Gerald Massey in response to the late (4x) Prime Minister of 19th century Great Britain, William Gladstone, and his claim of the Bible's impregnability.
"The book of Genesis is assigned to a man who was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians...To begin with, the legend of Eden is one of those primeval traditions that must have been common property of the undivided human race, carried out into all lands as they dispersed in various directions from one center, which I hold to have been African." Massey believed in Africa as the originator, and Egypt as its mouthpiece. Sometimes his terminology may be a bit offensive, like the use of "primeval" to describe the traditions but one must remember that he was working with a timeline, rigidly set by the same euro-centrists he was disputing, in order to establish the superiority and anteriority of Macedonian culture. Anything outside that timeline had to be deemed primitive or primeval. Science has now revealed that modern man originated inside Africa. Chalk one up for the late Gerald Massey.
Diodorus Siculus reporting on Osiris/Dionysus. "Osiris was the first, they record, to make mankind give up cannibalism…all men were glad to change their food, both because of the pleasing nature of the newly-discovered grains and because it seemed to their advantage to refrain from their butchery of one another…Osiris, they say was also interested in agriculture…and taught mankind at large the culture of the vine and the use of wine, as well as the way to harvest the grape and to store the wine…Of Osiris they say that, being of a beneficent turn of mind, and eager for glory, he gathered together a great army, with the intention of visiting all the inhabited earth and teaching the race of men how to cultivate the vine and sow wheat and barley; for he supposed that if he made men give up their savagery and adopt a gentle manner of life he would receive immortal honors…this did in fact take place, since not only the men of his time who received this gift, but succeeding generations as well, because of the delight which they take in the foods, which were discovered, have honored those who introduced them as gods most illustrious." Osiris is reputed to have traveled first to Ethiopia, then through Arabia along the shore of the Red Sea to India, where he founded not a few cities, he also visited other nations in Asia, Europe and the rest of the inhabited world.
Diodorus also clearly states that Egypt is the country where mythology places the origin of the Gods i.e. the gods of all nations, where the earliest observations of the stars were made, and further more, where many note-worthy deeds of great men are recorded.
Herodotus, called "the father of lies" by Plutarch, who seemed particularly offended by Herodotus's claim that Hercules was an Egyptian god, appears to warrant scorn by contemporary Euro-Centrists, only because he places a black/African civilization in the heart of the Caucasus, namely Colchis. This goes against everything the architects of "White Supremacy" would have us believe, a theory I might add, that includes a white origin for Egyptian civilization. They project their methods of fabrication onto the ancients. Author Richard Poe gives us an example of some methods used to discredit Herodotus: "But how does Armayor know that the Colchians were not black and woolly-haired in Herodotus's day? Simple. He quotes Hippocrates. In the classic work Airs, Water, Places, the Greek physician described the Colchians who lived near the river Phasis: "the Phasians have an appearance different from that of other men. As to size, they are large and corpulent in body. Neither joint nor vein is evident. They have a yellow flesh, as if victims of jaundice. Their voices are deeper than other men's." Poe counters with "Why do we find only tiny pockets of black Abkhazians, most of whom seem to have arrived during the period of Turkish rule? Perhaps during the 2,500 years that have passed since Herodotus, the black Colchians have simply blended into the general population. Such an event would hardly be unique. History offers many examples of black communities that have disappeared through intermarriage, and in a much shorter period than 2,500 years. Sociologists have called the process "whitening out." The black people of Argentina, for example, who, in 1852 constituted over 14 percent of the country's population, 34 percent in Buenos Aires alone, have been thoroughly "whitened out" through inter-marriage. There is virtually no trace of them today as a recognizable social group…Suppose such a process occurred in ancient Colchis. It is not hard to imagine why some observers, such as Herodotus, arriving on the scene some 1,500 years after it began, would have seen people with dark skin and woolly hair, while other observers, such as Hippocrates, would have seen people with yellow skin." The story of the blacks in Argentina, in my opinion, is a tragedy. Since I am sure the "whitening out" was premeditated, a way for the blacks to climb the economic ladder. Its like Oprah Winfrey's admission that when she was younger she wanted to be white. It also explains why most Asians reject the notion of a black origin for their various cultures. They do not want to be identified with the maligned masses at the bottom of the food chain in the European model of civilization. It is a far cry from the Egyptian model, where service to humanity was valued above all else, and where a benevolent nature secured your immortality and a place among the Gods. All transcendence in the hands of unscrupulous and unconscionable men becomes praetorian.