posted 27 March, 2009 11:26 PM
It's time, I think, for a refresher on the subject, because I ocassionally, get email such as this:
quote: Egypt, to the Egyptians. Kemet means "black land," and refers to the rich soil of Egypt. It is the root of the word "alchemy."
This is a mere repitition of racist mythology, having no basis in fact. It is, in a word, pitiful.
Kmt means black, and it only means black, it is what follows that tells us - black (what)? Some examples of usage: (Note: the 't' is silent, and is merely used to make the word a feminine noun.)
Kmt nu = Black nation (the name for Ancient Egypt)
Kmt ta = Black land
Kmt pw = It is black
nn Kmt pw = It is not black (Ahn.Ohn Kem poo)
St Kmt = Black Woman (Say.Kem) (and Because it refers to Isis; her name comes first)
The question is often asked "Why is it called Egypt?" This question can best be answered correctly by first remembering that the Ancient Egyptian language is NOT a dead language. It not only survives as Coptic Egyptian, but also in related languages such as Wolof (Senegal) and Yoruba (Nigeria). If this fact is kept in mind, one cannot drift into spurious speculations.
Kemet: The Original Name of Egypt
The oldest, official name for Egypt, by the Ancient Egyptians themselves, is Kmt (Keme) or Black. The contemporary Egyptian (Coptic) words for Egypt are (depending on the particular dialect): Kame, Keme, Kimi, and Kheme - all of which mean Black. Also in Coptic Egyptian we have, kem, kame, kmi, kmem, kmom or "to be black." The Ancient Egyptians referred to themselves as Kmtjw (Kemetu) and Kmmw (Kmemu) or Black people (In contemporary Egyptian: Kmemou=Black people). In Wolof, Khem means "burnt to black."
"Egypt": Greek Corruptions
The Greeks corrupted an Ancient Egyptian name for Memphis - Ht-Ki-Pth (hay-gip-Toh), "The Temple of Ptoh's Essence," to Aigyptos. Keeping in mind that the Greeks had a convention of adding an 's' to Ancient Egyptian proper nouns: Osiri (Usiri in contemporary Egyptian) > Osiris Isi (Ese in contemporary Egyptian) > Isis Pth(Toh) > Tos
"Misr" and "Mizraim": Semitic Corruptions
British Egyptologist E.A.W. Budge was one of the first to remark that "The name Mizraim may have been given Egypt (by foreigners) in respect of its double wall."
The name Misr is indeed a Semiticized form of Ancient Egyptian: Medjr = walled district Medjre = tower, fortress These Ancient Egyptian words became Meetsrayeem (Egypt) and Meetsree (Egyptian) in Hebrew, and in Arabic; Misr and Masri respectively. It is the same as Westerners calling China, "China," after the original Qin dynasty emperor ("Tschina" in Indo-European). The Chinese, however, call their country Zhongguo or 'the Middle Kingdom.'
Ancient Egyptian glossary
'Egypt' [ ] = Contemporary Egyptian (Coptic) words
Eturmeh..........North river (Lower Egypt) [Eioor - river] Etures.............South river (Upper Egypt) Hedje..............White Crown country (Upper Egypt) Keme..............Black (All of Egypt) [Keme - Black] Kemi..............."Southern" country (Upper Egypt) Kem Wer Miri.."the Great Black Sea" - which later would be referred to as Deshret Miri or "The Red Sea" Pasheti............The two divisions of Egypt; one belonging to Horus and the other to Set [Pashe - boundary] Res.................the South (Upper Egypt) [Res - south] Shmo..............the South (Upper Egypt) Sonti..............."the two halves of Egypt" (Upper and Lower Egypt) TaMera...........Land of the Inundation TaMeri............My beloved land Tawi...............the Two lands (Upper and Lower Egypt)
'Egyptians' Kemetu............Black's peoples (Egyptian citizens) Kmemu............Black people (the Egyptian people) Resu................Southern people (Upper Egyptians) Ret..................The Men [Rot - men] Ret na Romé....We Men above mankind [Romé - men;mankind] Romé n Keme..Men of Black ("Egyptians") TaMeru...........Land of the Inundation people (Egyptians) Tawiu..............The Two Lands people (Egyptian) [Ta;to - land]
KEMET
A comprehensive list of the structure and usages of perhaps the most significant word in the Ancient Egyptian language. All of these words can be found in "An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary" by E. A. Wallis Budge, Dover, NY
Used as an adjective
kem;kemem;kemom - black kemu - black (m) keme.t - black (f) hime.t keme.t - "black woman" (woman of Black) himu.t keme.t - "black women" (women of Black)
Used as a noun
keme.t - any black person, place, or thing
A determinative is then used to be more specific:
keme.t (woman) - "the Black woman"; ie, 'divine woman' keme.t (cow) - "a Black cow" - ie, a 'sacred cow' Keme.t (nation) - "the Black nation"
kem - a black one (m) keme.t - a black one (f) kemu - black ones (m) kemu.t - black ones (f) kemeti - two black ones
Used for Nationality
Sa Kemet - a man of Black (an Egyptian male) Sa.t Kemet - a woman of Black (an Egyptian female) Rome.t Kemet - the people of Black (Egyptians) Kemetou - Blacks (ie, 'citizens') Kememou - Black people (of the Black nation)
Other usages
Sa Kem - "Black man", a god, and son of Sa.t Kem.t - "Black woman", a goddess (page 589b) kem (papyrus) - to end, complete kem.t (papyrus) - the end, completion kemi - finished products kem khet (stick) - jet black ... kemwer - any Egyptian person, place or thing ('to be black' + 'to be great')
Kemwer - "The Great Black" - a title of Osiris - the Ancestor of the race
Kemwer (body of water) - "the Great Black sea" - the Red sea Kemwer (body of water + river bank) - a lake in the Duat (the OtherWorld) Kemwer Nteri - "the sacred great Black bulls" kemwer (fortress) - a fort or town Kemwer (water) - the god of the great Black lake
Kem Amut - a black animal goddess Kemi.t-Weri.t - "the great Black woman", a goddess Kem-Neb-Mesen.t - a lion god Kem ho - "black face", a title of the crocodile Rerek kem; kemu (shield) - buckler, shield kem (wood) - black wood kem.t (stone) - black stone or powder kem.tt (plant) - a plant kemu (seed) - seeds or fruit of the kem plant kemti - "black image", sacred image or statue
Using the causative "S"
S_kemi - white haired, grey-headed man (ie, to have lost blackness) S_kemkem - to destroy, overthrow, annihilate S_kemem - to blacken, to defile
Antonyms
S_desher - to redden, make ruddy S_desheru - red things, bloody wounds
Some interesting Homonyms (pages 770 > )
qem - to behave in a seemly manner Qemi - the south, Upper Egypt qem.t - reed, papyrus qemaa - to throw a boomerang qem_au - to overthrow qemam.t - mother, parent qemamu - workers (in metal, wood) qemqem - tambourines qemd - to weep qemati - statue, image - same as kemti qema - to create qemaiu - created beings Qemau;Qemamu - The Creator
Deshret - the opposite of Kemet
deshr.t - any red (ie, non-Black) person, place, or thing ... deshr.t (woman) - "the Red woman"; ie, 'evil woman' deshr.t (cow) - "a Red cow" - ie, the 'devil's cow' deshr - a red one (m) deshr.t - a red one (f) deshru - red ones (m) deshru.t - red ones (f) -- White or light-skinned people; devils deshreti - two red ones
And From the Coptic Bible (Song of Solomon) Anok ang ou Keme' nefer I am Black and Beautiful.Posts: 3344 | From: Berkeley | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted 28 March, 2009 09:57 AM
Wally – I have no way of knowing if what you say is accurate or not, I do not know the ancient Egyptian language. But, I can say that logically it does not make sense.
Quote: The Ancient Egyptians referred to themselves as Kmtjw (Kemetu) and Kmmw (Kmemu) or Black people.
In this usage and context; Black is a declarative statement. But how could it be used as such? Logically, it just doesn’t follow.
As an example: If you are a three eyed person, and everyone that you have ever seen or heard about, is also three eyed, how could you declare yourself, or describe yourself to ANOTHER three eyed person as being a three eyed person?
