Time, communion, and ancestry in African biblical interpretation: a contextual note on 1 Maccabees 2:49-70.

Abstract

Because behaviors and values described in the Bible most often have no analogues among contemporary Euro-Americans, social scientific biblical interpretation uses appropriate, explicit models of behavior verifiable among contemporary peoples through which to process behavior described in biblical documents. While the process sounds anachronistic, models are judged as structurally appropriate when they accord with all relevant biblical data and thus generate new understanding. Among biblical data in search of a verifiable, explicit model is that of ancestrism and ancestor veneration. In this essay, data from First Maccabees describing Israelite time and ancestrism are viewed in comparative perspective, at a high level of abstraction, with ancestrism perspectives provided by sub-Saharan African biblical scholars and theologians. During the last thirty years the amount of work produced by African scholars has increased to the point that it can be considered a large corpus of original research. In their selection of biblical texts to work on, African scholars have stressed those passages that relate to their own cultural experience. These quite often embrace the social structures and cultural values described in the Old Testament. This essay will explore the categories of time and ancestry by comparing ancient Israelite and African perspectives, while noting the wide ranging contributions of African scholarship.

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Just as the Old Testament has proved to be an African book, to do Old Testament scholarship has likewise proved to be an African enterprise (Holter 2000b: 66)

In a previous study in this journal, and in the context of the First Book of Maccabees, I have suggested that

   Collective memories are vehicles of organic solidarity, as they are the
   product of individual voices that point to charismatic figures, i.e.
   individuals who create themselves and are created in return so as to
   symbolise collectivities and social histories [Aguilar 2000].

The story of the Maccabean uprising points up a founding figure, Mattathias, who can be described as a symbolic community figure or a legendary ancestor. According to the narrative, Mattathias together with his five sons (John known as Gaddi, Simon called Thassi, Judas called Maccabaeus, Eleazar called Avaran, and Jonathan called Apphus) engaged in the traditional Middle Eastern ritual to protest the presence of social evil: he tore his garments, put on sackcloth, and observed deep mourning. The social evil in question included the abominations performed by the Hellenists, the pillage of the Temple and the installation of Gentile cults (1Macc 2:14). Later on within the text he is portrayed as leading a violent uprising against the imposition of certain Hellenistic practices in Judea.

In my previous work I suggested that the collective memory of a hero like Mattathias is created both by a linguistically composed (as opposed to an extemporary) document (i.e. a textually fixed yet oral narrative of the Maccabees) and by the actual intervention and action of such a person within the larger history of Syrian occupation and colonial power. The narrative itself was important enough for a Palestinian Israelite (probably its author) to write it down. And it was important enough to capture the attention of the historian Flavius Josephus, who under the auspices of Roman patronage narrated his own history of identity, ancestry and changing political allegiances.

In the second chapter of the First Book of Maccabees, the author tells how Mattathias died after leading public disturbances and violent resistance against the Hellenists on the Sabbath. Before dying Mattathias reminded his sons about their ancestors and the great deeds performed in each generation. Such an oral testament, not unknown within the Old Testament (cf., e.g., the Eulogy of the Ancestors in Sirach 44-50), provided continuity in the conflict with non-Israelites and urged Mattathias' sons to renewed commitment to the Law and to the Covenant. After speaking to them, Mattathias "blessed them and was joined to his ancestors" (1Macc 2:69).

This essay continues a social enquiry into the First Book of Maccabees. It departs from the "ethnographic present" provided by the author of the book, however, while asking questions of methodology related to the reading of this ancient text. What happens when one reads First Maccabees within other parameters of time and space? What happens when one replaces the cultural lenses shared by the author of First Maccabees, with a world view derived from contemporary sub-Saharan, African enculturation and experience?

The value of such an exercise derives from the fact that it is often quite difficult to recover the cultural lenses of ancient Mediterranean authors in specific areas such as ancestor veneration. Social scientific biblical interpretation is premised on the attempt to find out what an original audience understood by what an original author said and meant to say by discovering some actual modern human population that shares a social system and cultural values similar to those described in the ancient documents. While these contemporary social systems and cultural values are not identical to those of ancient Mediterranean populations, yet they are closer to anything available in modern Euro-American societies, and hence can serve as a springboard into the world view of ancient populations for the purpose of constructing testable comparative models of understanding. The sub-Saharan African experience is quite apropos to the task of understanding ancestrism and ancestor veneration in some comparative way that might be useful in understanding this feature of ancient Israelite society as it is presented in the biblical documents.

In what follows, I first consider some relevant developments in African biblical scholarship, including the African preference for the Old Testament over the New. Second, I describe some of the historical events and sources related to the first two chapters of the First Book of Maccabees within the historical period narrated by its author. Third, I explore contemporary African issues of ancestry and community that can be of use to contemporary biblical scholarship by providing a model of ancestry deriving from contemporary sub-Saharan African scholars and readily applicable in a historical reading of the books of Maccabees.

This essay concludes by suggesting that the sub-Saharan African contextual reading of the Bible can provide some cultural insights into ancestrism with the kinship relations and cultural parameters of sociability that come very close to those of the time and space of the Israelite narrative. A contemporary reading of the Maccabean narrative within an African context can provide further useful elements for a socio-scientific interpretation of the Maccabean uprising by assuming that Mattathias' words became the trigger event for such a social phenomenon. The idea of ancestry and its honor acted as a central call to retaliation and freedom, surely more powerful than some anachronistic "nationalistic" call to take arms against oppressors.

African Biblical Scholarship

When a wide range of biblically based African theological perspectives began to appear in the 1960s, it was clear that scholars recognized the difficulties involved in using the Old Testament as a source of revelation and as a canonical text. On the one hand, during the colonial period in Africa, the biblical text was used as a colonial tool by Europeans. They frequently associated conversion to Christianity with the colonial ordering of territories, lives and minds (Mudimbe 1988: 44-83; 1994: 114-29). In the words of Gerald West the Bible "was part of `a package deal'" (West 2000). On the other hand, the translation of the Bible into hundreds of African languages helped diffuse the biblical tradition into a multi-cultural African context. That varied context included an awareness of many other oral religious traditions and other written sources such as the Q'uran (Adelowo 1986; 1987). In some of the contexts, the use of the Bible and community reflection on its books created a challenge to the colonial powers and European missionaries (see, e.g., Comaroff & Comaroff 1991; 1997; and Maluleke).

