Jesus, the Black Prophet and the Ancient Black Hebrews of Israel

By Wesley Muhammad, PhD

In Honor of My Brother Soldier, the God Wise Intelligent (Timothy Taylor) 

(Excerpt from, "God's Black Prophets: Deconstructing the Myth of the White Muhammad of Arabia and Jesus of Jerusalem" by Wesley Muhammad, PhD)

From the first time Christian children settle into Sunday school classrooms, an image of Jesus Christ is etched into their minds. In North America he is most often depicted as both taller than his disciples, lean, with long, flowing, light brown hair, fair skin and light-colored eyes. Familiar though this image may be, it is inherently flawed. A person with these features and physical bearing would have looked very different from every one else in the region where Jesus lived and ministered.

                                                                 Popular Mechanics Magazine

“Noah brought his sons and his grandsons, and he blessed them with their (several) settlements, and he gave the as an inheritance all the earth. He especially blessed Shem and his sons, black but comely, and he gave them the inhabitable earth. He blessed Ham and his sons, black like a raven, and he gave them as an inheritance the coast of the sea. He blessed Japheth and his sons, they entirely white, and he gave them for an inheritance the desert and its fields; these (are the inheritances with) which he endowed them.”

                                                                         Pirqa Rabbi Elizer 28a

“The Children of Sam (Shem) settled in the center of the Earth, which is between Satidma and the sea and between Yemen and Syria. Allah made the prophets from them, revealed the Books to them, made them beautiful, gave them a black complexion, and also gave them a black complexion with a light-brownish undertone…The children of Ham settled in the south…Allah gave them a black complexion and gave some of them a black complexion with a light-brownish undertone…The children of Japheth settled in Safoun toward the north…They are light-skinned and very fair-skinned.”

                                                                    Al-Tabari, Ta’rikh al-rusul wa’l-muluk 

I. Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up

In 1931 Austrian Jewish Biblical scholar and art historian Robert Eisler published a classic in Josephus scholarship, his The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist: According to Flavius Josephus' recently rediscovered 'Capture of Jerusalem' and the other Jewish and Christian sources. Through a meticulous analysis of extant manuscripts, Eisler endeavored to restore the original reading of a first century text that discusses John the Baptist, Jesus and the early Christians. This first century source is the Halosis or “Capture (of Jerusalem)” of Josephus (37-100 CE). Originally written in Aramaic, a Greek rewriting was published around 72 CE. This is an important text for the discussion of Christian origins, particularly given the section therein treating “the human form of Jesus and his wonderful works.”  Josephus, the first century Jewish historian, is believed to have had access to official Roman records on which he based his history of the early ‘Jesus movement.’ He is thus a singularly contemporary witness. His texts passed through Christian scribal hands,[1] during which process the texts were no doubt altered: some ‘offensive’ passages were omitted and some Christian embellishments interpolated.[2] However, according to Eisler, a Slavonic (Old Russian) translation made from the original Greek text preserves – in scattered form – that original Josephean Testimony. By reconstructing the relevant passages, Eisler ‘restored’ what he believed is the original, first century description of the man Jesus.[3] His very significant restoration follows:

“At that time also there appeared a certain man of magic power … if it be meet to call him a man, [whose name is Jesus], whom [certain] Greeks call a son of [a] God, but his disciples [call] the true prophet who is supposed to have raised dead persons and to have cured all diseases. Both his nature and his form were human, for he was a man of simple appearance, mature age, black-skinned (melagchrous), short growth, three cubits tall, hunchbacked, prognathous (lit. ‘with a long face [macroprosopos]), a long nose, eyebrows meeting above the nose, that the spectators could take fright, with scanty [curly] hair, but having a line in the middle of the head after the fashion of the Nazaraeans, with an undeveloped beard. (*Halōsis, ii.174).”[4]  

This is a remarkable image of Jesus! A short, hunchbacked black-man with a unibrow, short (kinky)[5] hair with a part down the middle, and a scanty (nappy?) beard would have made the Passion of Christa profoundly different experience for undoubtedly every viewer. That this basic description goes back to Josephus is affirmed by a number of early Christian ecclesiastics, such as Andreas Hierosolymitannus, Archbishop of Crete (8th cent.) and John of Damascus (8th cent.).[6] Most of the details of this description are found in other Christian literature of an even earlier period. As T.W. Doane quotes:

“In its first years, the Christian church fancied its Lord’s visage and form marred more than those of other men; and that he must have had no attractions of personal beauty. Justin Marty (A.D. 150-160) speaks of him as without beauty or attractiveness, and of mean appearance. Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 200), describes him as of an uninviting appearance, and almost repulsive. Tertullian (A.D. 200-210) says he had not even ordinary human beauty, far less heavenly. Origen (A.D. 230) went so far as to say that he was ‘small in body and deformed.’ As well as low-born, and that, ‘his only beauty was in his soul and life (emphasis Doane’s).[7]    

This startling image of the Hebrew prophet from first century Jerusalem does violence to the reigning iconographic orthodoxy. Indeed, this orthodox image appears to be a point-by-point contradiction of this no doubt more reliable one: black-skinned vs. white; short and hunchback vs. tall and majestic; short (and curly) hair vs. long and flowing; scanty vs. long beard, etc (Figure 1).

How did this orthodoxy image develop and on what was it based? The restored description of Jesus appears in none of the standard texts of Josephus, for definite reasons: passages about “the plain, nay, ugly appearance of ‘Jesus in the flesh’,” were deleted from Josephus’s Halōsis because of its offensive ring in the ears of Christians of a later age…It may, then, be regarded as proved that the personal description of Jesus in the Halōsis…underwent the usual ‘corrections’ at the hands of Christian copyists and readers with a view to embellishment.[8]  

One significant example of such ‘corrective’ embellishment is the Epistula Lentuli de effigie Christi or the Letter of Lentulus on the appearance of Christ. This “doubtless Christian forgery” purports to be a letter written by an imaginary Roman proconsular, Pilat’s official superior, named Lentulus.[9] The ‘appearance of Christ’ described here, Eisler argues, is based on and intended to correct that found in the Halōsis.[10] The Letter reads:

“There lives at this time in Judea a man of singular virtue whose name is Jesus Christ, whom the barbarians esteem as a prophet, but his followers love and adore him as the offspring of the immortal God. He calls back the dead from the graves and heals all sorts of diseases with a word or touch. He is a tall man, well-shaped,[11] and of an amiable and reverend aspect[12]; his hair of a color of an unripe hazel, falling into graceful curls, waving about and very agreeable crouching upon his shoulders,[13] parted on the crown of the head, running as a stream to the front after fashion of the Nazarites. His forehead high, large and imposing; his cheeks without spot or wrinkle,[14] beautiful with a lovely red[15]; his nose and mouth formed with exquisite symmetry[16]; his beard, and of a color suitable to his hair, reaching below his chin and parted in the middle like a fork[17]; his eyes bright blue, clear and serene. Look innocent, dignified, manly and mature. In proportion of body most perfect, and captivating[18]; his arms and hands delectable to behold. He rebukes with majesty, councils with mildness, His whole address whether in word or deed, being eloquent and grave. No man has seen him laugh, yet his manners are exceedingly pleasant, but he has wept frequently in the presence of men. He is temperate, modest and wise. A man for his extraordinary beauty and perfection,[19] surpassing the children of men in every sense (emphasis mine).”

This Letter achieved its final form some time after 311 CE. That it is a pious fiction is clear. As Biblical scholar Edgar J. Goodspeed reports:

The ‘Letter of Lentulus’ is evidently a fiction, designed to give currency to the description contained in the printers’ manuals about the personal appearance of Jesus. The varying accounts of its provenance are simply devices to explain its survival from antiquity until today. It is probably as old as the thirteenth century; but it was unknown to Christian antiquity, and has no claims to serious attention as throwing any light upon the personal appearance of Jesus.[20]

As Eisler points out, this tall, ruddy, blue-eyed, hazel-haired Christ is a direct answer to that short, black-skinned, short-haired Jesus of the Halōsis. “The obvious intension of this pious fraud was to replace this description of Jesus, so offensive to the later Christians and hence deleted…by another, more edifying pen-portrait.”[21]