I mean, if an Egyptian went down to Nubia and said; “We are the Black people” a Nubian would likely say back; ya so are we, can we have some of you land? The same conversation would occur if an Egyptian went to Canaan, Arabia, Sumer, Elam, Anatolia, or pre-iron age Europe.
Though the Egyptians likely knew early on, about the Caucasian invasions in Europe. It was not until the Dorian Greeks attacked the city of Cyrene (about 650 B.C.) that Africa itself was threatened by them, but this was small, so still no need to declare oneself Black as opposed to White.
But, I am mindful that language does evolve; so it may be that what you say came into play during the Greek occupation (332 B.C.). At that time, there would have indeed been a need for Egyptians to differentiate between themselves and their occupiers.
And one final thought:
Quote: And From the Coptic Bible (Song of Solomon) Anok ang ou Keme' nefer I am Black and Beautiful.
quote:As an example: If you are a three eyed person, and everyone that you have ever seen or heard about, is also three eyed, how could you declare yourself, or describe yourself to ANOTHER three eyed person as being a three eyed person?
Since the Egyptians knew of light skinned [red] peoples as well as dark skinned [black] peoples, you are committing the logical fallacy of flawed analogy.
To remove the flaw from your analogy, you must prove that Egyptians did not know of the existence of light skinned peoples.
quote:I mean, if an Egyptian went down to Nubia and said; “We are the Black people” a Nubian would likely say back; ya so are we, can we have some of you land? The same conversation would occur if an Egyptian went to Canaan, Arabia, Sumer, Elam, Anatolia, or pre-iron age Europe.
^ This conversation occurs today, all the time. If you ever come to Africa, as a Black man, you might have this same conversation with other Africans.
Your comments really make no sense Mike111.
quote:Though the Egyptians likely knew early on, about the Caucasian invasions in Europe.
^ You only pile on, to your torrent of illogic and non sequiturs. The Kemetians did not know about 'caucasian' anything. Nor does this have anything to do with the term Km.t which means Black.
quote: It was not until the Dorian Greeks attacked the city of Cyrene (about 650 B.C.) that Africa itself was threatened by them
^ Another non sequitur. What you are trying to imply thru dishonest babblement is that before 650 BC the Kemetians did not know of the existence of non Black, ie - light skinned - peoples.
This is a lie.
Your position is completely ridiculous and no doubt sets the stage for many inane posts to follow.... Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted 28 March, 2009 12:16 PM
rasol - Name "ONE" group of White people before the Caucasian invasion of Europe. I notice you use the word "light skinned" to dodge the question that you knew I would ask, so likewise, "NAME ONE"
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posted 28 March, 2009 02:39 PM
Good analysis on Kemet from professor asante. ---------------------------------- Contesting Ancient African History: Assumptions and Claims of Eurocentric Historians
There are certain premises and positions that have become untenable by virtue of the Afrocentric intervention into social sciences and humanities. Afrocentrists have opened doors to historical research that have been long held shut by Eurocentric orientations to phenomena. For instance, in ancient historiography few scholars are now willing to take ancient Egypt out of Africa as Hegel, Breasted, and Maspero tried to do in the l9th and early part of the 20th century.[1] No serious researcher would claim, as Toynbee did, that Africa produced no civilizations.[2] Almost no one would argue the positions advanced by Fage concerning African people.[3] While a few whites can still be found who preach the inferiority of Africans, almost no scholar would be foolhardy enough to suggest that whites are biologically superior to blacks. In fact, I have witnessed a remarkable change in attitude on the part of many white scholars who are now following the tradition of Afrocentrists in their examination of phenomena by taking into greater consideration oral traditions, centered analysis, human similarities, and locational analysis, spheres previously examined mainly by Afrocentrists.
Kemet as an Example
The ancient Egyptian word “kmt” or “Kemet” has been arbitrarily interpreted by Eurocentric scholars to mean “the Black Land.” They say that the word “kmt” could not have meant “Black People” or “Black Nation” because the Egyptians were making a comment about the blackness of the soil. The ground was black, they say. The only reason many of the early European Egyptologists could not see the meaning of “kmt” was because they refused to believe that the people were describing themselves and their nation. Or more criminally they took the chance of shifting the meaning of the word to effect a grand conspiracy against the ancient Africans. I am more inclined to believe the first reason. The word “kmt” means literally “The Black Nation” or “The Black City.” To arrive at any other conclusion one must make all kinds of unreasonable mental contortions.
Although the determinative that refers to a place name, the niswet, occurs in most instances where the word appears many scholars have been reluctant to let go of the idea that the word “kmt” meant black dirt. They look the facts in the face and experience cognitive dissonance. After all, African, to them, was outside of history and clearly the Egyptians could not have been describing their land by reference to themselves. We can see how foolish this line of reasoning is by appealing to the language itself. Some writers argue that “kmt” but be seen in the light of “dsrt” where one is “black land” and the other is “red land.” But there is no uniformly black land in Egypt. At the Delta one could find silt from the inundation but this would be no different from silt from floods in other countries. Indeed, near Heliopolis, Ionuwu, we find some of the most dramatically read soil. One would have to argue unconvincingly that Heliopolis was not ever a part of this black land if one held to the theory of black soil. In the ancient Egyptian language the red land is more often written as hill country rather than with the determinative for city, niswet.
The impact of the Afrocentric idea is seen in the new interpretation of “kmt.” European scholars are now admitting that the explanation for the glyphs cannot be “black soil.” They have come to this understanding since African scholars have been making serious study of the Mdw Ntr. Now that reasonable scholars concede the point, made so emphatic by the ancients use of the niswet as a determinative, that “kmt” means “black country” or “black nation” what does it mean? In the first place the evidence is overwhelming that the main determinative refers to an organized political unit, a city, province, or country. Although some whites refer to “kmt” as the “black city” we must insist that this is a unique determinative understaood to represent the name of the country much like one would say Finns Land, Finland, Zulus Land, Zululand, Hun Land, Hungaria, or Angles Land, England.
There is an archaic interpretation of “kmt” and a more modern one. Both have speculative power but only one can be siad to have the authority of historical and linguistic evidence. “Kmt” in the archaic interpretation, as I am using the term, meant for the European scholars “black soil” as I have indicated. But now in a more modern sense they have revised the text to say that it means “black city.” There is an acceptance of the Afrocentrists’ contention that niswet, as a determinative, indicates a political entity. Admission that “kmt” means “black city” presents other problems for the Eurocentric writers. If it now means “black city” why would the Egyptians use color to describe a city? There is no “brown city” or “white city” or “red city.” If “kmt” is now “black city” in the text of the modern Egyptologists then it cannot mean “black dirt” or “black soil.” The word “black”, “km” did not carry negative connotations as it has in many modern European languages. To speak of Egypt as “Kmt” was to speak of a country not of dirt. Even those who argue for the connection between “dsrt” are intellectually imperiled because they cannot discover the parallel that supposedly existed in the past, that is, in the minds of the early Egyptologists, between “The Black Land” and “The Red Land.” They are not parallel because they are not in the same genre of place. The desert could not be said to exist in the North of thecountry and “Kmt” in the South when the desert actually existed everywhere, south to north, that was not riverine in the nation.
A Discourse of Dishonesty This entire linguistic enterprise seemed to be constructed for one reason: to deny that the ancient Egyptians were black skinned people. The exasperation white scholars of the last generation and their descendants demonstrated about assigning the achievements of the African nation of Egypt to black people clearly illustrates the racial bias in historical analysis. Why would every Egyptologist open his book with a description of Egypt that said in effect that the people of Africa who created the pyramids and the marvelous civilization along the Nile Valley were not black? There is only one reason for this defensive position and that is to disconnect Egypt from the rest of Africa. In no other example of ancient history can be find a similar response to the material culture of the people. There is no debate about who built the Great Wall of China or who built the Parthenon. No contest over the ethnicity or racial classification of an ancient people has ever reached the level of the discourse on Egypt. Fed by the desire to defend the primacy and supremacy of the white race, Egyptologists sold their intellectual rights to those who paid their bills.
