of it was conceived as part of this larger project and so has been thor-
oughly rewritten for what this project has become, the story of The Stolen Bible.
Thank you to the staff at Brill for their careful publishing work.
I am grateful to the very many who have journeyed with me in tracking the
stolen Bible. Their voices are evident in the book in diverse ways. In particular,
my thanks to Beverley Haddad, my companion on the way.