– AN EXPLORATION ON EMANCIPATION, TOO LONG AVOIDED
I grew up hearing of how the “White man’s Bible” enslaved us. I was guided into a stream of study that shocked me awake from the local church statues and beautiful renaissance paintings in children’s books and movie stories on Biblical times, which have not ceased, that I had digested from my earliest years of cognisance, which with a lack of geography would place the Biblical world in Europe. There are two worlds of theories and imagery available in respect to the African presence in the Biblical spaces. That compounds the confusion and presents a tremendous effort to seek clarity on the origins of the ideas, metaphors, and interpretations of old-world experiences retold in dramatic storylines. For instance, there are many narratives from diverse peoples of the Biblical flood, there was likely a global rise of waters, traumatic enough to generate heroes and doctrines. Locally, the archaeologist Denis Williams in finding shellfish remains of seafood miles inland, theorised that the sea in the north-west of Guyana was miles inland a few thousand years ago.
Rome’s adaptation of the faithist movement that emerged from the teachings of the ‘Christ’ and titled it ‘Christianity’ on the order of emperor Constantine, supported by the Roman Legions. I must infer that race is not entirely the imperative to establish colonisation of the mind, culture, and body. The yoke of secular Christian imposition began on the backs of pagan Europe, and those who pointed to misrepresentations of the Christ (or Kheru-Khemetic name describing the nature of the Christ) teachings. But from the ancient world up to the 1900’s the human imagination was captured and instructed to, by deciding authorities, with harsh penalties for individuals and populations in vulnerable positions who dared defy, thus a collaboration of narratives from Rabbis and officials and Saints of Christendom convoluted texts to remove Africa from having a historical memory pertaining to Antiquity; to empower the post-Moorish-era European’s justification of the slave -trade of non-Islamic Moors, thus the fiction of the ‘Noah curse’ see ‘NOAH’S CURSE’ by Stephen R. Haynes to explore what I cannot do in this article. The Bible in content is a collaborative work of the ages, Gary Greenberg President of the Bible Archaeology Society of New York gave us two study texts: “The Moses Mystery-the African origin of the Jewish people” In which historical and scientific methods are used to evolve the Biblical narrative, exposing Biblical similarity to the Khemetic text. Next, Mr. Greenberg, a Senior Trial Attorney, among other achievements, also wrote ‘Myths of the Bible. How ancient scribes invented Biblical History”. It must be noted that no religious Book has been exempt from the accusation of myth-making and converting previous events into their own, though some religions are savagely violent of questioners who summon doubts. Joseph Williams wrote “Hebrewisms of West Africa. Both the Caribbean and African references made this publication most relevant, bringing a new perspective to evaluating the concept of ‘The White man’s Bible’ .
Thus, these books and the fact of a current awareness of the Biblical geography, places the Biblical events on the continent of Africa, Kush-Sudan, Punt- possibly old Uganda, Egypt-same, Ethiopia same, Elam,-Susa the African kingdoms who joined with nomadic Aryan tribes to create ‘Persia’ and Babylon and Canaan. All are located on the African continent. Terms like middle-East, Mesopotamia are more colonising political constructs. Thus, the principles and values and creeds of inter-human relationships across cultures and tribes, rather than the Genocides of the Prophets, resonate Biblical relevance. The Bible is still a profound narrative of summoning the familiar innate “ I’ve heard that somewhere” , and the residue customary similarities that the West Africans and the minority of Southern Africans whom the slave trade brought to these lands could identify with, in their historical memory, that allowed engagement and manipulation by slavers, with the European. His cultural history of tribal gods differed drastically to the ideas identified as wholesome in the narratives of the Bible. In the theatre of slavery in our Demerara of old, the church, especially the congregational church, was seen as an enemy by most of the planters, while other churches condoned the racist manipulations necessary for the functioning of a slave society and sanctified the transgressors.
Emancipation must place in context the impact of religion and its duel impact especially on the consciousness of the Amerindian and Afro-Guyanese in comparison with the Europeans of the time from the beginnings of our nation; to recognise the detractions and contributions where existing, based on our current interpretations of religion, related to the pagan disguised as Christian and the Heathen with principles and creeds that can be valued as Christian. A great example is the man Jesus called the Christ, when he spoke to his religious leaders about a Kingdom of God and they imagined their roles of office in this Kingdom, and he disappointed them, by informing them that the Kingdom ‘like Emancipation’, must manifest within them. Was it this that caused the fatal falling out? Likewise, we must interpret emancipation, the sustaining tenets that preserved our survival then, and how our founding fathers envisioned within the first hundred years, our enhanced continuance.