J. Gardner Wilkinson’s The Ancient Egyptians, was an influential work first published in l836, a few years after Champollion’s deciphering of the Mdw Ntr, and re-issued as recent as l994. Wilkinson wrote that the Egyptians were “undoubtedly from Asia; as is proved by the form of the skull, which is that of a Caucasian race, by their features, hair, and other evidences; and the whole valley of the Nile throughout Ethiopia, all Abyssinia, and the coast to the south, were peopled by Asiatic immigrations.”[14] In an extended discussion of the origin of these creators of the ancient monuments along the Nile, Wilkinson goes on to explain that “The Egyptians probably came to the Valley of the Nile as conquerors. Their advance was through Lower Egypt southwards; and the extraordinary notion that they descended, and derived their civilisation from Ethiopia has long since been exploded.”[15]
While it is true that no serious scholar would write a description such as this today the descendants of Wilkinson are found everywhere in the Academy. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. used a quote from a letter to him by Miriam Lichtheim to defend his position that the ancient Egyptians were not black people. Lichtheim, according to Schlesinger, went so far as to say: “The Egyptians were not Nubians, and the original Nubians were not black. Nubia gradually became black because black peoples migrated northward out of Central Africa.”[16] The position advanced by Wilkinson became the reigning opinion of white scholars for more than a century and his influence continues until today. Of course, Wilkinson, even in l836, could have had better authority than he took advantage of to write his section on the race and origin of the Egyptians. Other observers, some much earlier, had already made more insightful commentaries about the ancient Egyptians. Count Constantin de Volney had written as early as 1791 in his book The Ruins: or a Survey of the Revolution of Empires exclaimed, “How are we astonished...when we reflect that to the race of negroes at present our slaves, and the objects of our extreme contempt, we owe our arts, sciences, and even the very use of speech; and when we recollect that, in the midst of those nations who call themselves the friends of liberty and humanity, the most barbarous of slaveries is justified, and that it is even a problem whether the understanding of negroes be of the same species with that of white men!”.[17] Volney was convinced enough to argue even further that the ancient Egyptians themselves “must have been real negroes, of the same species with all the natives of Africa.”[18] Other European scholars went against the leading edge of white supremacist teachings to announce the obvious. For example, the German scholar Erman wrote in l866: “Nothing exists in the physical structure of the ancient Egyptian to distinguish him from the the native African.”[19] Neither Volney nor Erman were to convince enough of their European fellows that their observations were valid and therefore as late as 1971 we find Egyptologists of the old school appearing in the words of David O’Connor who writes that “Thousands of sculpted and painted representations from Egypt and hundreds of well-preserved bodies from its cemeteries show that the typical physical type was neither Negroid nor Negro.”[20] O’Connor was just following the line laid down by earlier writers such as Wilkinson and Maspero. Indeed in Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orien Maspero had declared “On examining innumerable reproductions of statues and bas-reliefs, we recognized at once that the people represented on the monuments instead of presenting peculiarities and the general appearance of the Negro, really resembled the fine white races of Europe and Western Asia.[21] Maspero was clearly playing to those in whose service he was and cannot be considered serious in this observation or another one where he claims that the Egyptians ”were black skinned whites!” We are here in the terrain of the mystical. Fortunately for us we have science as a guide in our analysis and synthesis of phenomena. In this way Afrocentrists have been able to confront the arguments advanced against an African point-of-view, pointing out that most of the time the attacks have not been based on a close location of the issues but rather the anticipated response of those who feel that their prerogatives are threatened. Hopefully, we are on the road to a more authoritative pluralism.
[1] See. Georg Hegel, Reason in History. Trans. R. Hortman. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, l982, p.3; W. Breasted, Development of Religion and Though in Ancient Egypt.. 1911; and Gaston Maspero, Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orien. Paris: Hachette, 1917, pp. 17-18.
[2] Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History. London: Oxford University Press, l987, Volume One, pp. 5-23.
[3] J. D. Fage, A History of West Africa. London: Oxford University Press, 1969, pp. 2-14.
[4] See Molefi Kete Asante, The Afrocentric Idea. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999.
[5] Katherine Bankole, Slavery and Medicine. New York: Garland Press, l997.
[6] Black Issues in Higher Education, May, 1996.
[7] Audrey Smedley, Race in North America: The Origin and Evolution of a Worldview. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, l998, 2nd Ed., pp. 23-26.
[8] Molefi Kete Asante, “The Ideology of White Supremacy and the European Slave Trade,” paper presented at UNESCO Conference on “The Slave Routes” in Lisbon, Portugal, December, 1998.
[9] Aristotle, Physiognomonica
[10] Herodotus, Histories, Book II, 55
[11] Herodotus, Histories, Book II, 57
[12] Herodotus, Histories, Book II, 57
[13] Cheikh Anta Diop, Parente genetique de l’Egyptien Pharaonique et des langues Negro-Africaine. Dakar: IFAN, Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines, 1977, p. xxv.
[14] J. Gardner Wilkinson, The Ancient Egyptians. London: Guernsey, 1994, p. 302.
[15] Wilkinson, p. 303.
[16] Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America. Knoxville: Whittle Communications, 1992, p. l30
[17] C. F. Volney, The Ruins: Or a Survey of the Revolution of Empires. London: G.G.J. and James Robinson, 1791
[18] C. F. Volney, Travels Through Syria and Egypt in the Years 1783, 1784, and 1785. London: G.G.J. and James Robinson, 1787.
[19] Adolf Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt. New York: Dover Publications, l971 (originally published in l886 in German and in English in l894), p. 29.
[20] Ancient Egypt and Black Africa: Early Contacts,” Expedition: The Magazine of Archaeology/Anthropology, 14, l971, p. 2
[21] Gaston Maspero, Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orien. Paris: Hachette, 1917, pp. 17-18, 12th ed., translated as The Dawn of Civilization. London, l894, and reprinted by Frederick Ungar,New York, l968
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did anyone forget to left click the magnifying glass over the picture for a closer view!
Posts: 3344 | From: Berkeley | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:rasol - Name "ONE" group of White people before the Caucasian invasion of Europe
^ like all your remarks, this is devoid of intelligence and relevance.
what is relevant is whether the AE knew of the existence of Non-Blacks, which they did, of course......
what is intelligent, is the realisation that caucasian is properly and ethnic reference to *NON* Indo-European, non Germanic, non Turkic peoples of Europe.
Most whites of Europe are not caucasian just as most blacks of Africa are not Bantu.
Likewise, you will find no reference to cauasian in mdw ntr - only blacks [dark skinned peoples], and reds [light skinned].
The notion of caucasian as a race-catagory was invented in the 18th century.
Prior to this in the entire history of the English, Dutch, French, Italian, etc - > there is *NO* reference to them as 'caucasians'.
Mike111, almost anything you think you know, is something you don't know.
posted 29 March, 2009 11:31 AM
rasol - Even a person of your limited abilities must know that is a drawing of the original. As to the nonsense text, it's typical rasol.
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posted 29 March, 2009 11:47 AM
The Explorer - I have heard that often, invariably from people who in fact, can NOT read or write the language. Which only proves that the forum is mostly populated by ignorant bullsh1ters, more interested in posturing than in learning anything - but what's new.
The difficulty in translating hieroglyphic script is not new either, professional ancient Egyptian scribes also had difficulty in translating Hieratic script to hieroglyphic script.
Hieratic was first used during the Protodynastic Period, developing alongside the more formal hieroglyphic script. It is an error to view hieratic as a derivative of hieroglyphic writing. The earliest texts from Egypt are produced with ink and brush, with no indication their signs are descendants of hieroglyphs. True monumental hieroglyphs carved in stone did not appear until the 1st Dynasty, well after hieratic had been established as a scribal practice.
Scribes wrote in hieratic for day to day purposes, and hieroglyphs were a more specialised ability: we can still see spelling mistakes and slips, especially when the scribe was copying a text from hieratic to hieroglyphs.
This is part of the so-called Edwin Smith papyrus.
The Edwin Smith papyrus is the world's oldest surviving surgical document. Written in hieratic script in ancient Egypt around 1600 B.C., the text describes anatomical observations and the examination, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of 48 types of medical problems in exquisite detail. Among the treatments described are closing wounds with sutures, preventing and curing infection with honey and moldy bread, stopping bleeding with raw meat, and immobilization of head and spinal cord injuries. Translated in 1930, the document reveals the sophistication and practicality of ancient Egyptian medicine. Plate 6 and 7 of the papyrus, pictured here, discuss facial trauma.
