Birth of the Religion of the Black God (No ‘Goddess Religion’ in the Ancient World)

Wesley Muhammad, PhD © 2011 Wesley Muhammad

(Excerpt from Black Arabia and the African Origin of Islam)

I. The Neolithic and the Birth of a New Religion   

 In 1994 French archaeologist Jacques Cauvin published what I consider to be a profoundly important monograph, Naissance des divinités, Naissance de l’agriculture: La Révolution des Symboles au Néolithique (“Birth of the Gods, Birth of Agriculture: The Symbolic Revolution in the Neolithic”).[1] In it Cauvin cogently argued that the Neolithic revolution ca 10,000 BCE was preceded by a ‘revolution of symbols.’ That is to say, even before the change in subsistence strategies that defined the neolithisation of the Near East, there occurred an equally dramatic and consequential change in the collective ‘psycho-culture’ of the still hunter-gatherers of the Epipaleolithic, a change evidenced most clearly in a new symbolism as reflected in the art forms. The former symbolic art of the Epipaleolithic was primarily zoomorphic, with animals represented ‘democratically,’ if you will: no hierarchical organization is evident and no animal personality is made prominent. Thus, while selection of animals depicted may reflect a sense of ‘religious awe’ on the part of our primitive artists, no animal species stands out as an ‘animal god’ or a theriomorphic representation of ‘God’.[2]  This all changed on the eve of the Neolithic.[3] For some reason a new and rather coherent symbolic system, or as Cauvin calls it ‘a new religion’, emerged wherein the divine is represented through two primary symbols: a bull and a woman. Originating in the Levant – the area where some say Semitism originated – this new religion and its two symbols will dominate theological expression in the Near East throughout the whole Neolithic and Bronze Age periods:

The Woman and the Bull of the Neolithic appeared in the Levant as divinities whose emergence in the tenth millennium (BCE) is followed by their diffusion throughout the ancient Near East. The Goddess, flanked by her male partner assimilated by the bull, will be the keystone of a whole religious system…[4]     

 This symbolic/theological revolution was accompanied by a geometrical/architectural change: the change from circular (or oval) semi-subterranean houses (pits) to above-surface rectangular homes. Speaking on the ‘language of geomorphic shapes,’ Cauvin observes:

In the universal language of simple forms, the circle (or the sphere) signifies both that which transcends man and remains beyond his reach (the sun, the cosmic totality, ‘God’)…On the contrary, the rectangle, examples of which are rare in our everyday observations of nature, requires human initiative for its existence: the stone is not cubic or rectangular unless so fashioned. The square and the rectangle denote then the manifest, the concrete, that which has been realized…the ‘square house,’ generally built on the surface, is witness to a different mental attitude (emphasis mine-WM).[5] 

The work of classical scholar and antiquarian Richard Payne Knight further illuminates this ‘geometrical revolution.’ In his important work, The Symbolic Language of Ancient Art and Mythology, Knight points out that in the traditions of antiquity fire and water are the primary symbols of the active and passive productive powers of the universe. Fire, the active power, was masculine and represented by a circle, while water was the feminine passive power represented by the square or rectangle.[6]  The ancients understood that productivity resulted from the interaction of the two, the solar and the aquatic, and this interaction was hieroglyphically represented as a circle (or asterisk) within a square. This is the origin of the designation for the goddess as ‘the Place of the Gods’ or the House of God[7]: the solar has indwelled within the aquatic. This ‘geometrical revolution’ of the Neolithic therefore, in as much as it is related to the symbolic/theological revolution, seems to have signaled a theological refocusing: from the transcendent to the immanent aspects of deity. The anthropomorphic (woman) and theriomorphic (bull) symbolism signaled the same. It is not at all clear what social, economic or cultural changes might have stimulated this psychological and, indeed, paradigm shift, but it was of profound and lasting consequence for the history of religion from that point till today.  How does the Bull and the Woman of this Epipaleolithic/Neolithic ‘new religion’ signal divine immanence?

I.A. The Goddess

In the History of Religions water, that amorphous cosmic material from which life emerges, often assumes a feminine character.[8] Thus, as Marjia Gimbutas amply demonstrates, the primary symbolism of the goddess is aquatic – water, zig-zags, M’s, aquatic birds, ect. – associating her with the cosmic waters which are her element and her sphere.[9] As the cosmic womb of life she is depicted as a cow and black.[10] This black goddess represents divine imminence. As Gimbutas states: “The goddess is immanent rather than transcendent and therefore physically manifest.”[11] The role of the Woman in this ancient mythic scheme was eloquently elaborated by François Lenormant in 1874 in hisMagie chez les Chaldéens et les origines accadiennes (“The Chaldean Magi and Akkadian Origins”). Discussing the Mesopotamian and Levantine religious tradition, or “Kushito-Semitic” tradition, Lenormant affirms that these religions “show the same fundamental ideas, and have the names of the great majority of the gods in common”.[12]

