Abstract:

One of the ways to make the word of God become relevant in a new culture is through Bible translation and illustration. Some Ghanaian Bibles with illustrations enable local indigenes to understand the word of God in their language and give them a pictorial view of the written text. However, there seem to be some illustrations that do not give a precise description of the corresponding texts. One of such is the illustration of Matthew 2:11. Using exegesis and Erwin Panofsky’s iconographic analysis approaches, it was identified that the illustration does not give an exact representation of the text. Hence, the Bible Society of Ghana must either drop the current illustration on Matthew 2:11 or come out with a new illustration that meets the religio-cultural settings and the text of the author. For illustrations to meet both the text of the author and the religio-cultural background of the local indigenes, proposals were outlined for consideration.