Bantu language vs. Hebrew? No, not really. I know, its a silly title, as they cannot be compared the one against the other like that. Especially not when the one language group is THE predecessor of all languages. My point is, this aint no boxing match. I mean, just try to explore the share vastness of all the Bantu languages, other than Xhosa the main focus on this blog, you will be nothing short of baffled of what you will find. This, I would argue, does not make it a competition, at all.
Believe me when I say, there are many other Bantu languages (Xhosa, Ndebele, Siswati, Zulu, Sotho, spoken by most people of Southern Africa to this today. But, also you have other African langugaes such as: Shona (Manyika and Ndau) Kinyarwanda, Kurundi, with many others like Tswana, Tsonga, Lingala, Kikongo, Swazi, Luba-Kasai, Kituba, Luganda, Chewa, Gikuyu, Lukhya, Makhuwa - etc, etc. The list goes on. All of these are spread around the below ORANGE and GREEN areas and they number over 200 (though some say in the range of 250. How many it has been is uncertain, was it common one language (a holy tongue) at a point in time? Rest assured, both before and after the flood there was common understanding between all the peoples.
Now a linguist, well any thinking human being really, should be curious as to why there is such a prevalent common language group (Bantu), being so similar in pronoun and syntax (idioms and the like) from ancient times spread around right about in the area where ancient Israel, was situated according to some historical sources. Are these Bantu languages the remnant of The Lingo of ancient times, i.e., the Living Language of the Bible? I sure think so. Actually NO. I`d go further, I know so.
Before you go all fundaMENTAL on me, saying - how can this guy know? I will be the first to admit, that there are many answers to that question. Thus, too satiate those in need of academic sway to back up these outrageous sentiments, by all means have your for instance the French catholic Lévin-Bonaventure Proyart (1743-1808), the man who famously authored Maximilien de Robespierre (1758-94) autobiography (the guy from the French renaissance remember), and the lesser known work The History of Luango, Kakongo and N`Goyo (1776). In this particular book, you can find stuff like (Proyart, 1776:592-3):
`There are to be remarked in the language of the Negroes, many turns of phrases which appertain to the Hebrew. We have observed that they expressed, like the latter, by substantives, the qualities of the person or thing which are rendered by adjectives in other languages. Thus in order to say `hot water`, they say `water of fire` mazia-ma n`bayou. They say also a `man of blood`, for a cruel man; a man of riches, for a rich man, and so forth. They never express the affections of love or hatred, joy or affliction, by present tenses, but by preterites, like the Hebrew : they say I have loved, I have hated, for I love and I hate.`
Now, in my world and everyday life of smalltime research, traces like these are EVERYWHERE to be found - and in abundance. And they ascertain, as well as the Bible does with its inherent African idioms, metaphors, not to mention plants and animals, that the Biblical stories are old, really old, African stories about a real people...
And the people of the dark continent seem, to be polite, to be sleeping and may have been for some time. A sort of sleep you can find described in Scripture, along with some scary curses as well, promised to the people when they would turn from the Books of Moses. This did happen, plenty of wars stand to testify that. Now, IMAGINE what would happen WHEN they decided to turn their heads and hands away from The Living sacrifice sent from above from God Himself? They said, `Let His blood be on us and our children... (Matthew 27,25)` I`ll let than one sink in. Its not exactly encouraging, being the very words of The Children of Israel, uttered in the presence of the Son of God. So the Romans came and they destroyed the one thriving civilisation of Israel and in due time removed them from their rightful place and the annals of history.
The time for waking up has begun though - and questions like these must be asked, and my point is that being a descendant (or purported descendant) of Abraham might not be such a good thing. Then again, it might be everything. Let me explain. When thinking of warriors like T`Chaka Zulu, there seems to be great truth to the curses written in Deuteronomy 28. But The Almighty is always gracious and forgives all who comes to Him, that is the pure and simple message of the Gospel. Which has not changed, nor will it. People, along with their theories and all things man made on the other hand, change and erode as the desert sands in the wind.
Speaking about language, which is not a creation of man but a unique and special gift, given from God Himself - thus - it was meant to survive in its original form. And it did. Remember Proyart, well he went further and did go on to compare Kikongo even with the Greek, another language a majority of the Biblical scrolls has been preserved in for us in modern times. He wrote (Proyart, 1776):
`The connections with the Greek, appear equally marked. Besides constructions of similar phrases, there are, as we have observed, several verbs which change their initials, and take augments and double letters as with the Greeks. There are to be found also a great number of words which differ little from Greek words, and signify the same thing : Basita, which is pronounces Basitou, means like the basileus, βασιλεύς of the Greeks chief man of dignity. Bembo, noise, found of voice ; in Greek bemex , noise of wind.`
Think, the Bible contains in it the oldest stories known to man, wether you accept that statement or not, linguistics, anthropology and ancient texts - agree with that statement. Believing what this entails to the full, is still a matter of faith though. If you begin the arduous taks of tracing (and I might) the languages and the stories of the people (Bantu people), you will find the elusive Lost Tribes of Israel, as they are all over the southern part of Africa - to this very day. Do contemporary historians corroborate this? No, not even close. Essentially what we have inherited is all Roman history, which is not exactly your unbiased and objective stuff... Oh, you know what I mean. Its BS.
One thing should be crystal clear, Bantus did not operate in the Middle East, other than during The Exile to Babylon but thats another story, there is nothing in those desert areas for any true believer to seek or to find - all people of faith stop looking there for answers. Its all lies (Rev. 3,7-13). If this area of land is described as anything in Scripture, its as the remnants of Babylon, archeologists and historians would argue the same. If you have learnt anything from this blog, this should be the main theme. To stay far away from idolater desert gods, they won't help you, nor will the people living there be able to help. I pray for anyone under these powers.
