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KA Sambu: The da Vinci Code 
Philip Ochieng: Kalenjiin: Another lost tribe of Israel? 




The da Vinci Code

Notes prepared by

Dr KA Sambu for

Kagiptai radio Programme

Brotherless, sisterless, fatherless, wifeless, and childless

It is important if we are to understand the desire to maintain a brotherless, sisterless, fatherless (of the earthly type) and childless Jesus Christ character, to first understand the cultural setting of his day and time. Because he was to be sacrificed, or to qualify as a sacrifice, his character had to conform to that of the sacrificial objects of his time: Be first and last born because the mother must not conceive again. The sacrifice must be most painful to make, hence one requirement was that the sacrificial object be an only child. The Egyptians kept an Osirian bull for this purpose. A young cow, long before calving, is segregated, allegedly is later impregnated by a flash of light from heaven, bears an Osiris bull and never conceives again. The bull is then considered ritually perfect and is segregated and virtually worshiped as an incarnation of Osiris (a deified king of Egypt who lived reportedly 20,000 years ago).

 

The Apis bull, serapium, Alexandria,in basalt, H. 190 cm

The Apis bull, serapium, Alexandria,in basalt, H. 190 cm

 


This is how Herodotus described the essence of the Apis bull over 400 years before Jesus was born, "The Apis, or Epaphus, is a calf born of a cow that can never conceive again. By what the Egyptians say, the cow is made pregnant by a light from heaven, and

thereafter gives birth to Apis. The marks of this calf called Apis are these: he is
black, and has on his forehead a three-cornered white spot, and the likeness of an
eagle on his back; the hairs of the tail are double, and there is a knot under the
tongue” (Herodotus, 440 BC, Bk. III).

The Egyptians did not want to lose Osiris, a man whose mother conceived through God’s word that was pronounced by a light from heaven—an angel if you like—for ever. Like Jesus was later to be characterised, Osiris had risen from the dead and then died the second time. The difference between his story and that of Jesus here is that during his second life he impregnated his wife, Isis, who had in the first place helped resurrect him, resulting in the child—his first incarnation— well-known as Horus. So, not wanting to contemplate his permanent absence, the ancient Egyptians kept incarnating him in the form of the bull born in the manner outlined. As you can see, the practice must have gone on for perhaps 18,000 years before the time of the Jesus story.

If the bull is Osiris, who is Jesus, then the cow mother must be Mary and she too, like the bull’s mother, must revert to virginity after giving birth to Jesus. That logically expels all later brothers and sisters of Jesus because that would mean Mary had, far from reverting to virginity, continued her cycles of pregnancy and giving birth.  That would disqualify her as mother of God and Jesus as an only child bona fide for sacrifice.

I also remember working on the translation of an ancient  document from Coptic to English as part of practical class work at Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. Joseph was dying and the brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ, and their mother Mary, were running about frantically. It is highly probable, therefore, that a family like that really existed and a momentous personality, Jesus, among them around whom a typical ancient Osirian story was wound.

It should be borne in mind that it was the Egyptians that wrote the many books of the New Testament, including those that were not canonised alongside the four canonised ones: Mark, Luke, John, and Mathew. For some reason it was important to plot the setting in a far-off place, among a far-off people, hence the choice of Palestine and a strong Palestinian personality. An Egyptian Jesus would not have appealed to the populations at the time who were fast losing confidence in themselves after years of colonisation, rampant intermarriage, and consequent loss of identity. Besides the acts that were to be attributed to Jesus would have been such that the Egyptian locals would have demanded clear evidence to back them. If it was hard to sell a local prophet to the locals how much harder and unthinkable would it have been to sell a local native to them as God?

Jesus is given the sacrificial lamb treatment retrospectively and all his brothers and sisters are either played down or erased from the records, especially from orthodox church records such as those of the Coptic Church. But as for the Gnostic Church’s Nag Hammadi records it is quite normal to talk about the sisters and brothers, and about his chief lover, Mary Magdalene, too. The New Testament, in the first place, was written by the Gnostic lot, a secret that is well-known to every Egyptologist but well-hidden to the lay. The Gnostic founders of Christianity were excommunicated for maintaining that the character they had created along with all the drama of his life were being taken literally and misunderstood, particularly by the then new European branch of the church. They maintained that the story that they created was meant for allegorising and was not to be taken literally. This, the western branch of the church as power shifted to it, declared to be a heresy. The authors said they had written allegorical fiction but the readers said no, it was the truth! The African authors were expelled and the European readers of their works took over and adopted the allegorical sacrifial life of Jesus as historical fact. That was simply how absurd things were between the Gnostic founders of the Christian movement and their European successors.