It was within the binary opposition of oral and written traditions that the use and interpretation of the Bible became creative in an African context. By the 1960s, when the first written commentaries on the Bible started appearing, the literacy rates within Africa were quite low; but the biblical text had already been transmitted orally by generations of Christians. As de Souza pointed out in the 1972 Jerusalem Congress on Black Africa and the Bible, the biblical text itself had developed through an oral tradition. After all, the phrase commonly used in the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, is "thus says the Lord," not "thus writes the Lord" (de Souza 1972 in Mbiti 1994: 29). By the 1960s, however, it was difficult to perceive biblical scholarship, particularly on the Old Testament, as African. Nevertheless, the increase of Africans pursuing postgraduate studies in Europe and the United States stimulated interest in a theologia africana. As a result African interest grew, both in the Bible itself and in its relation to African life as well as Christian life and ministry. Relevant developments in African biblical scholarship, including the African preference for the Old Testament over the New, fall within three main areas of African theological expression: written theology, oral theology, and theology expressed in symbols. In this essay, I confine my presentation to written African theology--and in particular, African biblical interpretation.

As early as 1968, Kwesi Dickson started publishing several volumes under the heading THE HISTORY AND RELIGION OF ISRAEL (Dickson 1968). That systematic work was followed by the collection entitled BIBLICAL REVELATION AND AFRICAN BELIEFS (Dickson & Ellingworth 1969) and such seminal essays as The Old Testament and African Theology (Dickson 1973), Hebrewisms of West Africa (Dickson 1974), and Continuity and Discontinuity between the Old Testament and African Life and Thought (Dickson 1979a; 1979b). Dickson's emphasis was on challenging expatriates' historical comparisons and on developing comparisons based on varying world-views and cosmologies relative to the Old Testament in Africa and in Israel (Dickson 1972).

The influence of Kwesi Dickson in African biblical scholarship can be compared with that of John Mbiti. Whereas Dickson focused on comparing culture and society, Mbiti pioneered work related to the influence of the Bible on African Christianity: its theology, its development, and its life within an African Christian social milieu. In 1971 John Mbiti published NEW TESTAMENT ESCHATOLOGY (Mbiti 1971a) work that followed two seminal essays, New Testament Eschatology and the Akamba of Kenya (Mbiti 1971b) and Eschatologie und Jenseitsglaube (Mbiti 1968). Other works by Mbiti followed, including BIBLE AND THEOLOGY IN AFRICAN CHRISTIANITY (1986).

Mbiti and Dickson have dominated the field of African biblical scholarship. They have advocated the centrality of the biblical text and African oral traditions and their rich implications for African theology, and they have systematized earlier attempts at biblical commentaries and devotional literature. Among interesting biblical works it is worth mentioning FIDIA YA WENGI: MARKO NA INJILI YAKE (a Swahili commentary on the Gospel of Mark--Mshana 1966), STUDIES IN SECOND CORINTHIANS 1-6 (Imasogie 1976-1977), THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS (Akande 1977-1978), JOB: A MEDITATION ON THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING (Idowu 1976-1977), GOD'S LOVE AND FORGIVENESS (Fomum 1977-1978) and Mbiti's THE VOICE OF NINE BIBLE TREES (Mbiti 1973).

Other biblical works by African scholars (e.g., Mafico 2000) have explored cultural notions of the land and creation in the Old Testament, as well as the world of the ancestors within Africa and ancient Israel and the person of Christ within cultural models of ancestry and community living. I will return to those concepts shortly. At this stage I should like to suggest that African scholars have favored the Old Testament whenever they have explored biblical themes from creation to covenant, the giving of the Law and the prophetic call to return to tradition and the fear of the Lord (Holter 2000a).

According to Kwesi Dickson (1979a: 97-99) this preference, particularly on the part of the African independent churches, can be attributed to the following reasons:

First, the legalistic attitude of missionaries provided communities with stories more closely related to law-givers and the Old Testament than to the commandments of love, equality and metanoia present in the New Testament. In that missionary context the emphasis on regulations was reinforced by the Deuteronomic view of ritualized actions as vehicles to purity. Since regulations and sanctions constituted a social norm in African societies, missionaries found further justification for canonical regulations within the Old Testament (Oosthuizen 1968: 169).

Second, the African poor and dispossessed have found appealing passages and themes within the Old Testament, particularly in the Exodus narrative and the prophets. Thus, e.g., the Zionist churches in South Africa have made Moses a central figure in their biblical interpretation of the world by appropriating Moses' roles as liberator, political leader and lawgiver (Sundkler 1964: 107, 277,334-36).

And third, in traditional Africa, religion is embedded in kinship and politics. There is domestic religion, and there is political religion, but there is not free-standing religion. Thus Africans do not distinguish religious actions and social actions; rather, they completely incorporate religion within social life; and so religious norms, actions and perceptions permeate such issues as property rights and, rather incredibly, tailoring and agriculture!

It is quite easy, at a high level of abstraction, to discern similarities between the social systems of various Old Testament societies and sub-Saharan African societies. This can be done, e.g., in the areas of time, human destiny, sacrifice, relations between divine beings and land, and death and life.

The reasons suggested by Dickson point to continuities between Israelite life within the Old Testament and African societies. Not that all activities or modes of thought are totally related--no. But the assumption must be challenged that the Hellenistic in the New Testament fosters a different kind of thought-action patterns (even an individualism) that seems far removed from the communality of African societies. In fact this "hellenism" is most often Euro-American in origin and expression--not actually found in the New Testament. Nonetheless, Dickson is rightly convinced that the central feature of the Old Testament is a continuous interaction between God and ancient Israel not God and contemporary Africa. As suggested by other African authors, however, the Ancient Near East and the practices of sacrifice seem closer to African custom and thought than to discourses on Christ as the Logos, a Second Coming, or the "apocalyptic writings."

A very important consideration for Dickson and other African biblical scholars is that

   predilection for the Old Testament ... must not be equated with a correct
   understanding of its meaning. In studying the Old Testament it is essential
   to realize from the beginning that we are dealing with a particular story
   relating to a particular people at a particular time [Dickson 1979a: 98].