The idea of the Divine Being one, and universal, who mingles himself with the material world, which has emanated from his substance and not been created by him, is met with everywhere at the basis of belief…Cause and proto-type of the visible world, a nature-god has necessarily a double essence; he possesses the two principles of all terrestrial generation, the active principle and the passive principle, male and female; it is a duality in unity, a concept which, in accordance with the doubling of the symbols, has given birth to the idea of female divinities. The goddess, in the religions of the Euphratico-Syrian [Kushito-Semitic] group is entitled the ‘manifestation’ [‘reflection’ rather] of the male god to whom she corresponds. She does not differ from him essentially…Thus is Chaldea and Babylonia, as in Syria and Phoenicia, every god is necessarily accompanied by a goddess who corresponds to him. These divine personages are not imagined separately, but in couples; and each of these couples forms a complete unity, a reflection of the unity. When the god has a solar character, the goddess has a lunar nature; if the one presides over the day, the other presides over the night; if one personifies the elements regarded as active, fire, and air, the other personifies the passive elements, water and earth (emphasis mine-WM).[13]

I.B. The Bull

As the “fecundator par excellence, indeed the proto-type of male fertility,”[14] the Bull is the paramount ‘attribute animal’ of the Creator God in the ancient world.[15] This Divine Bull, that is to say the bull used to represent the all-powerful male creator-god, was a black bull, in particular the now extinct (sic) Bos primigenius or aurochs bull.[16] Standing two meters to the shoulders, weighing upwards of a ton, with a meter-wide spread of horns, the Bos primigenius was an immense beast, a contemporary of the other megaforms: the mammoth and huge Irish elk. This bull had powerfully developed and coordinated flesh, muscle and bone, making him the paragon of power and nobility. As Michael Rice writes in his study of the ancient and wide-spread bull-cult:

The essential and distinctive elements in the bull’s status in antiquity are the recognition of his nobility as a lordly beast…and his concentrated, highly coordinated power…the bull is the epitome of cheiftaincy, hence of kingship…The bull is always portrayed in all his vigour, potency and beauty.[17]

The beauty of the aurochs bull has much to do with its distinctive dense black coat with a white stripe running down its spine and white curly tuft between its horns. In the ancient bull-cult this black bull-hide is associated with the black primordial waters and signals the black skin of the creator-god who emerged out of those waters and produced therefrom an earthly body.[18] According to this ‘Myth of the Black God’ the creator-deity emerged from these waters as a so-called ‘sun-god,’ initially possessing a body of brilliant white or golden light, but later chose to cloak this fiery, transcendentbody with a more accessible, tolerable (for his creatures) black body, made out of the matter of the primordial waters.[19] It is this aquatic black body that is represented by the black bull. In geometrical terms, the ‘sun-god’ with his transcendent luminous body is analogous to the circle,[20] while the immanence of the rectangle is analogous to the aquatic black body, theriomorphically represented by the black bull and anthropomorphically represented by the Black Goddess. In other words, both the black bull and the black goddess represent the physical immanence of the creator-god in the world. What then is the relation between these two symbols?

Rice noted “the curious combination of the Goddess cult…with the cult of the bull,” for which he could find no explanation. [21]  But I believe he hit on the explanation of this relationship when he points out that, according to the myth associated with the ancient bull-cult “The bull…is a creature of the Mother,”[22] i.e. the black body is the product of the primordial aquatic matter, symbolically personified in the Woman. In a very real sense, the ‘new religion’ was about Corpus dei, the Body of God. The Goddess is the matrix. The aquatic black body of the creator-deity derives from the primordial black waters, personified in and symbolized by the black Mother Goddess. This is why the Mother Goddess is usually depicted with the youthful male god on her lap or emerging from her womb (Figures 18 and 20).[23] To fully comprehend this theme, we must disentangle the motif of the Cosmic Mother as both wife (primarily) and mother (secondarily) of the creator-god. Jack Randolph Conrad notes:

In Egyptian theology, Ra, the sun, the Bull of Heaven, reproduced himself…by copulating with his mother. He is described as the “bull of his mother, who rejoices in the cow, the husband impregnating with his phallus”…Such gods were called Kamutef, or “bull of his mother”.[24]  

The mythic motif behind these expressions is as follows: in the form of a luminous divine man (sun-god) the creator-god emerges out of the primordial waters, the latter personified as a cow and described as his ‘mother’.[25] Because the sun-god ‘went back into’ his mother, the primordial waters, to produce a new body – the black body – he is said to have ‘copulated’ with her, who is now also described as his ‘wife’. This copulation, however, produced him all over again, reborn through her but now as the immanent Black God, with a black body from the primordial black mater. Edmund Leach, in his essay “The Mother’s Brother in Ancient Egypt,” explains this theological concept:

Total deity is conceived as a bisexual triad – God the Father, God the Son, and God the ‘Mother of God’ – but the theology insists that God is consubstantial-coeternal from the beginning, (so) the system by which God the Father ‘begets’ God the Son through the body of the Mother of God replicates itself indefinitely, so that the Mother of God is also the Spouse of God, the Sister of God, and even the Daughter of God.[26]

II. No ‘Goddess’ Religion    

The ‘new religion’ is not a “female monotheism”[27] or a “Goddess-centered religion,” as has been claimed.[28] As archaeologist and feminist Lynn Meskell has demonstrated, this claim of Gimbutas and others of a ‘Goddess cult’ is simply wishful thinking, “hopeful and idealistic creations reflecting the contemporary search for a social utopia” which is not supported by the archaeological evidence.[29] Cynthia Eller, Associate Professor of Religion and Women’s Studies at Montclair State University, demonstrated the same in her important work, The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won’t Give Women a Future:

matriarchal myth fails completely on historical grounds. Evidence from prehistoric times is comparatively sparse, and hard to interpret conclusively. However, even taking these difficulties into account, what evidence we do have does not support the thesis that prehistory was matriarchal and goddess-worshipping…The myth of matriarchal history is an impressive…house of cards. The cards of which it is built are not totally flimsy. Some are plausible interpretations of historical and artefactual data. But others are patently absurd. They are either bad interpretations of the available data, or assertions based on no data at all. Taken together, the entire structure is unstable, and if there were not things stronger than archaeological or historical evidence holding them up-things like passionate hope and religious faith-it would be in imminent danger of collapse.[30]    

The problem is Gimbutas and other advocates of a pan-Goddess religion and civilization over-interpret, finding ‘symbols of the feminine’ in every and strange places, and they overlook and thus fail to integrate the ‘symbols of the masculine’ into their scheme.[31] Renowned English archaeologist Peter J. Ucko, in his “Review of the Mother Goddess Interpretation of the Anthropomorphic Figurines,” observes:

It is…necessary to both isolate the assumptions on which the Mother Goddess interpretation is based and to consider how the evidence of the figurines themselves…correspond to the observations of those who favour the Mother Goddess interpretation. First, those who have supported the Mother Goddess interpretation have either treated the male figurines as exceptions, directly ignored them or postulated a male associate of the Mother Goddess…But…if the female figures were taken as the representation of the Great Mother Goddess, the male figures logically represented the Great Father God. In no case has the accepted Mother Goddess interpretation recognized the logical consequences of its own assumptions…In short…the generally accepted Mother Goddess interpretation of the prehistoric anthropomorphic figurines leaves several features of the figurines themselves wholly unexplained and, in addition, poses several theoretical problems of interpretation which it fails to solve.[32]

An example of relevant but overlooked data is the case of Nevalı Çori, an important early Neolithic village in the middle Euphrates area of eastern Turkey. Radio-carbon dated to 8400-8100 BC, this site revealed some of the world’s most ancient known temples and monumental sculptures. Life-size anthropomorphic stelae as well as clay figurines, human and bovid, have been unearthed.[33] While sitting and pregnant female figures were found, the majority are male, completely contradicting the expectations of the Goddess-cult paradigm whose logic would make this important site a patriarchal cult of the Father God.   

The Goddess’s role in the myth of the ‘new religion’ is not as singular ‘life-creating power’ nor is the male bull-god ‘ephemeral and mortal’ in relation to her.[34]  As Conrad documents, “for millennia the bull-god, the father-god of strength and fertility, stood unchallenged as the supreme god of the ancient Near East.”[35] The Goddess in this myth is a matrix, that prima material out of which life emerged, but the role of Creator of the cosmos is reserved for the male god, the Bull God. The goddess appears as the god’s complement and, symbolically, as the personification of the aquatic substance of the god’s earthly body. This mystery of the union of the masculine Sun God and the aquatic primordial matter, personified as the Mother Goddess, is at the heart of the ‘new religion’, as evidenced by the later mystery systems that will evolve out of it.[36] This is the alchemical coniunctio oppositorum or “synthesis of opposites,” the synthesis of the male element (fire, sun, right) and female element (water, moon, left).[37] As Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty informs us:

The image of fire in water is the ultimate resolution of opposites; held in suspended union, each retains its full power and nothing is lost in the compromise, but there is complete balance.[38]      

This is why the mythological family of Egypt was always a tri-unit consisting of father, mother, andboy-child.[39] The mother and father represented differentiation, the young boy the unity of the two, the coniunctio oppositorum. The child is a boy because this child is the creator of the material world reborn. The ‘new religion,’ through its symbolism of Bull and Woman, is focused on the male god in his imminent black body rather than in his transcendent, fiery aspect.

 Notes

[1] (CNRS Publications, Paris. Second, revised edition, 1997). English translation, The Birth of the Gods and the Origins of Agriculture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

[2] Cauvin, Birth of the Gods, 68. See further Jacques Cauvin, “The Symbolic Foundations of the Neolithic Revolution in the Near East,” in Ian Kuijt (ed.), Life in Neolithic Farming Communities: Social Organization, Identity, and Differentiation (Hingham, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000) 235-251. For responses see “Review Feature: The Birth of the Gods and the Origins of Agriculture,” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 11 (2001): 105-21.