With the case now before a world court, where an Italian is suing for being taken for a ride as far as the Jesus story is concerned, coming up, these are some of the surprising truths that may come to light. The Italian complainant learned lately of the Egyptian Gnostics’ re-creation and refashioning of Osiris in the form of Jesus, got disgusted, and is now suing for “injury.”

According to the Gospels of Thomas, Jesus had brothers too:

Verse 99:1-2:


”Said to him his disciples, as follows: your brothers and your mother are standing outside.” Then he replies to them that his brothers and mother are those that will do the will of his father, such as they, the disciples. Then the disciples pose the question on coins and taxes and Jesus tells them to give Ceaser what belongs to Ceaser. Echoes Luke 20:22-25.

If the statement above reveals something about the family of Jesus, namely that he had siblings, the story below admits it but adds a twist to it. Part of the narrative, not related here, describes the death of Joseph before his wife Mary who is described here "Maria the virgin mother",  and their other children. The story, according to the footnotes, was written in Coptic script and language before 320/328 AD, so it is authoritative.

More about this may be read from:

S. Morenz, Die Geschichte von Joseph dem Zimmermann aus dem Bohairischen und Sahidischen übersetzt, erläutert und untersucht (Berlin und Leipzig, 1951).

This roughly translates to: The story of Joseph the Carpenter, translated from the Bohairic and the Sahidic ancient  Coptic Texts (thought to date back to 320, 328 AD), by Sigfried Morenz, who examines and describes them (Berlin and Leipzig, 1951).

Here Jesus tells the story himself, of his father’s life and death to his disciples at the Mt of Olivet. Jesus lists Joseph’s children by his deceased first wife as: Judas, Justus, James and Simeon. His daughters by the same wife were Assia and Lydia. Joseph, although a carpenter by profession, was also a priest at the temple. After he was widowed he applied to the priesthood for a bride and a 12-year old virgin girl, who had grown up in the temple as a destitute, dependent for sustenance on alms, was given to him by the priesthood after casting lots to determine whom, among the aspiring suitors, she could be given out to. This was Mary and Joseph intended not to defile her virginity ever: this was a marriage that was intended to be celibate.

From my acquaintance with Coptic Church history, perhaps this was necessary if Joseph had to retain his priesthood. The original texts are Coptic and may reflect Coptic thought and practice even though Joseph was supposed to be Jewish. Up until now a Coptic Christian man may take up priesthood even after marrying but may not marry again should he lose his wife. But if he does remarry he loses his status as a priest. A convenient, celibate, arrangement, though, may be made and, according to claims, honoured. Likewise, a man who is sworn into priesthood while a bachelor may not marry at all thereafter. One may also hear of a married Coptic Pope or two in history who, on ascendancy to the throne, ceased all sexual relations with their wives till death. These are policies that the faithful are told until, of course, someone gets pregnant within a celibate marriage: who better to “blame” for it than the Holy Spirit?

Jesus himself says that he was conceived of the Holy Spirit two years after Joseph had thus married his mother, so, married off at 12, she was pregnant at 14. On noticing that she was heavy, while in a marriage that was not only supposed to be celibate but also virginal, Joseph was embarrassed, upset, wondering when and with whom she had committed adultery, but sought to hide the fact. He planned to put her away quietly, but the angel, Gabriel, approached him and informed him that the conception was through the Holy Spirit. This was a version that he reported himself, so all we have is his word for it. The rest of the ancient Coptic literature story conforms much to what is related in the canonized gospels although there are unique and spectacular details here and there.

It is instructive that Jesus refers to Joseph as his father “after the flesh” which would suggest that he recognized Joseph as his biological father although spiritually he had God as his father through the Holy Spirit.  The Gnostic authors of these texts would be at home with such symbolic settings. This was the practice at the time, kings often attributing their conception to higher powers, sidelining their biological fathers. This would be the basis on which they would justify their ascendancy to the throne as no ordinary being was supposed to attain such a status but God’s own. A well-known example among them was Alexander “The Great” himself, whose circumstances of conception and birth, although it came over 300 years before that of Jesus, bear great resemblance to the latter’s better-known circumstances. Alexander was worshiped for centuries before Christ as the son of God through the Holy Spirit, King Philip, his father, being posthumously relegated to a foster father a la Joseph..