Other scholars have attempted readings of the Exodus narrative very much like those attempted in Latin America, where the post-colonial era of a continent is understood in the light of God's deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt (see, e.g., Ela 1986: 28-38).

Three conferences were crucial in these developments of scholarship. In 1972 the Jerusalem Congress on Black Africa and the Bible took place. African scholars met with their Israeli counterparts, and together they explored various topics related to Africa and the Hebrew Bible (see the papers in Mveng & Werblowsky 1972, particularly those of Idowu and Mveng). This conference was followed in 1977 by another conference on Christian-Jewish Relations in Ecumenical Perspective with Special Emphasis on Africa also in Jerusalem (Abotchie; Hammerstein; Mafico 1978; Mbiti 1978). A third conference took place in Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) in 1978 on the topic of Christianisme et Identite Africaine, sponsored by the Pan-African Association of Catholic Exegetes (Nyeme Tese 1980; Renju 1980).

In summary, it is clear that over the last thirty years biblical scholarship in Africa and comparisons between Africans, their social realities, and the Old Testament have produced a significant number of publications. Although it is not clear how many of these attempts have been absorbed and read by European scholars, the sixty-one page list of scholarly works recently compiled by Grant Lemarquand (2000b) suggests a scholarly phenomenon that cannot be ignored. The evaluation of these works will depend on the criteria of biblical interpretation and the models of exegesis and analysis considered scholarly and rigorous by readers. As a rule, these works fit into what Africans call "contextualization." That is, their contribution will have to be judged within the area of "contextual" biblical criticism and the sociology of religion, in which textual analysis focuses on immediate relevance, on ways of understanding a text in contemporary contexts rather than solely as a historical literary work within a particular language and history.

Apart from studies of the relation between African theology and biblical explorations or between biblical themes and African themes within contemporary cultural contexts, however, "traditional exegetical approaches" have also produced a rich series of works by African scholars, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s. Leonidas Kalugila, e.g., produced the seminal work, THE WISE KING: STUDIES IN ROYAL WISDOM AS DIVINE REVELATION IN THE OLD TESTAMENT AND ITS ENVIRONMENT (Kalugila 1980). Many exegetical works followed, including Ofusu Adutwum's 1984 work on the Hebrew root bth; Victor Zinkuratire's 1987 dissertation on the kingship of Yahweh, Benjamin A. Ntreh's 1989 monograph on political authority in ancient Israel, and Tewoldemedhin Habtu's 1993 study on Old Testament wisdom theology. All these scholars studied in Europe or North America, while the same scholarly exegetical work is present in those who studied the Old Testament in Africa and in their choice of themes for their theses. Consider, for example, Gabriel O. Abe (1983) on the covenant, D. J. I. Ebo (1985) on hope in Amos, Gedeon Gakindi (1992) on the Aaronic blessing, and Malachy I. Okwueze (1995) on mythology.

The emergence of African biblical journals also encouraged the systematic exchange among scholars working either in pastoral situations or within academic institutions, seminaries, and colleges without the library resources available in North America and Europe. In 1986 the first issue of the AFRICAN JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL STUDIES was published. Its mission statement included the promotion of biblical research and the study of biblical and related languages. But it also encouraged scholars to relate the biblical text to contemporary situations in Africa. Thus, against the possibility of scholarly criticism of an African "relevance" methodology, the journal followed the models proposed by Daniel N. Wambutda (Nigeria) and his "exegetical basis of African theology" (Wambutda 1980) and the suggestions of Samuel O. Abogunrin, who argued that "we cannot properly contextualize unless we first establish the nature of a text" (Abogunrin 1986). Other biblical journals published in Africa worth mentioning are the NEWSLETTER ON AFRICAN OLD TESTAMENT SCHOLARSHIP (1995) and theological journals such as the AFRICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW (1959), the AFRICA THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL (1971), the AFRICAN CHRISTIAN STUDIES (1985), the BULLETIN OF AFRICAN THEOLOGY (1979), the GHANA BULLETIN OF THEOLOGY (1970), and the OGBOMOSO JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY (1986)

Prominent African biblical scholars published in various journals: e.g., George L. Lasebikan (1985, 1988), D. J. I. Ebo (1989) and Edmond G. Djitangar (1993) on prophetism; David Alao (1984), J. M. Enomate (1986), and Monday U. Ekpo (1985) on scholarship; and Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya (1985), Hilary B. P. Mijoga (1990), and J. O. Akao (1990), who have focused on the Septuagint and historical studies.

After this short survey, I would suggest that the situation of many traditional African societies in the post-colonial era provides some interesting parallels with the historical context of the First Book of Maccabees. Those societies have come out of their cultural isolation (if such isolation ever existed) and have been forced to re-address issues of religious practices and social relations as other cultural practices and beliefs were imposed in the processes of colonialism. Thus British colonialism served basically the same purposes and carried basically the same cultural impositions as the Syrian or the Roman expansion. Issues of social identity, ethnicity, political allegiance, and cultural values seem to be structurally interchangeable, allowing for close comparison, in the area of social relations, between the features of the ancient Israelite societies and ethnic groups, on the one hand, and, on the other, the post-colonial situation of African societies and ethnic groups.

In fact, the First Book of Maccabees is a literary production that comes out of the Israelite experience of foreign expansion and imperialism.

The First Book of Maccabees

This work describes the Judean uprisings against the Seleucid dynasty and its imperial pretensions in the second century BCE. It tells of some of the same events described in the Second Book of Maccabees. Within an imperial occupation by the Seleucids, Antioch IV Epiphanes outlawed Israelite practices in Judea and ordered the installation of Hellenistic shrines and statues within the Temple and in all Judean villages. The family of the Maccabees led and sustained an uprising against the Hellenists until the Judeans pushed back the Seleucids and achieved independence, and the Jerusalem Temple was retaken and rededicated (see Doran).

The first book of Maccabees deals with a period of forty years, extending from the accession of Antiochus Epiphanes (175 BCE) to the death of Simon the Hasmonean (135 BCE). The work of a single author, most probably an eyewitness to the Hasmonean revolt (cf. G.Y.M.: 657), the document has been assessed as a rather accurate historical narrative (Bartlett: 16).

