Black Bible Manuscripts

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 Only a handful of scholars around the world were exposed to what was at the time the 2,000-year-old unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls.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.

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.  Godly, honorable, White translators who risked their lives 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.