Translation And The Reciprocal Impacts Of Yoruba Bible And Yoruba Culture

Research Article
Olusayo B. Oladejo
DOI: 
xxx-xxxxx-xxxx
Subject: 
science
KeyWords: 
Translation; Ajayi Crowther; Yoruba language; Yoruba culture; Yoruba Bible; Nigeria
Abstract: 

This paper is a text research designed to demonstrate that although the translation of the Bible into Yoruba language, which Bishop Ajayi Crowther coordinated in the 19th century, furthered the good purposes of Christian missionary expansion, it also had several incidental but significant impacts on the culture and traditional religions of the people. Several of these were laudable, others disagreeable. The work is significant in its effort to highlight some inadvertent reciprocal impacts of the traditional religious and Christian worldviews, categories and concepts engendered by the Yoruba Bible. Some aspects of this interchange have not been given ample reflection in existing academic discourse. It is demonstrated here that Yoruba culture and traditional religions have benefited immensely from the language, categories, graphics, liturgy, and forms of presentation of the Bible afforded by its translation into the vernacular. These transactions merit critical investigation to unveil the mutual impacts of the Yoruba Bible and culture.