After the death of Alexander the Great (323 BCE), his generals divided the empire, and Judea fell within the administrative claims of two groups, i.e. the dominant powers of the Euphrates and Nile valleys. From 312 BCE Seleucus I ruled Syria and Babylonia, while Ptolemy I ruled Judea until 198 BCE, when Antiochus III, having defeated the forces of Ptolemy V near the Jordan, took control of Judea (see Grabbe and Schurer). Thus, while Judea was a Syrian occupied territory, in the year 167 BCE, the Maccabees (Hasmoneans) emerged from a country district to challenge the Syrian policies implemented through Judean supporters. (For a chronology of 1 and 2 Maccabees see Doran: 14-15).

The Maccabean myth of origin relates to ideas of an Israelite just war against despots; its author writes in Hebrew imitating the style of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and 2 Samuel. Thus, the author "consciously set out to show how the Maccabean revolt closely followed ancestral traditions" (Doran: 20).

The past--a traditional past becomes a social tool of cultural unification against the policies of Antiochus Epiphanes for Judea. Those policies included processes of accommodation and cultural assimilation that relied on local elites and interest groups to create the conditions for a peaceful occupation and government. Thus the building of the gymnasium, together with the stripping of the temple and the later occupation of Jerusalem, created the conditions for a colonial occupation. That occupation was based on policies of cultural change, as "the king issued a proclamation to his whole kingdom that all were to become a single people, each renouncing his particular customs" (1Macc 1:41-42). But unification assumed the creation of a colony: "Anyone not obeying the king's command was to be put to death" (1Macc 1:50). Israelite prohibitions were abolished, and foreign gods were placed in the Temple--indeed, in every town in Judea. The "abomination of desolation" (1Macc 1:57; cf. Dan. 9:27, 11:31) was a statue of Baal Shamem or the Olympian Zeus, erected at the Israelite altar of holocausts.

The revolt started in the town of Modein, where Mattathias and his family refused to follow the king's decree. They made their point very clearly by killing a fellow Judaean, who happened to be sacrificing to a foreign god at that particular moment, and the king's commissioner. Mattathias then left for the hills, accompanied by his sons. As followers of Mattathias were slaughtered, those who remained alive agreed to expand the activities permitted on the Sabbath in order to fight their persecutors on the Sabbath day if necessary. They were joined by "a community of Hasideans," described as "stout fighting men of Israel, each one a volunteer on the side of the Law" (1Macc 2:42). The organization of such an armed force meant in practice the overthrowing of altars and the forced circumcision of all uncircumcised boys found in the region. It was at this time that circumcision became the marker of Jewish identity--at least in Palestine (Cohen: 13).

After he exhorted his sons to win honor by remaining faithful to the Law, as all the heroes of the past had done, Mattathias' life ends. In his exhortation, Mattathias focuses the narrative on the past, and points his sons to the good deeds produced by their ancestors in the past. Those two categories, time and ancestry, become the link taken by African theologians and biblical scholars in their actualized and contemporary reading of the biblical text. This peculiarly African way of reading the biblical text had already been pointed out by African theologians and biblical scholars when they dealt with the place of the biblical text within Africa, writing that

   it is clear ... that the primary task of any African theologian is to
   decipher the message of God for Africa today. We call that task the African
   way of reading the Bible [African Report 1990 (1986): 49].

Within this African way and its emphases in biblical interpretation, the similarities between Israelite society and African communal life are somewhat comparable at a high level of abstraction. It is possible, e.g., to argue that the agrarian, political and kinship institutions found in some African societies, particularly among Bantu, resemble the cultural and social milieu of the Hasmonean revolt and its history. Thus two different societies in differing geographical locations can be compared in terms of similar temporal value orientations, focussing "on the past" and "on the present" (on value orientations, see Pilch & Malina: xxi-xxxi).

The African Cultural Conception of Time

The main temporal value orientation revealed in the cognitive process that unifies cultural and sacred perceptions in the Old Testament and in the sacred oral narratives of Africa is the focus on the present as supported by the past. John Mbiti, in his biblical trilogy (Mbiti 1969; 1970; 1974; see also Malina 1996), has suggested that commonalities and differences between the Bible and the African myths of origin can illuminate ways in which the biblical text has been applied and interpreted within an African context.

According to Mbiti, "African concepts of time emphasize the past and the present" (Mbiti 1994: 34). As a result myths of origin (the past) provide narratives to which contemporary Africans return when uncertain (in the present) about what is going to happen. Time moves by creating an ever-increasing past. The future is in fact a forthcoming rooted in the present, an expression of time discerned only through the present, in which are rooted the passing of seasons, the birth and death of human beings, and the passing of day and night. History is not a linear process moving to some inexorable future point. In fact to some "the end of the world" is inconceivable and uninteresting. Thus, many African languages simply do not express a future tense or a future history.

According to Kwame Bediako's reading of Mbiti's African trilogy (Bediako; cf. Mbiti 1969: 22-23) the African concept of time has three main characteristics:

First, it is two-dimensional, with a long past, a present, and virtually no future.

Second, Africans' reckoning of time is concrete and specific, related to events but never mathematically verifiable.

And third, African time relates to history, but it always moves towards the past--from the present (the now) into the past.

This conception of time relates to a "religious ontology," where "to live is to be caught in a religious drama" (Mbiti 1969: 15). In African time, this sort of ontology correlates with a five-fold division of reality: God, spirits, humans, non-human animate, and non-human inanimate creation. Human actions, birth, and death fall within the ongoing interaction among these five social categories. Whereas there is a physical distinction between humans and spirits, they move within the same space and time, and therefore they interact with each other. From this point of view, those who die maintain a certain interaction with the living within the same social drama of a continuous social world.

The Concept and World of the Ancestors

In the African conception of the world, ancestors are present within the ongoing social life of a family, a group, or a region. The founding ancestors continue to be remembered and revered through libations, sacrifices, and songs. In African Christian theology, Christ has been designated as the Proto-Ancestor, because "He is the First-born among the ancestors, not at the level of a purely biological generation, but at the level of a birth to a mystical and supernatural life" (Bujo: 73; see note 21 against Nyamiti 1984). The Eucharist, in turn, is described as a "protoancestral meal" (Bujo: 74). The ancestors, after all, remain at the center of a group's existence through their role of "founder and unifier of all life and all harmony in the clan community" (Bujo: 67). Those who are closer in time to the living dwell around them--sometimes under the earth, at other times in forests or in the skies--and they guard the living. As correctly pointed out by Charles Nyamiti, there is a variety of ancestral cults, and there are African societies who do not recognize allegiance to founding ancestors (Nyamiti 1986: 42). It is clear, however, that most Africans maintain an enormous respect for the deceased in their families, clans and ethnic groups.