From Kalenjiin and Egyptian practice, we could perhaps explain why  certain lovers were called “Mary”. The name probably comes from Egyptian (retained in Kalenjiin too), mrrt, or,

 “mryt” as often transcribed by western Egyptologists, but murereet as is obvious from the Kalenjiin word of the same meaning, “beloved”. In the Kalenjiin context, and which we must read back to Egypt, a bride is referred to as murereet, “beloved”, “sweetheart”, until she gives birth to her first child, from when she becomes “wife”. This should explain why all the literature on Jesus written in Egypt refer to all the young women close to Jesus as “Mary”. Most wives of pharaohs, when depicted in their youth, also carry the “name” mrrt, strengthening this assumption (Sambu, 2007:273).

Mary Magdalene

According to the Gospel of Philip, a Nag Hamadi compilation of statements pertaining primarily to the meaning and value of sacraments within the context of a Valentinian conception of the human predicament of life after death, which is outside the Cannonised 4 gospels, Jesus had 3 female companions: His mother Mary, his/her? Stister, a Mary too, and Mary Magdalene, his closest female companion. Most importantly this Mary Magdalene who, according to the Gnostics, was the closest person to Jesus, “the most spiritual of the disciples” described as “the woman who knew the All” and, sometimes, the spiritual, or even “the legal wife of Jesus” (Cf. Walker, 1983:93).[2] His disciples often complained of Jesus’ partiality to Mary Magdalene, often kissing her in public. Other Marys: Mary Salome, Mary of Bethany. The da Vinci story is wound around this love; namely that Jesus died, leaving a pregnant Mary Magdalene. The Church is allegedly keen to hide this fact as well as the descendants of Jesus through Mary Magdalene’s daughter. It is in its quest to destroy any evidence that could lead to finding such descendants that it is prepared to kill and maim. Of course it is all fiction. But the mixing of fiction, truths, and half-truths has been the main concern of the church.

But the da Vinci Code film at some stage poses a difficult question to this effect: If the Lord so loved Mary Magdalene, who is the Church to declare otherwise?

As a spiritual leader, the Kalenjiin people in their true setting would still have appreciated a Jesus who was married and even had children, provided he led a righteous life. The priest of Asiis, Poiyoop Tuum, is required to be successfully married, have children devoid of juvenile mortality. No one can arrive at priesthood before attaining these, not least because of the lengthy strenuous training that is required. Bachelorhood is despised and death in this state is a disaster: it is said kiime kooninda, or kiime maat: he died forever or his spirit/lineage died. It is the duty of every man and woman to rekindle this maat. That the news of a married Jesus should shake a Kalenjiin faithful is, therefore, surprising.


 

Opus Dei

 

(Latin, 'work of God'), a Roman Catholic organization founded in 1928 by the Spanish priest Josemaria Escriva (1902-75) de Balaguer. Their name is most abused in the da Vinci Code movie, but they have scarcely complained. Instead, they have, quite oddly, applauded the incident. The film depicts a monk from their movement murdering people wantonly and dashing to them over their death throes to pray for their souls to go to heaven. He allegedly kills for what he imagines to be a good cause, so it is machiavellianly OK, it would appear.

 

Opus Dei members, of whom there are 76,000 world-wide, may be either priests or lay people, in which case they are encouraged to retain their social position and pursue their profession. Particularly active in General Franco's Spain (1939-75), the organization has exercised considerable, but controversial, conservative influence on public affairs. It maintains a number of educational establishments, including the Universities of Pamplona and Navarre. There is a separate branch for women, segregation of the sexes being an important principle. Opus Dei emphasises the austere and conservative aspect of Catholicism; members follow a range of ascetic and spiritual practices, which include daily 'mortification' in the form of brief self-flagellation (whipping oneself mercilessly), and celibacy is encouraged. These are considered sacrifices that are so painful they drive one to the next plane of spiritualisation and godliness.

