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Swapping Drinking Songs For Spiritual Songs: Skolia And Possession In Ephesians 5 And Mozambique, Alan Howell

Bible & Ministry Faculty Research and Publications

The prevalence of both drinking songs and spirit possession among the Makua-Metto of Mozambique shaped the way in which Mozambican Christians interpreted Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Based upon their cultural context, they naturally heard chapter 5 addressing these two phenomena as interconnected topics. That experience led to an investigation into the background of the original recipients of the letter through the lens of drinking songs and spirit possession to see if reading this text in the “laboratory” of the Mozambican context can shed new light on contemporary readings of the Ephesian 5 text and provide an example of non-Western …