Sorry about the occasional evangelisation, that does happen, back to Proyart who went on to say (Proyart, 1776):
`The are also to be found several words which seem to have come from Latin, such as mésa, table ; passi, suffering ; mongo, mountain ; méné, morning ; béné, much, largely strongly. N`zala, zeal, haite ; zelus is employed in the same sense by several Latin authors. Ilia, the intestines, the same word signifies the same thin in Latin.`
`We have pretended not in this place to assign all the reactions which this language may have with the ancient tongues ; we have contended ourselves with citing some of those which struck us most, and without deciding of ourselves, we leave ete informed reader, and him who is versed in antiquities, to decide wether we may not reasonably suspect some analogy between these languages ; and, supposing that he judges so, to explain how it could have happened that the languages of the Jews, Greeks, and Romans, should have concurred to form that of the Africans.`
When reading the last sentiment of Proyart, ask yourself this question - how can these Bantu languages, having outdated all of the above by thousands of years (some say 50,000), have formed the language of the Africans? YEEEBO - we are missing a couple of pages of objective history I dare say... These languages did not form the African, its the other way around, they (Greeks, Romans, Latins) where all formed by the Bantu languages, or one common Bantu language, lingua-franca in Biblical times.
Need other sources or places to look? Let me point you in the right direction and introduce some contemporary experts and their research. Enter the analytics, which have analysed sounds (the phonetics) in languages spoken around the world. The researchers have detected what they call `signals` which point to southern Africa as THE place where the human language originated. Findings from fossil skulls and DNA has roven that humans did originate in Africa. This does imply that modern language as we know it must have originated there also, although your average linguist would most likely create a fuss over this. He is just wired like that, to deny the existence of anything beyond his comprehension. Oh wait, most educated people do the same. You can't blame them though, its the system they serve that gets them.
Now back to language, using these signals (clicks and such) and detecting them, linguists argue that (at least ordinary language groups) cannot be traced very far back in time because they change so rapidly over time, according to Linguists. I would argue they seem to have stayed the same, in other places of the world. The oldest language tree (thus far constructed in academia) includes, off course, the Into-European family (this includes English), and goes back 9000 years, at the most. Which is ridiculous really, but this is as far back as academics are willing to stretch the known traces of language. When it comes to things like phonetics (clicks and such), the game changes altogether. Let me explain.
Now this dude, Quentin D. Atkinson, a biologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, has in modern times made a complete mockery of this Into-European time barrier. Atkinson did not look at words per say, but at something called phonemes, the consonants, vowels and TONES - the simplest elements of any language. So this guy, applied mathematical methods too linguistics, and found a striking pattern between 500 languages spoken throughout the world. He noticed that a given language uses fewer of the said phonemes the farther away from the earliest humans (Bantus) had to travel from Africa to reach it. The clicking languages (such as Xhosa and Zulu) have more than 100 phonemes, and Hawaiian, on the other end of the spectrum, being far away and perhaps last on the human migratory route out of the Homeland of Africa, has only 1. English has just about half of the African, 45 phonemes. Language trees such as these, should be removed from all linguistic programs, they are obsolete and where in fact always wrong, in their origin.
Now using this alternative method, in tracing the origins of language, the ever decreasing diversity with distance (compared to the decrease in genetic diversity with the distance from Africa), this not only implies that the human being originated in southern Africa, but also, you guessed it, language originated there as well.
Now, they (linguists and others not som much capable of independent thought) speculate that language is at least 50,000 years old, however the date that modern humans dispersed from Africa, are according to some experts at least 100,000 (though some say 290,000, who to believe huh?). Anyways, these numbers makes Indo-Europeans look like mere babies, and indeed they are. Atkinsons research does pinpoint a far crying echo of the past, just like this blog puts forth, things are way stranger and way older than they look. Linguists, again, will dismiss ANY claims to older languages than 10,000 years old, although Atkinsons paper has turned some heads. It remains to see where they go with this, though I doubt they will make connections towards Israel and Africa, any time soon. This should have an impact on the thinking man, and God willing, this information is used to get closer to God not further from Him.
Now Atkinson did, along with another guy called Russell Gray, reconstruct the Indo-European language tree with a DNA method called Bayesian phylogeny, believe when I say its dense and not exactly favourable stuff towards Africans, but this theory tries to push back the dates on the Indo-European languages... I mean you can imagine them all, historical linguists and the like, bickering and arguing over who's ten-year should be renewed, and they are not at all interested in rewriting history, as we know it and as it indeed should be. But more interested in how to save face and make some small editorial note which over time becomes the new standard. Just like with history, more lies.
Now Atkinson`s findings fit with all the evidence we know possess about the origins of language, with the so-called Bushmen (Hottentots) of the Kalahari Desert who belong to one of the earliest branches of this DNA tree (mitochondrial DNA). Their particular language group is called Khoisan and includes many clicking sounds, which is THE oldest component from ancient times (probably found in languages the Bible names Hebrew, Aramaic and off course Greek). These languages was most likely VERY similar to Xhosa in their pronunciation. Now Atkinson also found that the number of phonemes in a language increased with he number of people who spoke it, now this is interesting and could explain the whole concept of the Bantu language groups altogether. Another trace of what once was and we now found the mere remnants of.
Consider these things and ponder - cause what am I saying really? Basically, it all went down in Africa (in like the modern term: a galaxy, far far away, if you will) and history as we know it is a collection of revision and suppression. What can you do? Thats easy, just pray, and pray to the Father (uBawo).
Dont fret - look to Africa, go there, meet the people. And if you know The Saviour, tell them about Him. Invite them in with you, feed them and cloth them (Matt 25,35). Do whatever you can, who knows what tomorrow brings.
Uxolo lube nani