Active recruitment has resulted in a growing membership world-wide. The movement has attracted considerable criticism for its secrecy and authoritarianism, but Pope John Paul II is a supporter--he beatified de Balaguer in 1992.[1]

According to the Opus Dei website, http://www.opusdei.us/art.php?p=7017, The Da Vinci Code has raised public interest in the origins of the Bible and of central Christian doctrines such as the divinity of Jesus Christ. These topics are important and valuable to study, and they hope that interested readers will be motivated to study some of the abundant scholarship on them that is available in libraries. Does this prove that there actually is a Machiavellian strain in Opus Dei’s DNA? 

This was the hero of the Nicene Council as I came to learn when I was studying the Coptic language and church history. The Nicene Council’s proceedings are an important plank in the da Vinci Code story.

Athanas was bishop of Alexandria. But as far as the Copts are concerned he was Pope over the entire church, worldwide, of the time, and there is no evidence against this position and it can safely be taken for fact. He was among a number of early popes who were all black, or of mixed black and other, reigning from Alexandria. Earlier in his life, at age 30, in 325, he was allowed to take part and debate with Arius about the nature of Christ. His position was that Jesus Christ was consubstantial (of the same substance) with God the Father and was there from the beginning and co-equal. Athanas authored and introduced the Nicene Creed that declared Jesus God (i.e. deified Jesus). Emperor Constantine first agreed with him and supported him, swaying the Council’s vote in his favour, but later changed his mind. Athanas’ main antagonist was

Arius, a Libyan priest living in Alexandria

 who believed Jesus Christ not to be divine but only an exceptional human being. He was excommunicated by the Nicene Council in 325 AD. The condemnation was confirmed by Constantinople Council in 381 AD. At this time the power of the Christian Church was shifting base from Alexandria, Egypt, Africa, to Rome in Italy, the Roman Empire’s eternal capital—irrespective of the occasional claim (of Constantinople, Turkey) otherwise. The Catholic Church’s powerbase, has remained there, in the Vatican, since. Those who refused to shift allegiance to the Vatican retain papacy in their areas of influence, such as Coptic Church’s Cairo Papacy, the Greek Orthodox still recognising Constantinople papacy etc. The shift of powerbase from Alexandria to Constantinople, then to Rome occasioned the early break up of the Christian Church.

Arius’ was the brand of faith adopted by the Germanic invaders of parts of the Roman Empire because it was easier for them to understand than Athanas’ orthodox line was. This was largely the European understanding up until the 8th century or so. Nicea is now called Iznik and is in Turkey.

 

The Nicene Creed

 As I have pointed out above, the Nicene Creed was authored by Athanas from Egypt. Then a young man of 30, he argued and supposedly floored a much older, much more experienced man: Bishop Arius, who was against the declaration of Jesus as God from eternity to eternity. After a vote declared the deification (the elevation of Jesus to the level and equal of his self-declared father, God) side the winners, Athanas produced a kind of permanent constitution that would rule out any chance of ever reverting to Arius’ position. It was a clever trick on the side of the young African who later became Bishop of Alexandria, a papal position then as I have said above. He disagreed several times with Emperor Constantine over Arius and the deification clause which Constantine was to dislike in later life. Reports say that he deported Athanas 5 times and Athanas rejected his suggestion for revision of Jesus’ nature that number of times.

If Constantine was the wiser in old age, then it should not surprise us anymore as to why Church intelligentsia is now getting a bit embarrassed by the issue of deification of Christ. Other issues now considered embarrassing include all the miracles attributed to Jesus Christ as well as the posthumous ones. If Jesus was indeed God then he didn’t have to prove it, but in his time and place throwing in a miracle or two instead proved your divinity!

 

Nicene Creed: International Consultation on English Texts translation
as printed in:
The Lutheran Book of Worship
The Book of Common Prayer (Episcopal)
English Language Liturgical Commission translation

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen. 

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end. 

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.



[1]The Oxford Interactive Encyclopedia. Developed by The Learning Company, Inc. Copyright (c) 1997 TLC Properties Inc.

[2] For the latter controversial statement, Walker cites Katherine Folliot in her Jesus Before He was God (Printed by Hazell Watson and Viney, Aylesbury, Bucks), Folliot, London, 1978.

 

Kalenjin: Another lost tribe of Israel?
by PHILIP OCHIENG

If, in Kalenjin cosmology, the expanse of land that centres on the Mau forest was the "Promised Land," then the Ogiek were their Canaanites. 

As we read in Wanguhu Ng'ang'a's newly published book Communities of Kenya, the Ogiek were the natives of that land.

