African Roots PDF

# AFRICAN ROOTS He died in 750 B.C., having returned to his home in the south. That same year his son Piankhi (or Peye) assumed the title and the trappings of office of the pharaoh of both Upper and Lower Egypt. With Piankhi began the XXVth Dynasty, the reign of the black pharaohs, who would rule E...

# AFRICAN ROOTS He died in 750 B.C., having returned to his home in the south. That same year his son Piankhi (or Peye) assumed the title and the trappings of office of the pharaoh of both Upper and Lower Egypt. With Piankhi began the XXVth Dynasty, the reign of the black pharaohs, who would rule Egypt and Nubia together for almost a hundred years. During this period Nubia and the black pharaohs made their appearance in the Old Testament. Isaiah speaks of the powerful Nubian warriors: > Ah, land of whirring wings > which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia; > which sends ambassadors by the Nile, > in vessels of papyrus upon the waters! > Go, you swift messengers, > to a nation, tall and smooth, > to a people feared near and far, > a nation mighty and conquering, > whose land the rivers divide. (Isa. 18:1-2) In chapter 19, Isaiah speaks of Egypt and its eventual defeat by Assyria. This critical juncture in the history of Egypt was described in 2 Kings 19 (repeated in Isa. 37:5-11). The prophet Isaiah promised Hezekiah, the king of Judah, that the Assyrians would abandon the siege of Jerusalem because the king of Assyria had been called to meet an invasion of Egyptian troops under Tirhakah (or Taharqa). This ruler was the next to the last and perhaps the greatest of the black pharaohs; he ruled from 690 to 664 B.C. In 663, under the rule of Tanoutamon, nephew of Tirhakah, the Assyrians invaded Egypt and took over the empire, seizing the city of Thebes, the home of the black pharaohs. With this defeat, the Nubians returned to Nubia and never again held power in Egypt. It is, however, a Nubian who emerges from the pages of the New Testament as the one person there who was undeniably black. He is often referred to as the “Ethiopian Eunuch," and his story appears in **Acts 8:26-40**. This text is significant, since it places this individual of non-Jewish origin as a proselyte, or believer in the Jewish religion, in the chapter before the conversion of the apostle Paul and two chapters before the Roman centurion Cornelius, who is converted by the apostle Peter. The text in Acts describes a very wealthy and powerful man who was definitely black, yet it never gives us his name. We know that he was wealthy because he journeyed in a chariot, not on foot like Philip the Deacon, who baptized him. We also know that he was wealthy because he was a royal treasurer in a country that clearly from the text is not in Ethiopia but Nubia. "Ethiopian," as pointed out is the generic name in Greek for a black African. In fact, the text indicates that this man is from Nubia inasmuch as he is described as the treasurer of the "kandake," a title used in Nubia at the time to refer to the queen mother or perhaps a queen reigning in her own right. At any rate, it seems that in Nubia at this time the mother of the sovereign wielded much influence. Another sign of this man's wealth is his possession of a personal scroll of the prophet Isaiah, which he read in the Greek Septuagint version. Like most people of ancient times, he was reading aloud, so that Philip was able to hear him and use the text that was cited as the beginning of his catechesis. This unnamed African is the first black to enter the Christian faith. It was more than five hundred years, however, before Nubia itself accepted Christianity. When the Christian faith arrived, it came already divided. ## II Justinian, the Byzantine emperor who ruled the Roman Empire from Constantinople between 527 and 565, sent missionaries to Nubia in the middle of the sixth century; his wife, the beautiful and resourceful Theodora, also sent missionaries. Theodora supported the cause of the Monophysites - those holding the doctrine that Christ's human nature had been swallowed up by his divine nature, making him not human and divine but only divine. The Council of Chalcedon in 451, however, had solemnly declared that Christ had two natures, human and divine. The church of Alexandria in Egypt and other large groups of Christians, for reasons partly doctrinal and partly political and social, rejected Chalcedon's definition and became known as Monophysites, from the two Greek words meaning "one nature." Apparently, the first missionaries to arrive in Nubia were Monophysite priests sent by the authority of Theodora. Justinian, on the other hand, supported the teaching of Chalcedon, the official teaching of the Catholic church. His missionaries finally reached Nubia about 570. By the sixth century the original kingdom of Nubia had broken up into three kingdoms: Nobatia in the north, Makouria in the center, and Alwa in the south. Details regarding the movement and extension of conversion are not known, but by the final quarter of the sixth century, Nubia had become Christian. Apparently both the northern