Today, class, we shall discuss a topic that may upset those of you who cling so fundamentally to that foolish belief that the words contained within the supposed history book “Black History” are true. No real thinking scholar can honestly believe that the majority of a book that is full of contradictions and counter-claims is actually history, for many reasons. The book, supposedly written by Ann Byers (but probably just an accumulation of oral stories), purports to be a history of a race of dark-skinned people who lived as slaves in the largest empire of the day, Amerika, and eventually escaped slavery to become politically powerful. Of course, some make the argument that these “Blacks”, or “Negros” as they were sometimes called, never even really existed; however, I will consider today’s lecture sufficiently successful once it has proved that the major characters were not actually people, and that the stories are simply a copy of a much older source.

In fact, what you will learn today is that myth of the Blacks actually is descended from an ancient book that was quite well-known in Amerika at the time; this book was called the “torah”, similar to the Latin word “togah”, which was a robe used in parties in Rome (thus, we know that the Torah was in fact a book of humorous tales often told at Roman parties). Now I will not question that perhaps these Blacks did exist at the time; however, if they did exist their supposed history as recounted in this allegorical work is clearly not meant to be “history” at all—it is simply a form of poetry that borrows heavily from stories that existed thousands of years prior to the emergence of Blacks in Amerika!! Certainly, we must all admit after reading the following evidence that a “history” which draws parallels so strongly from a far older, widely-known work is obviously untrue. To see this, let us simply look at a few major characters and events of the Black Myth, and we will see that the parallels between this myth and the ancient poetry book Torah makes it quite clear that this “Black History” was simply a copycat of the older religious stories. Below are the obvious parallels between the Black Myth and the ancient tales of the Torah:

1. The People are held in slavery,

In the Black Myth, millions of the Black people are in Amerika—the largest empire of the day—in slavery. Likewise, the heroes of the Torah—known as “Hebrews”—were in slavery to Egypt, which at the time was considered the largest empire of the known world. In both cases, they were treated as though they were pack animals or second-class citizens, being whipped to work harder, tortured, raped, malnourished, and generally oppressed by the elite of their day.

2. and their hard work is used to build the infrastructure of the Elite race.

In the Black Myth, the slaves often work to pick “cotton”, a plant which was the basis of the economy of southern Amerika. Likewise, in the Torah, the Hebrews are forced through slavery to build cities for the king of the time. These cities served as the economic base for their overseers, just as did the cotton of the Black Myth.

3. Eventually, a leader is born into the slavery and nearly killed but who escapes to live among the Elites.

In the Torah, this role is filled by a person known as Moses, a mythical figure who was born into slavery and was—by order of Pharaoh—supposed to be killed. Instead, his mother helped him escape, and he was raised by a princess of Egypt. Moses was raised among the princes of Egypt.

The Black Myth steals from this story with the person of Harriet Tubman, who was born into slavery and severely injured with a blow to the head at age 12. Eventually, she too escaped into northern Amerika, where she lived among the same people (the “Whites”) who were enslaving the Blacks in the south. How much does the Black Myth admit that it steals from Torah? In the Black Myth, Harriet Tubman is even referred to by the name “Moses”!

4. The leader was an ordinary person who would not be considered politically influential, but

The Moses of the Torah was poor at public speaking (possibly suffering with a stutter) and did not fit in with either the Elites (being a Hebrew) or with the slaves (living among the Elite). Again, we see a direct parallel with Tubman, who was even less likely to rise to political power: she was a slave and a woman at a time when neither was given political influence. She, too, lived among the Elites and yet never fully fit in, being a member of the slave race.

5. when the leader reaches their mid-life, he leads a revolution to free his people from slavery.

When Moses of the Torah had been away from the cities long enough to raise a family, he was called back to lead his people out of slavery. Likewise, at age 34, Tubman returned to the southern Amerika to free her people.

6. The leader creates the freedom in a mystical manner, leading them right out from under the nose of the King, and instituting a battle.

Moses led his people through the Red Sea by “parting the waters”, implying some sort of secret tunnel or passage to freedom. Likewise, Tubman began the “Underground Railroad”, again implying some sort of tunnel or passage to freedom.

7. Following a war, a god-figure pronounces the people “free”.

Moses led his people to an area called Canaan and (after battling all of the Canaanites), his god pronounced his people to be free. Likewise, the Black Myth has a god-character called Abraham Lincoln who pronounces “emancipation”—freedom—for all slaves following a great battle called the Civil War.

