Redemption

African animism is the oldest religion in the world. It evolved during the 200,000 years that Homo sapiens existed on the African continent. Belief in the spirit world, in the afterlife, in the co-existence of the dead with the living, are tenets of faith that continue to prevail throughout Africa. It was carried intact in the first wave of migration to the farthest reaches of Asia and was carried across to the Americas 15,000 years ago. In the Orient, it is described by the West as Ancestor Worship. In North America it is Shamanism, after the shamans or priests of the Native Americans. All animists, whether African, Jewish, Christian, Japanese or Native American, believe in the afterlife and pay homage to their ancestral spirits. Although the ancient Egyptians were polytheistic, the roots of their religion would have been the ancient African religion perhaps distorted by the fables told to children in which animals could talk. This distortion of African teaching could have developed into the gods with animal and bird heads. This could also have been the origin of the elephant and monkey gods of Hinduism, transmitted after the initial migration of Homo sapiens. Indians carried this polytheism to Europe, where the animal gods were replaced by humans with human attributes. Animistic beliefs would have been adopted by the Hebrews before they left Egypt for the Promised Land. Moses was a prince of Egypt. He would have been exposed to African concepts and beliefs. The similarities between Animism and the religion started by Moses result from this assimilation. Their honoured ancestors were called prophets. In the Christian church that evolved from Judaean animism, they are known as saints. Relics reminded the living of their ancestors. It could be a bit of clothing, a lock of hair, a tree which the deceased had planted, a rock or a stream in which he or she drowned. All Catholic churches have a stone embedded in the altar. It holds a relic, usually of the saint to which the church was dedicated. Redemption, Book 3 of the Cyrenian Chronicles, brings into play the influence that African thinking had on the development of Christian concepts in the first century after Christ. Simon, the African who carried the cross behind Jesus on his way to Calvary, seeks to understand how this one man, even after his death, could continue to command a following. With his friend, Mark, they are able to use the precepts of African animistic religion to shed light on the veracity of the resurrection, the incarnation and the concept of the Trinity. Within a decade of the public execution of Jesus, his teachings resonated around the Mediterranean Sea. Jews, Romans, Greeks and Africans embraced his teachings even when the governing authorities turned against them, ridiculing, persecuting and eventually murdering them. In the first thirty years after his death, his word had spread and excited the ordinary people, against the will of their rulers. Simon, his wife Ursula, their son Rufus, and their friend, Mark, became active in the surge of conversions that spread from Jerusalem, through Antioch, to the Greek islands and then to North Africa. Their role is commemorated in the Acts of the Apostles, and in the letters of St Paul. Mark was a Cyrenian and, in this series of novels, is a close friend of Simon. Of all the evangelists, Mark mentioned specifically that Simon, the Cyrenian, was the father of Alexander and Rufus. Christianity began as a passive revolutionary force that confronted and challenged the precepts of those in authority: Jewish priests, Roman emperors, Pharaohs in Alexandria and the Kings and Candaces of Ethiopia. Nevertheless, these churches survived against all odds until, in the fourth century, it was finally accepted as the state religion in the most powerful empire of that time, the Roman Empire, ruled from Constantinople, in modern day Turkey. Further information on these series, may be found in our website: www.cyrenianchronicles.com.