It was to ancestors that God communicated the "vital force," so that ancestors "constitute the highest link, after God, in the chain of beings" (Kabasele 1992:117-18). In the context of African trinitarian theology, Charles Nyamiti has used ideas related to ancestral kinship in God to suggest that the Father is the Ancestor of the Son, and the Son is the Descendant of the Father, whereas the Holy Spirit is the ancestral Gift, Oblation (ritual Offering), Eucharist (Thanksgiving) between the divine Ancestor and Descendant (Nyamiti 1986: 45). In sum, in the words of the Congolese theologian Francois Kabasele Lumbala,

   The interdependence among the members of a Bantu clan reminds one of vases
   communicants: the pressure exerted on one point of the liquid is integrally
   transmitted to all other points. In the Bantu conception, life is
   comparable to such a liquid: the individual receives it from the first
   vessel, which represents his or her Ancestor, and with which the individual
   remains in ongoing communication. Everything that later enhances the degree
   of participation in life is of high interest to the Ancestors, and has
   repercussions on all other members of the clan [Kabasele 1992:116].

Community occasions, ritual festivals, and the world of dreams are means of constant communication between the living and the dead. Thus, the dead and the ancestors communicate with the living through their dreaming.

While community life expresses communion with ancestors--particularly with the founding ancestors within a particular lineage, sickness is an expression of broken relationships and lack of communion with the ancestors. Means of divination and spirit-possession reflect unhappy ancestors trying to make themselves heard. Thus, messages from ancestors have a bearing within a community and can alert men and women alike about any social breaks and lack of community ties. Life lived according to the order established by God and by the ancestors "guarantees the survival of the clan or tribal community, and thus provides for the well-being of each of the members" (Bujo: 69).

Blessings by those dying are crucial to the continuity of a lineage, as a dying person's successor is appointed by means of such action. Without children and without the proper symbolic appointment of succession a lineage would die.

It is within such cultural African parameters that the dying and burial process remains central to the life of communities and extended families. Thus, "rites that accompany death consolidate the links of kinship--and the accent is on the positive side of death" (Ela: 168). If the birth of children signals the continuation of a lineage, it is through parental blessings that life for a family, a clan and a lineage continues. For example, in the case of the Akamba of Kenya,

   The blessing of the dying father is potent and sought after by the
   children. Blessings are given for obedience to one's parents. A blessed
   person will prosper in all he does. His children, cattle and garden will
   grow healthy and multiply. This blessing on the family will continue
   forever, unless someone is disobedient in the family and is consequently
   cursed [Gehman: 297].

After death and through the proper burial procedures society returns to some normality. Death provokes changes in social roles, economic ownership and social structure. Death is a community crisis, and it involves the living and the dead alike.

Therefore, within an African world view brought to a reading of First Maccabees, the blessings and death of Mattathias can be related to the centrality of community life and the continuation of a lineage, which in the case of the Maccabees included the continuation of a struggle against foreign occupation. As will become clearer by using African models of kinship and community, such processes of rebellion against a imperial power could not have happened without the narrative provided by Mattathias' death and the African understanding of life, death, and blessings by a dying father. Those views illustrate the centrality of Mattathias' blessings within an African contextual reading of the text.

1 Maccabees 2:49-70 in African Perspective

For contemporary Jewish communities in the U.S., the Maccabean narrative has become central for Jewish winter celebrations as a foil to the Christian celebration of Christmas (Hannukah bush, Hannukah presents). In the early Christian communities the memory of the Maccabean revolt inspired Christian martyrs, so that the feast of the Maccabean martyrs was celebrated at Antioch in Syria and at Carthage in North Africa. Origen of Caesarea spoke of Eleazar (2Macc 6:19) as a person who decided to die with honor rather than survive persecution with shame (Origen, TO THE MARTYRS 22). The text must have been read by the Israelite and Jesus-group communities that already had the experience of reading the Hebrew Scriptures and the Second Temple writings two millennia ago (Holter 2000b: 54).

Within the Israelite Scriptures it was common for a father-figure to gather his sons in order to deliver his last will and testament: for example, Jacob (Gen 49), Moses (Deut 33), Joshua (Josh 23), Samuel (1Sam 12) and David (1Kgs 2). The content of Mattathias' testament is reminiscent of Sirach 44-50, where a eulogy of Israel's ancestors probably articulated by a devout Israelite of the second century BCE includes individuals such as Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Phinehas, Joshua, Caleb, the Judges, Samuel, Nathan, David, Solomon, Rehoboam, Jeroboam, Elijah, Elisha, Hezekiah, Isaiah, Josiah, Zerubbabel, Nehemiah, and Simon the High Priest.

Within that tradition of oral recitation of names, the ancestors are praised for their past deeds; but their memory provokes a present emotional and cognitive revival by challenging present understandings and actions. Thus, in Ben Sirach the glory of God is recognized within nature and creation and within family lineage. Ben Sirach writes,

   Next let us praise illustrious men, [men of piety--hesed--see 1Macc 2:42,
   7:13] Our ancestors in their successive generations. The Lord has created
   an abundance of glory, And displayed his greatness from earliest times.
   Some wielded authority as kings And were renowned for their strength;
   Others were intelligent advisers And uttered prophetic sayings [Sirach
   44:1-3].

   And further,

   But here is a list of illustrious men Whose good works have not been
   forgotten. In their descendants they find A rich inheritance, their
   posterity. Their descendants stand by the commandments And, thanks to them,
   so do their children's children. Their offspring will last for ever, Their
   glory will not fade. Their bodies have been buried in peace, And their name
   lives on for all generations. The peoples will proclaim their wisdom, The
   assembly will celebrate their praises [Sirach 44:10-15].

