BIBLICAL BRONZE SERPENT AND THE TRADITIONAL IGUN GUIDE (ROYAL BRONZE) OF BENIN KINGDOM: IMPLICATIONS FOR INCULTURATION AND CONTEXTUALIZATION

This study focuses on sacred craft in Numbers 21:4 – 9 and the Igun (royal bronze) traditional guide of the Benin kingdom. Sacred objects have played a significant role in mediating religious meaning, divine presence, and communal identity across cultures. This biblical narrative presents the bronze serpent crafted under divine instruction as a sacred object through which healing and obedience to Yahweh were enacted. Similarly, the Igun metal-work functioned not merely as artistic expression but as ritual guides embedded in cosmology, kingship, and ancestral mediation. Despite the geographical and cultural distance between ancient Israel and the Benin Kingdom in Nigeria, both traditions reveal a deep intertwining of sacred craft, religious symbolism, and communal life. This creates a theological tension and interpretive imbalance surrounding these sacred crafts, downplaying their original divine authorization and sacramental function. This imbalance has contributed to a theological disconnection in African Christian thought, where biblical sacred materiality is affirmed, and the African sacred craftsmanship is rejected or demonized. Moreso, there is a lack of sustained comparative theological and historical analysis between the bronze serpent tradition and the ritual metalworking of the Igun guide, which has limited scholarly understanding of how sacred craft functions as a legitimate medium of religious meaning across cultures. Part of the findings is that sacred craft in both traditions mediates human encounter with the divine, but while the bronze serpent is a provisional sign whose authority derives from God, the Ìgún artefacts carry embedded spiritual and social authority. However, the study recommends that churches should develop frameworks for reinterpreting cultural symbols in light of Scripture, transforming indigenous practices into Christ-centred expressions.