By Odimegwu Onwumere
When you say “A dead God” and “A living God” what do you have in mind? Obviously, from the Nigerian Christians’ periscope, they refer “A Dead God” to represent the numerous Gods that Africa has and use “A living God” to quantify the God that is called Jehovah/Yahweh.
While we will be exploring to understand the misinformation the West has for ages been using against Africa and Africans against their Gods and majority of our people have swallowed their lies line, lead and sinker and many are still swallowing, in 2012, I had excerpted some lines contained in Robert Obioha’s Column, Friday Sun, Oct. 12, 2012, Pg 19, for us to understand if our traditional peoples worship “A Dead God”.
In that wonderful piece, Obioha writes: “All religions including the received Christian and Islamic religions and African indigenous religions acknowledge the need for prayers in the life of the individual, the community and the nation… Nigerians did not hear of God and prayer from the white missionaries or their Arab counterparts.
“Our forebears had been praying and worshipping their God on the terms they knew best before the unwarranted incursion of these intruders. Yet after praying for good crop yield, they go to the farm and till the soil. They work and pray. But today, Nigerians literally depend on prayers that only prayer controls their lives. They pray to God to heal them of headache, malaria and cough…”
In 2010, I had written in other fora that Professor Molefi Kete Asante in his article titled “The Future Of African Gods: The Clash of Civilization” (July 10, 1998) wrote that “Those who speak to us of Christian and Islamic morals have often been the very ones who have defiled our ancestors memories and called our sacred rites paganism.
“Malcolm X once said that the world pushes the African around because we give the impression that we are chumps, but chumps, weaklings, falling over ourselves to follow other people rather than our own traditions”.
In the words of Asante, “This is what the Chinese and Indians have fought to keep at bay. While we have often embraced our enemies’ gods they have found those gods to be anathema to their interests. Show me the gods we Africans worship and I will show you the extent of our moral and ethical decay”.
In the same year, I had written that: Professor MAC Odu in his article titled “Obama’s Significance” (Sunday Independent (Nig), October 25, 2009), didn’t sing a different song. He wrote that, “The entry of Barack Obama into White House as President of United States of America has immense significance in the world history.
“It has happened to shut down nearly 400 years of world history that evidenced greed of Europe. It has provided the White World an opportunity for remorse for its past in broadcasting wrong principles in the world for earthly benefits.
“The world was made by Europe to believe that the Black man was less endowed than his White counterpart. That wrong principle is now dead and buried…. Zimbabwe, South Africa, Angola, Congo, Australia, New Zealand etc. are nations imbued by creation with unique features, and Europeans moved in to pollute with their craving for earthly gain and subjugating human beings allocated such lands as their heritage during their temporary sojourn here”.
In the above highlight, I must say that many people are dead in Nigeria in the name of religion, even though that they are living. They are ‘dead’ due to the religions that the West and Arabs introduced in the continent of Africa and they grabbed them with their two hands and legs and chests tied around the alien religions.
They do not go beyond what they were told in order to see if there are stories behind their colonized and spoon-fed minds. While they see “dead God” in the African spirituality, yet, they call the dead ancestors of Europeans and Americans to assist them in their prayers. I want to scream sometimes, when I hear our people referring to any aboriginal things here as devil or associated to the Christians’ invented demons that do not exist anywhere in the world except in the savagery mindset of the sect about spirituality.
Against that influence, it is obvious that many of our people are running away from who they are and embracing what the West wants them to be. In 2012, I had excerpted some lines that were contained in (Musician) Segun Akinlolu’s (known as Beautiful Nubia) wisdom.
Akinlolu had said in an interview in Friday Sun, Oct. 12, 2012, thus: “I am who I am. Many people are trying to run away from who they are. They are running away from who their parents are, from the heritage that is theirs. I embrace my heritage, where I’m coming from, the language they speak, the values they uphold like honesty, selflessness, uprightness, self-pride, truth and communal spirit…
“That is my package; I embrace traditional values… What some people are running away from; what they are calling too archaic, I go towards it… What the West gave us that we are trying to run toward, that all of us are trying to adopt, has its own values, advantages and disadvantages…
“What we inherited from our forefathers, ancestors are values and advantages. As somebody who has been exposed to the two, I should be a perfect agent and know the one that is superior.”
