Interview with Nabil Ziani, author of "The Berbers in the Bible"

​

You recently published a book entitled "The Berbers in the Bible". Does the Bible tell the story of the Amazighs?

Yes, the Bible does speak of the Berbers. This is what my research proves in this book. Since the most ancient times, and going back to the sources of the first peoples of which Noah was the ancestor, it is possible to follow the list of the descendants of this patriarch to discover the future of each nation that populated the planet. This is also the case of the Berber people.

​

In my book, I went looking for the first of all Berbers, the ancestor of all Amazighs. Then, little by little, and going through the texts of the Bible from Genesis to the Apocalypse, I reconstructed the history of the Berbers as they appeared in the texts of the Old, then of the New Testament. There is thus a trace there alongside Moses in Egypt, to the right of Joshua in the land of Canaan, then in historical texts such as that relating to Chachnaq mentioned seven times in the Bible.

​

In the New Testament, we are struck by the fact that the Gospels report that the person who helped Jesus carry his cross was a Berber named Simon of Cyrene. Then, there are numerous references to Berber Doctors and Prophets in the book of the Acts of the Apostles and in the rest of the New Testament. Several prophets spoke of the Berbers, like Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Isaiah, etc.

​

What did they report about the Berbers?

They have, for example, announced prophecies relating to the Berbers in the End Times. There are indeed texts that describe them and announce their future. They are described as brave, courageous, intelligent, but also quick to fight and wage war. This is how they are mentioned in the prophecies announcing the wars of Gog and Magog, as well as that of Armageddon. My book clearly demonstrates that the Bible reports texts relating to both the origins of the Berbers and their future. The Bible therefore becomes a document to examine, study and dissect, since it tells the story of our people and gives us extremely important information about its future. My research on the history of the Berbers in the Bible, as a historical document, allowed me to discover a source of important revelations that have never been, or so little, used by historians.

Precisely, what did you discover in the Bible on the Berbers?

The Berbers played an important role in the development of human civilization. They intervened in the course of historical events, without anyone paying homage to them, or even recognizing it. With Moses and Joshua, with pharaohs and kings, with emperors and military leaders, by imposing itself in the fields of theology, philosophy, arts and letters, science and technology. The Bible reveals part of it to us, but in a coded way, so that it is only revealed at the appropriate time. And that time has come, since this information finally reaches the public who will discover it with interest.

​

How many know that there were Berbers alongside the Hebrews who left Egypt under the leadership of Moses? How many know that the son of Aaron brother of Moses married a Berber? Who knows that Joshua had among his advisers a priest with a Berber mother? We know today that Chachnaq is told in the Bible.

​

By browsing the biblical text, we discover that it is about the Berbers, but naming them differently: Pouth, Libya, Cyrene, etc. The words "Berber", "Amazigh", "Numidian" or "Africa" do not appear there, for the simple reason that they did not yet exist.

Mauretania, country of the Moors, literally means in Berber the country of Tanit, a divinity taken up by the Romans under the name of Venus and the Greeks under that of Aphrodite. Herodotus points out sixteen tribes that were in Libya in antiquity. They were joined over time by the Greeks, the Phoenicians, the Romans, the Vandals, the Byzantines, the Arabs... Which caused the change in their external image, to the point of being completely forgotten by History, then assimilated to the Arabs since their Islamization. There are also several Jewish migrations to North Africa. So numerous that a Judeo-Berber community has been there since the eighth century BC.

You said that the Berbers played an important role in the development of human civilization. What have concretely given to humanity?

It should be noted that several Church Fathers were Berber. All the great Protestant reformers drank from Amazigh sources such as those of Saint Augustine, Cyprian and Tertullian. Martin Luther the Father of Protestantism, Jean Calvin the Father of the Reformation, Henri Newman, founder of Anglicanism, were inspired by the literary works of these Fathers of the Church of Amazigh origin. It was a Berber pope who Latinized the Catholic Church. Saint Gélase (Ghilas in Berber) was also the teacher of Saint Valentine. The first Gospel was written by a Berber, and the first Latin translation of the Bible was made in North Africa, long before the known version of Saint Jerome. The Berbers therefore gave all of humanity a lot of enlightenment, such as the invention of the candle in the current city of Béjaia, Algeria. It is indeed the Berber name of the city which, once transliterated in Arabic then in Spanish which will give the French name "candle". It was around Guelma-Calama that the novel, as a literary genre, was invented by Apuleius of Madaure. And it is Augustin de Taghaste who will invent the autobiography with his famous “Confessions”. The French historian Henri-Irénée Marou affirms that it is "African Christianity which was the fruitful and effective agent of a transfer of culture from south to north, from Africa to Europe". He was talking about North African Christianity, of course. He adds: “I believe that you North Africans should be quite proud of that, of having offered Europe these masters who formed it”. And to conclude "the whole of Latin Christianity, the whole of Western Europe was in this way fertilized, educated, cultivated by your ancestors according to the flesh, if not the spirit, your fathers".

​

Another historian, Etienne Gilson declared “It suffices to compare what the Berber people were and, generally speaking, the peoples living in North Africa, before their conquest by Islam and what they have become since. Almost all the Latin Fathers are Africans: Tertullian of Carthage, the Numidian Arnobus of Sicca and his pupil Lactantius, Saint Cyprian of Carthage, Victorinus the African, the Berber Saint Augustine, in short all that glorious column head of Latin patristics. How many splendid gifts from Africa to the Church of Rome while the latter still had to balance only Saint Ambrose and Saint Jerome! ".

What is the interest of your book for readers?

This book will bring to readers, in particular the Amazighs, a new and edifying light on the history of the Berbers. This is the first time that the Bible, this precious source which is generally neglected by historians, has been used to trace the origins of the Berbers. Today, whether they are Muslims, Jews or Christians, whatever their language of expression, the Berbers will discover a part of their history never before revealed. Part of the mystery of their origin is revealed in my book, especially since for the first time the name of the first of the Berbers is revealed, whose descendants still occupy this immense territory which extends from the west of Nile to the Canary Islands, from the Mediterranean to the borders of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Interview by Isaac S.