Remarkably, scientific advances developed three quarters of a century after Eisler wrote have confirmed the correctness of his restored description of Jesus. In the December 2002 issue of the scientific magazine Popular Mechanics the cover story ran: “The Real Face of Jesus: Forensic Science Reveals the True Image of Jesus.” Science-writer Mike Fillon reports on the fruits of the application of a new science, forensic anthropology, to the search for the historical Jesus. British forensic scientists and Israeli archaeologists collaborated to recreate the “most accurate image” of the Nazerean prophet to date. Based on the data obtained from this multi-disciplinary approach, Richard Neave, retired medical artist from London’s University of Manchester, created a molded image of a dark-skinned Jesus (Figure 2). The data, for the most part, is uncannily consistent with Eisler’s restored description. Mike Fillon writes:

“Jesus (would have had) dark rather than light-colored eyes…in keeping with Jewish tradition, he was bearded as well…While most religious artists have put long hair on Christ, most biblical scholars believe that it was probably short with tight curls …

From an analysis of skeletal remains, archaeologists had firmly established that the average build of a Semite male at the time of Jesus was 5 ft. 1 in., with an average weight of about 110 pounds. Since Jesus worked outside as a carpenter until he was about 30 years old…(his) face was probably weather-beaten, which would have made him appear older[22]…the (image) of the dark and swarthy Middle Eastern man emerges…he probably looked a great deal more like a dark-skinned Semite than westerners are used to seeing…”[23]

II. Hebrews: African Israelites

Now, Neave’s reconstruction still has a somewhat “European” look, which, by his own admission, derives from his own imagination. Genetics acorroborates this data and confirms that Jesus and the Hebrew must have been, not just black, but Africoid. The African origin of the ancient Hebrews was noted often by the Classical authors[24] and is now confirmed by the genetic data, particularly that related to the so-called “Cohen Gene” or, more properly, the Cohen Modal Haplotype (CMH). Discovered in 1997 by Jewish scientists, this paternal genetic marker (it is found on the Y-chromosome) has a high frequency among the Jewish (Askenazi and Sephardic) priesthood (Cohanim) and is thought to be a signature of ancient Hebrew ancestry.[25]  The haplotype (CMH)[26] is indeed part of a haplogroup (Hg J)[27] that originated in Black Arabia or Afrabia ca 30 kya (thousand years ago) and in high frequencies is believed to indicate “Semitism.”[28]

While early reports, largely from Ashkenazi (white) Jewish writers, tended to portray this discovery as evidence that Ashkenazi Jews are truly Hebrew with a legitimate claim to the Holy Land,[29] further genetic tests and reports demonstrated just the opposite. Two data-sets in particular turned this apologetic use of the discovery on its head: (1) the further “discovery” that the “purest” surviving remnant of the Children of Israel identified by CMH tests is the tribe of Black Jews in India, the Bene Israel and the Black Jews of Cochin, who show a genetic affinity not only to Ethiopians and Yemenies, but also to the tribe of Black Jews in South Africa, the Lemba, whose relation to the ancient Hebrews has also been confirmed by the presence of high frequencies of the CMH[30] (2) and the reports confirming that, though the CMH is found in high frequencies among the priestly class of both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewry, this class only represents 4-10% of this Jewry.[31] Most Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews lack this signature[32] and in fact have been shown to be genetically related, not to Semites, but to Gentiles: Kurds, Turks, East Europeans, etc.[33]  Thus, genetics confirms that the ancient Hebrews were black.

Anthropological and archaeological evidence for the Judean town of Lachish, sacked by the Assyrian King Sennacherib in the 8th century BCE, further confirms that Hebrews at that time were still an Africoid people. The approximately 1500 skulls discovered during excavations show a heterogeneous population,[34] but the primary group was likely of a “dark complexioned, narrow-headed type” similar to the ancient Egyptians.[35] That these “Kushites” of Biblical Lachish were in fact Hebrews is unmistakably confirmed by the so-called “Lachish Reliefs”, the monumental pictorial reliefs depicting the siege which graced the walls of Sennacherib's palace at Nineveh. These reliefs depict the Assyrians leading away African-Israelite captives (Figure 3) and even flaying them alive (Figure 3).[36]  These African-Israelites, with their short stature, prognathicism, and short, kinky hair resemble in these respects the Josephus’ restored description of Jesus. Thus, divergent evidences converge to confirm that description.  

    

On the Lachish reliefs in the British Museum, Israelite prisoners are shown being sent into exile and flayed alive by the Assyrians under Sennacherib, whose capture of Judean cities is recorded in 2 Kings 18:13.

