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(More customer reviews)I've got to be more careful about self-published works - usually there's a reason no reputable publishing house will take them. I purchased this book because it looked interesting. I've gotten interested in both ancient Egypt and the early roots of Christianity. I've long sensed that there is some overlap - after all, according to the Bible, Joseph and Mary fled with Jesus into Egypt to escape Herod's persecutions, so it wouldn't be surprising that Jesus might have picked up some Egyptian religion and mixed it with the Judaism He was raised with. I thought perhaps this book would explore such connections. But instead it is a rambling, disjointed, free-floating diatribe about all the ills of society being traceable to the exclusion of the Bible from public education and Christians' racist refusal to see the roots of Christianity in ancient African-Egyptian civilization.
For a shorter review, I should focus on what the book got right - I could stop here. I'm not even sure where to begin to address the flaws of this book. Ocansey's "logic" seems to be roughly: Egypt was the earliest civilization; early Egyptians mapped the "heavens" in the Zodiac, which is God's blueprint of His plan for the world, including Jesus Christ; the Egyptians were monotheistic and worshipped the same "God Almighty" as in the Bible; Egypt is in Africa; denying the Egyptian roots of Christianity is racist way of excluding the real African roots of Christianity, based on the racist theory of evolution; the theory of evolution is but one manifest aspect of the evil influence of Satan in the world, which is responsible for all the world's ills; and finally, if public school children are denied learning about Christianity and its true roots in ancient Egypt, they will of necessity be left in utter darkness and society will stumble toward it's ultimate destruction.
So much of this book was so patently and obviously wrong that I feel rather foolish refuting it. But, nonetheless, here goes. First, Egypt was not the only ancient civilization. If you search "cradle of civilization", you'll get more hits for ancient Mesopotamia than you will for Egypt. Also, there is growing evidence that the Norte Chico people in ancient Peru had vast and complex civilizations - complete with pyramids - that pre-date Egyptian civilization.
Second, Ocansey's claims about the Zodiac are just baffling, such as his claim that the Zodiac belongs under the rubric of astronomy, not astrology. Nevermind the fact that the constellations reference nothing other than the random distribution of stars and other "heavenly bodies" throughout the universe. But even to whatever extent the Zodiac is a valid "chart" of the "heavens", Ocansey's interpretation thereof was, to say the least, stretching it. If you read that section, I'd suggest smoking something stronger than tobacco - it might make more sense then. Being as most Christian denominations view the Zodiac as part of the occult, I don't think Ocansey is going to find wide-spread acceptance of his views on the subject.
Third, the idea that ancient Egyptians were monotheistic is just laughable. They had a pantheon of gods to rival the Greeks, Romans, Norse and even the Hindus. Ocansey, however, argues that they had a sort of underlying monotheism because they recognized that there was one "God Almighty" (Ra) who created everything; the other gods are just aspects of the One God, sort of like Jesus and the Holy Spirit are aspects of God. But by that view, Hinduism is also monotheistic. Again, I don't see widespread acceptance by Christians adopting Ocansey's view that Egyptian religion is the same as Christianity. After all, the Egyptians worshipped their Pharaohs as gods, and only Pharaohs (and those they needed to serve them in the afterlife) were eligible for life after death. Admittedly, Ocansey refers to one Pharaoh in particular - Akhenaton - who introduced monotheism (or a form thereof), but Akhenaton's religion died out with his death, and even he essentially worshipped the Sun.
Fourth, ancient Egypt was not "black" in any way that can be directly connected to modern "black culture". While there is still vast disagreement about what race the ancient Egyptians were, there is more of a consensus that the concept isn't even relevant. The ancient Egyptians portrayed themselves in statutes and wall paintings in a variety of hues from white to pink to brown to black and with a variety of features from stereotypical African features to stereotypical European, Semitic and Asian features. But in any case, their culture flourished three to five thousand years ago and was at the crossroads of many different cultures and civilizations. To say that ancient Egyptians were "black" is not only possibly inaccurate, it's rather meaningless as culture and civilization have changed (evolved!) drastically since then.
Finally, Ocansey is stuck in the old canard that only the Bible represents "Truth". Science is meaningless because it only focuses on what can be experienced and studied, while "God's truth" transcends sensory and rational knowledge to achieve a level of "revelation" knowledge. That may or may not be, but how is it, then that no two believers agree on precisely what "God's truth" is? Even if we were to grant Ocansey's wish to teach the "truth" about God and Jesus Christ, whose truth would we teach? Catholic? Mainline Protestant? Evangelical?
Ocansey really vents his spleen on "evolutionary theory" throughout the book. It is the work of Satan responsible for all the evil in the world including, interestingly, Europeans' attitudes towards blacks and Native Americans which allowed for slavery and other oppression. Nevermind that Darwin didn't even develop the theory of evolution until hundreds of years after the slave trade had begun. And nevermind that there are just as many (if not more) religious justifications for slavery and racism as there are secular ones. The South has never exactly been known as a hotbed of Enlightenment science. It is, however, part of the Bible Belt. Nothing will convince people like Ocansey that the "theory" of evolution is every bit as much proven science as the "theory" of gravity, but that shouldn't mean that he gets to impose his "beliefs" about "science" on public school kids.
Ocansey also argues that there are no values, morals or self-discipline without God. There are only two choices: God or Satan; good or evil. If you don't teach kids about God, they will have no way to learn about good, no reason to discipline themselves or behave better than animals. I'd say Buddhist monks who fast and meditate for days or weeks at a time would be surprised to learn that they have no self-discipline. If only the world were as black and white as Ocansey paints - how easy it would all be.
Perhaps the most unsettling things about this book are that Ocansey received two masters and a Ph.D. from Columbia (I'm guessing they don't look at those as their finest moments) and that he has been involved in public education in New York City for over thirty years. I do hope his work has been administrative. I hope that no public school children have actually been exposed to either his bizarre theology or his bad science.
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The Roots of Our Faith: Ancient Egypt And The BibleThis book seeks to set Christianity "right-side up on its feet" by acknowledging its ancient Egyptian roots.Concepts, ideas and beliefs mapped out in the Zodiac or recorded in the Egyptian Book of the Dead became the source of much that we find in the Bible. It documents that creation doctrine taught by ancient Egyptians, and recorded in the Bible, was superseded by Evolutionary theory which distorted many of those ideas. Man, believed to be God's creation as spirit, soul and body became a "higher animal" according to evolutionary theory. Hierarchies of man emerged with the "higher" not assigned to ancient Egyptian Blacks but to Whites, while Blacks were even considered subhuman. The foundation was laid for racism and man's inhumanity to man as evidenced by slavery and the holocaust.Today color discrimination and segregation still exist, thanks to evolutionary theory. Since this philosophy still controls American Public school education, children are denied the knowledge of God with such truths, ideas and concepts that had their foundation in ancient Egypt. Consequently, students are exposed to the deception of Satan without the countervailing Power of God through the Holy Spirit, Who alone transforms individuals from the ordinary to the extraordinary.
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