God in Jewish and Fante Religious Thought

Abstract

This paper focuses on the Jewish concept of God from the Hebrew Bible and also God in the thoughts of the Fante from Oguaa (Cape Coast). The methodological approaches adopted for the study were phenomenology and the narrative method. Instruments used in the collection of data were observation and semi-structured interviews using the purposive sampling technique. The paper deals with the question of the existence of God, names, and the nature of God from both Jewish and Fante thoughts. Questions about the existence of God are taken for granted in the Hebrew Bible: it is a foundational knowledge embedded in their very consciousness and praxis. The same established understanding is found among the Fante from Oguaa, as expressed in the popular maxim: Obi nkyerε abɔfra Nyame, literally meaning, ‘no one shows the child God’. The study contends that the Jewish concept of God in the Hebrew Bible is not much different from God in the life and thought of the people of Oguaa. The paper also brings out some shared similarities and differences between the Jewish and Fante in their conceptions about God. The sharp dichotomy between these two sets of religious groups is that among the Jewish people, there is a consistent emphasis on the oneness of YHWH and exclusive devotion unto him as attested to in the Hebrew Bible whereas in the Fante thought, devotion to the Supreme God is diffused with that of other transcendental beings such as gods and ancestors.

Keywords

• deity
• fante
• jewish
• thought
• oguaa
• religious