Decolonising Biblical Hermeneutics: Reading the New Testament Through Hausa Oral Cultural Lenses in Northern Nigeria

This doctoral study proposes and demonstrates an original biblical hermeneutical methodology that reads selected New Testament texts through the lenses of Hausa oral cultural traditions, contributing to the decolonisation of biblical interpretation in northern Nigerian Christianity. Western biblical hermeneutics continues to dominate theological education in Nigerian seminaries, rendering the New Testament culturally distant to Hausa Christian communities and limiting its transformative capacity within those communities. Drawing on intercultural hermeneutics, postcolonial biblical studies, African oral hermeneutics, and Hausa literary and cultural studies, the research employs a community hermeneutics methodology, engaging thirty Hausa Bible scholars, church leaders, and cultural story-tellers in guided hermeneutical dialogues focused on selected Synoptic Gospel passages, Pauline community texts, and Revelation. The dialogues surface Hausa cultural concepts including taimakon juna (mutual aid), mutunci (personal honour and integrity), and Sarki (king and his court) as productive interpretive lenses that illuminate New Testament themes of discipleship, community ethics, and eschatology in ways that resonate with Hausa cultural imagination. An original three-stage Hausa oral hermeneutical protocol is proposed and applied to produce contextualised readings of five New Testament texts. The study makes original contributions to biblical hermeneutics, intercultural theology, and theological education in northern Nigeria. Keywords: biblical hermeneutics, decolonisation, Hausa culture, oral hermeneutics, intercultural theology