Concepts Of God In Africa

Book Overview

The first edition of the Concepts Of God In Africa came out in 1970. There followed several impressions in paperback, but eventually the book went out of print. The demand for it has increased, just as the study of African Religion has spread widely in the last quarter of the twentieth century, both in Africa and worldwide.

To the second edition I have added new information from more peoples, more names of God in African languages, and a select update of the bibliography. The information comes from about 550 African peoples and languages {not to use the discarded word tribes}, compared to about 300 in the firrst edition. Similarly I have increased the number of main and attributive (descriptive) names of God to over two thousand. I have also made stylistic changes, most prominently to addressing the 'Gender' issues.

Nevertheless, I have retained the grammatically masculine use of the word God, bearing in mind that God is beyond the anthropomorphic expressions we employ to speak about or describe him. African concepts depict God in both feminine and masculine terms, and I have not come across an indigenous language that has the kind of grammatical gender distinctions that are characteristic of some European languages.

The belief in God, is profoundly entrenched in African spiritual "blood", so to speak. Traditional African identity is soaked in awareness of the reality of God. This living monotheism is the gemstone show piece of African religiosity. From the Foreword to the Second Edition.

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