The doctrine of God in African Christian thought : the Holy Trinity, theological hermeneutics, and the African intellectual culture /
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The Christian faith knows and worships one God, who is revealed in the Son and in the Holy Spirit. This is the meaning of the doctrine of the Trinity in Christian thought. Although Christian orthodoxy defines the doctrine of the Trinity, the intellectual tools used to capture it significantly vary. At different times and in different places, Western Christianity has, for instance, used neo-Platonism, German Idealism, and the conceptual tools of the second-century Greeks. Taking elements from the known African intellectual framework, this book argues that for African Christians, the respective pre-Christian African understanding of God and the Ntu -metaphysics, in particular, function as conceptual gates for an attempt towards articulating the Trinity for African Christian audiences.
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Originally presented as the author's thesis (D. Th.)--University of Stellenbosch, 2000. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [279]-292) and indexes. :
9789047420224 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Inscribing devotion and death : archaeological evidence for Jewish populations of North Africa /
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Reliance on essentialist or syncretistic models of cultural dynamics has limited past evaluations of ancient Jewish populations. This reexamination of evidence for Jews of North Africa offers an alternative approach. Drawing from methods developed in cultural studies and historical linguistics, this book replaces traditional categories used to examine evidence for early Jewish populations and demonstrates how direct comparison of Jewish material evidence with that of its neighbors allows for a reassessment of what the category of "Jewish" might have meant in different North African locations and periods and, by extension, elsewhere in the Mediterranean. The result is a transformed analysis of Jewish cultural identity that both emphasizes its indebtedness to larger regional contexts and allows for a more informed and complex understanding of Jewish cultural distinctiveness.
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1 online resource (xviii, 342 pages) : illustrations, maps. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 315-334) and index. :
9789047423843 :
0927-7633 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Christian remnant-African folk church : Seventh-Day Adventism in Tanzania, 1903-1980 /
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The growth of Christianity in Africa during the twentieth century is one of the most fascinating shifts in the history of religions. This book presents a history of the Tanzanian Seventh-day Adventist Church, which is representative of this shift in many respects: slow beginnings, struggles over cultural issues, the emergence of a unique church life combining denominational heritage and African elements, frictions with governments, and the development of popular theology. Yet Tanzanian Adventism also exemplifies an important phenomenon which has been given little attention so far - the transformation of minority denominations to dominant religions. This study breaks new ground in analyzing how the Adventist "remnant" developed into an African "folk church" while attempting to remain true to its original ethos.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [559]-600) and index. :
9789047422686 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Gnostica, Judaica, Catholica : collected essays of Gilles Quispel /
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This volume brings together a rich and varied collection of essays by Gilles Quispel (1916-2006), Professor of the History of the Early Church at Utrecht University from 1951 until his retirement in 1983. During his illustrious career, Professor Quispel was also visiting Professor at Harvard University in 1964/65, and visiting Professor at the Catholic University of Leuven from 1969 until 1974. The fifty essays collected in this volume testify to most of the prominent themes from Professor Quispel's scholarly career: the writings of the Nag Hammadi library in general and the Gospel of Thomas in particular; Tatian's Diatessaron and its influences; the Hermetica ; Mani and Manichaeism; the Jewish origins of Gnosticism; and Gnosis and the future of Christianity. This volume also makes a number of his less known earlier publications (mainly presented under the heading 'Catholica') available to the international community. Until shortly before he died, Professor Quispel remained active in his study of the Gospel of Thomas . He had been one of the first to acquire the Coptic text of the Gospel of Thomas , of which he published the first translation in 1959 and his final translation in 2005. He was also active in researching the Diatessaron , and Valentinus 'the Gnostic'. One of his most recent essays - published for the first time in this volume - is on 'the Muslim Jesus.'
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047441823 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
African and European readers of the Bible in dialogue : in quest of a shared meaning /
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Far too long, the relationship between European and African biblical scholarship has been a non-relationship. Divergent insights into how biblical texts should be interpreted and made fruitful for the current context, cultural differences, colonial past and post-colonial future, radically different social situations - this all made companionship and real interaction difficult. This rich and multilayered volume (result of a Stellenbosch conference 2006) attempts to disclose new modes of dialogue between readers of the Bible from those two worlds. More than twenty theologians from Africa and Europe reflect together on how readers from radically different contexts - professional and ordinary alike -, may become allies in an ethically accountable way of relating the biblical text to their current (global) situations and how a process of mutual learning may be established. This book provides important insights in intercultural hermeneutics, the relationship between classical historico-literary approaches and new forms of interpretation. It also gives examples of new forms of how to read the Bible in the secularised European context and the HIV/Aids stricken Africa. Particularly enriching is that every contribution is followed by a personal letter of response of another contributor to the book, giving impulses for further dialogue and debate. The book is useful for all biblical scholars and students, in particular for those interested in how to do contextual exegesis in a manner that also takes into account the context of the other.
