Abstract:
This article examines the phrase ἀλλὰ ῥῦσαι
ἡμãς ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ in Matthew’s rendition of
the Lord’s Prayer through the Ewe-Ghanaian
demonological lens. It employs a combination
of the historical-critical and indigenous mother
tongue biblical hermeneutics methods to
address the ambiguity associated with the phrase
ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ in the petition. It also engages
the world of the text with the Ewe-Ghanaian
demonological world view and defines the
place of πονηρός (evil/evil one) in Ewe-Ghanaian
Christian spirituality. The article discusses
the various hermeneutical and theological
positions on the text and juxtaposes them with
popular Ewe-Ghanaian Christian demonology.
The article argues that the aggressiveness with
which the Ewe-Ghanaian Christian confronts
his/her destiny issues is premised on the primal
belief that everyone came to this world with his/her own destiny (gbetsi) or fortune (aklama). However, there are forces
that interfere with one’s destiny. It is against this backdrop that one must
relentlessly wage a spiritual warfare against those forces through not only
tumultuous and verbose prayers, but also ritual performances, in order to
either protect a good fortune or reverse a bad one. The phrase ἀλλὰ ῥῦσαι
ἡμãς ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ (Mat. 6:13b) is, therefore, a call on “Our Father in the
heavens” to reverse any misfortune in one’s life, in order to fulfil one’s
destiny in life.
Description:
This article represents a reworked version of
aspects from Daniel Sakitey’s PhD thesis, titled
“Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer in Ewe-
Ghanaian context”, in the Department of New
Testament and Related Literature, University of
Pretoria, with Prof. Dr Ernest van Eck as supervisor.
