Question for the black Christians

This is for everyone from the black Americans to black Caribbean people and so on...

Were there Bibles in Africa?

I mean I know there are now that Europe has successfully infiltrated it.

But prior to this, was there a such thing as an African Christian Church?

 

I know I am not black (please do not reject this post because of my skin colour) but I hope I can answer a little to this. The first Christian churches in Africa were set up in circa AD 40, according to tradition, by Mark the Evangelist (info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_the_Evangelist) who created the Orthodox Church of Alexandria in Egypt. This started off as an almost entirely Greek-speaking church but by the second century the scripture had been translated into three local languages, and after which the Church grew rapidly in Africa.
The Gospel of Luke records that a Cyrenian was compelled to bear the cross for Jesus, prior to Jesus' crucifixion. Cyrene was located in North Africa. The book of Acts records that, on the day of Pentecost, Egyptians and Cyrenians were among the crowd, and heard the apostles proclaim the Gospel in their native languages. Acts also records the conversion of an influential Ethiopian eunuch to Christianity. Finally, the book of Acts records that following the apostles missionary journey to Cyprus, new converts from Cyprus and Cyrene preached the Gospel to the Greeks of Antioch.

In fact, these days the growth of the Christian Church is down to African evangelists than European missionaries.

 

I don't care about what it says in the Bible

I want Facts, I could give a fuck about what was said in Acts

My point in making this thread was black American Christians (and followers of any other Bible based religion) was introduced to the shit via slavery

Yet these niggaz dedicate their entire FREE lives to the shit

Boggles my fuckin mind

 

Then why ask the question then if you don't really want any other answers?

 

Hun, a lot of the New Testament is based on history of the early Roman Empire. It's not the most reliable/full/unbiased source of history we've got, but it's a source nonetheless if you're looking for early Christianity and its place in Roman history. But you're not though...

And you're not wrong. Yeah, most of sub-Saharan Africans were forced into Christianity because their colonizers were Christians. However, Christianity has been in Africa for close to 2000 years because northern Africa was considered part of the Greek and then Roman world (after being conquered by Alexander and then Rome). The biggest Christian community was definitely in Alexandria, it was where most of the religions of the time had followers.

So, to answer your questions, yes there were bibles in Africa before the slaves were brought over to North (and South!) America and the Caribbean. Particularly in Ethiopia and Egypt. This was partly due to being next door to Christianity's birthplace - Israel, just north and east of Egypt; but mostly because the entire region was part of the Roman world and Christianity spread through the empire really quickly.

As for modern African American Christians, well that's how history and colonization affects groups of people. They weren't the only people introduced to Christianity by Europeans though, same thing happened in East Asia and South America right? But the irony is that Europeans themselves were forced into Christianity by the dying Roman Empire when Emperor Theodosius declared it the official religion of the empire and all other religions were banned. Those Europeans then enslaved and transported Africans en-masse more than 1000 years later and colonized much of the rest of the world. So don't blame only European colonization for using a fat Jesus dildo to rape the world, blame the Italians lol.

Azure

 

I gave my answer on the earliest records of Christianity in Africa. If you don't want to accept it then maybe you shouldn't be asking.

 

The bible is a primary source and of course like all primary sources needs to be understood in the context it was written (purpose, writer, audience etc.). However if you want concrete evidence oppose to the understanding other posters have offered, why don't you just fuck off and look up the primary sources and archaelogical evidence yourself, instead of being a lazy asshole?

Great point sorry no one has bothered to do the research for you, i guess you're just going to have to be content with the fact you have no idea what you're talking about (even if the topic itself has merit, which i think it does).

Religion means alot of different things to different people, maybe you should ask a black Christian sometime, why he* believes in Christ?

*
I used "he" opposed to a gender neutral term, as seems to be the politicaly correct thing to do today. Because either "he", "she" or any other individual gender specific term seems to me to be the best at representing an individual opposed to saying "...why he or she believes in Christ.".

 

Yes, at least one form of christianity has been around for centuries in Africa before the Europeans spread it there: the ethopian orthodox church.

 

I respect this answer and I agree with the Egypt thing

But very few, if any, slaves were from Egypt

Prolly not even from Ethiopia either when you think about how deep they woulda had to travel

Xac, I already did "fuck off" and did my research on the shit

I'm pretty sure I've studied the origins of Christianity more than at least 95% of the people who follow it.

And to everyone else who answered with "facts" from the bible...

Uh yea, if you aint got facts from a credible Source you may want to avoid this thread. Miss me with your emotional ass responses. You aint sittin here tellin me to believe some shit that came out of the same book that said God created man from the dirt and woman out of a fuckin rib.

