The Afro-centric Bible

Language is highly influenced by culture.

The definition of a word is going to be directly related to the culture in which that word is being used. One word may have different meanings depending on the culture that is using it. In order to place the correct context to a Hebrew word from the ancient Hebrew language one must first understand ancient Hebrew thought.¹

I recently came across a video on YouTube entitled, 100% Proof Israel is in Africa, and I found it highly interesting. Although I don’t agree with the conclusions the young woman arrived at, she has a very valid point when she says that there are many cases of bad English translations of the original Hebrew in the Bible, however, I feel she fell victim to the pitfall inherent in our opening quote, i.e. cultural bias, in reaching her conclusion on the location of Biblical Israel and I will analyze a screenshot of a portion of her presentation to illustrate why. The video in its entirety can be viewed here:

In the screenshot, she bases her statement that Abraham didn’t go “down” from Arabia to Egypt on the fact that the Nile runs “down” from the south to the north in east Africa. This is true, it does, and is the reason “lower” Egypt is the portion nearest to where the Nile enters the Mediterranean Sea, but that same convention doesn’t apply outside of this specific area, so while it is true that he could have made a journey “down” into Egypt from a place to the south of that land, it is just as valid to say he went “down” from Caanan into Egypt, and we know he was in Caanan from Genesis 17:7,8:

And I will establish My covenant between Me and thee and thy seed after thee throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee.

And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land of thy sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.'

Here is a map of ancient Caanan:

The wording in the bottom left corner clearly indicates that Egypt lies below Caanan, thus Abraham journeyed down into Egypt.

Her list of mistranslated words begins with the word האחרון/ha-acheron, from Deuteronomy 11:24, which in her Bible says western, and is definitely a bad translation, it is more an interpretation of the meaning of the word. In the Mechon-Mamre online Hebrew English bible it says hinder, which means located or near the back, so closer to what she has as a translation. This may not make any or little sense to us, but it was understood by the people to whom it was originally given.

She next turns to Numbers 34:3, and the word קדמה, from the root קדם/qedem. The translation says eastwards, which she feels is incorrect, however, while the root literally means front/from the front, it is also used in the form found in the scripture to mean eastward, in the sense that the east is the front, or the direction you face to greet the sun. Again, the people of that time would have understood this.

She proceeds to Joshua 1:4, and the word מבוא/mebo, from the root בוא. This word means, introduction, preface, coming in, entrance, as she indicates, which could translate as setting of the sun in the sense that the great sea is where the sun enters at the end of the day. Why it is phrased this way is, again, a cultural thing, but makes more sense than saying the term should be translated as east.

In Joshua 15:1, the word תימן/teman, is Hebrew for Yemen, which is located at the extreme south of the Arabian Peninsula and is used here to indicate the location of the southernmost portion of Judah’s land. The word נגב/negeb, is the name of the southern region of Judah’s inheritance and is considered synonymous with saying south, southward or southern, although the term דרום/drom, is the more general word for south. It literally means a dry region, or area of little rainfall, and not dessert.

These are not so much mistranslations as they are the result of her not understanding the language and simply relying on word for word translations. There are many English translations of the Hebrew Bible based on how different people interpret the text, which means a person should really study the language for themselves in order to arrive at their own interpretation and understanding. A bad translation is like this:

The words ים המלח do not mean Dead Sea, they mean Salt Sea! And while the שבת/Sabbath is a day of rest, לשבות does not mean to rest, it means to cease from productive labor. Not understanding the language can lead to serious mistakes when it comes to another culture, and trying to understand the Bible without understanding Hebrew or ancient Hebrew culture can only lead to confusion.

What the young woman is attempting to do using supposed mistranslations of the Hebrew Bible is to shift the focus of the scriptures to one that is Afro-centric, and, again, while I don’t agree with most of her conclusions, her attempt to achieve this objective is justified and correct; the Bible narrative is centered on events that take place within an “African” location.

If you search for the geographical location of Israel on Google, it will say it lies in Asia or the Middle East. Actually, it says both, because it supposedly is on the continent of Asia while its geo-political location is the Middle East. Notice I said “geo-political”, not geological or geographical, because the term Middle East is political and only pseudo geographical, being a creation of western newsmen to describe a particular region of the world for the purpose of defining an area with certain interconnected political activities and history. East is a compass direction and is relative to the location from which it is being determined, therefore, the term Middle East is basically Euro-centric, based on the fact that Europeans refer to countries like China and Japan as lying in the far East.

Saying that Israel is on the Asian continent is also misleading— well, really, just a lie geologically, because it sits on the African tectonic plate, not the Asian— but they can say this because there is no actual consensus of what a “continent” is! It makes more sense to say Israel is in northeast Africa than to say it lies in Asia, yet this is not the case in general because there are those who don’t want this region to be directly linked with the rest of the African “continent”; ancient Egyptians are almost never referred to as Africans.

Here is how the world looked 50 million years ago:

And here is a depiction of the earth’s tectonic plates:

The boundary between the African and Eurasian plates lies along the route of the Euphrates River, placing all the events of the scriptures within the “African” continent, which we have started referring to as Eden, since the garden is said to have been located eastward in Eden, and both the Tigris and Euphrates— which are named —lie eastward of the Pishon and Gihon, which goes around Cush/Ethiopia. I believe the land referred to as Havilah is modern day Uganda, where the largest gold deposits in the world have recently been found.

The Bible is thus an African-Edenic record of an African-Edenic people, from Adam to Yehoshua/Yeshua/Jesus, this is just the truth according to the Bible itself and a proper interpretation of the scientific evidence, which means that, yes, it is Afro-centric!

1. Jeff A. Benner, Ancient Hebrew Lexicon of the Bible