Mattathias, in turn, reminds his sons of the covenant with God. In the Old Testament, descriptions of the covenant are usually structured with an opening that recalls the benefits of God to those chosen for a covenant relationship, then a reminder of the positive outcomes of faithfulness to such a covenant, followed by the conditions accepted by current partners in the presence of witnesses. See, e.g., the covenant scenes in Joshua 24, Deuteronomy 32:7-14, 18, and Joshua 23 2-6. In comparison with the listing given in Sirach 44-50, Mattathias omits Enoch, Noah, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Solomon, Elisha, Isaiah, Hezekiah and Josiah. No great women are mentioned. The selection made in First Maccabees seems to be more arbitrary than any other selection that could be taken out of the Hebrew Scriptures. A detailed examination of such ancestry is necessary in order to relate this passage to other parts of the Hebrew Bible and other inter-testamental writings. It is also necessary to relate such Israelite practice to the common African recitation of lineages and ancestry that bespeaks their own preference for biblical passages that otherwise seem to some Western readers highly repetitive and somehow meaningless.

Consider now 1 Maccabees 2:49-70, cited for the reader's convenience:

   (49) Now the days drew near for Mattathias to die, and he said to his sons:
   "Arrogance and reproach have now become strong; it is a time of ruin and
   furious anger.

   (50) Now, my children, show zeal for the law, and give your lives for the
   covenant of our fathers.

   (51) "Remember the deeds of the fathers, which they did in their
   generations; and receive great honor and an everlasting name.

   (52) Was not Abraham found faithful when tested, and it was reckoned to him
   as righteousness?

   (53) Joseph in the time of his distress kept the commandment, and became
   lord of Egypt.

   (54) Phinehas our father, because he was deeply zealous, received the
   covenant of everlasting priesthood.

   (55) Joshua, because he fulfilled the command, became a judge in Israel.

   (56) Caleb, because he testified in the assembly, received an inheritance
   in the land.

   (57) David, because he was merciful, inherited the throne of the kingdom
   for ever.

   (58) Elijah because of great zeal for the law was taken up into heaven.

   (59) Hannaniah, Azariah, and Mishael believed and were saved from the
   flame.

   (60) Daniel because of his innocence was delivered from the mouth of the
   lions.

   (61) "And so observe, from generation to generation, that none who put
   their trust in him will lack strength.

   (62) Do not fear the words of a sinner, for his splendor will turn into
   dung and worms.

   (63) Today he will be exalted, but tomorrow he will not be found, because
   he has returned to the dust, and his plans will perish.

   (64) My children, be courageous and grow strong in the law, for by it you
   will gain honor.

   (65) "Now behold, I know that Simeon your brother is wise in counsel;
   always listen to him; he shall be your father.

   (66) Judas Maccabeus has been a mighty warrior from his youth; he shall
   command the army for you and fight the battle against the peoples.

   (67) You shall rally about you all who observe the law, and avenge the
   wrong done to your people.

   (68) Pay back the Gentiles in full, and heed what the law commands."

   (69) Then he blessed them, and was gathered to his fathers.

   (70) He died in the one hundred and fortysixth year and was buried in the
   tomb of his fathers at Modein. And all Israel mourned for him with great
   lamentation.

In verse 52, the testing of Abraham as he is commanded to slay his son Isaac (Gen 22) is linked with the situation of the Maccabees, remotely suggesting that Abraham's faith is assumed as righteousness and his paradigm as an example of faithfulness (cf. Gen 15:6, Rom 4: 3). The same theme was used in the book of Jubilees where Abraham was found faithful through many tests (Jub 17: 17-18), including a famine in Chaldea and his rejection of idol worship. These two stories are combined in Pseudo-Philo, where Abraham in Chaldea is thrown into a fiery furnace after he rejects idols.

Verse 53 tells of Joseph's story as keeper of the Law and lord of Egypt as told in Genesis 37, 39-41. His rejection of Potiphar's wife and her seduction is also mentioned in the book of Jubilees 39:1-10. Thus, the author of Maccabees suggests that faithfulness leads to exaltation and rule.

In verse 54 the priest Phinehas, previously mentioned as a role model for Mattathias' actions (1Macc 2:26), appears in Numbers 25:6-13. In this verse Mattathias claims ancestry from Phinehas by noting that the contemporary High Priest, Simon II, is a descendant of Eleazar, son of Aaron and father of Phinehas, the ancestor of Zadok and the Oniads. As a result Mattathias claims the legitimacy of the Hasmonean priesthood (cf. Sirach 45: 23-26).

In verse 55 Joshua is another ancestor mentioned because he completed the task entrusted to him, i.e., he followed and completed the command. Joshua had been commissioned by Moses (Num. 27:18-23) and by God (Josh 1:2-9). His role is glorified in Sirach 46 1-7. Joshua's accomplishment was clear: he led the tribes of Israel in the conquest of the land, and after dividing the land he gathered them at Shechem and made a covenant to serve Yahweh rather than any other gods. Within First Maccabees, the author "draws heavily on the language and ideology of the book of judges" (Doran: 50).

Verse 56 mentions Caleb, who together with Joshua reported on the land they were sent to spy out (Num 14), and both of them were the only representatives of the wilderness generation tribe of Nun allowed to enter the promised land. Caleb (of the tribe of Nun) settled around Hebron (Josh 14: 6-15). Both of them are also mentioned in Sirach 46:7-10, as opposing the assembly in order to prevent its members from committing sin. Thus, Caleb and Joshua share the same reward, i.e. the land, because of their duties on behalf of the people and of God.

Verse 57 remarks how David was rewarded because he was "merciful" (eleos), understood in the sense of covenant faithfulness (hesed). For example, David sings a song of thanksgiving (2Sam 22:21-25), his trust in God allows him to defeat Goliath (1Sam 17:45-47), his dynasty will last for ever, as promised in 2 Samuel 7:13-16 (cf. Psalm 89; Sirach 47:2-11). In First Maccabees none of the Hasmoneans are given the royal title, but they are addressed as leaders (hegoumenos, 1Macc 14:35), while later John Hyrcanus will claim the title of king.

Verse 58: Elijah, prophet of the ninth century BCE, made his appearance when king Ahab started worshipping the Canaanite storm god Baal, who was supposed to bring rain and therefore fertility to the land. Elijah told the Israelites that Yahweh would bring drought to the land if they continued worshipping Baal. In a contest with the priests of Baal, Elijah assured the Israelites that Yahweh was the only one they should trust to restore the land's fertility (1Kgs 17:1-18:46). The priests of Baal did not bring rain through their offering, whereas after Elijah's sacrifice "the water flowed round the altar until even the trench itself was full of water" (1Kgs 18:35). Later on at Mount Horeb Yahweh appeared to Elijah in the sound of a breeze, sending him to anoint those who had not worshipped Baal within Israel (1 Kgs 19:11-18). Finally Elijah was taken up to the sky in a chariot of fire during a whirlwind (2Kgs 2).