[3] For Epipalaeolithic, maybe (Africoid) Natufian roots of this Neolithic symbolism see further A. Nigel Goring-Morris and Anna Belfer-Cohen, “Symbolic Behaviour from the Epipalaeolithic and Early Neolithic of the Near East: Preliminary Observations on Continuity and Change,” in H.G.K. Gebel, B. Dahl Hermansen and C. Hoffmann Jensen (edd.), Magic Practices and Ritual in the Near Eastern Neolithic (Berlin: Ex Oriente, 2002) 67-79.

[4] Cauvin, Birth of the Gods, 69.

[5] Cauvin, Birth of the Gods, 132.

[6] Richard Payne Knight, The Symbolic Language of Ancient Art and Mythology. An Inquiry(New York: J.W. Houton, 1876) 25-28, 60-64.

[7] Knight,  Symbolic Language, 64.

[8] Encyclopedia of Religion, New Edition 14: 9702 s.v. Water by Jean Rudhart.

[9] Marjia Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2001) xxii, 3, 25, 29.

[10] Ibid., xix. In the Œg Veda the cosmic waters are cows (e.g. 4.3.11; 3.31.3; 4.1.11) and inPañcaviÒśa-Brāmana 21.3.7 the spotted cow Śabalā is addressed: “Thou art the [primeval ocean].” On water and cows in Indic tradition see further Anne Feldhaus, Water and Womanhood. Religious Meanings of Rivers in Maharashtra (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) 46-47.

[11] Ibid., 316.

[12] François Lenormant, Magie chez les Chaldéens et les origines accadiennes (Paris: Maissonneuvee, 1874) 106

[13] Ibid., 117, 129. 

[14] Jack Randolph Conrad, The Horn and the Sword. From the Stone Age to modern times – the worship of the Bull, God of power and fertility. (New York: E P Dutton and Company Inc., 1957) 85.

[15] The bull represented potency, fecundity, and primordial materiality, all essential characteristics of the creator-deity. On the creator deity and the bull v. René L. Vos, “Varius Coloribus Apis: Some Remarks of the Colours of Apis and Other Sacred Animals,” in Willy Clarysse, Antoon Schoors and Harco Willems (edd.), Egyptian Religion: The Last Thousand Years, Part 1. Studies Dedicated to the Memory of Jan Quaegebeur (Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters en Departement Oosterse Studies, 1998) 709-18; Harold Bayley, The Lost Language of Symbolism: An Inquiry into the Origin of Certain Letters, Words, Names, Fairy-Tales, Folklore, and Mythologies2 vols. (London: Williams and Norgate, 1912) I:323-4. On the symbolism of the bull see further Michael Rice, The Power of the Bull (London and New York: Routledge, 1998); Conrad, The Horn and the Sword; Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, trns. Rosemary Sheed (1958; Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1996) 82-93; DDD s.v. “Calf,” by N. Wyatt, 180-182. ‘Attribute Animals’ were fauna that symbolically represented particular attributes or characteristics of the anthropomorphic gods. See True Islam, The Truth of God: The Bible, The Qur’an, and The Secret of the Black God (Atlanta: All-In-All Publishing, 207) 23-28. On the ‘attribute animal’ in ancient Near Eastern (hereafter ANE) religion see Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: the One and the Many (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982)109-25; P. Amiet, Corpus des cylinders de Ras Shamra-Ougarit II: Sceaux-cylinres en hematite et pierres diverses (Ras Shamra-Ougarit IX; Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 1992) 68. 

[16] Rice, Power of the Bull, 23-24.

[17] Ibid., 274.

[18] See e.g. the black skin of the Egyptian deity Min, the ‘creator god par excellence.” Robert A. Armour, Gods and Myths of Ancient Egypt (Cairo and New York: The American University in Cairo Press, 1986, 2001) 157; Veronica Ions, Egyptian Mythology Middlesex: The Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd., 1968) 110. While Min was associated with a white bull in New Kingdom Panopolis and Coptos at an earlier period in Heliopolis he was associated with the black bull Mnevis. See G.D. Hornblower, “Min and His Functions,” Man 46 (1946): 116 [art.=113-121). On Min and black bovines see also H. Gauthier, Les personnel du dieu Min (Le Caire, 1931; IFAO. Recherches d’Archéologie 2) 55-57. On the mythological significance of the black bovine skin see especially Vos, “Varius Coloribus Apis.” On the black bovine, Creator-god, and primordial waters see Asko Parpola, “New correspondences between Harappan and Near Eastern glyptic art,” South Asian Archaeology1981, 181 who suggests that ‘the dark buffalo bathing in muddy water was conceived as the personification of the cosmic waters of chaos”. See also W.F. Albright who noted that “the conception of the river as mighty bull is common”: “The Mouth of the Rivers,” AJSL 35 (1991): 167 n.3 [art.=161-195]. The black bull (k" km) of Egypt, Apis, personified the waters of the Nile which was regarded as a type of Nu, the dark, primeval watery mass out of which creation sprang (See Émile Chassinat, “La Mise a Mort Rituelle D’Apis,” Recueil de travaux relatifs a la philology et a l’archeologie egyptiennes et assyriennes 38 [1916] 33-60; E.A. Wallis Budge, The Egyptian Book of the Dead (The Papyrus of Ani). Egyptian Text Transliterated and Translated [New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1967] cxxiii). See also the Babylonian Enki, called am-gig-abzu, ‘black bull of the Apsû (primordial waters).” See Albright, “Mouth of the Rivers,” 167.  On the black bull and the black waters of creation see also Vos, “Varius Coloribus Apis,” 715, 718.