The Kalenjin were later conquerors. Like the Israelites, who travelled northwards, the Kalenjin came southwards from Egypt. 

No wonder the Ogiek remnants of the Ndorobo-Sirikwa cluster are beginning to pose what looks like a "Palestinian problem".

The Kalenjin story is nearly identical in many other ways to that of ancient Israel. Why is it that certain central details of Kalenjin settlement in Kenya's Rift Valley have mythical counterparts in Israel's reported colonisation of Canaan at the end of the 13th century BC?

Why does the Kalenjin epic claim a sudden exodus from Egypt, a wandering for long decades in the wilderness, the crossing of a river called "Jordan," a mass circumcision at Pisgah, capped with the conquest of Jericho, Bethel, Ai, Hazor and other cities of the Levantine natives? 

Even more astonishing, how is it that, for these events, Kalenjin tradition uses terminology almost identical to that of Judah's King Josiah, his chief priest Hilkiah, their redactor Ezra and other masterminds of what Bible students call the Deuteronomistic History?

Today's Kalenjin equivalents of the Soferim — those who wrote and edited the Jewish Bible in the seventh and sixth centuries BC (just before, during and just after the Babylonian exile) — assert that the Kalenjin arrived in abrupt escape from Egypt.

They began to settle only after some 40 years of wandering in the "wildernesses" of Southern Sudan and northwestern Kenya and "the Mountain God" (Elgon). Divested of the Bible's thick ethnic self-aggrandising gloss, it is true that a certain Semitic tribe left Egypt abruptly after a period of imperialistic rule.

Known to historians as Hyksos and including the immediate family of a certain Y-aa-gub ("Jacob") — known in Kalenjin mythology as Yak-hober — this Semitic tribe renamed itself Ysro-el ("Israel") after their leader had dreamed of an encounter with the god El at a place thereafter called Beth-el or Bethel ("House of El").

In Out of Egypt, Ahmed Osman explains that the term Israel was derived from the Coptic god Asar-el, (a name that means "Osiris is God" or simply "El empowers") the chief god of the Nilo-Hamitic Copts, Edomites and Canaanites.

Known in the Pentateuch as "Moses," Amenhotep IV was the pharaoh who triggered so much religious unrest by revolutionarily imposing a monotheon called Aten — for which reason he changed his named to Akhenaten — and banned all other gods and goddesses. 

Kalenjin youth at a traditional ceremony.

Egypt was electrified. But what archaeo-history now knows is in conflict with what we read in the Pentateuch and the Deuteronomistic History. 

Moses abdicated and fled not because he had killed an Egyptian and hidden him in the sand but only because the priests conspired to kill him on account of the Aten. 

First, he went south to Nubia — his mother Tiye's maiden country. There, he married Tharbis, the black beauty whom Exodus calls Zipporah. 

After assuming the pseudonym "Moses," he sneaked back into Egypt via Midian, and gave his Aten religion to his former Israelites slaves. 

In return for a promise to liberate them, they agreed to be recruited into an army which he then used to wage war on official Egypt to try to reclaim his crown. 

But he was routed and forced to flee once again, this time into Sinai's Shara Mountains — "the Mountain of God" — in Edomite country, to give rise to the legend called Exodus. 

The problem we have is that it is the Jewish descendants of those Israelites who are writing that story and they are doing so after many centuries of oral tradition and with a great deal of ethnic self-glory.

The Pentateuch tells only the story of the small group that fled with Moses northwards. Historians now agree that the religious upheaval caused by Akhenaten-Moses occasioned "exoduses" in all other directions. 

Some fled to West Africa (perhaps including the remarkable Dogon of Mali, Akan of Ghana and Wolof of Senegal). Some fled to Crete, Peloponnesus, Thessaly and Colchis (creating the legend of Jason's Quest for the Golden Fleece). 

Some fled towards the Red Sea (later to emerge in Ethiopia as the "Falasha Jews"). 

If we zero in on the Kalenjin, Luo, Maasai, Teso and Turkana, the question is: Are they the descendants of the Copts who fled southwards? 

The Kalenjin thesis seems to be that the Myoot — their maternal ancestors — moved out of Egypt southwards at about the same time as the Israelites were scurrying out of Egypt northwards. 