Verse 59 takes note of Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael, who thanks to their fidelity were saved from the deadly flames of the fiery furnace (Dan 3), prepared by king Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon for those who did not serve a golden statue as he commanded. Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael were young men brought from Israel who because of their noble or royal descent were prepared for royal service in Babylon (Dan 1:3-7). Because of this miraculous preservation from fire Nebuchadnezzar decided to honor the God of the Jews.

Verse 60: Daniel's faithfulness and his inclusion in this list of holy ancestry follows the same kind of scenario as with Nebuchadnezzar. An edict suggests that for a period of thirty days the whole kingdom should worship king Darius. Daniel refuses to do so, and he is thrown into a lion's den. He is saved by an angel, however, while his opponents are thrown to the lions and Daniel recovers the king's favor and prospers.

Verses 61-64 mark the conclusion of the father's speech, drawing lessons from the lives of his ancestors and their faithfulness to God. One of the implications here is not to fear the sinner, perhaps referring to Antiochus Epiphanes (1Macc 1:10; 2:48; 2Macc 9:9). It is clear that the father summons a successor and appoints him as in the case of Moses who appointed Joshua, to lead the people into the promised land (Deut 31:7, 23; Josh 1:5-9, 18).

Verse 65 notes that Simeon is appointed as Mattathias' successor. Simeon is Mattathias' second son (1Macc 2:2), called Simon in Greek. Although Simeon was third in the chain of command of the Mattathias' tribe (1Macc 13), he became the leader of the Maccabean uprising and senior to his brothers ("sound in judgment" as the leader in Isaiah 9:6).

Verse 66 mentions Judas, who eventually becomes the commander in chief of the rebellious army in a "fight for Israel" (see syntax of 1Macc 3:2).

Verses 67-68 set forth the last words of Mattathias, who aims to unite those who observed the Law in order to fight the non-Israelite enemies. The sentence is similar to the final sentences of Moses (Deut 32:43-47) and the divine warrior of Isaiah 59:18. With this conclusion, the first two chapters of First Maccabees draw to a close. The progression in these chapters is, then, as follows: the first chapter describes non-Israelites attempting to abolish the political religious practices of Israel, and the second delineates practical and forceful responses to this challenge.

Verses 69-70 describe Mattathias' death in terms reminiscent of that of Jacob (Gen 49:28-29, 33; 50:10). Mattathias is "joined to his ancestors" like Moses (Deut 32: 50), the generation of Joshua (Judg 2:11), and Judith's husband (Jdt 16:22). The phrase also occurs in the prediction of King Josiah's death (2 Kgs 22:20) and in the story of Bel and the dragon (Bel and the Dragon 1).

Mattathias is buried in his ancestral tomb, and all Israel mourns him, in the same way it mourned the defiled sanctuary (1Macc 4:39), the death of Judas (1Macc 9:20) and the death of Jonathan (1Macc 13:26).

Ancestors and Ancestral Tombs

In turning to an African reading and exegesis of this particular passage in the First Book of Maccabees, we must be aware of three levels of continuity between the Old Testament and African life and thought. Thus, Eric Anum has proposed the following threefold schema.

First, a religio-cultural continuity, by which there is an express suggestion that elements within an African religio-cultural ethos recall ancient Israelite beliefs and practices.

Second, a theological continuity between the Old Testament and African life and thought. According to Anum (457), "God is regarded as a God of the whole earth and therefore at work in Israel as well as the other nations."

Third, a hermeneutical continuity, whereby as Africans appropriate the Old Testament to themselves, they approach the text with presuppositions, questions and problems that are of concern to them.

Therefore, the text and the people who read it within an African context "are bound together as they dialogue with each other" (Anum: 458).

Gaster in his 1970 work MYTH, LEGEND AND CUSTOM IN THE OLD TESTAMENT, raised a note of caution on any comparison between the biblical material and any other cultures. For him, it is incorrect to show parallels between Israel, on the one hand, and, on the other, peoples who lived outside the geographical areas occupied by Israel and certainly those cultures that lived after the events narrated within the Old Testament. According to Gaster some distortions inevitably take place, making it rather risky to assume one can achieve a historically valid interpretation of a text in this way.

Dickson responded to such criticisms by suggesting that "biblical commentaries by African theologians could have a distinctive character; for, in addition to the relevant critical tools, they could utilise the continuity-discontinuity relationship to achieve interpretative realism" (Dickson in Anum: 463). It is clear that Dickson thought that such a risk was worth taking to attempt to understand patterns of thought rather than any sort of direct cultural borrowings. After all, it is this sort of comparative method, at a high level of abstraction, that is used in linguistics and biblical studies to shed light on the use of words by different peoples, their languages and cultures.

If the concept of God has been central to the comparison between the Bible and African traditions, other concepts and ideas, such as that of sacrifice, have also been explored. The ancestors provide a central motif for comparison and a particular enrichment of our understanding of the First Book of Maccabees. For it is precisely through the remembrance of ancestral systems of descent that Israel proclaims a special relationship with God. From the moment that Abraham is called, his descendants multiply--and the Maccabees are able to trace their descent through a line of faithfulness by God to their fathers through many generations.

African societies share the same central understanding of a process of sociality and memory presumably present in ancient Israel. It is through a process of conscious memorizing that the past becomes part of the present. B. S. Childs in his work on memory in Israel suggested that within the Priestly source the fact that God remembers is a favorite theme. The verb to remember, used with God as the subject of the sentence, occurs 73 times in the qal form (Childs: 31). Four texts, however, show some complications. Kittel shows that 1 Chronicles 16:15 and Psalm 89: 48 must have God as a subject while Isaiah 63:11 and Lamentations 3:19 must also have Israel as their subject (Kittel 1937, 1977 [1967]).