Logically then: since hieratic is the oldest form of writing for the Egyptians; and it is the script of Medicine, law, contracts, poetry, conveying human thought, etc. Then it MUST also be BY FAR, the most ACCURATE form of written communication for the Egyptians.
Why then is hieratic documents NOT the source for answering questions about how the Egyptians viewed themselves and others, and what words they ACTUALLY used! Is it because ES denizens are not the only full-time Bullsh1ters out there?Posts: 22721 | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted 29 March, 2009 11:58 AM
Mike, But even if the AEs didn't refer to themselves as "black", others did. Recall Herodotus's descriptions of the AEs as being "melanchroes"(black-skinned) with wooly hair.
And a number other Greeks including Aristotle: "too black a hue as an Egyptian or Kushite marks a coward. So too too white a hue as we see with women. The best colour is that which is intermediate--as we see with the tawny colour of lions".(Physiognomica).
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quote:rasol - Name "ONE" group of White people before the Caucasian invasion of Europe
^ like all your remarks, this is devoid of intelligence and relevance.
what is relevant is whether the AE knew of the existence of Non-Blacks, which they did, of course......
what is intelligent, is the realisation that caucasian is properly and ethnic reference to *NON* Indo-European, non Germanic, non Turkic peoples of Europe.
Most whites of Europe are not caucasian just as most blacks of Africa are not Bantu.
Likewise, you will find no reference to cauasian in mdw ntr - only blacks [dark skinned peoples], and reds [light skinned].
The notion of caucasian as a race-catagory was invented in the 18th century.
Prior to this in the entire history of the English, Dutch, French, Italian, etc - > there is *NO* reference to them as 'caucasians'.
Mike111, almost anything you think you know, is something you don't know.
You're a mess man.
That picture is a known FAKE
The Egyptians always shaded themselves lighter than the Nubians and Darker than the people North of them like Europeans and people from the Levant.
The one on the right is an Egyptian, on the left is a Libyan (probably Berber) second from the left is a Nubian.
Posts: 143 | From: The United States Of America (sadly) | Registered: Mar 2009
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That picture is actually the reproduction (a drawing) and is thus, fake. The real one shows each group in fours with the Egyptians considerably darker.
In other scenes, Kushites and Puntites are shown in the exact same complexion as the Egyptians. Get over it....
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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I see that other one being used (not the one you post, but the one showing the Egyptian the same as the Nubian (which is bullshit) being used alot by American negro-centrists for propaganda proposes.
anyways thanks
: )
Posts: 143 | From: The United States Of America (sadly) | Registered: Mar 2009
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posted 29 March, 2009 01:10 PM
^^Actually, they're two different scenes from two different areas. I think you posting that fake tomb scene/drawing is an example of propaganda. Check out the links I gave you. Both the ones I'm referring to are authentic (including the one showing Nubians and Egyptians in the same light). The former is from the tomb of Ramses III who was also depicted as "Black skinned" himself, though they both depict African peoples.. You came in here being dishonest..
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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quote:Originally posted by Sundjata: ^^ I think you posting that fake tomb scene/drawing is an example of propaganda.
Correct. Which is why Sir Knuckleheads drawing has no known author. [ask him - WHO - drew it? ]
Actually there are two knuckleheads in this thread.
SirKnucklehead, and KnuckleheadMike.
The image posted here is from Sethe/Lepsius works published 1st in Europe in 1906.
It is not a 'fake'.
KnuckleheadMike is equally daft. He posts photographs of the actual tomb scenes...yes, but only of the Blacks - labed Rm.t [Egyptian], and Nhsy [Sudanese], he does *not* post photos of the Amu or the Tamehu who are shown as light skinned [Reds]. Such are the depths he must sink to, in order to keep himself stupid.
In spite of the fact the Lepsius work is actually featured in Diop's masterpiece African Origin of Civilisations - Mike111 claims that images of non Blacks [reds] is a fake.
How can one even educate such a pair of idiots?
Mike you and SirInfamous are opposite sides of a coin titled ignorance.
Wally ignores you both because you are beneath contempt in your prattling stupidity.
For anyone who wants complete and accurate information on the Ramses III tomb scene, it is found here...
posted 29 March, 2009 05:23 PM
rasol - I don't think that anyone is really buying it, but you never know.
Posts: 22721 | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted 29 March, 2009 07:27 PM
How could I have let this one pass...
quote: Mike111 wrote:
And one final thought:
Quote: And From the Coptic Bible (Song of Solomon) Anok ang ou Keme' nefer I am Black and Beautiful.
I just don’t see these people saying that!
A Copts Collage from Wiki.
These "people who are saying that," much to the chagrin of Mike111, are the ancient Hebrew authors who wrote these texts, and which King James of England would later have translated (please note the use of the King's English). The Coptic christians have merely translated these texts into their own language Coptic- the latest stage of the Ancient Egyptian language - this Bible is used also in Sudan and Ethiopia: This is what the ancient Hebrews wrote, in one of the most erotic books of the Bible:
The Lady:
The song of songs, which is Solomon's.
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.
Because of the savour of thy good ointments thy name is as ointment poured forth, therefore do the virgins love thee.
Draw me, we will run after thee: the king hath brought me into his chambers: we will be glad and rejoice in thee, we will remember thy love more than wine: the upright love thee.
I am black, *but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.
King Solomon:
I have compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots.
Thy cheeks are comely with rows of jewels, thy neck with chains of gold.
We will make thee borders of gold with studs of silver.
The Lady:
While the king sitteth at his table, my spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof.
A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts...
...My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand.
His head is as the most fine gold, his locks are bushy, and black as a raven.
His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk, and fitly set. ------------------------------------------------- These 'wacky' Hebrews wrote these 'amazing' things as well...
'Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength, and it was infinite'
'Wonderous works in the Land of Ham and terrible things by the Red sea'
...Why was Ancient Egypt called 'The Land of Ham?'but there's more, but you'll have to find it on your own; an endeavor which I doubt you will undertake, for obvious reasons...
*both the Ancient Egyptians and the Hebrews wrote in a similar fashion: kmt nfr or Black Beautiful; you will find this in the footnotes of any large bible; did the sages mean 'but' or 'and'? Hmmmmm..
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posted 29 March, 2009 09:13 PM
Sorry Wally; the Hebrews DIDN'T write ANY current religious documents EXCEPT the Dead Sea Scrolls. Which the public has NOT been permitted to view for the last 60 years, and in all likelihood, will NEVER be permitted to view.
The current guardians of these Documents are the White people who lyingly call themselves Jews, and the White people who usurped the Christian branch of the Hebrew religion and made it their own.
The fact that they refuse to reveal the contents of REAL Hebrew documents, tells you all that you need to know.
To further educate you, this is the history of all current Hebrew based religious documents.
The Septuagint
The SEPTUAGINT, derived from the Latin word for "seventy," it ideally refers to the mid 200 B.C. translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek in Alexandria, Egypt.
The earliest, and best known source for the story of the Septuagint, is the Letter of Aristeas, a lengthy document that recalls how the Ptolemy’s – the Greek family that Alexander the Great set up to rule Egypt for him – specifically Philadelphus II (285–247 B.C.), who desiring to augment his library in Alexandria Egypt, commissioned a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. He wrote to the chief priest Eleazar in Jerusalem, and arranged for six translators from each of the twelve tribes of Israel to come to Egypt for that purpose.
The seventy-two (altered in a few later versions to seventy or seventy-five) translators arrived in Egypt to the Ptolemy's gracious hospitality, and translated the Pentateuch: the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures, believed to have been written by Moses, in seventy-two days. There is no information available, as to how differing versions between individuals and tribes were resolved. Although opinions as to when this occurred differ, scholars find 282 B.C. to be an attractive date.
As attested by the Dead Sea Scrolls (the oldest known Hebrew scriptures), there was no “ONE” Hebrew belief or Canon at this time. Rather there were many sects, each with their own beliefs – some quite radical. Thus Ptolemy's need for many translators from each tribe, in hope of getting a consensus of the Hebrew religion. How much of the material presented was written (and when it was written), and how much was oral is unknown.
