A Life of Integrity: The Maccabean Story

Abstract

The experience of ontological and epistemological dominations made Africans lose their self-consciousness and become unfulfilled in life. Every human being has a life of integrity that must be lived. The Maccabees in the Bible were dominated by Antiochus IV, the King of Syria. He desecrated the Temple, changed their religion, politics, economy, and social life and above all made himself a god to be worshipped. He deprived the Jews of their identity and dominated them ontologically, but they had a life of integrity to live. Some of the Jews accepted the new way of life by Antiochus and helped to betray those few Jews who stood against this new system of Antiochus. Many of the pious Jews lost their lives, but with hope in Yahweh and persistent endurance they regained their identity and life of integrity. The plague of coloniality made Africans invariably lose their identity, and consequently their integrity as others determined their pace of life. The African story is like the Maccabean story; this article studies selected texts in Maccabees (1 Maccabees 2 and 3; 2 Maccabees 6 and 7) and suggests their regaining of identity and life of integrity to the African situation. The paper uses biblical exegesis and intercultural interpretations to unearth the buried African treasures for an integrity of life.

Keywords

• African identity and integrity
• African culture
• African hermeneutics
• Maccabean revolt
• coloniality
• ontological and epistemological dominance