INDIGENOUS EXEGESIS: EXPLORING THE INTERFACE BETWEEN MISSIONARY METHODS AND THE RHETORICAL RHYTHMS OF AFRICA - LOCATE local reading resources IN THE ACADEMY Gerald West University ofNatal ABSTRACT 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 ٠٢ 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 inte^retatlve interests in the academy. This article addresses and redresses this anomaly, arguing that it does make sense to speak ٠٢ “indigenous exegesis” and that indigenous exegesis does have a place in the academy alongside the more familiar forms ٠٢ exegesis. ١ . Introduction Conjoining “indigenous"’ and “exegesis”, as my title does, is somewhat unusual. Eaeh word has its own semantic field, with little or no overlap, except perhaps if we use the word “exegesis” metaphorieally. But أhave resisted placing the term “exegesis” in my title in inverted commas, avoiding - for now - the too easy making of a metaphor. Behind my reticence is the question, posed to me by a colleague, Maarman Sam Tshehla, as to whether the academic adjective “critical” belongs to the west. What, in other words, do we mean by “critical” and is what we mean essentially western? Or, in the words ofAlpheus Masoga (2002, 10?), “Who owns and controls the مﺀ* اﻫﺮ» ‘critical’”? 1 continue to ponder tírese questions, aimed as they are in both cases at my own work and my use of the terms “critical” and “pre-critical” to describe the interpretative practices of academically trained readers of the Bible and ordinary untrained “readers” of the Bible respectively. This article is an attempt to come up with some sort of reply to their important and probing questions.1 In some sense, the academic use of the term “critical” is a western thing, in that it has a long history of use within the western academy, both in very specific senses, for example, “historical-critical” biblical scholarship, and in a more general sense, for example, “critical thinking”. Clearly the term “critical” requires some explication, simply repeating it does not help. If we explicate current uses of the phrase “critical thinking” in the academy, across a range of disciplines, we arrive at, 1 would suggest, something like “structured and systematic questioning”. Of course, each discipline has its own particular set of structured and systematic questions - and biblical studies is no exception - but they would all subscribe to this common sense. In fact, in recent attempts by tertiary institutions in South Africa to express the outcomes of their courses in Outcomes Based Education terms, one of the few ١ This articie is a reworking and development of parts of an essay I have written in an earlier attempt to address these questions (see West, forthcoming). Neotestamentica 36(1-2) 2002, 147-162