Material culture in the Old Testament: Conflict and propaganda with Missionary Christianity

HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Material culture in the Old Testament: Conflict and propaganda with Missionary Christianity
 
Creator Josiah, Ucheawaji G. Jeffrey-Ebhomenmen, Blessing
 
Subject Old Testament; Cultural Studies; Church History; African Studies; Old Testament icons; African indigenous materiality; missionary Christianity; relic; biblical transmission; biblical reception
Description Cultural materiality as evident in the Old Testament (OT) was borne out of personal and corporate experiences of ancient Israelites with YHWH (Ex 16:32–34; 25–36; Nm 16–17, Jos 3–4). At the dawn of Christian Missions, certain indigenous religious objects became ‘idolatrous’, but across the Atlantic Ocean, they were works of art kept in museums and art galleries. This negatively impacted biblical reception by the locals. This work investigates select OT icons and wades into their ontological and existential significance in relation to the conflict and propaganda of Missionary Christianity towards indigenous icons. The narrative criticism and the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) including Focus Group Discussion (FGD) were engaged in the study while the Symbolic Interactionism was the theoretical framework. The objects preserved by ancient Israel were to serve as relics for future generations who were to have an existential knowledge of YHWH’s dealings with their forebears. Western missionaries claimed to have transmitted biblical messages to Africa, yet their approach led to conflicts in biblical reception by the indigenous people who struggled between being detached from their existential realities, and accepting the gospel with its Eurocentric biases. The Western missionaries’ inability to transmit the biblical understanding of cultural materiality in their dealings with Africans invites suspicion in the missionaries’ efforts with a pretentious display of ignorance of the ontological significance of indigenous materiality.Contribution: This article offers insight into the conflict and propaganda inherent in the Western missionaries’ approach in transmitting biblical messages of cultural materiality, and challenges of biblical reception among indigenous people in Nigeria.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor
Date 2024-04-30
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Narrative criticism; Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA)
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/hts.v80i2.9039
 
Source HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies; Vol 80, No 2 (2024); 8 pages 2072-8050 0259-9422
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/9039/26952 https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/9039/26953 https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/9039/26954 https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/9039/26955
 
Coverage — — —
Rights Copyright (c) 2024 Ucheawaji G. Josiah, Blessing Jeffrey-Ebhomenmen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
ADVERTISEMENT