<<Issa is co-author with another scholar, Salim Faraji, of the book The Origin of the Word Amen: Ancient Knowledge the Bible Has Never Told, and it suggests far more than a simple origin of one of the most uttered words in the world.>>


A little background checking is fun, and the Afro-Centric roots are not far to seek for either Issa or Faraji, both of whom are on the editorial board of the Journal on Pan-African Studies. Issa has written about the African roots of the Bible and alleged “intriguing similarities in language from ancient Egypt and in Biblical writings with words used to this day in Ghana and elsewhere in West African.” This claim is typical, of course, and (equally typically) neither Issa nor Faraji seems to have any ascertainable background in linguistics.


Faraji is also the founder of the The House of Amen, a “Nubian-Kemetic, Pan African Cultural Society based upon the Classical Nile Valley tradition of Amen. The House of Amen's primary emphasis is the restoration and contemporary application of the Classical Nile Valley Temple Tradition of Amen as it was practiced in both Nubia and Kemet”

Then there is the usual self-aggrandizement:


“ABOUT THE FOUNDER AND PRESIDING PRIEST, SCHOLAR, WARRIOR

The House of Amen was founded through Salim Faraji, The Venerable Heru-Ankh-Amen. The Venerable Heru-Ankh-Amen is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Religion at the Claremont Graduate University in Claremont California and an Ernest Tune Coptic(Egyptian)and Meroitic(Nubian)Library Scholar with a concentration in Early Christianity and Nubiology--Middle Nile Valley Studies. The Venerable Heru-Ankh-Amen also completed a Master of Divinity degree at the Claremont School of Theology and is a professor of religion at the University of La Verne and the Amen Ra Theological Seminary both in Southern California.”


Newspapers really ought to vet their sources before giving credence to this nonsense, and all this would be risible if it weren’t so serious in its implications for real scholarship. As Stephen Howe put it at the end of his Afrocentrism, “it is all unutterably sad.”


Lee