Bosadi Hermeneutics: Mapping Masenya’s Journey of Collisions and Relationships in Biblical Interpretation

Madipoane Masenya’s Bosadi hermeneutics have gradually morphed out of the African/South African context, contributing, in a novel way, to the emancipation of Black women. It gives rise to the quest for a liberative, African, biblical, and woman-centered approach to reading both biblical and cultural texts. It affirms that a woman (mosadi), in her full humanity, is created in the image of God. The experiences of a Black South African woman at the hands of white and Black male oppressive cultural elements, biblical biases, and interpretations constitute the point of departure for Bosadi hermeneutics. Masenya, through Bosadi, goes further to identify and critique the oppressive androcentric elements of the biblical texts. This chapter describes the context that gave birth to Bosadi hermeneutics while paying attention to the liberating, ethical, and philosophical ideas that it generates and proposes. Through Bosadi hermeneutics, Masenya has dared the unchartered waters of the stubborn patriarchy of the African culture and the Hebrew Bible. Masenya, positioning herself in an African worldview, carved the epistemic tools of trade derived from that context to critique the ontologies, epistemologies, and ethics that emerged out of the same culture and the Bible. In that way, she crossed the borders, faced collisions, and built new ontological, epistemic, and ethical bridges and relationships derived from the Northern-Sotho context with her eyes focused on Africa, the diaspora, and beyond.