Biblical principles as an answer to the African people’s questioning of witchcraft

Witchcraft is still an enormous and serious issue in African culture. The media, includingthe entertainment component (e.g. African Magic programmes on satellite television), portraywitchcraft as an issue that needs to be addressed. Witchcraft has in a sense been integratedinto the system and context of the Nigerian community because most of the programmingoriginates from this country. The same can be said of the South African milieu. It would beremarkable to read a tabloid such as the Daily Sun without at least one reference to witchcraft.Between 1994 and 1996 several hundred people were killed in the Limpopo Province onsuspicion of witchcraft, to which the response from the Christian sector was diverse andvaried. De Vries (2010:35) argues that Christians believe that upon becoming a member ofthis faith, witchcraft is powerless; yet there are indeed Christians who consider bewitchmentpossible, despite a belief in God. This being the case, the question that arises is, ‘What doesthe Bible teach in this regard’? The most compelling evidence for the existence of witchcraftis its mention in both the Old Testament (OT) and the New Testament (NT). Although allChristians read the same Bible, the interpretation of its teachings on witchcraft differ greatly.This article has attempted to identify, from a historical-grammatical exegetical point of view,a number of biblical principles on witchcraft that could be set as guidelines for addressingwitchcraft-related matters and to obtain a clearer picture on Scripture’s teachings regardingwitchcraft. (This topic has also been explored from a meta-theoretical perspective in afollow-up article.)