Autonomy and the Challenges of Interpreting the Decolonial African Bible

The Bible is a source of authority with meaning and power to speak to contemporary audiences and contexts. What tools can interpreters use to unlock and apply the meaning of scriptural texts to new situations? Should Africans read and interpret the Bible in Africa through African lenses and read with the concerns of Africans at heart? The debate on deconstructing the Eurocentric biblical interpretation has raged for some decades. However, it is legitimate to ask whether the decolonial biblical interpretation has helped make the Bible relevant to the plight of contemporary Africans. Has it addressed issues which affect Africans at the grassroots, such as the plight of the poor, oppressed and suffering? This chapter will use the tools of Legitimation Code Theory to analyse the process by which African contextual and decolonial interpreters have sought to apply contemporary meaning to biblical texts. The chapter will focus on the dimension of Autonomy and use the tools of Autonomy tours. An Autonomy tour maps the sociological process by which non-target knowledge, like an ancient or modern context, is taken up, repurposed and applied to a target purpose, such as interpreting a sacred text. The chapter will analyse three groups of interpreters of the Bible. Firstly, the pioneers of the tripolar method of Contextual African Hermeneutics, Jonathan Draper and Gerald West. Secondly, postcolonial feminist hermeneutics from Musa Dube and Madipoane Masenya (ngwan’a Mphahlele). Finally, the new generation of decolonising African interpreters like Hulisani Ramantswana. For each of these scholars, we will analyse how their tours, in selected papers, move from the social context to the text, the reader and application to a new context and how these moves map onto the Autonomy plane.