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Meeting ID: 860 4125 9075 | Passcode: 346573
Christian attitudes towards Afrika and Afrikans in regard to Afrikan religious values, beliefs and practices is very curious because Christianity itself is an Afrikan Traditional Religion. Hosea 11:1 says in part, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” The prophet of course, was thinking not of a person; he was not thinking of Jesus. He was referring to the nation of Israel. This biblical reference is important because it explicitly states that the origin of those who practice the Jewish faith is Egypt, Afrika. We Christians have an unhealthy habit of ignoring the spiritual beliefs and practices that preceded Judaism. Instead of examining the ancient Egyptian religious context in search of religious ideas and practices we act as though the purported 380-year sojourn of Jacob and his children in Egypt is of no real consequence; as though any people can live anywhere for nearly four hundred years and remain untouched by their environment.
Gary Greenberg, who serves as President of the Biblical Archaeology Society of New York wrote a book entitled The Moses Mystery: The African Origins of the Jewish People. In it, he argues quite persuasively that the ninth king of the Eighteenth Egyptian Dynasty, Pharaoh Akhenaten, was the first true monotheist; that Moses and subsequently the Levites were devotees of the Aten (or Sun) which Akhenaten asserted was the symbol for the one and only God.[1] And in fact, a careful reader of the Pentateuch can see the tension between radical monotheists (Moses and the Levites) and rest of the Hebrew escapees. Those outside of the Levitical line kept “whoring after other gods” while Moses and the Levites were faithful to Yahweh. Indeed the experiences of Moses and the Levites reflects those of Akhenaten who is called “the heretic king” because he attempted to rid Egypt of all deities except Aten.
The writer of the gospel of Matthew, who seems to ignore the fact that one’s lineage is traced through one’s mother, lists Jacob as an ancestor of Jesus through Joseph in chapter 1 verse 2, then quotes Hosea 11:1 and applies it to Jesus in chapter 2 verse 15. While we can question Matthew’s method of interpretation, it is clear that linking Jesus to the Exodus event and Moses is an important element in his gospel. By so doing however, the writer of the gospel of Matthew also connects Jesus to Egypt, Afrika, and he does it twice. First, he ties Jesus to Joseph’s ancestral linage through Jacob, then he images the holy family fleeing into Egypt to find refuge from Herod. The Gospel of Luke also links Jesus to Jacob (3:34) through Joseph. And in the Book of Acts chapter 7 verse 22 Luke images Stephen saying “So Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in his words and deeds” at the time of his stoning.
The Early Church Fathers were also aware of the connection between Egypt, Afrika, Judaism and Christianity. In 427 C.E. Saint Augustine in Retractiones (1:3) writes: For what is now called the Christian religion existed of old and was never absent from the beginning of the human race until Christ came in the flesh. Then true religion which already existed began to be called Christian. And Bishop Eusebius, in The History of the Church (2:4) said, The Religion proclaimed by him to All Nations was neither New nor Strange.[2]
As sons and daughters out of the Afrikan diaspora and members of an oppressed people; as believers in God and followers of Christ, we cannot afford to ignore the fact that the divine and human drama recorded in the pages of our Bible has its origin in Afrika. Nor should anyone else. Geography matters especially when it is occupied territory. Those whom we call “the Jews” did not exit Egypt tabla rasa, with an empty consciousness. They were in fact, Hebrews (Habiru- foreigners/wanderers) who had been thoroughly baptized in Egyptian religious practice and culture on Egyptian/Afrikan soil. Further, it is clear that the writers of the gospels of Matthew and Luke believed the historic and genetic connection to Egypt important enough to mention in their narratives. Doesn’t meaning elude us as interpreters when we ignore, for no other reason than our prejudice, the geo-religious and political contexts of the narratives, poems, prayers, laments, and laws documented in the Bible?
Second, if Jesus is a Son out of Egypt then he is Afrikan. This is a powerfully important interpretive insight not just for oppressed Afrikans and other First Nation or indigenous peoples, but for domineering whites who have been grossly miseducated via Greco-Roman and Germanic interpretive inventions and interventions. Because the ideology of race is so pervasive in Bible lands and biblical interpretation landscapes like N. America, S. America and S. Afrika; and because light skinned people have privilege based solely on the color of their skin, accepting the Afrikanity of Jesus regardless of the actual color of his skin, is significant. It means, in part, that God chose an Afrikan as God’s son, anointed him, and used him to fulfill divine purposes in the world.
Third, the identification of Jesus with Afrika and by extension, with Africans, allows the well-grounded and interpretative sound students of the Bible to confidently read the texts of scripture 1) see and acknowledge those without privilege and pedigree in the text and 2) observe and declare ways in which God is surely as present with the underprivileged, the outcasts, and the poor as God may be with the privileged and the prosperous.
This sermon and study series begins with the recognition that Yeshua is a son out of Afrika. It then explores some of the many ways this anointed one, filled with Afrikan Holy Ghost, went about the countryside of Palestine healing the oppressed people of God.
[1] Greenberg, Gary. The Moses Mystery: The African Origin of the Jews. (Secaucus, New Jersey: The Birch Lane Press, 1996), pp. 2-23.
[2] See D.M. Murdock, Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection. Stellar House Publishing, 2011, p. 49.
Wednesday, November 4
Biblical Text: John 3: 11 – 15
Yeshua as a Rabbi/Teacher
Wednesday, November 11
Biblical Text: Mark 1: 12-15
Yeshua: Proclaimer of the True Gospel
Wednesday, November 18
Biblical Text: Mark 11:15-19
Yeshua as Revolutionary
Wednesday, November 25
Biblical Text: Mark 3:1-6
Yeshua: Healing as an Act of Resistance
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