Today, ‘they’ are not telling us about the “Osiris” and “Horus” stories, whereas in archaeological and anthropological proofs, they were replayed down through history and attached to a host or “redeemers” like “Tutankhamun, Chrishna of Hindostan, Budha Sakia of India, Odin of the Scaudinavians, Zoroaster and Mithra of Persia, Baal and Taut, “the only Begotten of God,” of Phenicia, Indra of Thibet, Bali of Afghanistan. Jao of Nepaul, Wittoba of the Bilingones, Thammuz of Syria, Atys of Phrygia, Xaniolxis of Thrace, Zoar of the Bonzes, Adad of Assyria, Thor, son of Odin, of the Gauls, Cadmus of Greece, Quexalcote of Mexico, the Divine Teacher of Plato, Adonis, son of the virgin Io of Greece, Quirinus of Rome, Prometheus of Caucasus, Mohamud, or Mahomet, of Arabia, and finally Jesus of Nazareth…”
At present, the West apparently is telling us that it is superior to Africa and in one of their biblical injunctions, told us that the Egyptians we see today we shall see them no more, whereas the same Egypt was the cradle of the world’s cultures and traditions and from where even the Christian traditions were re-phrased by early Greeks and Romans for political reasons.
Nowadays, those political policies are hoodwinking our people into believing that ours is always “A dead God” but “A living God” for the West. I had written in another forum in 2010 that in the light of that, Meshiyach Yahzitere Yahmarabhi in his article – “Hard Truth” – (published in The Moonlight newspapers, Nigeria, April 20-26, 2010), said “… we still see their churches and mosques as salvation chambers while those things were consciousness we inherited as slaves”.
He further opined that the African race can never see civilization if they continue playing the scripts written for them by the western world, and he maintained that “…truly liberation in Africa can’t be meaningful until a strong and truthful religion emerges from Africa and dominate the world….
“Walter Rodney, an African-American stock in his epic socio-scientific thesis named “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa”, Yahmarabhi said he prophesied the perpetual domination of Africa by Europe, unless Africa looked inward to thwart the evil mechanization of the imperialists and neo-imperialists. (But he was tagged a nincompoop).”
Just as Rodney was tagged a radical (by Europe), a Marxist and a social scientist with little relevance to human history, in another era, Frantz Fanon in his book “Wretched of the Earth”, Yahmarabhi said, “Fanon exposed the annihilation scheme of the imperialists to turn Africa to a mere economic zoo, where Africa as a suppressed specie of human beings will turn to robots… likewise Fanon was regarded with loathsomeness at home and abroad.”
In what the West has told us is the Ten Commandments of God, has been exposed as not such in many ancient proofs, which shall be dissected accordingly as we burgeon in this discussion. According to Xenophilia, a website for (True Strange Stuff), “The Ten Commandments, eight of them at least, were taken from the Egyptian Principles of Ma’at written at least 2000 years earlier.”
The investigation goes further: “Written at least 2,000 years before the Ten Commandments of Moses, the 42 Principles of Ma’at are one of Africa’s, and the world’s oldest sources of moral and spiritual instruction. Ma’at, the Ancient Egyptian divine Principle of Truth, Justice, and Righteousness, is the foundation of natural and social order and unity.
“Ancient Africans developed a humane system of thought and conduct which has been recorded in volumes of African wisdom literature, such as, these declarations from the Book of Coming Forth By Day (the so-called Book of the Dead), The Teachings of Ptah-Hotep, the writings of Ani, Amenemope, Merikare, and others…
“One aspect of ancient Egyptian funerary literature which often is mistaken for a codified ethic of Ma’at is Chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead, often called the 42 Declarations of Purity or the Negative Confession. These declarations varied somewhat from tomb to tomb, and so cannot be considered a canonical definition of Ma’at.
