Academic literature on the topic 'Xhosa bible'

Adopted by the United Nations in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the most widely translated document. However, versions in 419 languages are not conceived as translations but equivalences, alternate embodiments of identical tenets. The Bible has been rendered into numerous languages, but the Hebrew and Greek originals possess authority that English, Bengali, and Xhosa derivatives do not. The Bible is translated, but the UDHR is, through the theology of international governance, transubstantiated into multiple tongues. No version has priority; each is equally valid, transparent, and interchangeable. The utopian premise is not only that all humans possess inalienable rights but also that all languages express the same principles. The document’s title, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, might seem a solecism, a misplaced modifier. Surely, it is human rights that are universal, not the declaration. However, the UN insists that all versions (at least in the original official languages) are equally binding. It rejects Whorfian notions that particular languages enable particular thoughts and embraces languages as neutral tools whose specific manifestation is irrelevant. Arguments against imprisoning writers in Burma could appeal equally to the authority of either the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or la Déclaration universelle des droits de l’homme or Всеобщую декларацию прав человека or la Declaración Universal de Derechos Humanos or 世界人权宣言. Rather than the Babelian myth of an Ur-Sprache before hubris scattered us into mutual unintelligibility, the UDHR endorses a Chomskyan belief that all languages can express the same thoughts. Yet differences among versions of Article 1 (“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”) are not trivial; dignity is incommensurable with Würde, αξιοπρέπεια, dignidade, waardigheid, or достоинства. The UDHR is a translingual text shaped by the languages of framers and translators.

On the issue of methodology, oral literature has been decisive in the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Africa. For instance, Madipoane Masenya (ngwan�a Mphahlele) convincingly employed the folktale of the �Rabbit and the Lion� in her interpretation of the Bible. That Narratology and Orality in African Biblical Hermeneutics is a rarely researched area within biblical scholarship provides room for further studies in this area. This article argues that the reading of the Deuteronomistic story of Naboth�s vineyard and Jehu�s revolution in the light of Intsomi yamaXhosa [the folktale of the Xhosa people] illustrates how biblical interpretation in Africa could be informed by Orality and Narratology. This article examines the light that the socio-economic function of the story of Naboth�s vineyard and Jehu�s revolution would throw on the function of the folktale of Intsimi yeenyamakazana, and vice versa. Furthermore, the present article probes the socio-economic implications that can be drawn from biblical and Xhosa Orality and Narratology for post-apartheid South Africa.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article draws on the indigenous knowledge system, namely Xhosa Narratology and Orality, to interpret Old Testament texts with a view to offering liberating socio-economic possibilities for poor black people in South Africa.

This study provides a description and critical analysis of the grammatical structure of isiXhosa as used in the Revised Union Version of the Bible, published in 1942 and republished in 1975. This translation records what was regarded as proper isiXhosa at the beginning of the 20th century, reflecting the consensus inter alia of prominent isiXhosa writers, such as W.B. Rubusana, J.H. Soga, C. Koti, Y. Mbali and D. D. T. Jabavu, who served on the committee that produced the revision. In this study isiXhosa is described in its own right, without approaching it with preconceived ideas derived from other languages. That is to say this is a phenomenological analysis describing the grammatical structures of isiXhosa as they present themselves to the analyst. It is comprehensive, with no structure being overlooked or being described in such a manner that it complicates an understanding of other structures. In the first chapter the context of the research and a brief outline of the historical growth in understanding the structure of isiXhosa are set out and the goals and the method followed in this study are described. In the following chapters the findings of this study are presented. The initial focus is on isiXhosa phonology and the orthography used to put it to writing. Then isiXhosa morphology and syntax is set out. Initially the substantives, i.e. the nouns and pronouns in their distinctive classes and forms, and how they are qualified, receive attention. Then the predicates are explored, i.e. the verbs and copulatives, as linked to the substantives with concords, and reflecting various moods, tenses, actualities and aspects. Finally attention is given to ideophones and interjections and words that can be grouped together as adverbs, conjunctions, avoidance words and numerals. In the concluding chapter consideration is given to the question of whether this study has in fact achieved the aim of setting out a description of the structure of isiXhosa based solely on the language itself, free of preconceived ideas, and attention is drawn to insights gained in respect of the true nature of the isiXhosa grammatical structures, such as, for example, the variable prefix qualificative nouns, traditionally referred to as adjectives. This study is therefore a revisionist study in the sense that it reinvents isiXhosa as a language in its own right, free from Western influenced perspectives.

This study searches for the origin and history of the concept of individual accountability and the reason for its absence in the African Traditional Religion framework. This search begins in the Axial Age (800-200 BCE), and discusses ancient Israel's Axial Age and its Axial Hebrew prophets' response models. The study tracks the introduction of Axial ideals to South Africa, via Christianity since 1826, and examines the Xhosa prophets' response models to their Axial context. The Social Christians attempts to impart Axial ideals during the period of segregation and the Tuskegeean response model are also examined. The similarities between ancient Israel and South Africa as revealed by Biblical archaeology, underlie this study's call for the utilisation of the power of religions such as Christianity, and of South Africa's religious elite, to rapidly alter current maladaptive beliefs within the African Traditional religious framework that impedes Africans' ability to adopt individual accountability.
Biblical and Ancient Studies
M. A. (Biblical Archaeolgy)

This study finds its place in a global resurgence of interest in the Reverend Tiyo 'Zisani' Soga's and nineteenth century black political activism. It attempts to deepen our inderstanding od Soga's global milieu and identity, providing an assessment of scholarship on Soga's life and commenting on the major critical works on Soga provided by Williams, de Kock and Attwell and addressing the question of his multiple identities. The thesis explores Soga's relationship with textuality to reveal the struggles he encountered during his career as an author, most especially as the translator of the Bible.
English Studies
D. Litt. et Phil.