The linguistic evidence adduced by the Kalenjin counterparts of the Jewish Soferim is telltale. Compare the Pentateuch with, for instance, Kipkoeech araap Sambu's book The Kalenjin People's Egypt Origin Legend Revisited. 

But, before we do so, let us summarise the Bible story on Israel's flight. After wandering for 40 years around a peak in Edom (known variously as Hor or Horeb or Sinai or "Mountain of God"), they gave their new god Aten the name Yahoo, taken from the local Shasu-Edomites. 

Finally, they arrived at the foot of Nebo or Pisgah, a Moabite hill on Jordan's East Bank.

Atop Pisgah, "the Lord" showed Moses the extent, beauty and economic prospects of "the Promised Land" of Canaan but told him that he himself would never see that land. 

Then, following a mass circumcision ritual at Gilgal, the "children of Israel" crossed the River Jordan to capture Jericho. 

As we turn to the Kalenjin version of the story, please keep in mind the biblical terms "Pisgah", "circumcision", "Gilgal", "Jordan" and "Jericho" which I have just used. 

It was from a mountain called Psigiis that the leader of this southern "Exodus" viewed the Kalenjin "Canaan".

On top of Psigiis (Pisgah?) — the term which gave this vanguard Kalenjin group its name Kipsigiis — the leader viewed the whole range of what would become modern Kalenjinland from Koibatek and Nakuru to Lake Victoria. 

Because, during the wandering, the Kalenjin people had had no time to circumcise their boys, the whole Kalenjin community was forced to camp somewhere called Tulwaap Monyiis for a mass circumcision ritual. 

But "mass circumcision"? Of course! Among Egypt's most important religious impositions on Israel was the Nilotic practice of chopping off the foreskin of the male organ. 

Among the Copts, it had been a bequest from the god Ra. Long after the Exodus, the Jewish writers of the Pentateuch would replace Ra with their own newfangled Yahweh as the god who had demanded the "cut." 

But, with the Soferim, there is no attempt to explain the significance of circumcision — which is among the proofs that their Nilotic masters had imposed it on the Israelite slaves without explaining its religious significance to them. 

Indeed, the Book of Joshua reports that all the male Hebrews who came out of Egypt were circumcised, but that those born during the wanderings were not and that a mass circumcision was thus performed on all the males at Gilgal in the plains of Jericho.

Moses' Levites performed a mass ritual at Gilgal just before crossing the Jordan. Sambu writes: "[The Kalenjin] did not name the [corresponding] hill Gilgal. 

But... it is interesting to note that one of the places the [Kalenjin] occupied twice while wandering in the plains [of the Rift Valley] was Gilgil." 

Which Kenyan has never heard of Gilgil, the thriving trade centre between the lakes Naivasha and Elmentaita?

The Israelites then crossed a river called Jordan to take Jericho, just as the Kipsigiis crossed a river called Chooryan to take Kericho. 

What can it mean? We now pronounce the "ch" in "Jericho" like the "k" in "Kenya". But the native Jebusites — a clan of the Canaanite natives — pronounced it like the "ch" in "church". 

Jericho, therefore, rhymed with Kericho. Moreover, in the Kalenjin language, "k" is usually pronounced like a hard "g". 

Kericho, therefore, may originally have been Gericho (which is not at all far from Jericho.) What a small world ours is! 

The only question is: Who borrowed from whom? 

The near-identity between Pisgah and Psigiis, Gilgal and Gilgil, Yordan and Chooryan, Jericho and Kericho, etc., and the circumstances in which those terms occur affirm at least a historical confluence.

Neo-Hamites: A shared history of flight and fight

Kalenjin, Dholuo, ancient Coptic, ancient Canaanite (or Ugarito-Phoenician) and ancient Edomite belong to the same ethno-linguistic family known as Nilo-Hamites. 

The Nilo-Hamites had a profound influence on Hebrew, both when the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt and for centuries in post-Exodus Canaan.

The Pentateuch is chockfull of religious imagery and vocabulary borrowed from Coptic. If the Kalenjin left Egypt at the same time as the Israelites, then that is a historical confluencer.

In mind-bogglingly salacious, the Deuteronomistic Historian tells us exactly what terrible things the Israelites, under "Joshua", did to the Canaanites, savage deeds which reverberate up to now as a "Palestinian problem". 

The question is: What happened to the Kalenjin's "Canaanites", the autochthonous Ogiek- Sirikwa-Ndorobo cluster?