According to Philo of Alexandria (100 A.D, he lived 200 years afterward?), only the Pentateuch was commissioned to be translated: and some modern scholars have concurred, noting a kind of consistency in the style of the Greek Pentateuch. Over the course of the next three centuries however, other books of the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek in an order that is not altogether clear. By observing technical terms and translation styles, and by comparing the Greek versions to the Dead Sea Scrolls, (see below), and by comparing them to Hellenistic literature, scholars are trying to stitch together a history of the translations that eventually found their way into collections. It seems that sometimes a Hebrew book was translated more than once, or that a particular Greek translation was revised. In other cases, a work was composed afresh in Greek, yet was included in the collection of original scriptures.
(The point here, is that there is no guarantee that the finished product was even Hebrew.
NOTE should be taken that this document no longer exists. All current scripts are from "supposed" copies of copies. Sound suspicious?)
The Masoretic text (MT)
(From Hebrew masoreth, “tradition”), said to be the traditional Hebrew text of the Hebrew Bible. This work was begun around 600 A.D. and completed in 1000 A.D. by scholars at academies in Babylonia and Palestine, in an effort to reproduce, as far as possible, the original text of the Hebrew Old Testament. Their intention was not to interpret the meaning of the Scriptures but to transmit to future generations the authentic Word of God. To this end, they gathered manuscripts and whatever oral traditions were available to them at the time.
During the middle years of the Masoretic’s creation, the powerful and influential Khazars, converted to the Hebrew religion. It is not known what input or effect, the Khazars had on the final version of the Masoretic text, or how closely the modern Jewish Bible reflects the Masoretic text.
NOTE should be made here, that the Hebrew Nation no longer existed at this time. Consequently, who were the experts being consulted in Palestine and Babylon, and what was their affiliation? As mentioned before, there was no "ONE" Hebrew cannon.
Khazars – An ancient Turkic people who appeared in Transcaucasia, {the transitional region between Europe and Asia, extending from the Greater Caucasus to the Turkish and Iranian borders, between the Black and Caspian seas.} in the 2nd cent. A.D, and subsequently settled in the lower Volga region. They emerged as a force in the 7th century and rose to great power. By the 8th century the Khazar empire extended from the northern shores of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea to the Urals and as far westward as Kiev. Also in the 8th Century, the Khazars converted to the Hebrew religion and made Judaism the State religion. “Itil” the Khazar capital in the Volga delta, was a great commercial center. The Khazar Empire fell, when Sviatoslav, duke of Kiev (945–72), son of Igor and of St. Olga, defeated its army in 965 A.D. The Khazars are the progenitors of European Jewry.
The Modern Bible
The Old Testament
In its general framework, the Old Testament is the account of God's dealing with the Hebrews as his chosen people. The first six books of the Old Testament narrate how the Israelites became a people and settled in the Promised Land. The following seven books continue their story in the Promised Land, describing the establishment and development of the monarchy and the messages of the prophets. The last 11 books contain poetry, theology, and some additional historical works. The term Old Testament was devised by a Christian, Melito of Sardis, about AD 170 to distinguish this part of the Bible from the later New Testament.
The Hebrew canon recognizes the following subdivisions of the Old Testaments three main divisions:
1) The Torah/Pentateuch, in the broadest sense the substance of divine revelation to the Hebrew people: God's revealed teaching or guidance for mankind. The meaning of “Torah” is often restricted to signify the first five books of the Old Testament, also called the Law or the Pentateuch. These are the books traditionally ascribed to Moses, the recipient of the original revelation from God on Mount Sinai. Jewish, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant canons all agree on their order: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
2) The Nevi'im/The Prophets the second division of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament. In the Hebrew canon the Prophets are divided into (1) the Former Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings) and (2) the Latter Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel - and the Twelve, or Minor, Prophets: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi). This canon, though somewhat fluid up to the early 2nd century BC, was finally fixed by a council of rabbis at Jabneh (Jamnia), now in Israel, at about 100 A.D.
2a) The Protestant canon follows the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament. It calls the Former Prophets the Historical Books, and subdivides two of them into Samuel I and II, and Kings I and II. Some Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox versions further divide Kings into four books. Maccabees I and II are also included in the Roman and Eastern canons as historical books.
2b) The Prophets in the Protestant canon include Isaiah (which appears in two books in some Catholic versions), Jeremiah, and Ezekiel from the Hebrew Latter Prophets. The Minor Prophets (The Twelve) are treated as 12 separate books; thus the Protestant canon has 17 prophetic books. The Roman Catholics accept the book of Baruch, including as its 6th chapter the Letter of Jeremiah, both considered apocryphal by Jews and Protestants.
3) The Ketuvim/The Writings, the third division of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament. Divided into four sections, the Ketuvim includes: Poetical books (Psalms, Proverbs, and Job), the Megillot, or Scrolls (Song of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations of Jeremiah, Ecclesiastes, and Esther), prophecy (Daniel), and history (Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles I and II).
3a) Thus the Ketuvim is a miscellaneous collection of liturgical poetry, secular love poetry, wisdom literature, history, apocalyptic literature, a short story, and a romantic tale. They were composed over a long period of time—from before the Babylonian Exile in the early 6th century B.C. to the middle of the 2nd century B.C. — and were not entirely accepted as canonical until the 200 A.D. Unlike the Torah and the Nevi'im (Prophets), which were canonized as groups, each book of the Ketuvim was canonized separately, often on the basis of its popularity.
The total number of books in the Hebrew canon is 24, the number of scrolls on which these works were written in ancient times. The Old Testament as adopted by Christianity numbers more works for the following reasons. The Roman Catholic canon, derived initially from the Greek-language Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible, absorbed a number of books that Jews and Protestants later determined were not canonical (see apocrypha); and Christians divided some of the original Hebrew works into two or more parts, specifically, Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles (two parts each), Ezra-Nehemiah (two separate books), and the Minor Prophets (12 separate books).
In the Apocrypha of the Old Testament, various types of literature are represented; the purpose of the Apocrypha seems to have been to fill in some of the gaps left by the undisputed canonical books and to carry the history of Israel forward to the 2nd century B.C.
Old Testament pseudepigrapha are extremely numerous and offer accounts of patriarchs and events, attributed to various biblical personages from Adam to Zechariah. Some of the most significant of these works are the Ascension of Isaiah, the Assumption of Moses, the Life of Adam and Eve, the First and Second Books of Enoch, the Book of Jubilees, the Letter of Aristeas, and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. Pseudepigrapha – Are works usually spuriously attributing authorship to some biblical character. Pseudepigrapha are not included in any canon.
The New Testament
The New Testament is the second and later, also smaller of the two major divisions of the Christian Bible, and the portion that is canonical (authoritative) only to Christianity.
Christians see the New Testament as the fulfillment of the promise of the Old Testament. It recounts the life and ministry of Jesus and interprets its meaning for the early church. Like the Old Testament, the New Testament is a collection of books, including a variety of early Christian literature.
The New Testament focuses especially on the new covenant created between God and the followers of Jesus. There are 27 books in the New Testament: The four Gospels of the New Testament deal with the life, the person, and the teachings of Jesus, as he was remembered by the Christian community. The book of Acts carries the story of Christianity from the Resurrection of Jesus to the end of the career of the Apostle Paul; The Letters (21), or Epistles, are correspondence by various leaders of the early Christian church, chief among them the Apostle Paul, applying the message of the church to the sundry needs and problems of early Christian congregations; and the Book of Revelation, a description of the coming apocalypse. The Book of Revelation is the only accepted canonical representative of a large genre of apocalyptic literature that appeared in the early Christian movement. Apocalypse - The Jewish and Christian writings of 200 B.C. to A.D. 150 marked by pseudonymity – (a fictitious name), symbolic imagery, and the expectation of an imminent cosmic cataclysm in which God destroys the ruling powers of evil and raises the righteous to life in a messianic kingdom.
Most are believed to have been written shortly after Jesus’ death in the later 1st century A.D, though none can be dated precisely. Only two authors are known for certain: St. Paul, credited with 13 epistles; and St. Luke, writer of the third gospel and the Book of Acts. Attributions of other authors range from highly likely (for the other three gospels) to completely unknown (for the Epistle to the Hebrews). These documents circulated among the early churches and were used as preaching and teaching sources. The earliest known list of the current New Testament canons dates from 367 A.D, in a work by St. Athanasius. A church council of 382 A.D, gave final approval to the list.