[19] On this ‘Myth of the Black God’ in ancient tradition see Appendix.

[20] On this ‘transcendent’ luminous body in ancient tradition and the Semitic religions see Jean-Pierre Vernant, “Dim Body, Dazzling Body,” in Michel Feher, Ramona Naddaff and Nadia Tazi (edd.),Fragments for a History of the Human Body: Part One (New York: Zone, 1989): 19-47; A. Leo Oppenheim, “Akadian pul(u)É(t)u and melammû,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 63 (1943): 31-34.  Wesley Williams, “A Body Unlike Bodies: Transcendent Anthropomorphism in Ancient Semitic Tradition and Early Islam,” forthcoming in the Journal of the American Oriental Society128 (2009).

[21] Rice, Power of the Bull, 82-83.

[22] Rice, Power of the Bull, 102.

[23] See below.

[24] Horn and the Sword, 86.

[25] See for example the Egyptian image of a mighty cow rising up out of the waters bearing the sun-disk between her horns. The cow is the “mother of the sun god”; Erik Hornung, Idea into Images: Essays in Ancient Egyptian Thought (Timken Publishers, 1992) 41.

[26] Edmund Leach, “The Mother’s Brother in Ancient Egypt,” Royal Anthropological Institute News 15 (1976): 19.

[27] Cauvin, Birth of the Gods, 32.

[28] Gimbutas, Language, xvii; idem, Civilization, passim. See also John D Brinson, When God Was Black (Denver: Outskirts Press, 2007) who claims Neolithic religion was Goddess-centered and Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, Dark Mother: African Origins and Godmothers (San Jose: Authors Choice Press, 2001).

[29] Lynn Meskell, “Goddesses, Gimbutas and ‘New Age’ archaeology,” Antiquity 69 (1995): 74-86.

[30] Cynthia Eller, The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won’t Give Women a Future (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000) 81, 180.

[31] See Peter G. Bahn, “No Sex, Please, We’re Aurignacians (And Responses),” Rock Art Research 3 (1986): 99-120; Meskell, “Goddesses,” 76,80-81.

[32] Peter J. Ucko, Anthropomorphic figurines of predynastic Egypt and neolithic Crete with comparative material from the prehistoric Near East and mainland Greece (London: A. Szmidla, 1968) 417-418.

[33] H. Hauptmann, “Ein Kultgebäude in Nevali Çori,” in M. Frangipane, H. Hauptmann, M. Liverani, P. Matthiae & M. Mellink (edd.) Between the Rivers and Over the Mountains. Archaeologica Anatolica et Mesopotamia Alba Palmieri Dedicata (Rome: Universita Degli Studi Di Roma 'La Sapienza', 1993) 37-69; idem, “The Urfa region,” in M. Özdoğan and A. Özdoğan (edd.), Neolithic in Turkey: the Cradle of Civilization. New Discoveries (Istanbul: Arkeoloji ve Sanat Yayinlari, 1999) 65-86; idem, “Ein frühneolitisches Kultbild aus Kommagene,” in J. Wagner (ed.) Gottkönige am Euphrat: Neue Aus- grabungen und Forschungen in Kommagene (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2000) 5-9. 

[34] Gimbutas, Language, 316, 175.

[35] Conrad, Horn and the Sword, 112.

[36] On which see Appendix below.

[37] Willibald Kirfel, Die fünf Elemente unsbesondere Wasser und Feur: Ihre Bedeutung für den Ursprung altindischer und altmediterraner Heilkunde (Walldorf-Hessen, 1951) 17; Manley P. Hall, Melchizedek and the Mystery of Fire (Los Angeles: Philosophical Research Society, 1996) 9; idem, The Hermitic Marriage (Los Angeles: Philosophical Research Society, 1996) 42.  

[38] Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, “Submarine Mare in the Mythology of “iva,” JRAS (1971): 9.

[39] Françoise Dunand and Christiane Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men in Egypt: 3000 BCE to 395 CE(Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2004) 30-1.

In Islam Does the Color of the Prophet(s) Matter?