The parallels between Abraham Lincoln as a character equivalent to the Torah’s god are unmistakable. Firstly, the father of the religion in the Torah is a character called “Abraham”—and, of course, that is taken as Lincoln’s first name. Not only that, though, this Lincoln frequently quoted from the Torah and its later sequel, the New Testament. And it wasn’t just that he quoted from it—he used the same terminology that was attributed to the god-character and its son in those two books, stating “a house divided against itself cannot stand”!!! A clearer equivalence between the two characters could not be made.

8. Years after the establishment of the religion, however, there is some disagreement in the faith—the people of the story still don’t believe they are being treated properly by the Elites.

In the further story of the Torah collection, we learn that after many centuries of growing as a church, there was divisiveness between the priesthood and the regular people, who felt as though the priest-leaders of their nation were corrupt.

Likewise, several decades following the Civil War, the Black Myth teaches that the blacks were still under a subtler oppression by the Elite Whites—they were forced to use different facilities than the Whites, had no power in voting, etc.

9. A peace-loving leader arises; he is intelligent, loves debate, quotes heavily from the Torah and New Testament, and his speeches become famous.

Not long after, a person named Martin Luther rebels against the religious priests, quoting from the Torah and saying that everyone should be equal in god’s eyes. His famous debate, the “95 Theses”, is studied by people around the world. However, Martin Luther’s rebellion is non-violent. The leader has the highest university education and is a priest himself.

And sure enough, what do you think happens in the Black Myth? A Black priest (called, “reverend” at the time), begins a series of non-violent protests against the Elite Whites of his day. He has the highest degree possible—a Doctorate—and is a brilliant debater. But does this new leader, as described in the Black Myth, even try not to make his copycat nature evident? No! The writers wanted you to know he was a fictional character, based upon Martin Luther! So much so that they gave him the same education, the same situation, and even the same name with just a new surname: Martin Luther King!!!

The only thing that is shocking to me, as a modern philosopher, is the fact that so many people still cling to that old myth, that old crutch, known as the Black History. It has been shown quite obviously that these stories are simply a collection of tales, stolen almost entirely from other, older sources, which try to tell a moral story. They certainly are not evidence of historical fact, and—though I am skeptical—if these people (Abraham Lincoln, “Moses” Tubman, and Martin Luther King) even did exist, it certainly was not in the same way that they supposedly exist here. These stories were handed down through the ages and written down years after the actual events, by people who probably weren’t even there. How can we possibly consider them true? I hope that you have enjoyed this lecture, and can put aside these myths that are simply meant to make you feel good.

I find it sad that I even have to write a conclusion, but I fear that the same fundamentalist atheists that served as inspiration for this essay might not be able to understand that they are the motivation for the writing of the above article. The satirical work above is made by following the same line of logic that so many agnostics and atheists today follow: the idea that if there are similarities between Christianity and some concurrent or older religion, then Christianity is obviously simply a copy of that other religion (and thus, untrue). The line of argument in these arguments is usually quite similar to what is above: the etymology of words is twisted to bizarre lengths (as with “Torah” and “toga”); incorrect assumptions are made based on phrasing (that the “underground railroad” was a literal tunnel underneath the ground); the history is “cherry picked”, where the skeptic chooses only the evidence that favors his thesis and ignores all evidence to the contrary; and it is all based upon the shaky premise that parallelism is equivalent to plagiarism.

In fact, there are at least three ways in which ancient stories from two cultures can in fact arise with startling similarity and yet be independently true events:

1. Coincidence (for example, the fact that both Tubman and Moses returned for their people while in their middle ages, or that a man named after Martin Luther would likewise lead a religious and societal revolution),
2. The later story is purposefully drawing a parallel to the existing story for literary purposes (such as the reference of calling Tubman “Moses”—a deliberate reference to the other story by slaves to help show the importance of what she did by comparing it to a similar event), and
3. The two true stories refer to the same event (for example, isn’t it at least possible that the reason every culture has a Flood account is not some psychological or conspiratorial explanation, but the far simpler explanation that a large-scale flood did in fact occur, and a family was in fact saved by boarding a ship?)

It can be incredibly frustrating to see people perpetuating these same tired Copycat Christ theories over and over—particularly since it is the uneducated or uninformed person who is convinced of their truth without feeling the necessity to perform further investigation. Who knows what will be taught from university podiums some 2,000 years from now, if only one or two sources exist that reference African-Americans? How much of what we know to be true today will be disqualified by future skeptics simply because there was parallelism to some fiction (or supposed fiction) of their history?

The good news is that as long as the Copycat theories are out there, men like J.P. Holding will be there to expose the flaws in their arguments. Hopefully, this article can add something to that effort.

Sincerely,

Michael D. Belote