III. Semites: The African Forbearers

Found in Rabbinic Hebrew and Classical Arabic literature is a tradition according to which both the Semites and the descendents of Ham were black, Japheth being the only white son of Noah. The linguistic, archaeological and genetic evidences converge to confirm this ethnographic insight. The Semitic languages constitute a branch of the larger Afroasiatic (hereafter AA) language family. While there is no solid consensus, most scholars affirm that the AA ‘proto’ language and its speakers originated in Africa,[37] likely in the Darfur-Kordofan region along the present-day border between Chad and Sudan.[38] The Proto-Semites, i.e. that group who spoke the ‘Proto-Semitic’ language, were undoubtedly a group of East Africans who branched off from the Proto-Afroasiatic stock in Africa anywhere from the ninth to the sixth millennium BCE.[39] They likely followed the Blue Nile to the Ethiopian Highlands (where most of the Semitic languages are found to this day) and crossed over into Arabia from the Bab el Manded[40]; others probably continued north down the Nile eventually entering Syria-Palestine from the Isthmus of Suez. However, whether the ‘Semitization’ of this ‘Proto-AA’ branch took place in the Sudan or the Levant,[41] we are talking about a group of migrating Africans evolving African languages. As anthropologist Dana (Reynolds) Marniche remarks: “the indigenous or ‘black’ tribes of Arabia were those who in ancient times migrated from Africa…and were the earliest purveyers and dispersers of the Semitic dialects.”[42] Indeed, the Akkadians of ancient Mesopotamia, whose Semitic language is the earliest documented, was an Africoid group, [43] as were the Arabs and Hebrews, the two best-known representatives of ‘Semitism.’[44]

IV. Conclusion

Robert Eisler observes:

strange and bewildering…is this small, bent, and homely figure when first emerging from behind the veil which pious delusion has managed to weave around it for centuries…The complete disappearance of the genuine pen-portrait of Jesus is but a proof of the far-reaching Hellenization of the Jewish Messiah, a process which took place in the first centuries of the Church.[45]

We have demonstrated that the Hellenization process which transformed the small, black-skinned Hebrew of history called Jesus into the tall, ruddy white-skinned Christ of the orthodox iconographic tradition is directly paralleled by anAryanization process which transformed a black-skinned prophet of Arabia named Muhammad into the ruddy white-skinned Muhammad of the orthodox Islamic iconographic tradition. This Aryanization of Islam involved a massive Persian/Iranian influence on Islamic tradition consequent to the misnomered Abbasid Revolution (ca. 750) which toppled the Umayyads, Islam’s first historical dynasty.[46] This process changed the demographic face of the Muslim world in general from black to mainly white. As a consequence the black Arab Muhammad, like the black Hebrew Jesus, was found offensive in and to the new order. His image too was thus ‘corrected,’ giving us the ‘white Prophet of Mecca’ so adored by most of the Muslim world today.  

Notes:

[1] Robert Eisler, The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist: According to Flavius Josephus' recently rediscovered 'Capture of Jerusalem' and the other Jewish and Christian sources (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1931) 38-39: “not a single Greek, Latin, Slavonic, or other Josephus text has come down to us which has not passed through the hands of Christian scribes and Christian owners.” 

[2] Eisler, Messiah Jesus, 223-31, 381-92, 457-71, etc.

[3] While there was immediate scholarly backlash to Eisler’s conclusions (e.g. J.W. Jack, The Historic Christ [London: James Clarke & Co, 1933]) and most scholarship today refuses to concede his point, some scholars have taken another look at the issue and affirmed its basic correctness. See e.g. Arthur E. Palumbo, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Personages of Earliest Christianity (New York: Algora Publishing, 2004) who concludes: “It is likely that Eisler’s restoration of the Slavonic passage about Jesus does correspond as close as can be expected to what Josephus actually wrote and to what was recorded in the actual official Jewish and Roman documents. (230)”

[4] Eisler, Messiah Jesus, 425-427.

[5] As Eisler, Messiah Jesus, 421 points out, there are two alternatives in the manuscript tradition: ολιγόθριξ “scanty”  and ουλόθριξ “curly.” 

[6] Eisler, Messiah Jesus, 393-94.

[7] T.W. Doane, Bible Myths and their Parallels in Other Religions (Mokelumne Hill, CA: Health Research, 1985 [1882]) 502.