By Wesley Muhammad, PhD © 2011 Wesley Muhammad, Phd

1.] Is it Un-Islamic to Discuss Muhammad’s Color?

Whenever I or a colleague such as Tariq Berry or Dana Marniche recites the clear evidence that the Prophet Muhammad of Arabia was a black-skinned Arab, inevitably someone – most often a Muslim – claims that such a discussion is useless at best or un-Islamic at worst. It is claimed that, because Allah is not a respecter of person and Islam is a religion for all peoples, there should be no discussion of the Prophet’s color. Islam, it is even alleged, does not sanction any interest in this matter of the Prophet’s skin color at all. Yet, the modern Iranian Shi’it shaykhs Maulana Muhammad Zakaria and Ahmed E. Bemat could claim in 2006 with all of the authority of their positions and having no reason to fear a backlash:

“the Holy Prophet’s (s) white complexion had a touch of redness and there was a luster in it…Hence the Imams have stated that ‘if someone says that the Holy Prophet’s (s) complexion was black, we will issue a fatwa of infidelity (kufr) for him because he insulted and disparaged the Holy Prophet (s) and the insulting and disparaging of a prophet amounts to infidelity…”  (inShamail-e-Tirmizi, trans. Prof. Murtaza Hussain F. Qurashi [New Delhi: Kitab Bhavan, 2006] 3).

Similarly, internationally renowned Syrian (Sunni) scholar, Shaykh Muhammad al-Yaqoubi who teaches today at the Grand Umayyad Mosque in Syria, in the following video matter-of-factly informs us of the Prophet Muhammad that,

“His skin color was white, but not jet white…there was some redness on his skin…he had a touch of pink color…”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRfdPQZ4w98

There are thousands of images of this ruddy white Muhammad throughout the Muslim world today, mainly but not exclusively in Iran and India.

Religious Painting from Persia of White Muhammad

The irony is that modern Muslim scholars like the above routinely proclaimed the ruddy whiteness of the Prophet’s skin, without being hounded by the objection: “It does not matter in Islam!” This objection seems reserved only for those who proclaim, based on overwhelming evidence, that the Prophet was in fact a black-skinned Arab and that this popular white-skinned Muhammad is an ethnocentric fiction authored by non-Arab converts to Islam.

The fact of the matter is, however, the color of the prophets, including and especially Prophet Muhammad, absolutely DID matter in pre-modern Islam. Indeed, it was an orthodox issue in Classical Islam, at least according to the Classical Arabic textual tradition.  We find for example the following hadith report in Sahih Bukhari, # 648:

“Ibn Umar narrated: the Prophet (s) said: “[During my Ascension to Heaven] I saw Moses, Jesus, and Abraham. Jesus was white-skinned (ahmar), curly haired with a broad chest; Moses was black-skinned (adam), straight-haired and tall as if he was from the people of al-Zutt.”

On this account it is popularly accepted that, while Moses was black-skinned, Jesus was white-skinned. However, Bukhari follows this hadith with another report (# 649, 650) that insists that this color allocation (for Jesus) is erroneous:

“Salim narrated from his father: ‘No, By Allah, the Prophet (s) did not say that Jesus was white-skinned but said: ‘While I was asleep circumambulating the Ka’ba (in my dream), suddenly I saw a black-skinned man (rajul adam) with straight hair walking between two men, and water dripping from his head. I asked who he was, and the men said he is the Son of Mary (Jesus). Then I looked behind and saw a white-skinned man (rajul ahmar), fat, curly-haired and blind in the right eye which looked like a bulging grape. I asked whom he was and they said, ‘This is al-Dajjal’.”’”

In other words, the white-skinned man seen in Prophet Muhammad’s vision was not Jesus, who was seen as a black-skinned man, but al- Dajjal. There is even a variant of this hadith, reported for example by Ali Qawi al-Harawi (d. 1605) in his commentary on al-Tirmidhi’s famous al-Shama’il al-Muhammadiyah, according to which Muhammad said regarding Jesus: “I saw a black-skinned man (rajul adam), the best one can see among black-skinned men.” Thus, Jesus and Moses would have been black-skinned men.

What is important here, however, is that in this most orthodox piece of Muslim literature besides the Qur’an, al-Bukhari’s Sahih, the skin color of the prophets Jesus and Moses are freely discussed and debated. One might ask: if it was perfectly Islamic for al-Bukhari to discuss the color of the Prophets – discussions, mind you, attributed to the Prophet and some of his key Companions - how did it become un-Islamic to discuss these matters today?

But Jesus and Moses are not Muhammad in Islamic tradition, despite the claim by this same tradition that all of the prophets are equal.  In Islamic tradition the Prophet Muhammad is enveloped in a robe of sacrality and holiness that no other Prophet shares. But this heightened sacredness of Muhammad did not make him less likely to be the topic of discussions about such mundane matters as skin color. On the contrary, detailed discussion of Muhammad’s physical appearance, including his skin color, is found in most of the most orthodox literatures – Sunni and Shi’ite alike. Ibn Sa’d (d. 845), for example, in his famous and important Kibab al-tabaqat al-kabir, devotes twelve pages to a chapter entitled, “[Reports] Mentioning the Description of the Physical Body of the Messenger of God (SAWS).” This chapter includes twelve hadiths reporting on the alleged complexion of the Prophet.

Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-kabir

Likewise, al-Bukhari in his Sahih devotes a chapter to “[Reports Detailing] The Description of the Prophet,” which includes discussion of his skin color.  

Page From Bukhari

Muslim’s Sahih, Abu Dawud’s Sunan, Tirmidhi’s Jama’, Nasa’i's Sunan, Ibn Hanbal’s Musnad, al-Bayhaqi’s Dala’il al-nubuwwah, al-Baladhuri’s Ansab, Ibn Kathir’s, al-Bidayah wa-l-nihayah, just to name a few orthodox texts, all include discussions of the skin-color of the Prophet Muhammad.

Not only that. A whole literature developed whose chief purpose was the extolling of the physical and non-physical qualities of the Prophet. The most famous text of this genre is the al-Shama’il al-Muhammadiyyah (“The Noble Qualities of Muhammad”) by al-Tirmidhi (d. 892). This famous text opens with a discussion of the Prophet’s physical appearance, including his skin color. See for example the Table of Contents in the English translation of this text by Prof. Murtaza Hussain F. Qurashi: the opening section treats “The Physiognomy (i.e. physical appearance) of The Prophet.”

Table of Contents From  Shama’il

All of these literatures are within the orthodox Sunni tradition of the pre-modern period. They all make it abundantly clear that it was very “Islamic” to discuss the skin color and other physical traits of the prophets, especially the prophet Muhammad.  Thus, those who today argue that in Islam the color of the Prophet doesn’t matter can claim no authority from the Classical Islamic tradition for this position.    

2.] Muhammad’s Color According to the Classical Islamic Tradition

Al-Tirmidhi, in his Jami’ al-Sahih (VI:69 no. 1754), reports on the authority of the famous Companion of the Prophet, Anas b. Malik:

“The Messenger of Allah was of medium stature, neither tall nor short, [with] a beautiful, dark brown-complexioned body (hasan al-jism asmar al-lawn). His hair was neither curly nor completely straight and when he walked he leant forward.”

This or a related report is found as well in Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-tabaqat al-kabir, I/i, 123; Ahmad b. Hanbal, Musnad III: 969 no. 13854; al-Bayhaqi, Dala’il al-nubuwwah, I:203; Ibn Kathir, al-Bidayah wa-l-Nihayah, VI: 13. See also the following from Ibn Sa’d’s, Kitab al-tabaqat al-kabir, on the authority of Abd Allah b. Abbas:

“Yazid al-Farisi said: I saw the Messenger of God (s) in a dream during the time Ibn Abbas [was governor] over Basra. I said to Ibn Abbas: “I saw the Messenger of Allah (s) in a dream.” Ibn Abbas said: “Verily, the Messenger used to say, ‘Satan cannot assume my form, so he who saw me in a dream, surely had a vision of me.’ Can you describe to me what you saw?” [Yazid] said: “Yes, I [will] describe [him]. He was a man between two men. His body and flesh were brown and blemish-free with a sheen (asmar ila al-bayad), smiling, eyes with collyrium, features of his face beautiful. His beard was thick from this end to that, and (the man) pointed to his two temples with his hands. It was so thick that it covered his neck….” Thereupon Ibn Abbas said: “Had you seen him while awake, you could not have described him better than this.”    

According to these reports, which freely discuss the Prophet’s skin-color, the Prophet’s complexion was dark-brown. Ibn Sa’d reports another very interesting report on the authority al-Zubayr who reported on the authority of Ibrahim:

“The Messenger of Allah (s) stretched his left foot, such that the blackness of its exposed part (zahiruha aswad) was visible.” (Kitab al-tabaqat al-kabir, I/i,127)

Al-Tirmidhi reports in his al-Shama’il al-Muhammadiyyah (#1), on the authority of Anas b. Malik,

“The Messenger of Allah (s) was neither tall, such that he would stand out, nor was he short. He was not albino-white (al-abyad al-amhaq), nor was he deep black (adam). His hair was neither very curly nor completely straight. Allah commissioned him towards the end of his fortieth year. He remained in Mecca for ten years and in Medina for ten years. Allah caused him to pass away at the turn of his sixtieth year and there was not found on his head and beard [as much as] twenty white hairs.”

This report does not stand in contradiction to the other reports according to which the Prophet was dark brown-skinned, because asmar is not adam. According to classifications of the Arabic linguists such al-Tha’labi, adam is a more excessive blackness than asmar. What is therefore denied here is that Muhammad was one of the excessively black Arabs, like the Banu Sulaym maybe.