Heretical movements such as Gnosticism and Montanism spawned a great body of New Testament pseudepigrapha. The existence of such purported scriptures lent great impetus to the process of canonization in the young and orthodox Christian Church. Heretical - A religious opinion contrary to church dogma.
All the New Testament apocrypha are pseudepigraphal, and most of them fall into the categories of acts, gospels, and epistles, though there are a number of apocalypses and some can be characterized as wisdom books. The apocryphal acts purport to relate the lives or careers of various biblical figures, including most of the apostles; the epistles, gospels, and others are ascribed to such figures. Some relate encounters and events in mystical language and describe arcane rituals.
Most of these works, arose from sects that had been or would be declared heretical, such as the Gnostics. Some of them argued against various heresies, and a few appear to have been neutral efforts to popularize the life of some saint or other early leader of the church, including a number of women. In the early decades of Christianity no orthodoxy had been established, and various parties or factions were vying for ascendancy and regularity in the young church. All sought through their writings, as through their preaching and missions, to win believers. In this setting virtually all works advocating beliefs that later became heretical, were destined to denunciation and destruction.
In addition to apocryphal works per se, the New Testament includes a number of works and fragments that are described by a second meaning of the term deuterocanonical: (“added later”). The Letter to the Hebrews attributed to Paul, who died before it was written, is one of these; others are the letters of James, Peter (II), John (II and III), and Jude, and the Revelation to John. Fragments include Mark 16:9–20, Luke 22:43–44, and John 7:53 and 8:1–11. All are included in the Roman Catholic canon and are accepted by the Eastern Church and most Protestant churches.
Aspects of the Christian religion
New Testament references to the “mysteries of the kingdom of heaven” (for example), Matthew 13:11; Mark 4:11; Luke 8:10) generated myth and legend. The New Testament emphasis on secrecy and on the mysteries of salvation became fertile ground for the exfoliations of myth and legend. Things hidden from the beginning of the world now blossomed in the signs of the new messianic age. These truths, now come to light, should be proclaimed to the whole world. Through myth and legend, Christians transmitted and explored, with the full force of the imagination, the wonders revealed in Christ and the secrets of his salvation.
Esoteric traditions, especially those based on apocalypses and apocrypha (such as the Apocalypse of Peter, Gospel of Thomas, Secret Gospel of Mark, and Gospel of Philip) preserve some legends and myths descending from the early Christian centers of Edessa, Alexandria, and Asia Minor. The First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus (known also as the Arabic Infancy Gospel) recounts that one day, Jesus and his playmates were playing on a rooftop and one boy fell down and died. The other playmates ran away, leaving Jesus accused of pushing the dead boy. Jesus, however, went to the dead boy and asked, “Zeinunus”, who threw you down from the housetop?” The dead boy answered that Jesus had not done it and named another (I Infancy 19:4–11).
This and other such narratives describe the “hidden life” of Jesus in the 30 years before his public ministry began. The Acts of Paul narrates the story of a friend of Paul who was thrown to the lions—one of which defended her in a manner similar to that of the lion in the story of Androcles, a well-known legend. Other exemplary legends appear in the Acts of the Martyrs and other histories. After Christian theologians defined orthodoxies in terms of Greek philosophy or Roman juridical code, these mythic themes appeared clumsy or tasteless and in retrospect, heterodox or even heretical.
Groups of Gnostics and heretics, who based their ideas on alternative mythologies of Christian salvation, furnished exotic Christian myths, legends, and practices. In the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D, these groups often subscribed to theories of dualism, that is: the world of matter was created by an evil god (of the Book of Genesis), and the realm of the spirit was created by a good god (revealed in the New Testament), and they were irreconcilably pitted against one another.
Many Gnostic sects—among them the Valentinians, Basilidians, Ophites, and Simonians—developed a variety of myths. Valentinus lived in Rome and Alexandria in the mid-2nd century. Valentinian myths describe how the pleroma (spiritual realm) that existed in the beginning was disrupted by a fall. The Creator God of Genesis, aborted from the primordial world, became a Demiurge and created the material universe. He deliberately created two kinds of human being and animated them with his breath: these were the hylics and the psychics. Demiurge - A subordinate deity who is the creator of the material world.
Unknown to the Demiurge however, certain remnants of pleromic wisdom contained in his breath lodged as spiritual particles in matter and produced a third group of beings called pneumatics. The God of Genesis now tries to prevent Gnostics from discovering their past origins, present powers, and future destinies. Gnostics (the pneumatics) contain within themselves divine sparks expelled from the pleroma. Christ was sent from the pleroma to teach Gnostics the saving knowledge (gnosis) of their true identities and was crucified when the Demiurge of Genesis discovered that Christ (the male partner of the feminine Holy Spirit) was in Jesus. After Christ returned to the pleroma, the Holy Spirit descended.
Another group: The Ophites (from the Greek word ophis, “serpent”) reinterpreted the mythological theme of the Fall of Man in Genesis. According to the Ophite view, the serpent of the Garden of Eden wanted Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, to eat from the tree of knowledge (gnosis) so that they would know their true identities and “be like God” (Genesis 3:5). The serpent thus, is interpreted as a messenger of the spiritual god, and the one who wanted to prevent Adam and Eve from eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge is viewed as the Demiurge. In their rejection of the God of the Old Testament, who gave the Ten Commandments, the Ophites flaunted their sexual freedom by extreme sexual license, a trait common to other Gnostic groups as well.
The Phibionites in Alexandria were another Gnostic sect described by Epiphanius. They gathered at banquets that became ecstatic orgies. Married couples changed partners for dramatic sexual performances. Sperm and menstrual blood were gathered and offered as a gift to God before being consumed as the Body and Blood of Christ. By such erotic communions they sought to re-gather the elements of the world-soul (psyche) from the material forms into which it had been dispersed through a cosmic tragedy at the beginning of time. The re-gathering amounted to salvation, for all things would be gathered up into the one glorious body of Christ.
The Magi and the Child of Wondrous Light.
The legend of the Magi-Kings was embellished in apocryphal books and Christian folklore. The Proto-gospel of James and the Chronicle of Zuqnin, describe the birth of the Savior. Like the God Mithra, the divine child is consubstantial with celestial light and was born in a mountain cave on December 25. Such imagery of the Nativity of Christ and the symbolism of the royal visitors may originally have descended from Persian accounts of the birth of the cosmic savior, for the accounts seem to owe a great deal to Persian theologies of light.
But the themes have been recast in Christian terms. The Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum, relates that 12 Magi-Kings lived near the Mountain of Victories, which they climbed every year in the hope of finding the messiah in a cave on the mountaintop. Each year they entered the cave and prayed for three days, waiting for the promised star to appear. Adam had revealed this location and the secret promises to his son Seth. Seth transmitted the mysteries to his sons, who passed the information from generation to generation. Eventually the Magi, sons of kings, entered the cave to find a star of unspeakable brightness, glowing more than many suns together. The star and its bright light led to, or became, the Holy Child, the son of the Light, who redeems the world. Mithra - pre-Zoroastrian Persia – The Sun god – also, the celestial deity who oversaw all solemn agreements. Magi - Zoroastrian priest
The Vulgate Bible
(From the Latin editio vulgata: “common version”), Latin Bible used by the Roman Catholic Church, primarily translated by St. Jerome in 382 A.D. Pope Damasus commissioned Jerome, the leading biblical scholar of his day, to produce an acceptable Latin version of the Bible from the various translations then being used. His revised Latin translation of the Gospels appeared about 383 A.D.
The Septuagint was an important basis for St. Jerome's translation of the Old Testament into Latin for the Vulgate Bible; and, although he had doubts about the authenticity of some of the apocryphal works that it contained (he was the first to employ the word apocrypha in the sense of “noncanonical”), he was overruled, and most of them were included in the Vulgate.
Other apocryphal writings, canonical only to Roman Catholicism, with an exception or two, include the Book of Baruch (a prophet) and the Letter of Jeremiah (often the sixth chapter of Baruch); the First and Second Books of Maccabees; several stories from Daniel, namely, the Song of the Three, Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon; and extensive portions of the Book of Esther. Certain other books found in the Septuagint—the Apocrypha for Protestants and Jews; the deuterocanonical books for Roman Catholics—were included. Deuterocanonical works are those that are accepted in one canon but not in all.