“Rather, they appear to express each tomb owner’s individual conception of Ma’at, as well as working as a magical absolution (misdeeds or mistakes made by the tomb owner in life could be declared as not having been done, and through the power of the written word, wipe that particular misdeed from the afterlife record of the deceased).
“Many of the lines are similar, however, and they can help to give the student a “flavor” for the sorts of things which Ma’at governed—essentially everything from the most formal to the most mundane aspect of life. Many versions are given on-line, unfortunately seldom do they note the tomb from which they came or, whether they are a collection from various different tombs.” – (Wiki).
Tiger Lily responded on January 3, 2012 at 2:27 am concerning the distorted Egyptian 42 Commandments:
I don’t mean to be rude, but this is not about black or white. This is a post about the history of theological beliefs. Moses was indeed adopted by the Egyptian royals and would clearly have known the laws of Goddess Ma’at. He would have used that knowledge to convert his followers. You see, people don’t always follow a completely new idea. Often there has to be some form of familiarity to convince people to a new way of thinking. Moses did that. Christians later did that to Pagans…etc. It’s actually very political. He wanted an uprising. He wanted people to follow him. He needed to convince them. How better than to preach something they already knew? So this has NOTHING to do with white or black and I find it so infuriating that someone always makes a racist remark. It’s politics. It’s theology. But this is not black against white or vice versa.
In my article titled, “The stolen African literature” (2010), I had made the following informed comments:
The Ameer Spiritual leader, and Pan-African Movement leader, Writer/Poet Naiwu Osahon, in his masterpiece titled “Bible Calls God Satan”, amongst other things, had the same view with the above writer. Osahon wrote that “the Bible is made up of the Old and New Testaments, and is the canon of the three branches of Christianity: Roman Catholic, Greek and other orthodox sects, and the Protestant groups. Judaism and Islam put premium on the Old Testament, which came from a wide range of ancient manuscripts written in archaic Hebrew, Aramaic, and Chaldean languages, with their problems of modern interpretations.
“Some of the books misquoted, distorted or misinterpreted to assemble the bible included: The Book of the Dead (African), which the British Museum gave their own title of (The book of the Coming Forth by Day and Night), in 1895. The book of Divines (African); the Book of Judgment (African); the Heart of Judgment and such other works.
“Also included in the list of documents, of course, was the Jewish Old Testament. Two of the most important documents the church fathers distorted and suppressed while putting the Christian religion together namely: The Coptic Scrolls, sometimes called the Nag Hammadi literature, were found at Nag Hammadi in 1945, while the Dead Sea Scrolls (supposed to have been produced around the 9th or 10th Century, were dug out of a cave near Qumran in the Judean desert in the 1950s”.
Researcher Ben Noah also talked about such books, and he wrote: “Books such as: The Egyptian Book of the Dead (originally titled The Book of Coming Forth by Day and by Night) by E. A. Wallis Budge; The Coffin Text and The Pyramid Text; The World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors by Kersey Graves; and Christianity Before Christ by John G. Jackson, among others, have recorded these various stories and all you have to do is read them to see this evidence for yourself.
“Some Egyptologists feel that the triad of deities: Amon, Mut and Khonsu, at the temple in Karnak, were copied by the early Christians to form the present Holy Trinity. I kid you not when I say that “all roads lead to Egypt and not Rome”. Rome has just lied about it…. As a side note, according to most Christian scriptures, Jesus was said to have been born in Bethlehem, or Nazareth.
“In the Coptic writings, where the oldest Christians called Copts still reside (Kemet and Ethiopia), and according to Dr. Yosef ben-Jochannan, a Kemetologist, born in Ethiopia, Jesus was said to have been born in Kemet (Egypt). In Matthew 2:15, it still says, “Out of Egypt shall I call my son!”
