The Concept of Community in the Old Testament

Contemporary Ghanaian Christianity shows a strong attachment to the Old Testament. The main reason may be found in the perceived similarity between the world-view present in the Hebrew Bible and the traditional Ghanaian society. On this premise, re-discovering the community-orientation in the Old Testament can help the contemporary Christian churches to develop an African related missionary approach. For this reason, the study sought to explore the concept of community in the Old Testament and in the traditional African thought, to re-examine the value of the idea of community in Africa-Christianity. Different methodological approaches were used for the study. These were tradition-historical method, to explore the understanding of community in the Old Testament; the literary critical approach, to isolate and describe the modes of communication employed in the biblical text and the comparative study of religion, to analyse the different scholarly views on the idea of community in traditional Africa society.

Krebeti Christopher - Department of Religion and Human Values of the Faculty of Arts, University of Cape Coast. Master of Philosophy Degree in Religious Studies.