Our Ancestors Practiced The Bible In Africa
Just like rock and roll, the Bible was culturally aproppiated. Europeans got a hold of the Bible, and claimed it as their own, and created a image of Jesus that was white, with blonde hair and blue eyes. I once bought into the false claim that the Bible was the “white man’s religion” and the religion that slave owners forced on my ancestors. I once heard a man say “the Bible is not a lie, it was just put in the hands of liars”
Europeans began teaching a servitude message of the Bible to enslaved Black people. A report from 2018, shows that slave owners removed passages out of the Bible that would inspire rebellion.
“About 90 percent of the Old Testament is missing [and] 50 percent of the New Testament is missing,”
Nat Turner is an example of somebody who read the true message of the Bible and not the distorted message given to him by slave owners. Nat Turner who led one of the biggest slave rebellions in America, was a preacher. The Bible is what inspired him to lead the rebellion.
Nat Turner said he was inspired by the book of Exodus, about Moses and the Israelites. The Israelites, are who the Bible refers to as, Gods chosen people. During the time of Moses they were being enslaved and mistreated by the Egyptian government. Moses helped lead them to freedom. Nat Turner also describes in his confession letter that Jesus also helped inspire him to lead the rebellion. He said he had a vision from God, in which he
“heard a loud noise in the heavens, and the Spirit instantly appeared to me and said the Serpent was loosened, and Christ had laid down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and that I should take it on and fight against the Serpent, for the time was fast approaching when the first should be last and the last should be first… And by signs in the heavens that it would make known to me when I should commence the great work, and until the first sign appeared I should conceal it from the knowledge of men; and on the appearance of the sign… I should arise and prepare myself and slay my enemies with their own weapons.”
Below will contain eyewitness accounts of historians that documented that our ancestors were practicing. These historians will use these two words interchangeably. Jews and Israelites. Those words are in reference to what the Bible refers to as. God’s chosen people, also known as the children of Israel.
“For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth” (Deuteronomy 7:6)
It has been historically documented that Black people were practicing the Bible in Africa, before slavery and colonialism. During the time of the slave trade, two French travelers named Conrad Malte-Brun and James Gates-Percival, documented their travels in Africa, in their book, A System of Universal Geography.
They wrote:
“The kingdom of Loango contains black Jews, scattered throughout the country; they are despised by the Negroes who do not even deign to eat with them; they are occupied in trade, and keep the sabbath so strictly that they do not even converse on that day; they have a separate burying ground, very far from any habitation. The tombs are constructed with masonry, and ornamented with Hebrew inscriptions.”
A historical account from the 1700’s describes the connection between West Africans and the Israelites. This account is from an African man from the Igbo tribe of Nigeria, named Oludah Equiano.
He was kidnapped from Nigeria and was enslaved in Barbados and Virginia. He was somehow able to purchase his freedom and went on to become a writer and abolitionist. In his autobiography, he not only documented the horrors of slavery, but he also wrote about his culture back home during the slave trade. He detailed how his tribe practiced the same customs of the Jews in the Torah,
“We practiced circumcision like the Jews, and made offerings and feasts on that occasion in the same manner as they did. Such is the imperfect sketch my memory has furnished me with of the manners and customs of a people among whom I first drew my breath. And here I cannot forbear suggesting what has long struck me very forcibly, namely, the strong analogy which even by this sketch, imperfect as it is, appears to prevail in the manners and customs of my countrymen and those of the Jews, before they reached the Land of Promise, and particularly the patriarchs while they were yet in that pastoral state which is described in Genesis — .”
“Like the Israelites in their primitive state, our government was conducted by our chiefs or judges, our wise men and elders; and the head of a family with us enjoyed a similar authority over his household with that which is ascribed to Abraham and the other patriarchs. The law of retaliation obtained almost universally with us as with them: and even their religion appeared to have shed upon us a ray of its glory, though broken and spent in its passage, or eclipsed by the cloud with which time, tradition, and ignorance might have enveloped it; for we had our circumcision (a rule I believe peculiar to that people:) we had also our sacrifices and burnt-offerings, our washings and purifications, on the same occasions as they had.”
In 1853, a newspaper called the Weekly Raleigh Register, published eye witness accounts of Mali, Africa. It stated:
“A Jew who had accompanied a German traveller,as far as Timbuctoo, found near the boundary of Bambara a large number of Jewish negroes. Nearly every family among them possesses the law of Moses, written upon parchment.”
