Biblical Hebrew is an African Bantu language.
The language known as Biblical Hebrew was learnt by the Hebrews from the Ancient Egyptians, who were African Bantu people.
Because Eurocentric Bible scholars and Egyptologists have consistently disregarded and dismissed Bantu languages as possible sources of ancient Egyptian languages or ancient Hebrew, the Bantu roots of ancient Egyptian languages and Biblical Hebrew have gone largely unnoticed. The sad consequence is that Bible scholars and Egyptologists have trashed the Bantu language master key which would unlocks the mysteries of ancient Egypt and the Bible.
The peculiar neglect to investigate so obvious a clue could be due to their unfamiliarity with Bantu languages, but more probably the lazy apathy of racial bias. Chisanga N. Siame’s article,1 finds it remarkable that contemporary Egyptologists have ignored notable pioneer Egyptologists2 who held that the ancient Egyptian civilization was founded by Black Africans. The article states that Massey3 argued plausibly that in addition to being Black African, ancient Egyptian was also the source language of the English vocabulary which is rooted in Sanskrit, since Sanskrit itself was heavily influenced by ancient Egyptian. That Cheikh Anta Diop,4 an African Egyptologist, demonstrated that several names and concepts in present day Africa are similar to those of ancient Egypt but it is mostly only black scholars who embraced his observations, many others have dismissed them out of hand.5
Further, that although Diop’s findings have been fervently defended by African Americans,6 they unfortunately, lack the requisite cultural and linguistic insights of Black Africa, and that works by Black African intellectuals7 who are intimate with African cultures and languages possess an advantage over Diaspora Africans. And that any apposite investigation of ancient Egypt needs “African scholars trained not only in the ancient Egyptian language, language” and other ancient languages, “but also in the [indigenous] languages of Africa”, Jacob Carruthers.8
Africans themselves have, however, been so thoroughly brainwashed by colonial and neocolonial persecution of their cultures, languages and spirituality that they hold in contempt. Thus far, Africans are more keenly aware of the differences that set them apart, such as artificial colonial boundaries and imported foreign religions, rather than the commonalities of language and spirituality that unite them. In fact, Africans have been so thoroughly programmed for attachment to all others except themselves, that many are not even aware that these commonalities exist at all. The only commonality they are generally aware of is their black skin color, which does not say much, considering that black skin is not unique to Africa, and that Africa is host to millions of white Africans.
We demonstrate the linguistic ties between ancient Egypt, Biblical Hebrew and Luganda, in a bid to create justification for largescale functional knowledge of Bantu languages and to form a foundational database for all Bantu language connections. Ultimately, the Bantu language database will fill in any gaps in this work and inform all future linguistic investigations.
The evidence of linguistic similarities between Bantu languages and Biblical Hebrew is undeniable. It is only from such hard data of linguistic evidence that we can hope to set the historical record straight. However, Bantu speakers themselves seem largely ignorant the pronounced resemblances between their languages and Biblical Hebrew. This ignorance is attributable to Africans’ unfamiliarity with Hebrew, the persistent exclusion of black Africans from the Egyptological/archeological establishment and Africans’ deep-rooted postcolonial apathy towards their own culture and languages.
Biblical Hebrew is in fact a Bantu language, or at the very least, the etymological roots of all Hebrew words are Bantu words. There are word for word similarities between all Biblical Hebrew words and Luganda words. These similarities are not merely accidental or borrowed similarities of semantic concepts; they are similarities of specific words with cogent similarities in meaning, not accident, not borrowing.
Many Hebrew words are identical to Luganda words, and even where the similarities are not obvious, Hebrew words still carry obvious features and nuances from their Bantu parent languages. These features have made it possible for this work to establish the origin of names like River Nile, Cush and Allah, unlike Eurocentric scholars who peter out at ‘primitive root’, ‘foreign origin,’ or ‘uncertain derivation’.
Non-Bantu speakers, for whom words are just a means of communication, may find it difficult to relate with the Bantu-Hebrew word comparisons. Bantu root words have their own micro roots that stem from the nature of the thing named, such as its colour, movement, function, sound, appearance or smell.
Bantu speakers understand that words are not just a means of communication; words are the medium our minds use to describe our experiences. We experience the mind through words. Words form the building blocks of all our thoughts and deeds. Every word is a description or name of an experience. Words are the handles we use to identify and distinguish how we experience different ideas, people, places, or indeed anything we perceive. Unlike animal language, words make it possible for human beings to build and concretize their experience of perceptions, thoughts and memories. Words are the foundation upon which we build meaningful experience. Without words, there is no meaning to experience beyond animalistic communication.
Bantu words are powerful tools of conjuration that call to mind whatever has been named; from which stem other word branches that derive from it. Embedded within each Bantu word is the entire etymology of that word, all the way down to its first onomatopoeic syllable that was ever spoken by Bantu ancestors. A simple word, for example ‘mbwa’ which means dog in Luganda, conjures in the mind the dog, together with all its characteristics, just from the sound of its bark.
