Indigenous Exegesis

What sense does it make to speak of "indigenous exegesis"? In some sense this article is an exegesis of this question and this phrase. While acknowledging the presence and importance of ordinary African "readers" of the Bible in the formation of African biblical scholarship, African biblical scholarship has said very little about the textual interpretative interests of ordinary African "readers" and the place of these interpretative interests in the academy. This article addresses and redresses this anomaly, arguing that it does make sense to speak of "indigenous exegesis" and that indigenous exegesis does have a place in the academy alongside the more familiar forms of exegesis.