From the way the Kalenjin react whenever faced with that question, we can infer that the Ogiek's fate was in every way as horrendous as the Canaanites' — numerous fights, flights, deaths, assimilations and adaptations.

Those were exactly what happened also to the Philistines, Moabites, Ammonites and Amorites after the Israelites had grabbed their lands. 

The difference is only that, by their "euphemisms," the Kalenjin show at least a sense of remorse. The Khazari usurpers of Judah who now lord it over Palestine do not.

Article Source: http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard/Article/Kalenjin--Another-lost-tribe-of-Israel-/211006

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About The Author: Philip Ochieng -- is a Kenyan Editor with the Nation Media Group. Like Obama Senior, he too went to the US on the famous Tom Mboya Airlift of 1959 [ when hundreds of Kenyan students were given scholarships to American universities ].

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Whatever you do, don’t kill the Kenyan dream
Daily Nation, July 24 2010
Philip Ochieng
In The Kalenjin Egypt Origin Legend Revisited, Kipkoeech arap Sambu informs us that Myoot is the real name of the various "Kalenjin" sub-communities. "Kalenjin" was imposed on them by the colonial Kenya Broadcasting Service.
 In the early 1940s, Towett, Koske, Seroney and other Kalenjin students at Alliance had coined the term from a word with which all the Myoot still call attention — equivalent to theKiswahili sikiza or nasemaje or nakuambiaje, the Kikuyu atiriri, the English I say and Dholuo awachoni or winji.
But Myoot is much more interesting because it is etymologically related to Maat, the Nilotic goddess of justice, beauty and symmetry. The two elements that compose it — Ma and At or Myo and Ot — are semantically vital because the first refers to "mother" and the second to "house".
The Kalenjin called themselves Myoot because, they said, they had all come from the same mother in a primordial house. Dholuo expresses an identical concept in similar words – Ma and Miyo for "mother" or "motherhood" and Ot for "house".
Thus Dhoot (Dho-ot) – our word for "clan" – means "door" or, literally, "mouth of the house" – just as Dholuo literally means "mouth of the Luo". Everybody comes from the "mouth" of a "house", through Maat's door.
All this is relevant to other Kenyans because they might find that all are children of a single "Eve" in the mists of time. But there is a more concrete way of looking at the origin of what we call Kenya.
Whether we are "indigenous" or "expatriate", all of us come from a house built by colonialism. Colonial die-hards — like Massie-Blomfield — might be caressed whenever many a Philip Ochieng affirms that all Kenyans come from the same Dhoot called colonialism and objectively aspire to a larger Myoot.
Massie-Blomfield's ignorance expresses itself in his inability to see that a people's origin need not always be glorious.
Yet, colonialism armed me with two powerful weapons — English and a love for books — through which I can effectively retort to all colonial die-hards that colonialism was a radically evil institution.
The positive thing about our common colonial origin is that it can create in all of us — not excluding Massie-Blomfield's progenies — the feeling of a common destiny and that, therefore, we ought to unite to hasten that destiny.
The same colonial tyranny was what once united certain individuals from all ethnic and racial groups into a common cause called nationalism.


If the Kalenjin will teach Kenyans the details of what it entails (in terms of rights and duties) to belong to Myoot — if we can learn to follow the injunctions of Maa — what can we not achieve in our will to build a larger Myoot called Kenya?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the celebrated Genevois political philosopher, summarised Myoot's demands in the term "common good".
Commitment to social beauty and symmetry — in the form of material plenty and equity and political justice — that is what Asiis demanded of all the Myoot and other Nilotes.
In a new Myoot called Kenya, that is what Cheptaleel would demand of us all — including the grandchildren of Massie-Blomfield and other Kenyans of Boer and Anglo-Saxon origins.
The point, however, is that a teacher succeeds best only if she constantly exemplifies her own moral demands. That is the prime assignment facing the Kalenjin today.
They must lead us in our present struggle to move to a higher level of legal beauty and equity so that we can approach Nirvana — as our brother Sidhartha Gautama called his conception of Myoot for Bihari of India — as soon as possible.
Thus, if the Kalenjin want to say 'No' to the draft constitution, let them do it from their own understanding of what Maat would have advised.
In short, if they vote 'No' as a community, they will have much to answer for their self-isolation and for sacrificing the nation's dream of a higher Myoot at the altar of a self-seeker called William Ruto.


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