A popular(increasingly) name for ancient Africa is 'Alkebulan'- it means garden of Eden or something like that. Africa or African names are mentioned more than a thousand times in the Bible. Here is a scholarly article on the subject. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext...
It's an interesting topic, that is, the origin of names for what today is called Africa. The name Africa supposedly originated when the Romans named the land after a tribe-possible the Berbers, living in Tunisia who they called the Afri. So Afri-terra or land of the Afris. Apparently Alkebulan, used in the Koran, may have either an Arabic or African origin. It requires research. The word is increasingly popular yet it may be from an old Arabic word 'al-qalb' meaning 'heart or interior'. I would guess that several tribes had their own name for various regions locally. The Bible refers to Africa generally as Cush or Kush. Kush was 'the most powerful kingdom in the nile valley in 1750 BCE". That's pretty early. For a while the Kushites or Nubians ruled Egypt.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/melissakravitz/2022/01/04/harlem-and-london-are-getting-a-brand-new-african-food-hall-alkebulan/
Some Europeans took Biblical names to a certain extent rather than the reverse. The Bible hasn't got names like Swedenborg, Rasputin, McTavish or Stanislaw in it. The names were originally Hebrew and translated-sometimes crudely, into English. To be more correct one might use the Hebrew spelling instead of English. Christianity had a centralized origin geographically speaking in the era before the settling of the western hemisphere. It needed to be near enough to pagan Europe that missionaries could bring the word of God to the pagans lost in their primitive ways. It was a transitional catalyst in bridging the older, fading civilizations of the fertile crescent with the rising civilizations of the north. Africa and Israel are 422 miles apart. Europe was closer to being colonized by an African religion than vice versa. Islam is also from the Middle East not Africa. Jesus was taken to Africa for a while as a kid by his parents, as Barrack Obama was removed from Hawaii and raised in Indonesia.
Christianity has been in Africa since the first or early second century A.D. The disciple Mark is said to have taken the gospel to Alexandria. Coptic Christianity has existed in Africa since the year 55 A.D. and is one of the oldest Christian churches.
It is the case that economic colonization has occurred with other cultural elements simultaneously. It is wrong to conflate the causality and meaning of all issues with those of the primary power and political force though. Even in history one should follow the money to determine power. Land used to be nearly equivalent to money. before machines proliferated even human labor as slaves was of great value to the rich. Today maybe technology is the main creator of economic value as an equal with natural resources while human capital is decreasing in value. Lawyers will face tough competition for work with Artificial Intelligence one of these days I would guess.
Millions of Africans risk their lives to migrate to Europe because it has economic power that southerners desire to obtain. I am concerned that they do not get anything like a true Christianity from Europeans these days. Being a nominal Christian was a convenience for many and a necessity for others. Mankind is corrupt with original sin and there isn't a pure society where one may contemplate philosophically and critically spiritual concerns without pressure if one were so inclined. At some point the economic power of the ultra-rich draws many followers to their values that today is more of a decadence, soma and homosexual, trans-genderized, mono-sexual, atheist mileau rather than Christian. Not everyone is chosen to be a Christian; "all are called and few are chosen". If one is just outwardly Christian and not spiritually renewed with the Lord's grace it may not have effective eternal value.
I tried using microsoft's AI Chat for a search of the Koran and it found nothing. Yet it insists that it is the oldest name for Africa. I will quote it's answer to my question about Alkebulan- "The term “Alkebulan” is believed to come from the ancient Egyptian name “Alkebu-lan”, which means ‘mother of mankind’ or 'garden of Eden’1. It’s an ancient African word that has been used to describe the African continent for centuries1. The word “Alkebulan” is derived from the Arabic adverb “qabl” meaning “before”. “Al” is the definite article “the”, and the suffix “lan” denotes the plural form of the adverb. Thus, the Arabic word “Alkebulan” means “the ones before”, or simply “the indigenous people”2. It’s also interpreted from Arabic as the 'Land of Blacks’3. It’s considered to be the oldest name for the African continent, used by many African cultures, including the Berbers of North Africa1. It symbolizes a sense of pride and identity for many Africans1. However, the exact origins of the term are still unknown1.”
The age of colonization didn't start for about two thousand years after the start of the events in the Bible became recorded. AVRM (Abraham) lived in Ur circa 2000 B.C. before famously wandering to the site that today is Jerusalem. The age of colonization is said to have started circa 1500 with Portuguese in South Africa etc. Yet European people like the Carthaginians and other like the Phoenicians have lived on the North Shore of Africa for a very long time. So they and Alexander the Great's military might be said to have begun an earlier age of Euro-settlement in the region. The history is complex. You may know that the Septuagint version of the Bible- the Jewish Old Testament, was made by 72 Jewish scholars translating Hebrew to Greek in Alexandria Egypt. Jews also lived in Africa while slaves of Egypt. Moses- a Jewish prince of Egypt (the Pharaoh didn't know he was Jewish), led them out of Africa and to the land named Israel presently. One should lose the racism and simply learn history from zillion sources.
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