Various editors and correctors produced revised texts of the Vulgate over the years. The University of Paris produced an important edition in the 13th century. Its primary purpose was to provide an agreed standard for theological teaching and debate. The earliest printed Vulgate Bibles were all based on this Paris edition.
In 1546 the Council of Trent decreed that the Vulgate was the exclusive Latin authority for the Bible, and declared the canonicity of nearly the entire Vulgate, excluding only the Third and Fourth Books of Maccabees, the Prayer of Manasseh, Psalm 151, and the First and Second Books of Esdras.
Eastern Christendom, meanwhile, had accepted some of the Old Testament apocrypha—Tobit, Judith, the Wisdom of Solomon, and Ecclesiasticus (Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach)—but rejected the rest.
The so-called Clementine Vulgate, issued by Pope Clement VIII in 1592, became the authoritative biblical text of the Roman Catholic Church. From it the Confraternity Version was translated in 1941. Various critical editions have been produced in modern times; in 1965 a commission was established by the second Vatican Council to revise the Vulgate.
John Wycliffe and the Lollards
The first complete English-language version of the Bible dates from 1382 and was credited to John Wycliffe and his followers.
John Wycliffe, a University of Oxford philosopher and theologian whose unorthodox religious and social doctrines in some ways anticipated those of the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. The name “Lollard”, used pejoratively, derived from the Middle Dutch lollaert (“mumbler”), which had been applied earlier to certain European continental groups suspected of combining pious pretensions with heretical belief.
At Oxford in the 1370s, Wycliffe came to advocate increasingly radical religious views. He denied the doctrine of transubstantiation and stressed the importance of preaching and the primacy of Scripture as the source of Christian doctrine. Claiming that the office of the Pope lacked scriptural justification, he equated the Pope with Antichrist and welcomed the 14th-century schism in the papacy as a prelude to its destruction. Wycliffe was charged with heresy and retired from Oxford in 1378. Nevertheless, he was never brought to trial, and he continued to write and preach until his death in 1384. Transubstantiation - The miraculous change by which according to Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox dogma the Eucharistic elements at their consecration become the body and blood of Christ while keeping only the appearances of bread and wine.
The first Lollard group, centered on some of Wycliffe's colleagues at Oxford led by Nicholas of Hereford. The movement gained followers outside of Oxford, and the anticlerical undercurrents of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 were ascribed, probably unfairly, to the influence of Wycliffe and the Lollards. In 1382 William Courtenay, archbishop of Canterbury, forced some of the Oxford Lollards to renounce their views and conform to Roman Catholic doctrine.
The sect continued to multiply however, among townspeople, merchants, gentry, and even the lower clergy. Several knights of the royal household gave their support, as well as a few members of the House of Commons.
The accession of Henry IV in 1399 signaled a wave of repression against heresy. In 1401 the first English statute was passed for the burning of heretics. The Lollards' first martyr, William Sawtrey, was actually burned a few days before the act was passed. In 1414 a Lollard uprising led by Sir John Oldcastle, was quickly defeated by Henry V. The rebellion brought severe reprisals and marked the end of the Lollards' overt political influence.
Driven underground, the movement operated chiefly among trades-people and artisans, supported by a few clerical adherents. About 1500 a Lollard revival began, and before 1530 the old Lollard and the new Protestant forces had begun to merge. The Lollard tradition facilitated the spread of Protestantism and predisposed opinion in favor of King Henry VIII's anticlerical legislation during the English Reformation.
The most complete statement of early Lollard teaching appeared in the Twelve Conclusions, drawn up to be presented to the Parliament of 1395. They began by stating that the church in England had become subservient to her “stepmother, the great church of Rome.” The present priesthood was not the one ordained by Christ, while the Roman ritual of ordination had no warrant in Scripture. Clerical celibacy occasioned unnatural lust, while the “feigned miracle” of transubstantiation led men into idolatry.
The hallowing of wine, bread, altars, vestments, and so forth was related to necromancy. Prelates should not be temporal judges and rulers, for no man can serve two masters. The Conclusions also condemned special prayers for the dead, pilgrimages, and offerings to images, and they declared confession to a priest unnecessary for salvation. Warfare was contrary to the New Testament, and vows of chastity by Nuns led to the horrors of abortion and child murder. Necromancy – Making appeals to the spirits of the dead for purposes of magically revealing the future or influencing the course of events
Finally, the multitude of unnecessary arts and crafts pursued in the church, encouraged “waste, curiosity, and disguising.” The Twelve Conclusions covered all the main Lollard doctrines except two: that the prime duty of priests is to preach and that all men should have free access to the Scriptures in their own language. The Lollards were responsible for a translation of the Bible into English, by Nicholas of Hereford, and later revised by Wycliffe's secretary, John Purvey.
The Gutenberg Bible
Also called the Forty-two-line Bible, or Mazarin Bible, the first complete book existing in the West and the earliest printed from movable type, so called after its printer, Johannes Gutenberg, who completed it about 1455 working at Mainz, Germany. The three-volume work, in Latin text, was printed in 42-line columns and, in its later stages of production, was worked on by six compositors simultaneously. It is sometimes referred to, as the Mazarin Bible because the first copy described by bibliographers was located in the Paris library of Cardinal Mazarin.
Like other contemporary works, the Gutenberg Bible had no title page, no page numbers, and no innovations to distinguish it from the work of a manuscript copyist. This was presumably the desire of both Gutenberg and his customers. Experts are generally agreed that the Bible, though uneconomic in its use of space, displays a technical efficiency not substantially improved upon before the 19th century. The Gothic type is majestic in appearance, medieval in feeling, and slightly less compressed and less pointed than other examples that appeared shortly thereafter.
The original number of copies of this work is unknown; some 40 are still in existence. There are perfect vellum copies in the U.S. Library of Congress, the French Bibliotheque Nationale, and the British Library. In the United States almost-complete texts are in the Huntington, Morgan, New York Public, Harvard University, and Yale University libraries.
The Tyndale Bible
Because of the influence of printing and a demand for scriptures in English, William Tyndale began working on a New Testament translation directly from the Greek in 1523. The work could not be continued in England because of political and ecclesiastical pressures, so the printing of his translation began in Cologne (Germany) in 1525. Again under pressure, this time from the city authorities, Tyndale had to flee to Worms, where two complete editions were published in 1525.
Copies were smuggled into England where they were at once proscribed. Of 18,000 copies printed (1525–28), two complete volumes and a fragment are all that remain.
When the New Testament was finished, Tyndale began work on the Old Testament. The Pentateuch was issued in Marburg in 1530, each of the five books being separately published and circulated.
The Coverdale Bible.
On October 4, 1535, the first complete English Bible, the work of Miles Coverdale, came off the press either in Zürich or in Cologne. The edition was soon exhausted. A second impression appeared in the same year and a third in 1536. A new edition, “overseen and corrected,” was published in England by James Nycholson in Southwark in 1537. Another edition of the same year bore the announcement, “set forth with the king's most gracious license.” In 1538 a revised edition of Coverdale's New Testament printed with the Latin Vulgate in parallel columns issued in England was so full of errors that Coverdale promptly arranged for a rival corrected version to appear in Paris.
The Matthew Bible
In the same year that Coverdale's authorized version appeared, another English Bible was issued under royal license and with the encouragement of ecclesiastical and political power. It appeared (in Antwerp?) under the name of Thomas Matthew, but it is certainly the work of John Rogers, a close friend of Tyndale. Although the version claimed to be “truly and purely translated into English,” it was in reality a combination of the labors of Tyndale and Coverdale. Rogers used the former's Pentateuch and 1535 revision of the New Testament and the latter's translation from Ezra to Malachi and his Apocrypha. Rogers' own contribution was primarily editorial.
The Great Bible.
In an injunction of 1538, Henry VIII commanded the clergy to install in a convenient place in every parish church, “one book of the whole Bible of the largest volume in English.” The order seems to refer to an anticipated revision of the Matthew Bible. The first edition was printed in Paris and appeared in London in April 1539 in 2,500 copies. The huge page size earned it the sobriquet the Great Bible. It was received with immediate and wholehearted enthusiasm.