“Contrary to written sources, Kemet (Egypt) is where Christianity was born, while Ethiopia built the first Christian Church and was the world’s first and oldest Christian nation. Christianity was originally an African religion, as was the Hebrew African religion called Judaism”.
Juxtaposing to that, the erudite writer/poet Osahon stated that “The Scrolls incorporate ideas from very ancient Pagan times in Egypt, and The Dead Sea Scrolls include Isaiah’s materials dating back to the second century BCE. These were all doctored while being translated into European languages.
“For instance, the Jews while translating the Hebrew religion into Greek text fraudulently spelt one of their deities or idols, with the capital letter ‘G’ for ‘God’ while spelling the idols of other nations with the small letter ‘g’ for ‘god’.
“Seventy Jewish scholars gathered in Alexandra, Egypt, around 200 BCE to perpetrate the fraud. They found that although Judaism was preaching monotheism, they were in reality serving several deities or gods of the Canaanites”.
Osahon reiterated that what the world today refers to as the ‘Most High God’ was the Canaanite God: “El”.
“The Canaanites deity was El (or El Elyon),” he said, “Whose subordinates or sons were spelt with small letters as in: el, eloah and elohiym. None of these deities, not even El, was considered the Supreme or Universal Being.
“They were all deities with El as their superior or Father or the only God that could be spelt with the capital letter ‘G’. These deities were actually super human beings who had at one time or the other lived on earth and are now ancestors who took charge of several individual nations. El Elyon (Black, Father or God of all gods), allocated the nations of the world to the deities”.
Yet, while many of us refer to our aboriginal Gods as “Dead”, Xenophilia, the website for (True Strange Stuff) has this to say: “Here is a different translation showing how “THE 42 COMMANDMENTS OF ANCIENT EGYPT” correlate with the 10 commandments.
“Moses, if he existed, (there is no undisputed historical/archaeological evidence that he did), was an Egyptian. According to stories, he was adopted by an Egyptian royal family. If that were true he would have been familiar with these principles. If there was no historical Moses, then others most likely borrowed a few of the Principles of Ma’at when composing the Ten Commandments.”
Read the below:
THE 42 COMMANDMENTS OF ANCIENT EGYPT
I.
Thou shalt not kill, nor bid anyone kill.
II.
Thou shalt not commit adultery or rape.
III.
Thou shalt not avenge thyself nor burn with rage.
IV.
Thou shalt not cause terror.
V.
Thou shalt not assault anyone nor cause anyone pain.
VI.
Thou shalt not cause misery.
VII.
Thou shalt not do any harm to man or to animals.
VIII.
Thou shalt not cause the shedding of tears.
IX.
Thou shalt not wrong the people nor bear them any evil intent.
X.
Thou shalt not steal nor take that which does not belong to you.
XI.
Thou shalt not take more than thy fair share of food.
XII.
Thou shalt not damage the crops, the fields, or the trees.
XIII.
Thou shalt not deprive anyone of what is rightfully theirs.
XIV.
Thou shalt not bear false witness, nor support false allegations.
XV.
Thou shalt not lie, nor speak falsely to the hurt of another.
XVI.
Thou shalt not use fiery words nor stir up any strife.
XVII.
Thou shalt not speak or act deceitfully to the hurt of another.
XVIII.
Thou shalt not speak scornfully against others.
XIX.
Thou shalt not eavesdrop.
XX.
Thou shalt not ignore the truth or words of righteousness.
XXI.
Thou shalt not judge anyone hastily or harshly.
XXII.
Thou shalt not disrespect sacred places.
XXIII.
Thou shalt cause no wrong to be done to any workers or prisoners.
XXIV.
Thou shalt not be angry without good reason.
XXV.
Thou shalt not hinder the flow of running water.
XXVI.
Thou shalt not waste the running water.
XXVII.
Thou shalt not pollute the water or the land.
XXVIII.
Thou shalt not take God’s name in vain.
XXIX.
Thou shalt not despise nor anger God.
XXX.
Thou shalt not steal from God.
XXXI.