[8] Eisler, Messiah Jesus, 393, 413.

[9] Eisler, Messiah Jesus, 396.

[10] Eisler, Messiah Jesus, 397.

[11] Versus the “short growth, three cubits tall, hunchbacked” prophet of the restored Josephean Testimony.

[12] Versus “of simple appearance”.

[13] Versus “scanty (curly) hair”.

[14] Thus not “in appearance elderly”, and was the figure of Josephus’ Testimony.

[15] Versus “black-skinned”.

[16] Versus the prognathism of Josephus’ Jesus.

[17] Versus the undeveloped beard of Josephus’ Jesus.

[18] Versus the hunchbacked Jesus of Josephus.

[19] Thus not ‘ugly’ as early Church tradition claimed Jesus actually was.

[20] Edgar J. Goodspeed, Modern Apocrypha, Famous "Biblical" Hoaxes by (Boston: Beacon Press, 1956) 91.

[21] Eisler, Messiah Jesus, 431.

[22] Eisler, Messiah Jesus, 413: This confirms an observation made by Eisler: “the indication regarding his age, ‘in appearance elderly’ (is) completely opposed to the traditional thirty years of Luke (3:23). Both statements could be harmonized by supposing that Jesus looked much older than he actually was.”

[23] Mike Fillon, “The Real Face of Jesus: Advances in forensic science reveal the most famous face in history,” Popular Mechanics (December 2002): 70, 71.

[24]Strabo, Geography, 16.2.34; Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride 31; Josephus, Against Apion I.22; Tacitus, Histories, V.2; See futher James Henry Breasted, Ancient Times (Boston, 1916) 199; Gerald Massey, A Book of the Beginnings, 2 vols.  (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1995; Facsimile of 1881 edition) Volume 2; Godfrey Higgins, Anacalypsis: An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil of the Saitic Isis or an Inquiry into the Origin of Languages, Nations and Religions (Brooklyn: A&B Publishers, 1992; Facsimile of 1836 edition) 398ff, 434ff.

[25] Mark G. Thomas et al, “Origins of Old Testament Priests,” Nature 394 (July 1998): 138-140. See also Rabbi Yaakov Kleiman, DNA & Tradition: The Genetic Link to the Ancient Hebrews (Devora Publishing, 2004) for a review of the history of this discovery.   

[26] A haplotype (from the Greek: ἁπλοῦς, haploûs, "onefold, single, simple") in genetics is a combination of alleles (DNA sequences) at different places (loci) on the chromosome that are transmitted together.

[27] In the study of molecular evolution, a haplogroup (from the Greek: ἁπλοῦς, haploûs, "onefold, single, simple") is a group of similar haplotypes that share a common ancestor with a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) mutation.

[28] Ornella Semina et al, “Origin, Diffusion, and Differentiation of Y-Chromosome Haplogroups E and J: Inferences on the Neolithization of Europe and Later Migratory Events in the Mediterranean Area,” American Journal of Human Genetics 74 (2004): 1023-1034.

[29] e.g. Rabbi Yaakov Kleiman, DNA & Tradition.

[30] Tudor Parfitt, “Descended from Jewish Seed: Genetics and Jewish History in India: The Bene Israel and the Black Jews of Cochin,” Journal of Indo-Judaic Studies 6 (2003): 7-18; idem, “Place, Priestly Status and Purity: The Impact of Genetic Research on an Indian Jewish Community,” Developing World Bioethics 3 (2003): 178-185; Mark G Thomas et al, “Y Chromosomes Traveling South: The Cohen Modal Haplotype and the Origins of the Lemba-the ‘Black Jews of Southern Africa’,” American Journal of Human Genetics 66 (2000): 674-686; Tudor Parfitt and Yulia Egorova, Genetics, Mass Media and Identity: A case study of the genetic research on the Lemba and Bene Israel (London and New York: Routledge, 2006). Y Rashmee, who broke the story of the Bene Israel in The Times of India July 20, 2002 (“India’s Children of Israel Find Their Roots”) proclaimed: “More than 2,000 years after they first claimed to have set foot in India, the mystery of the world’s most obscure Jewish community – the Marathi-speaking Bene Israel – may finally have been solved with genetic carbon-dating revealing they carry the unusual Moses gene that would make them, literally, the original children of Israel…[The research says] this is the first concrete proof that ‘exils from Palestine made it as far as India”. On the Black Jews of India see further Jewish Encyclopedia s.v. Cochin; Joseph J. Williams, Hebrewisms of West Africa: From Nile to Niger with the Jews (Biblo and Tannen [reprint]) 150; Higgins, Anacalypsis, I:398-400.  

