Abstract:
Artificial Intelligence (AI) isset to revolutionise global knowledge domains and biblical
hermeneutics is no exception. At face value, in Zimbabwe, AI has been stigmatised as a
humanistic and profane technological system with an immense propensity to cause general
religious backsliding, degeneracy, vain philosophising and secularisation of the Gospel of
Christ. This article isolated Colossians 2:8 as a lens to investigate the congruency of Artificial
Intelligence to the pericope’s scope of ‘philosophy, vain deceit, tradition of men and
rudiments of the world’. The Zimbabwean setting was used to examine whether the
Colossian Christian Church’s philosophical aspersions bear any semblances to how AI is
viewed among the clergy, theologians, Christian believers and academics of religious
studies. The qualitative methodological paradigms of African Biblical Hermeneutics and
Exegetical Method were employed in the study. The study mainly established that AI, like a
tool in the hands of a workman, can either build or destroy, enhance or adulterate biblical
hermeneutics depending on how it is viewed and used.
CONTRIBUTION: The article reflects on how the world’s most nascent technological
development, Artificial Intelligence, impacts on biblical interpretation generally, but, more
particularly, in the Zimbabwean context.
