Text, theory and methodology: Ruminations from the horizon of a reader from the south

Abstract

This article marks the tenth year of Welile Mazamisa’s passing, as a proverbial burning down of a library. It contains a recollection of lessons gleaned from memory of his own ruminations as he lived and mused from his horizon as a reader from the south. In his own dialectic fashion, a reflection on the text, theory and methodology is discussed as a possible lesson and perhaps, also a quo vadis question to the contemporary biblical scholar and theologian in South Africa, concerning these categories of scholarship. It seems fair to say that among lessons to still be learned from Mazamisa, is this lesson: a critical reader is to be mindful of the centrality of the text, the urgency of theory and the necessity of methodology in the process of reading and appropriating the reading of the text. In conclusion, an application is made to the decolonisation project and the credibility of theology as an academic discipline in South Africa (SA).
Contribution: This article contributes to the discourse of hermeneutics and decolonisation and also to the discourse of hermeneutics and the question of the credibility of theology as an academic discipline in South Africa.