Who wrote the bible, torah and koran?

A translated version of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. This text contains various death and funeral related spells, rites, and other material from pagan Egypt before it was invaded and forcibly converted to Islam. (http://styxhexenhammer666.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/egyptian-book-of-dead.html).

Compatriots,

A lot of Ghanaians/Africans are naive and dogmatic about the origin of religious texts. They are even more extremist in reasoning about the origin of the Bible, Torah and Koran than the Europeans, Jews and Arabs who imposed it on them! A Ghanaian parody (I use this only as a parody) holds: a simpleton taught to chew cleansing stick, ostensibly goes to bed chewing it!

So they bury their heads in the sun concerning the authorship of religious texts. All their lives most Christian ‘believers’ are content to dogmatically read one or two versions of the Holy Bible - usually the King James 1 and New World versions. At worse they read one of hundreds of its (revisionist) 'versions'. For their part, although Muslims are under a stricter sanctions to only read the ‘authorised’ version of the Holy Koran (to which mention an automatic “Peace be to him” must be recited) many interpretations of it has slipped through ‘verbatim’ translations, according to the many sects or personal orientation the ‘translator/s’ might belong.

All their lives converts to the main ‘world’ religions find it intellectually unnecessary, or even an ecclesiastical taboo, to investigate the origin of their texts so as to historicise (give a critical account of their true development) and appropriately situate their pronouncements more fulfilling into their lives. They appear uninterested or tremulous to necessarily exploring and release the Pandora ’s Box of unknown effects that the abundant new intellectual, anecdotal, historical and spiritual information/knowledge will impact on their personal, social and cultural lives. The possibility of change petrifies them!

Modern cultural history is agreed that humanity emerged from Africa millions of years ago. That the invention of Egyptian-Nubian hieroglyphics 2,500 BCE, commenced Africa's literary contribution to world culture. That this is the basis of the Roman alphabet; itself a mercantile imposition on our people during the European Slave Trade and imperialist colonisation; and which unquestioningly still remains our preferred textual means of exchange.

If what I have said is true so far, then the invention of the Bible (by 'inspiration') of Adam, Noah, Moses and Abraham is less than 5,514 years old in time (3,500 when the Noah floods were nebulously said to have commenced + 2013 into the Christian era). If it is so, the Bible does not account for the millions of years before it (of religious ritualism, notions of monotheism and polytheism in world culture).

Indeed, it would not account for Africa's own contributions to world cosmology: from the Egyptian 'Book of the Dead', Nuba (Sudan mountains), Dogon (in their secretive caves in Mali), Bameleke (Congo), Koi-San (Southern Africa), Yoruba (Nigeria), Voudou (Benin Republic, Haiti, Cuba and Brazil), Akan, Frafra, Dagbani, Ga, Ewe (Ghana) and other religious accounts (written or unwritten) that litter the cultural prairie across Africa.

I mention The Egyptian Book of the Dead here, as an account of one of Africa’s earliest records, written 1,700 years before the Christian Bible! It is a, “Collection of documents containing spells and formulas that were placed in the tomb to help a deceased person in their journey through the Underworld.” (http://dallaslibrary2.org/fineBooks/bookofdead.htm):

“Hence, in the 17th century B.C. they put together on papyri the Book of the Dead, a survival guide for the hereafter mainly to avoid being destroyed by the horrible god Ammit, the “Devourer.” Written in the hieroglyphics (“god’s words”), here were not just the spells you needed but the charms, numbers, formulas, and passwords without which you’d be lost (literally).” (Rules for the Dead, John Cooney, Jan. 31, 2011,http://obit-mag.com/articles/rules-for-the-dead-egyptian-book-of-the-dead).

This is the reason I often ask what evidence exists for the Bible, Torah and Koran. Who wrote them? Under what violent social-cultural-political pressures have Africans abandoned their own religious cosmologies for foreign religions like Christianity, Islam and Judaism?

My questions are relevant and consistent to helping Ghana/Africa revisit and envision our own indigenous cosmologies. This is necessary for our national-continental cultural identity/ies. It is also important to collectivising and creating the necessary cohesive impetus to bonding and unifying us for development and modernisation.

After all, Africa invented monotheism (idea of one God) - not Europe, Arabia or Israel. The Hebrews learnt monotheism in Africa. Jewish tribalism as basis for Judaism is at variance to Africa’s matriarchal and patriarchal systems of worship that emphasised/ses our internal, ancestral, symbolic spiritualties in our rivers, sea, forests and general environmental; in our meteorological seasons, agrarian and littoral (sea, river-based) work production cycles. Robin Edward Poulton aka Macky TALL further comments:

“It translates the depth of African spiritual beliefs, so different from the Jewish creation myth of the Garden of Eden. The Jews had a tribal, patriarchal social structure dominated by men like Adam and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. West Africans had a matriarchal social structure that still infuses daily life and spirituality. In Africa, spirituality infuses the whole of life. There is no separate concept of ‘religion’, for spirituality is in everything and it comes from our Supreme Creator – Guéno in the pular.” (Dogon Culture in Eastern Mali and Malian Religion, Robin Edward Poulton aka Macky TALL,http://vafriendsofmali.org/education/teaching-timbuktu/teaching-the-community/dogon-culture-and-malian-religion/).

I think there is more sense in African cosmology than all derivatives of the Jewish Torah (Bible, Koran), which rally around detached but alienating, amorphous notions of a God that can only intervene quick and decisive enough when you are already dead - to either throw you into hell and everlasting fire, or sit you on ‘his’ right hand side (doing what?...one does not know)!

Therefore, I am afraid it is not good enough to claim divine inspiration, visions in sleeps, flashes-in-the-pan spiritual visitations in the middle of the night, etc to explain these questions off so easily. So-called native doctors, shamans, fetish priests and astrologers also have these dreams!

I must clarify that my questions are not judgmental of anyone's intellectual or scientific abilities. Millions of brainier scientists and intellectuals all over the world are also religious. I ONLY SEEK OBJECTIVE ANSWERS NOT JUSTIFICATIONS TO THE ABOVE QUESTIONS. I only want to learn humbly. Please share your opinions!

Regards.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BIO-DATA Kofi of Africa resides in Leeds, UK. He is currently a Director of, Resources for Education for African Development (READ), a UK-Ghana educational charity that offers accessible community education from primary to university level. He is a writer/educator who blogs avidly on Facebook and Blogspot. Mission statement: to examine and offer reasonable solutions to help address the poverty, ignorance and powerlessness of the Ghanaian/African poor.

He lectured, Media & Cultural Studies and Sociology (the University of Leeds, and Leeds Metropolitan University - 1992-07). He also worked variously as: Assistant Editor, Third World Book Review; freelance journalist (West Africa, Africa, Afrique Asie, etc), as Media Researcher (Campaign for Press Freedom); a Printer and Graphic Designer.

He was the 1985 Mohammed Maiga laureate in journalism for Africa (“Ghana’s Daughters in Lagos”, Feb.1985, Afrique Asie). He received the prize from the late, President Thomas Sankara in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Blog: brakofi.blogspot.com Mb phone: 0044 7943 969651 Email: kofi.of.africa@gmail.com