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Result of a conference held in Stellenbosch, South Africa in January 2006. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047442400 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Church and settler in colonial Zimbabwe : a study in the history of the Anglican Diocese of Mashonaland/Southern Rhodesia, 1890-1925 /
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This book examines the history of the Anglican Diocese of Mashonaland/Southern Rhodesia (virtually co-extensive with modern Zimbabwe) in the period 1890-1925, when its institutions took shape and its religious character was formed. While work among indigenous communities is outlined, the primary subject is the church's work with white settlers. A fresh general narrative is provided and an examination of clergy recruitment and finance relates events in Mashonaland to developments in global Anglicanism. Among the questions addressed are those of religion and empire, church and state and the complexities of relationship between the Church of England and her overseas extensions, particularly those covering areas of white settlement. Local developments in religious practice are also explored: most striking of these was the settler apprehension of the vast landscapes of South-Central Africa as a locus of the sacred and their custom of veld burial.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [235]-264) and index. :
9789047442387 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Catholic Pentecostalism and the paradoxes of Africanization : processes of localization in a Catholic Charismatic movement in Cameroon /
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The anthropological literature on religious innovation and resistance in African Christianity tended to focus almost exclusively on what have come to be known as African Independent Churches. Very few anthropological studies have looked at similar processes within mission churches. Through an ethnographic study of localizing processes in a Charismatic movement in Cameroon and Paris, the book critically explores the dialectics between 'Pentecostalization' and 'Africanization' within contemporary African Catholicism. It appears that both processes pursue, although for different purposes, the missionary policy of dismantling local cultures and religions: practices and discourses of Africanization dissect them in search of 'authentic' African values; Charismatic ritual on the other hand features the dramatization of the defeat of local deities and spirits by Christianity.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [227]-240) and index. :
9789047442950 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Making and remaking mosques in Senegal /
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This book constitutes a seminal contribution to the fields of Islamic architectural history and gender studies. It is the first major empirical study of the history and current state of mosque building in Senegal and the first study of mosque space from a gender perspective. The author positions Senegalese mosques within the field of Islamic architectural history, unraveling their history through pre-colonial travelers' accounts to conversations with present-day planners, imams and women who continually shape and reshape the mosques they worship inches Using contemporary Dakar as a case study, the book's second aim is to explore the role of women in the "making and remaking" of mosques. In particular, the rise of non-tariqa grass-roots movements (i.e.: the "Sunni/Ibadou" movement) has empowered women (particularly young women) and has greatly strengthened their capacity to use mosques as places of spirituality, education and socialization. The text is aimed at several specialized readerships: readers interested in Islam in West Africa, in the role of women in Islam, as well as those interested in the sociology and art-history of mosques.
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Originally presented as the author's thesis (PhD)--SOAS, University of London, 2006. :
1 online resource (xxvii, 408 pages [22 pages] of plates) : illustrations, maps. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004217508 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Practical Imperialist : Letters from a Danish Planter in German East Africa 1888-1906 /
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This book provides a rare opportunity to follow the daily life on and around plantations and towns in the first years of the German colonial presence in East Africa, as seen through the eyes of a Danish master farmer working for the German East Africa Company. There are few memoirs and personal letters from these years, and existent letters are primarily by explorers, colonial officials, missionaries or the occasional settler. Lautherborn's material provides one of the very few entry points into the daily business of colonial expansion and consolidation in the early years of German East Africa as seen through the eyes of a practical man trying to do a job in a complex and changing world.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047408468
9789004147423
The Transmission of Learning in Islamic Africa /
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In a series of essays this collected volume challenges much of the conventional wisdom regarding the intellectual history of Muslim Africa. Ranging from the libraries of Early Modern Mauritania and Timbuktu to mosque lectures in contemporary Mombasa the contributors to this collection overturn many commonly accepted assumptions about Africa's Muslim learned classes. Rather than isolated, backward and out of touch, the essays in this volume reveal Muslim intellectuals as not only well aware of the intellectual currents of the wider Islamic world but also caring deeply about the issues facing their communities.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047413349
9789004137790
Christianity and the African Imagination : Essays in Honour of Adrian Hastings /
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During the twentieth-century, Christendom shifted its centre of gravity to the Southern Hemisphere, Africa becoming the most significant area of church growth. This volume explores Christianity's advance across the continent, and its capturing of the African imagination. From the medieval Catholic Kingdom of Kongo to a transnational Pentecostal movement in post-colonial Zimbabwe, the chapters explore how African agents - priests and prophets, martyrs and missionaries, evangelists and catechists - have seized Christianity and made it theirs. Emphasizing popular religion, the book shows how the Christian ideas and texts, practices and symbols, which have been adapted by Africans, help them accept existential passions and empower them through faith to deal with material concerns for health and wealth, and to overcome evil.
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1 online resource :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004245112
9789004116689
An African Research Ethics Reader : From the Ground Up /
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Cultural research ethics is in a nascent phase within the field of research ethics as a whole and requires more attention and in-depth articulation. With specific case studies, this vital volume provides unique perspectives on topics such as social autonomy vis-a-vis interests of individuals. This volume assembles needed resources and case studies in cultural research ethics practices, providing insight into current developments and future research directions. It is a valuable contribution to cultural research ethics given the dearth of published literature available in this emerging field. It is designed with two broad audiences in mind: (1) African researchers and research organizations that want homegrown guidance about research ethics, and (2) research ethicists worldwide who can use it to learn about cultural research ethics especially with respect to Africa.
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1 online resource (304 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004697676
The African Informal Economy /
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The informal sector is a vital sustainer of the African economy, employing more than 60% of sub-Saharan Africans. The book examines diverse segments of the informal sector, putting into consideration their structure, dynamics, resilience and gender issues. Chapters are based on empirical research on women in the transport sector, vehicle maintenance artisanship, graduates in the informal sector, COVID 19, and the informal economy. Other chapters focus on the indigenous usury finance system, coconut oil production, herbal medicine, and the gig economy across countries including Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Togo, and Burkina Faso.
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1 online resource (351 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004692657
What Is Ailing Africa? - Practical Philosophy in Reinventing Africa /
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Not only does this book detail the colonial experiences in Africa through what the author refers to as a 'social construct,' it also vehemently criticises modern African governments for their current corruption and maintenance of the continent's situation. This book presents a two-pronged analysis of Africa's predicament by looking at the duality of ethics and identity. It tries to trace the problematic aspects of westernization and modernization within the contexts of neo-colonialism and continued exploitation of Africa by external forces, as well as the complicity of Africans themselves.
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1 online resource (256 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004697652