[31] Harry Ostrer, “A genetic profile of contemporary Jewish populations,” Nature Reviews-Genetics 2 (2001): 891.

[32] Only about 15% of lay Ashkenaz and 12% of lay Sephardim possess this marker. The presence of this marker in non-priestly segments of the populations may be accounted for by gene flow from the Cohanim or priests. Thomas et al, “Origins of Old Testament Priests,” 139; Semina et al, “Origin, Diffusion, and Differentiation,” 1029; Ellen Levy-Coffman, “A Mosaic of People: The Jewish Story and a Reassessment of the DNA Evidence,” Journal of Genetic Genealogy 1 (2005): 12-33 [15-16]; Doron M. Behar et al, “Multiple Origins of Ashkenazi Levites: Y Chromosome Evidence for Both Near Eastern and European Ancestries,” American Journal of Human Genetics 73 (2003): 768-779 [769].

[33] Almut Nebel et al, “The Y Chromosome Pool of Jews as Part of the Genetic Landscape of the Middle East,”American Journal of Human Genetics 69 (2001): 1095-1112: “In comparison with data available from other relevant populations in the region, Jews were found to be more closely related to groups in the north of the Fertile Cresent (Kurds, Turks, and Armenians) than to their Arab neighbors (1095)”; Gil Atzmon et al, “Abraham’s Children in the Genome Era: Major Jewish Diaspora Populations Comprise Distinct Genetic Clusters with Shared Middle Eastern Ancestry,” American Journal of Human Genetics 86 (2010): 850-859: “genetic proximity of these European/Syrian Jewish populations, including Ashkenazi Jews, to each other and to French, North Italian and Sardinian populations favors the idea of non-Semitic Mediterranean ancestry in the formation of the European/Syrian Jewish groups (857)”; Almut Nebel et al, “Y chromosome evidence for a founder effect in Ashkenazi Jews,” European Journal of Human Genetics 13 (2005): 388-391; The CMH clad belongs to the J haplogroup. J has two major derivative subclads associated with it: J1 and J2. The CMH belongs to JI, which originated in Black Arabia and signals African Semitic ancestry. J2, on the other hand, which is found among Ashkenazis at a frequency twice that of JI, has a characteristically non-Semitic European distribution and is believed to have originated from a mutation that occurred in the Aegean area!  F. Di Giacomo et al, “Y chromosomal haplogroup J as signature of the post-neolithic colonization of Europe,” Human Genetics 115 (2004): 357-371; Levy-Coffman, “Mosaic of People,” 16, 24-26: “Because Jewish populations possess approximately twice as much J2 as they do J1, their ancestry more closely matches that of Turkish and Transcaucasian populations [25].” 

[34] S.O.Y. Keita, “An Analysis of Crania From Tell-Duweir Using Multiple Discriminant Functions,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 75 (1988): 375-390.

[35] Sir Arthur Keith, “The Men of Lachish,” Palestine Exploration Quarterly (1940): 7-12 [11]; Keita, “An Analysis.”

[36] See especially David Ussishkin, The Conquest of Lachish by Sennacherib, with drawings of the Lachish reliefs by Judith Dekel; photographs of the Lachish reliefs by Avraham Hay; and reconstructions of the Assyrian siege by Gert le Grange (Tel-Aviv : Tel Aviv University, Institute of Archaeology, 1982).

[37]John Huehnergard, “Afro-Asiatic,” in Roger D. Woodard (ed.), The Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) 225; Christopher Ehret, S.O.Y Keita and Paul Newman, “The Origins of Afroasiatic,” Science 306 (2004) 1680-1681; Carleton T. Hodge, “Afroasiatic: The Horizon and Beyond,” in Scott Noegel and Alan S. Kaye (edd.), Afroasiatic Linguistics, Semitics, and Egyptology: Selected Writings of Carleton T. Hodge (Bethesda, Maryland: CDL Press, 2004) 64; ML Bender Upside Down Afrasian, Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere 50 (1997): 19-34; Christopher Ehret, Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic (Proto-Afrasian): vowels, tone, consonants, and vocabulary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995) 487; Joseph H. Greenberg, "African linguistic classification," in Joseph Ki-Zerbo (ed.), General History of Africa, Volume 1: Methodology and African Prehistory (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1981) 292–308. On the Africa vs. Asia AA Origin dispute see Daniel P. Mc Call, “The Afroasiatic Language Phylum: African in Origin, or Asian?” Current Anthropology 39 (1998): 139-143.