The first printing was exhausted within a short while, and it went through six subsequent editions between 1540 and 1541. “Editions” is preferred to “impressions” here, since the six successive issues were not identical.
Geneva Bible
Also called Breeches Bible – Was a new translation of the Bible published in Geneva (New Testament done in1557; Old Testament in 1560) by a colony of Protestant scholars in exile from England, who worked under the general direction of Miles Coverdale and John Knox and under the influence of John Calvin. The English churchmen had fled London during the repressive reign of the Roman Catholic Mary I, which had halted the publication of Bibles there.
The work acquired the sobriquet “Breeches Bible” because it described Adam and Eve as having made “breeches” to cover their nakedness (Genesis 3:7), instead of “aprons” or “loincloths.” The Great Bible (named for its large page size and first ordered by Henry VIII in 1538) was restored to the churches after Queen Elizabeth I's succession halted persecution of Anglicans and Protestants, but the Geneva Bible, imported from Europe and not printed in England until 1576, quickly surpassed the Great Bible in public favor. The work's enduring popularity made the Geneva Bible an important influence on the translators of the King James Version of 1611.
The Bishops Bible
The failure of the Great Bible to win popular acceptance against the obvious superiority of its Geneva rival, and the objectionable partisan flavor of the latter's marginal annotations, made a new revision a necessity. By about 1563–64 Archbishop Matthew Parker of Canterbury commissioned its execution and the work was apportioned among many scholars, most of them bishops, from which the popular name was derived.
The Bishops' Bible came off the press in 1568 as a handsome folio volume, the most impressive of all 16th-century English Bibles in respect of the quality of paper, typography, and illustrations. A portrait of the Queen adorned the engraved title page, but it contained no dedication. For some reason Queen Elizabeth never officially authorized the work, but sanction for its public use came from the Convocation (church synod or assembly) of 1571 and it thereby became in effect, the second Authorized Version.
King James Bible.
Because of changing conditions, another official revision of the Protestant Bible in English was needed. The reign of Queen Elizabeth had succeeded in imposing a high degree of uniformity upon the church. The failure of the Bishops' Bible to supplant its Geneva rival made for a discordant note in the quest for unity.
A conference of churchmen in 1604, became noteworthy for its request that the English Bible be revised because existing translations “were corrupt and not answerable to the truth of the original.” King James I was quick to appreciate the broader value of the proposal and at once made the project his own.
By June 30 1604, King James had approved a list of 54 revisers, although extant records show that 47 scholars actually participated. They were organized into six companies, two each working separately at Westminster, Oxford, and Cambridge on sections of the Bible assigned to them. It was finally published in 1611.
Not since the Septuagint, had a translation of the Bible been undertaken under royal sponsorship as a cooperative venture on so grandiose a scale. An elaborate set of rules was contrived to curb individual proclivities and to ensure its scholarly and nonpartisan character. In contrast to earlier practice, the new version was to preserve vulgarly used forms of proper names in keeping with its aim to make the Scriptures popular and familiar.
The impact of Jewish sources upon the King James Version is one of its noteworthy features. The wealth of scholarly tools available to the translators made their final choice of rendering an exercise in originality and independent judgment. For this reason, the new version was more faithful to the original languages of the Bible and more scholarly than any of its predecessors. The impact of the Jewish upon the revisers was so pronounced that they seem to have made a conscious effort to imitate its rhythm and style in the Old Testament. The English of the New Testament actually turned out to be superior to its Greek original.
Two editions were actually printed in 1611, later distinguished as the “He” and “She” Bibles because of the variant reading “he” and “she” in the final clause of chapter 3, verse 15 of Ruth: “and he went into the city.” Both printings contained errors. Some errors in subsequent editions have become famous: The so-called Wicked Bible (1631) derives from the omission of “not” in chapter 20 verse 14 of Exodus, “Thou shalt commit adultery,” for which the printers were fined £300; the “Vinegar Bible” (1717) stems from a misprinting of “vineyard” in the heading of Luke, chapter 20.
The remarkable and total victory of the King James Version could not entirely obscure those inherent weaknesses that were independent of its typographical errors. The manner of its execution had resulted in a certain unequalness and lack of consistency. The translators' understanding of the Hebrew tense system was often limited, so that their version contains inaccurate and infelicitous renderings. In particular, the Greek text of the New Testament, which they used as their base, was a poor one. The great early Greek codices were not then known or available, and Greek papyri, which were to shed light on the common Greek dialect, had not yet been discovered.
A committee established by the Convocation of Canterbury in February 1870, reported favorably three months later on the idea of revising the King James Version: two companies were formed, one each for the Old and New Testaments. A novel development was the inclusion of scholars representative of the major Christian denominations, except the Roman Catholics (who declined the invitation to participate). Another innovation was the formation of parallel companies in the United States to whom the work of the English scholars was submitted and who in turn, sent back their reactions. The instructions to the committees made clear that only a revision and not a new translation was contemplated.
The New Testament was published in England on May 17, 1881, and three days later in the United States, after 11 years of labor. Over 30,000 changes were made, of which more than 5,000 represent differences in the Greek text from that used as the basis of the King James Version. Most of the others were made in the interests of consistency or modernization.
The publication of the Old Testament in 1885 stirred far less excitement, partly because it was less well known than the New Testament, and partly because fewer changes were involved. The poetical and prophetical books, especially Job, Ecclesiastes, and Isaiah, benefited greatly.
The revision of the Apocrypha, not originally contemplated, came to be included only because of copyright arrangements made with the university presses of Oxford and Cambridge and was first published in 1895.
The New English Bible.
The idea of a completely new translation into British English, was first broached in 1946. Under a joint committee, representative of the major Protestant churches of the British Isles, with Roman Catholics appointed as observers, the New Testament was published in 1961 and a second edition appeared in 1970. The Old Testament and Apocrypha were also published in 1970. Apocrypha (apokryptein) - To hide away. In biblical literature, works outside an accepted canon of scripture.
The history of the term's usage indicates that it referred to a body of esoteric writings that were at first prized, later tolerated, and finally excluded. In its broadest sense apocrypha has come to mean any writings of dubious authority.
The New English Bible proved to be an instant commercial success, selling at a rate of 33,000 copies a week in 1970. The translation differed from the English mainstream Bible in that it was not a revision but a completely fresh version from the original tongues. It abandoned the tradition of “biblical English” and except for the retention of “thou” and “thy” in addressing God, freed itself of all archaisms. It endeavored to render the original into the idiom of contemporary English and to avoid ephemeral modernisms.
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posted 29 March, 2009 09:29 PM
Note to Wally; weren't you a little suspicious by the phrase " I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon." What, Black women are not SUPPOSE to be comely? Would a Black person really write that?
You really need to think more critically.
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posted 29 March, 2009 11:37 PM
^ You need to learn how to read..... "*but comely", asterisks by words have implications for meanings, though doubtless none that you would be inclined to grasp.
It is also a poem, written by the ancient Hebrews about a Black women, and not an *interview*, quoting the woman.
But the worst part of your babblement is.... Wally clearly explained that, and you still failed to grasp it.
You're hilarious Mike111.
Esp, in the way you think playing the idiot can allow you to hide from the complete destruction of your ridiculous claims that ancient Kemetian and Hebrews did not know of the existence of non Black peoples. Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted 30 March, 2009 12:16 AM
Maybe you should ask Ausar to delete Mike like you did Jamie. You seem to fall back on that whenever you can't argue a point. You spineless coward. lol
Posts: 4165 | From: jamaica | Registered: May 2008
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posted 30 March, 2009 01:40 AM
^^Crackakoben how about you hop off everyones nuts that you obviously have envy for, huh jewboy?
Posts: 6572 | From: N.Y.C....Capital of the World | Registered: Jun 2008
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quote:Originally posted by Freehand: Agreed, you, sir knucklehead and akoben must have been eating your wheaties, cuz you're clearly feelin' yourselves
Sounds cute airhead, but what does it mean?
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posted 30 March, 2009 11:27 AM
Freehand - I see you have difficulty in expressing yourself, is your condition similar to Autism?
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posted 31 March, 2009 10:22 AM
^What is it that I didn't comprehend; and will you please explain it to me. Thanking you in advance.
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