Over 50 people attended a workshop on 2 July 2024 at the Institute for Distance Learning (IDL) Amonoo-Neizer Conference Centre at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, Ghana, to discuss aspects surrounding histories, legacies and dissemination of mother-tongue Bibles.
In Ghana, German and British Bible Societies facilitated some of the first translations of the Bible into mother tongues in the nineteenth century. As Michael Wandusim has demonstrated on his work on Ludwig Adzaklo, Ghanaian scholars have been an integral part of historical translation work, yet often overlooked in the histories of Bible translations. The GloBil project is committed to making a contribution to the decolonisation of knowledge surrounding the histories and legacies of mother-tongue Bible translations and in this spirit we—Michael Wandusim and Felicity Jensz—co-organized a workshop with our colleague Prof. J. E. T. Kuwornu-Adjaottor of the Department of Religious Studies, KNUST, in Kumasi, Ghana.
The first session of the workshop was focused on the history of Bible translations and Bible societies, including an overview of the GloBil project (Jensz/Wandusim), the history of Bible translations in West Africa (Ekem) and the textual histories of the original Greek sources of the New Testament (Strutwolf). This session provided context into the deep historical tradition of Bible translations and transcriptions.
In sessions dedicated to the reception and dissemination of Bible translations, a wide range of topics were covered, including the question of how mother-tongue Bibles reflect African spirituality (Afriyie), as well as specific examples of Bible translations for the Bono-Twi (Boaheng) and Dangme (Kuwornu-Adjaottor) languages. Several papers focused on mother-tongue biblical hermeneutics, including the history and focus of different directions of mother-tongue biblical hermeneutics in Ghana (Aryeh), mother-tongue biblical hermeneutics as decolonized knowledge production for social transformation (Amevenku), and the centrality of mother-tongue Bibles to the religious landscape of Ghana (Torsu). The processes behind the distribution of Bibles in Ghana today were also presented in a paper (Worae), which highlighted some of the historical processes still used today as well as some of the newer forms of Bible dissemination, including through digital means.
The rich presentations over the day demonstrated the value of the collaborative workshop and provided insights into many aspects of mother-tongue Bibles that will be reflected in further outputs of the project, including future blogs and also publications. Of particular note was the display of mother-tongue Bibles of many Ghanian languages, some of which have historical legacies dating back to the nineteenth century. The workshop was made possible by our KNUST collaborator Prof. J. E. T. Kuwornu-Adjaottor, helped by his two assistants Peter Adams and Ernest Frimpong Junior. We were generously financed through the Internationalization Fund of the University of Münster.
A link to the program can be found here:
The video of the conference on YouTube can be found here: