Book Description

In Faith and Freedom in Galatia: A Senegalese Diola Sociopostcolonial Hermeneutics, Niang argues that the apostle Paul is a sociopostcolonial hermeneut who acted on his self-understanding as Gods messenger to create/form, through faith in the cross of Christ, free communities--a self definition that echoes some features of ancient Graeco-Roman and modern colonial lore. This above thesis is bolstered with contributions from social sciences, postcolonial theories, biblical hermeneutics, and an exegetical analysis of Gal 2:11-15 and 3:26-29--a method Niang calls a Senegalese sociopo stcolonial hermeneutics. The dissertation compares the French colonial objectifications of Diola people, of Sénégal, West Africa, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the Graeco-Roman objectifications of the descendents of the ancient Celts (the Gauls/Galatians of Asia Minor) as savage beasts, primitive, irreligious, fickle, bibulous, and warmongering barbarians who threatened civilization; and therefore, must be tamed and civilized/colonized. Insight was drawn from Graeco-Roman writers, modern classicists, epigraphical evidence unearthed in Asia Minor, and ethnographical conclusions on the Diola socioreligious world to show that colonial typologies were overdrawn. Both Gauls/Galatians and Diola people had their own civilizations re gulated by complex divine judicial systems that required delicate rituals of confessions/reconciliation for wrongdoers. The exegetical and concluding sections emphasize Pauls role in bringing about an alternative mode of community construction. He does this through a countercolonial story of faith in Jesus Christ that dismantles enslaving and negative colonial typologies, decolonizes and powerfully reshapes the mind of the colonized into free children of God who share a new common identity in Christ--an inclusive and egalitarian people in the community of God (Gal 3:26-29). In response to French colonization, Aline Sitoé, a Diola prophetess, exercised an.