This is because unlike in English where the word dog is merely an arbitrary label for a species of domesticated canines; in Luganda, the word “mbwa” actually describes a dog. ‘Mbwa’ is made up of a suffix ‘mbu’ and a root ‘wa’. ‘Mbwa’ translated into English is “that which makes the sound ‘wa’ since the dog barks ‘wa wa’. Most Luganda words that include the syllables ‘wawa’ have an etymological connection with the word ‘mbwa’; or they stem from the root word ‘wa’ or ‘waa’. An ill-mannered person is said to have been brought up ‘muwawa’. ‘Oku waawaala’ is a reverberating sound. ‘Oku waawaanya’ is to gobble food quickly. ‘Oku wawagula’ is to tear down excess branches from a tree. ‘Oku wawamila’ is to drink rapidly or rush of any kind.
Luganda has a range of copular verbs which are linked with the conjunction ‘be’ or ‘bwe’ (meaning ‘like this’ or ‘like that’) to describe all sensations such as sound, texture, movement, taste, colour. 9 These words form the basis of all Luganda root words and possibly the entire alphabet. For example, ‘amazzi gayiika be waa,’ means that water is pouring with the sound ‘waa’, ‘enkuba eyiise bwe waa’ means that rain is pouring with the sound ‘waa’.
The chicken is ‘nkoko’ because it makes the sound ‘ko ko’, the cock’s crow is ‘kokolima’. The undomesticated cat is ‘muyayu’ because it makes the sound ‘miaow’, a wayward person is called a “muyayu”. The noisy ibis is ‘ng’ang’a’, because it makes the sound ‘ng’aang’a’, while to be loud and senseless is to ‘ng’ang’ala’.
Words have power, but the Westerners who interpreted the Bible for us do not understand this. In their literal Biblical interpretation, they threw away the baby and kept the bath water. The Bible must be interpreted within the spiritual and cultural framework of the Bantu languages in which it was written to reveal its true meaning. Literal Biblical interpretation is like the child who is shown the moon, but sees only the finger pointing at the moon, and concludes that the finger is indeed the moon.
As with most of the Bible’s message, John 1-5 about the power of words has been lost to literal misinterpretation. Before anything was created, God existed as ‘the word’ and created with ‘the word’. It is through the power of words that we experience the world, our bodies and minds. Our very awareness of being the ‘I’ is experienced as ‘the word’. That awareness of being the ‘I’ is the image of God – the ‘I AM’ of Exodus 3:14 – who is ‘the word’. You are not your thoughts, or your body, or mind, or the ego thinker of your thoughts. You are the ‘I’ who shines the light of consciousness you experience as the body mind. The ‘I’ remains ever unchanging even when the ego, thoughts and body change. Without the awareness of being ‘the word’ ‘I’, there is no words, no thought and no thinking ego.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. John 1-5
Everything we create is first conceived in the mind as word concepts by the ‘I’, meaning that we create with words in the same way that God created with ‘the word’. We are also ‘the word’ because we were created in the image of God who is ‘the word’. Words can create anything because they have the potentiality to be formulated into an infinite variety of concepts, including infinity itself. Therefore, with ‘the word all things are possible,’ (Mathew 19:26).
To realize our full potential as creators who were created in the image of God the creator, we must first understand the ‘the word’ in whose image we were created. In other words, to know ourselves, we must first know God. However, Biblical misinterpretation has locked our unlimited potential to create in its stranglehold of narrow simplistic literalism.
If God’s own language is Bantu languages, then that makes Hebrew a mere third-party dialect constructed from the primordial Bantu languages. In conclusion, only a Bantu Bible interpretation will allow humanity to access the hitherto illusive original message of ‘the word’ of God, which was intended to elevate us to our full potentiality of being ‘the word’.
1 Katunkumene and Ancient Egypt in Africa, Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 44, No. 3 (APRIL 2013),
Sage Publications, Inc, pp. 252-272.
2 Herodotus, Count Volney, Champollion the Younger (see Diop, 1955/1974), Gerald Massey (1975), Henri Frankfort(1948/1978), Martin Bernai (1987, 2001), and Nicolas Grimai (1988/1992).
3 Gerald Massey (1975).
4 Diop (1955/1974, 1963/1989; 1981/1991).
5 Howe, 1998; Lefkowitz, 1996; MacDonald, 2003; O’Connor & Reid, 2003; Smith, 2009.
6 Martin Delaney, Frederick Douglass, and Solomon Coles, Yosef ben Jochannan, van Sertima, Continental John Henrik Clarke, Leonard Jeffries, Maulana Karenga, Jacob H. Carruthers, Ivan Asa Grant Hilliard.
7 Molefi Kete Asante, Theophilius Obenga and Mubabinge Bilolo
8 Carruthers, 1992a, p. 26
9 Check out other copular verbs at www.thedivinelanguage.com