Bukhari reports the following in his Sahih (Volume 4, Book 56, Number 744):

“Narrated Isma'il b. Abi Khalid: ‘I heard Abu Juhayfa saying, "I saw the Prophet, and Al-Hasan b. Ali resembled him." I said to Abu- Juhaifa, "Describe him for me." He said, "He was abyadand his beard was black with some white hair. He promised to give us 13 young she-camels, but he expired before we could get them."

This report and similar ones have caused no limit of trouble for moderns. The term used here to describe the Prophet’s complexion is abyad.  This term usually means ‘white’ in contexts not related to human complexion. It is the term normally used to denote the whiteness of such objects as milk, teeth, ect. However, Classical Arabic has a linguistic phenomenon called al-addad, which we call antiphrasis today, in which in certain contexts a word signifies its lexical opposite. Abyad is the classical example of this phenomenon. Thus A. Morabia, writing in the Encyclopedia of Islam (s.v. Lawn), notes:

"One of the most striking manifestations of the symbolic connotations of colours among the Arabs, is the phenomenon of opposites (al-addad). We have seen, in studying the semantic value of certain adjectives of colour, that they were sometimes capable of embracing two diametrically opposite meanings. This phenomenon is particularly to be noted in the case of white and black...To signify wine, the Arabs used a number of euphemisms of the type 'the fair drink', 'the golden one', etc...Even today, in certain parts of the Orient and the Maghrib, in order to avoid pronouncing the word 'black'...opposites are used. In Morrocco, al-abyadsometimes denotes tar or coal." 

In the context of human complexions, the term abyad assumes its didd sense and means ‘black’.  But in Classical Arabic there are several distinct ‘blacknessess’ or ‘shades of blackness’ as pointed out by both al-Tha‘labīb in his Fiqh al-lugha [82-82] as well as al-Asyuti in his Jawāhir al-‘uqud wa-mu’īn al-qudāt wal-muwaqqi’īn wal-shuhūd [II: 574]. Abyad/bayad is a particular shade or ‘type’ of blackness. According to the important Syrian hadith scholar and historian of Islam, Shāms al-Dīn Abū `Abd Allāh al-Dhahabī (d. 1348), in his Siyar a’lām al-nubalā’ [II:168]:

“When Arabs say, ‘so-and-so is white (abyad),’ they mean a golden brown complexion with a black appearance (al-hintī al-lawn bi-hilya sudā’). Like the complexion of the people of India, brown and black (asmar wa ādam), i.e. a clear, refined blackness (sawad al-takrūr).”

This means that when abyad is used to describe the human complexion, it means a refined black complexion [free of blemishes] with a golden-brown hue. This golden brown hue is no doubt due to the luminosity or glow that is also implied by the term abyad: the gloss and sheen (saqala wa safa’) that sits on and thus interacts with a refined black complexion. This most popular description of the Prophet as abyad is thus consistent with the above reports according to which the Prophet had a dark-brown complexion.

Abyad/bayad as a description of human complexion is to be distinguished from ahmar, red, which also has a didd – sense when used of human complexions. Though red is a dark color, when used of human complexion it means white-skinned or fair-skinned. Ibn Manzur [Lisan al-arab IV: 209, 210] notes:

“The Arabs don’t say a man is white [or: “white man,” rajul abyad] due to a white complexion. Rather, whiteness [al-abyad] with them means an external appearance that is free from blemish [al-zahir al-naqi min al-‘uqub]; when they mean a white complexion they say ‘red’ (ahmar)… when the Arabs say, ‘so-and-so is white (abyad – bayad), they [only] mean a noble character (al-karam fi l-akhlaq), not skin color. It is when they say ‘so-and-so is red’ (ahmar – hamra’) that they mean white skin. And the Arabs attribute white skin to the slaves.”

“Red (al-hamra’) refers to non-Arabs due to their fair complexion which predominates among them. And the Arabs used to say about the non-Arabs with whom white skin was characteristic, such as the Romans, Persians, and their neighbors: ‘They are red-skinned (al-hamra’)…” al-hamra’ means the Persians and Romans…And the Arabs attribute white skin to the slaves.”

The vast majority of the reports in the Classical collections describe the Prophet Muhammad as black/brown-skinned (abyad/asmar). There are a few reports, however, generated no doubt by non-Arab converts to Islam like the Persians, which describe the Prophet as white-skinned, abyad al-lawn mushrab humra (Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-tabaqat al-kabir, I/i,120, 121,122, 124, 129 (Ar.); Baladhuri,Ansab, I: 391 § 836; 394 § 848). I have shown the secondary nature of these reports. This description is absent from al-Bukhari and many of the early Classical texts. It becomes popular only in the later, medieval period when non-Arabs dominated the intellectual life of the Muslims.  On this development see my article “ ’Anyone who says that the Prophet is black should be killed’ : The De-Arabization of Islam and the Transfiguration of Muhammad in Islamic Tradition,”

 @ http://drwesleywilliams.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/Muhammad_Article.170121832.pdf  

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.