Thou shalt not give excessive offerings nor less than what is due.
XXXII.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods.
XXXIII.
Thou shalt not steal from nor disrespect the dead.
XXXIV.
Thou shalt remember and observe the appointed holy days.
XXXV.
Thou shalt not hold back the offerings due God.
XXXVI.
Thou shalt not interfere with sacred rites.
XXXVII.
Thou shalt not slaughter with evil intent any sacred animals.
XXXVIII.
Thou shalt not act with guile or insolence.
XXXIX.
Thou shalt not be unduly proud nor act with arrogance.
XL.
Thou shalt not magnify your condition beyond what is appropriate.
XLI.
Thou shalt do no less than your daily obligations require.
XLII.
Thou shalt obey the law and commit no treason.
On July 27, 2013 at 5:05 pm one Ahabyah Of’Zion made the following confessional statement in response to the above on the website, buttressing how the subject “God” came into existence and opens a new mind of how Africans inherited the concept – “A Dead God” while the West – “A living God”.
Ahabyah Of ‘Zion said, “First of all, do you people not know that those of old reverence themselves as “Gods” “Goddesses”? Every Law they set was inspired by self… The word “God” in the past reference that one was in control, leader, or one of authority which means if Obama or Beyounce was back then he (or she) would be a “GOD/Goddesses”.
“Thank the Most High he has given me revelations that go far beyond what so many of you simple people understand. You all would worship anything and everything except for the right thing.
“That’s why the world is in chaos today. You don’t need a “God”, “Goddess” or the spirits of old to reach the father. If you search deep within yourself with true love for the creator and put away foolish traditions he would find you. You wouldn’t have to go whoring around with the “Book of the Dead”, King James Bible or other idolatry to reach The Most High…”
Correcting the later oversight by Ahabyah Of ‘Zion, Lorraine Voss responded on the same page on May 12, 2014 at 1:25 am: “…and the ‘Book Of The Dead’ is the title that the Europeans named changing the true Book’s name the “Coming Forth By Day, and by Night” in 1835 (remember what Osahon said. Mine), because of their misunderstanding, as usual…. and it’s a book that documents all of the papyrus found by archaeologists on the walls of stone written by the ancient Afrikan Kings, and Queens. You will learn this if you do the research that it’s all kept in the British, and Cairo Museums, history, and artifacts…Hotep.”
In October 2014, I had written that the so-called “Most High” is not separated from man. And I wrote: “Much as I know, man is of three substances or elements: the body, the soul and the Spirit. The Spirit is uncreated and this differentiates man from man, and man from animals. The early Igbo knew about this truth and they have the maxim: Onye n’Chi ya (Everybody has his own Spirit/God).
“This Spirit/God is not externalised. However, the dis(organised) religions of this world have tied this Spirit/God in the ecumenical politics through which the different dis(organised) religions cropped-up. This Spirit/God was known to be a Spark in everybody and was not externalised as it is today.
“Conversely, the Spirit/God has been shackled and imprisoned against (its) will through (ORGANISED) dogmas and doctrines of all these book-religions, thereby making man to look at his Spirit/God as something that is too far to be reached. The Spirit/God is “uncreated antimatter spark” chained up in a body and envisioned by the soul.
“Every man has control over his Spirit/God, without which “man would never have stopped being a hominid”. It is this Spirit/God that makes man to evolve. The Spirit/God always goes out with the soul when a man transits.”
To sum up this treatise, another commentator on the website on September 22, 2013 at 9:39 pm said, “Egypt is our culture. We were Kings and Queens, we are Gods. There are things in this world no one would ever understand, because the man has them thinking with a closed mind. Open that third eye… (Our Creator) gave you and see things for what they really are. Black men and women are the most special beings in the first five galaxies including this one. We can do amazing things once we stop (not being who we originally were. Mine).”
Odimegwu Onwumere is a Poet/Writer; he writes from Rivers State. Tel: +2348057778358. Email: apoet_25@yahoo.com