NEWLY REVISED! (August 2021) Surprisingly, all 5 billion Bibles translated in whole or in part into nearly 3,000 languages sprang from Black African manuscripts. The oldest Hebrew Old Testament manuscripts, the oldest Greek New Testament manuscripts, and the oldest Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament (called the Septuagint), are all African documents. After 25 years of preparation, Firpo releases the latest in his string of books. He is the only one who could have written it with such ferocity. A number of fragments among the world-famous Dead Sea Scrolls are African documents. In fact, the oldest document among the Dead Sea Scrolls is an African manuscript. Carr brings a unique perspective since he personally worked extensively with Prof. Dr. John C. Trever, the late Bible scholar who was the first Westerner to discover the Dead Sea Scrolls and announce their existence to the world. Only a handful of scholars around the world were exposed to what was at the time the 2,000-year-old unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls. Carr was not only one of these, but was the only Black man to have done so. As a Man of Color, he was able to see through a set of lenses different from those of his colleagues. He was accorded the privilege of being in the "inner circle" since he was the first person ever to take color photographs of the oldest most complete version of the Hebrew Old Testament in the form of the 1,000-year-old Codex Leningrad B19a, located at the time in the Soviet Union, now Russian Federation. His daring adventures there made international news. Showing the influence of Black African rulers in the Hebrew Old Testament in the present book, the title "Pharaoh" is mentioned approximately 271 times in the first half of the Bible. Five pharaohs are mentioned by name, while eight remain anonymous. This book discusses an African Greek New Testament manuscript that was initially deemed the oldest of its kind until it was "re-dated" so as to lose that distinction. It was also first recognized as the best and most important manuscript in its genre. Scholars with questionable motives have even argued that the impressive Greek New Testament African manuscript is from anywhere but Africa, even though it is fabulously known as the Codex Alexandrinus, named after the Egyptian city of Alexandria from which it came. Amazingly, the Greek New Testament was "officially" cataloged in Africa in the fourth century CE. However, in the early centuries after Christ's death, distinguished African-born Christian historians, writers, and theologians like Origen, Athanasius (who was derisively called a "black dwarf"), and St. Augustine confirmed that the 27 books of the Greek New Testament had already been assembled and collectively recognized by the first-century Christian community at large. Not knowing the above details as presented in this publication by a Black man who was in the "inner circle," some see the Bible as "the White man's book." While the oppressive White European Catholic Church, which sponsored the horrors of the Inquisition and engaged in other unconscionable acts, endeavored to prevent the Bible from being translated into the language of the common people, a handful of brave White European "revolutionary" translators like John Wycliffe, William Tyndale, and Martin Luther confronted the Church head-on and dared to translate the Bible in such a way that even a 'plow boy' could read it. Rome responded with a vengeance by hunting some of these down and burning them alive at the stake. These godly, honorable men are descriptively called "Snowballs in Hell" in the third section of this book. And what of the Black Christians who were contemporaries of the Bible translating martyrs? These and other long-overlooked and forgotten persons of African descent--peppering all strata of European society--are discussed in detail in this unparalleled piece of literature, "Black Bible Manuscripts: Why the Bible Isn't the White Man's B
About the Author: Firpo Carr is an internationally known author, historian, scholar, Bible translator, lecturer, former radio show producer, former radio show host, university instructor, documentary producer/screenwriter/director, and newspaper columnist. He has appeared as an eminent scholar on such nationally televised documentaries as "Encounters with the Unexplained: Secrets of the Bible--What Do the Dead Sea Scrolls Tell Us?" and the prime-time specials "Ancient Secrets of the Bible I," and "Ancient Secrets of the Bible II." He was also the only Black scholar to study the secret Dead Sea Scrolls, Bible documents written on African papyrus and other material. Numerous media outlets like the Los Angeles Times, and the prestigious international journal Biblical Archaeology Review, said he was also the first person to take color photographs of the oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible: the Codex Leningrad B19a. It happened in January 1989 when the Soviet government, knowing he had studied Bible languages, invited him to photograph pages from the sacred text. Aside from co-authoring an article in the scholarly peer-reviewed two-volume encyclopedia set, African American Religious Cultures (2009), Firpo has examined ancient Biblical documents in his multiple trips to several countries, and has conducted comprehensive research at the National Library of Russia, the Israel Museum (Shrine of the Book wing), the Egyptian Museum, the British Museum, and the National Museum of Ethiopia. Furthermore, he has engaged in extensive field research, having explored artifacts and ruins in various places. And as a Bible translator, he has studied little-known fragments of the book of Matthew, reportedly the oldest New Testament fragments in existence.