“The explanation which they give of themselves, in connection with their black skin, is this — that after the destruction of Jerusalem, at the time of the captivity, some of their ancestors, having neither goods nor land, fled to the desert. The fatigue which they endured so great, that nearly all the females died by the way. The children of Ham received them with kindness and by intermarriage with their daughters, who were black, communicated their color to their children. These children became generation by generation, of a deeper hue, until no differences of color now distinguish the children of Shem and those of Ham.”
Shem and Ham, mentioned in the quote above, are both black races that are mentioned in the Bible.
Definition of Ham, according to Zondervan’s Compact Bible Dictionary
The Bible and historical evidence describes God’s Chosen people, the Israelites, as being black or African.
To view that evidence and the appearance of the Israelites click on the link below.
In the Bible, there contained a kingdom called Judah. Jesus is from the tribe of Judah, which came from the Kingdom of Judah.
Below is a 1747 map of Africa, created by an English cartographer named Edward Bowen(1693 or 1694–1767). This map, shows specifically where the ancestors of many African Americans come from. Notice that the region of Africa that is labeled the “Slave Coast”, is also labeled the Kingdom of Juda. Juda known as Judah, is the name of the Southern Kingdom of Israel.
The Bible stated that Judah would be would be stripped of their heritage and sold away into slavery.
You can view the map on the link below to the site for the Library of Congress.
The Kingdom of Juda was in what is now called, Benin. According to the Washington Post, it was once West Africa’s largest slave port.
In the 1870’s, a French public research university called, the University of Montepellier, put out a book(below)on geography, that stated:
“Whydah (Fidah, Hwedah, Ouida, Judah, or Ajuda) is a old city frequented since the 16th century by the Portuguese slavers, who gave it its name. It’s inhabitants were said to be Judaic, “and they were indeed considered as a remnant of scattered tribes of Israel”
In 1876 a French geographer named, Élisée Reclus , wrote in his book called, “The Earth and Its Inhabitants” (below) :
“The Dahomey territory, guarded by the important town of Glehuech, Known to Europeans by various names of Fida, Heredah, Whydah, Wida. The old writers called it Juda, and it’s inhabitants were said to be Jews.”
In 1820 an English traveler named James Gray published his book “An account of Timbuctoo and Housa”, where he wrote:
“This place is reported to be inhabited by one of the lost tribes of Israel, possibly an emigration from the tribe of Judah. Yahooda, in African Arabic, signifies Judah. Yahoodee signifies Jew. It is not impossible, that many of the lost tribes of Israel may be found dispersed in the interior regions of Africa, when we shall become better acquainted with that Continent; it is certain, that some of the nations that possessed the country eastward of Palestine when the Israelites were a favoured nation, have emigrated to Africa.”
-El Hage Abd Salam Shabeeny collected and formatted by James Gray Jackson: An Account of Timbuctoo & Housa (1820)
According to the oral traditions of Africans in countries such as , Nigeria, Senegal, and Congo, their ancestors migrated from Israel to West Africa.
DNA evidence actually proves that black people’s ancestors come from Israel. In 2016 a genetic study called, the Genetic Structure of the World’s First Farmers, led by a Professor from the Department of Genetics of Harvard University showed that the same DNA (E1b1A) that African Americans, black people in Latin America and the Caribbean, many blacks still in Africa, black people in Asia, black people in Europe and around the world, etc is traced back to Israel.
In 70 AD the Romans invaded Israel causing millions of Israelites to escape to Africa. “In his book ,The Great Roman-Jewish War: 66 — 70, the Roman historian, Flavius Josephus, stated over thousands of years ago,that the Israelites migrated into Africa. He writes:
“General Vaspasian and his son Caesar Titus fought against the Jews. Millions of Jews fled into Africa, among other places, fleeing from Roman persecution and starvation during the siege.”
This historical migration is backed up by the DNA evidence mentioned above.
With all the evidence that has been presented I hope one comes away knowing that the Bible is not “the white man’s religion.” If the Bible is the white mans religion, why did our ancestors practice the Bible, before Europeans and Arabs invaded Africa? If the Bible is the white mans religion, why would the white man write in the Bible that black people were the chosen people of God? Why would he write that God would punish Europeans for enslaving black people, as mentioned in Deuteronomy 30:1.