[38] Nicholas Faraclas, “They Came Before the Egyptians: Linguistic Evidence for the African Roots of Semitic Languages,” in Silvia Federici (ed.), Enduring Western Civilization: The Construction of the Concept of Western Civilization and Its “Others” (Westport, Connecticut and London: Praeger, 1995) 175-96.

[39] Gregorio del Olmo Lete, in his Questions of Semitic Linguistics. Root and Lexeme: The History of Research (Bethesda, Maryland: CDL Press, 2008) 115 noted: “[Proto-Semites] formed part of a mass of peoples  who, moving out from the heart of Africa, spread north and reached the Mediterranean coast and beyond…The Semitic family [was] the spearhead of one of the expansive movements of peoples toward Asia  (from Africa)…” See further Edward Lipiński, Semitic Languages: Outline of a Comparative Grammar (Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters and Departement Oosterse Studies, 1997) 42-43; A. Murtonen, Early Semitic (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1967), 74; Faraclas, “They Came Before the Egyptians”; Igor M. Diankonoff, “The Earliest Semitic Society,” Journal of Semitic Studies 43 (1998): 209-219; idem, “Earliest Semites in Asia,” Altorientalische Forschungen 8 (1981)23-70; George Aaron Barton, Semitic and Hamitic Origins: Social and Religious (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1934) 8.

[40] Faraclas, “They Came Before the Egyptians” 190.

[41] Peter Bellwood, First Farmers: The Origin of Agricultural Societies (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005) 209; Diankonoff, “Earliest Semitic Society.”

[42] Dana Reynolds, “The African Heritage & Ethnohistory of the Moors,” in Ivan van Sertima, Golden Age of the Moor (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1992) 105.

[43] William L. Langer, An Encyclopedia of World History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1972); T.K. Penniman, “A Note on the Inhabitants of Kish Before the Great Flood,” Excavations at Kish , 4:65-72. The British Orientalist, Sir Henry Rawlinson, who deciphered the cuneiform script in the 19th century, was convinced that the Akkadians and the preceding Sumerians were Kushites. See e.g. Outline of the History of Assyria (1852) andNotes on the Early History of Babylonia (1854).

[44] On the African origin of the Arabs see Wesley Muhammad, Black Arabia and the African Origin of Islam(Atlanta: A-Team Publishing, 2009); Tariq Berry, The Unknown Arabs: Clear, Definitive Proof of the Dark Complexion of the Original Arabs and the Arab Origin of the so-called African Americans (Morocco, 2002); Reynolds, “The African Heritage”;  Runoko Rashidi, “Africans in Early Asian Civilizations: A Historical Overview,” in Runoko Rashidi and Ivan Van Sertima (ed.), African Presence in Early Asia (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1999) 21-57; Emmanuel Anati, Rock-Art in Central Arabia. Vol 1: The “Oval-Headed” People of Arabia(Louvain and Leuven, 1968); Bertram Thomas, “Racial Origin of the Arabs,” in idem, The Arabs: The life-story of a People who have left their deep impress on the world (London: Thorton Butterworth Ltd., 1937) 353-359. On the African origin of the Hebrews see Strabo, Geography, 16.2.34; Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride 31; Josephus, Against Apion I.22; Tacitus, Histories, V.2; James Henry Breasted, Ancient Times (Boston, 1916) 199; Gerald Massey, A Book of the Beginnings, 2 vols.  (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1995; Facsimile of 1881 edition) Volume 2; Godfrey Higgins, Anacalypsis: An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil of the Saitic Isis or an Inquiry into the Origin of Languages, Nations and Religions (Brooklyn: A&B Publishers, 1992; Facsimile of 1836 edition) 398ff, 434ff.

[45] Eisler, Messiah Jesus, 431, 433.

[46] See below.