The word zkr, developed particularly within the Deuteronomistic tradition, expressed a general theological meaning over and above the psychological act of remembering, in that it expressed a sense of faithfulness to the Law and thus to the covenant with God, as suggested in Deuteronomy 8:2 (Aguilar 1986). Not only does obedience emerge from a process of memory, but Israelites of later periods also identify themselves with the people of the Exodus. Thus, Childs suggests that "historical memory establishes the continuity of the new generation with the decisive events of the past" (Childs: 51). It is a process of memory that brings faithfulness as the Israelites find their own identity and the justification for their present actions in their own past through the lives and deeds of their ancestors. God on his part can remember and can forget. If God forgets someone, that person does not have any existence (Ps. 88:6).

As previously suggested, African scholars using the comparative method and focussing particularly on patterns of thought related to action can relate to such a pattern of divine behavior. In a continent partially dominated by Islam and traditional religions, Christian biblical scholars and theologians have found that ancestral behavior reproduces those patterns of understanding proposed by ancient Israel.

In this cultural interpretation, the memory of and respect for ancestors did not, in the case of Mattathias, merely produce a psychological good feeling. Instead, the thought of the Israelites' past deeds and their memory instigated a new campaign against the imperial presence and non-Israelites through which Judas Maccabaeus "extended the fame of his people" (1Macc 3:3).

Conclusions

While the variety of African societies and languages is enormous, patterns of ancestral links and ancestral action on behalf of the living constitute a cultural and religious common denominator. Christ, for example, has been described as "the grand ancestor" (Mbiti 1972) and God as "the Great Elder" (Kabasele 1998: 42). The ancestors occupy a central role in society, because without them their descendants would not exist. If God gives life, he does so through humanity. Within such humanity,

   The ancestors are the first who received the force of life from God. They
   represent the highest level of being beneath God in the pyramid of beings.
   But they remain human. Having passed through death, they are more powerful
   than living persons, enjoying the capacity to exercise the force of life.
   They can increase or diminish the force of life on earth. In their life's
   journey they see God and God's subjects [Kabasele 1998: 42].

Thus, the importance of Mattathias' genealogy of faithful men in Israel resonates with African exegetes through their own central understanding of ancestors. In a continent where a person cannot be conceived if ancestors do not exist, and where a person cannot become part of the lineage of ancestors if children are not conceived and born within the extended family, ancestry and community are of the essence for God's blessing and life itself. Such life arises out of and is maintained by ancestral links and the kinship of a particular lineage. It reveals itself within different manifestations of communities, including those where the Bible is read, commented on and studied. In summary, without ancestors there is no life; ancestors are present, albeit in an invisible capacity, within the visible world of humanity.

An African community thus requires, along with human interpersonal relations, the presence and the blessing of the ancestors (cf. Wilson). In certain cases human beings are able to participate in the society of the ancestors while living in a totally different location, e.g., the Merina of Madagascar (Bloch 1971). The Merina construct ancestral tombs in ancestral villages--i.e., in places where their ancestors lived. The dead live there, and the living will eventually join them; so more money is actually spent on a tomb than on a house. After all, such ancestral villages are needed for the ancestors; they will host every living human being for a long time after death (Bloch 1971: 113). As in the case of Israel, the Merina have inherited the land from their ancestors. But "the notion of `land of the ancestors' is to the Merina a totally self-evident material concept, quite unlike the more abstract formulations we might find in other parts of the world" (Bloch 1989: 172).

The same connections with ancestors can require the building of shrines where ancestors can be spoken to, as in the case of the Lodagaa in West Africa; these ancestors hold certain general rights to the property of their descendants (Goody: 100-01,371-78). Thus, ancestors "are seen as good people who set an example that men should follow and who maintained the ideal of the social order and of social behaviour merely by their having lived as they are said to have lived" (Middleton: 26). In fact, the ancestors outnumber the living, since there are more dead people than living (Winter: 111). As in the case of the Maccabean ancestors, names and successions within a lineage are recited to others in order to express belonging, identity and a communal self, so that oral tradition becomes a historical source (Lewis 1994: 95). Ancestors are remembered through an oral repetition that provokes further actions in order to imitate the ancestors and their moral attitudes both within and outside the society (Lewis 1961).

This essay has presented a preliminary examination of a particular passage within the First Book of Maccabees that fits the criteria for a contemporary African exegesis. In doing so, it has followed the comparative method suggested by African biblical scholars. Further, it has explored the text by using a socio-cultural understanding of the Maccabean period and the writings that portray the Maccabean story in the context of other biblical writings, with emphasis on themes such as ancestry, blessing and memory so common in African communities.

This essay thus supports a contemporary African trend in contextual biblical exegesis that embraces the study of biblical documents in their original socio-cultural context, and interaction of that study with the socio-cultural experience of contemporary communities. As suggested here, both studies should first be attempted separately, while allowing for the possibility that textual exegesis can be extended into an interpretive project of seeking further understanding by past and present comparison.

Such an attempt at an African biblical exegesis can be expanded to a full commentary on the whole of the Old and New Testament as well as the inter-testamental literature. Such a project requires a rigorous and intensive study of the original texts, however, with the proviso that

   African exegesis does not seek to understand the text merely for its own
   sake, or out of an intellectual curiosity. African exegesis is need-driven
   and faith oriented [so that] the interface between popular and academic
   readings is an important motif in African exegesis [Lemarquand 2000a: 93,
   951.

It is clear for those African biblical scholars who for the most part have been trained in Western institutions that this sort of interface enriches our understanding of the Bible. In this particular essay it has been used to clarify the cultural notion of ancestors and blessings in the Israelite community at the time of the Hasmonean revolt. It elucidates the social and ritual relations between the world of the living and that of the dead--two realities that are interconnected within contemporary Africa and mediated by indigenous rites, such as divination or spirit possession. But these considerations also reflect theological understandings presumably present in contemporary Christian rites such as the Eucharist, the prayers to the saints, and the ongoing relation between the community of the living and the community of the dead.

In sum, such "contextual" methodology can be used and critically applied in the study of all ancient documents, and that study will certainly benefit all those working in comparative biblical scholarship, a feature of all contemporary historical-critical interpretation.

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Mario I. Aguilar, S.T.B., M.A. (Leuven), M. A., Ph.D. (London), author of five books and several papers, is currently Chair of Ritual Studies at the American Academy of Religion. He lectures at the School of Divinity, St. Mary's College, University of St. Andrews, Scotland (e-mail: [e-mail]).