 

BULLSHIT.

Just because someone is a black American does NOT mean that they had slaves at any point in their family.
My only black friend's father came to the US roughly 30 years ago, straight from a Nigerian tribe.
Obama doesn't have any history of American slavery.
How presumptuous and thoughtless.

You're as bad as the blacks that assume every white American has ancestral slave-owners.

 

So you want to stay uninformed. OK. So answer me this. If you didn't want to hear anything from the Bible, why did you post in a Christian board?
But it looks like I'm wasting my breath and I can't believe I went out of my way to gather information for you. That was 15 minutes of my life wasted, thanks.

 

Orly? Then why not present your own argument? why not enlighten us poor fools as to the sad state of the black Christian?

Ok so you know the bible inside out, good for you. Do you know how to evaluate a piece of historical evidence? do you understand that even if a primary source is not %100 accurate it can still shed light on history?

Here's the interesting thing, I am assuming you don't believe the bible was written by God right? well if it was not written by God, then it was written by men right? well if it was written by men, do you not think that they would have some information about the time and place they lived in? or is it all lies?

I don't think anyone in this thread has claimed that you should believe everything in the bible as fact, as an argument in this thread. It is just one source of information, that yes does have some value, especially when cross referenced with archaelogical evidence.

It is sort of like the Illiad, no serious historian takes that book as an entirely factual account of a siege. But no serious historian would deny that if understood in its proper context, is a very valuable book historicaly.

So, you aversion to any information from the bible isn't as enlightened as you seem to think it is. Having said that no one here is telling you to take all your information from it. Again if you really want to know, look up other sources and if you can find out what archaelogical evidence exists for the subject. if you do that, then maybe you could clarify your point of view more intelligently to us?

If you don't want to do that fine, no one expects you to. But it doesn't give you the right to be a whiney little know it all when people give you their understanding, that which you asked for.

 

I appreciate any time you spend looking for information, I just aint accepting any from any scriptures. I'll take some inspirational quotes from the bible but there is not one story in it that comes anywhere close to being a fact. And how am I "uninformed"? Because I don't believe a book that says male human beings were created from dirt and female human beings were created from the rib of one of the males? Wow @ the amount of stupidity it takes to actually accept some shit like that as a fact. I swear I have more intelligent conversations about God with atheists than I do with Christians.

To that other guy, the bible was written by Constantine. Well not just him, but he's the one who organized it. He chose which books were included and which ones were not. Have any of you actually taken the time to research where exactly the bible came from? If there were no such thing as the bible, a book obviously written by a person (unless you think God sat at a typewriter at some point), you all would be completely lost in your pursuit of God. But many of us know God long before we read any "instructions" on how to do so.

Grown ass fuckin people really believe a book that tells stories about 700 year old men on a boat with animals and shit. Shit just goes to prove no matter how much intelligence human beings are credited for, humans are still the stupidest species on the planet. All you have to do is say something to them enough times and they automatically accept it as true. You hear a damn preacher screamin about heaven and hell and that's enough to scare you into picking up a bible.

Don't come to me with your Christian babbling, I can state what I stand for IN MY OWN WORDS all day. Get that bible out of your hand and think for yourself.

 

Despite your urge to show your lack of respect did you notice you got some answers that are not bible-related?

 

An idiots logic at it's finest.

Trying to informally make the link that Africans following Christianity is them puttin them back into the slave mentality is ridiculous.

 

Oh nah I dont think the Bible was used to put black slaves into a slave mentality, slavery itself was more than enough to accomplish that. Most black Americans are still in the slave mentality today, even the ones who don't follow the bible.

Question:

Where in the fuck did I say the bible was used to put black people into a slave mentality?

Spare me the insults, especially if you're a Christian.

Until you can explain the logic in Noah's Ark, the story of creation, or the story of Adam and Eve, you're the only idiot in this conversation.

 

I'm not a christian but I can't see why anyone would try to have an openminded discussion with you cause it shows that it's just not gonna happen...

 

It aint that I aint open minded

I just dont accept the bible as fact because it's not

Any argument with the bible as its backbone is too stupid for me to entertain anyway

I didn't shut down anything except people trying to throw bible verses and stories at me like its some kind of fact

That shit aint a "fact" to anyone outside of religion

 

Same here, but still I don't regard a christian as a follower just because they believe in certain things that also are in the bible. By the way, did you start this thread out of interest or curiosity or only for entertainment?

 

I started it because I really wanted to know because all facts pointed towards slavery

But if I was missing something, I was all ears

Still am actually

But anything from the bible will be disregarded

I went to Catholic school growing up, and excelled while in it, I've heard enough of the bible