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E-book Healer : Reception of Jesus as healer during Early Christianity and Today
Among the many challenges, African biblical scholarship faces the inability to theorise the subject under discussion. The healing stories are no exception. The starting point is asking what the African biblical reader hears on reading the healing stories. Since its arrival, African readers of the Bible have been engaging in mirror or contextual reading of the Bible. At the onset, being within a personalistic worldview where illness is interpreted from the perspective of the gods or ancestral spirits and the crucial role of religious practitioners, the African reader of the Bible resonates with the worldview behind the New Testament narratives. To an African biblical reader, the pain expressed while seeking healing, the role of Jesus as a healer and the celebrations after the healing are familiar images within an African context. Similar to most subsistent and peasant communities whereby sickness disrupts relationships, peace and functions within the household, receiving or getting healing is a point of great relief whereby the once sick person and the entire household celebrate. Healing is a point of shalom, of peace and of completeness. This study attempts to theorise Jesus’ healing practices as shalom moments that evoke individual and community celebrations. By taking this stance, I shift attention from Jesus to imagining the possible atmosphere surrounding the stories.
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