The receipts
Where it all came from
Nothing is exempt, including me. So here's where to check it yourself.
I'm not an academic. I didn't build this book by summarising a shelf of scholarly books. I worked the other way round: I started with primary sources and the historical record, the biblical text itself, ancient inscriptions, archaeological findings and the documented actions of historical figures, and I followed the patterns myself. I followed the money and I followed the power, and I drew my own conclusions from where the evidence led.
Where I point to scholars, I'm pointing you to where the established academic work sits. Where a claim is contested, or where it's my own interpretation rather than settled fact, I say so, here and in the book. If you want to go deeper, start with the primary sources. That's where I started.
Scripture you can open today
Every verse the book leans on is in the Bible and the Qur'an you can pick up today. Start with these.
- Genesis 2 and 3: the garden, the tree and "in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (2:17). Then Genesis 5:5: Adam lives 930 years.
- 1 Kings 2:37: King Solomon uses the same words, "thou shalt surely die", as a death sentence.
- Job 1 and 2 and Zechariah 3: the satan as a prosecutor in God's court, working for God.
- Isaiah 14: the "morning star" passage, which in its own context is a taunt aimed at a Babylonian king, not a description of a fallen angel.
- Isaiah 45:7: "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil."
- Paul's own letters, read in his own words rather than through someone else's summary.
- The Qur'an, quoted in full where the book makes a point about it, and the hadith, the recorded sayings of the Prophet.
Ancient texts
Older writings that sit behind, beside or against the Bible. Most can be read in translation for free.
- The Epic of Gilgamesh: the flood story of Utnapishtim. Put it side by side with Noah and compare. The British Museum holds the famous Flood Tablet.
- The Ugaritic texts and the Baal Cycle: El, Baal and the divine council of Canaan. Tablets are held in museum collections, including the Louvre.
- The Book of Enoch: the Watchers. Free to read on the Internet Sacred Text Archive (sacred-texts.com).
- The Nag Hammadi Library: the Gnostic texts, including the Apocryphon of John and the Hypostasis of the Archons. James M. Robinson (ed.), The Nag Hammadi Library in English (1990).
- Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies, Book 1 (around 180 CE), and Athanasius of Alexandria's 39th Festal Letter (367 CE): the other side of that story.
Inscriptions and archaeology
The physical evidence anyone can search for.
- The "Shasu of YHW" inscription at Soleb: one of the oldest records of YHWH's name outside the Bible, placing his origins in the borderlands south of Canaan.
- The "YHWH and his Asherah" inscriptions: documented across biblical archaeology.
- Isis nursing Horus: the divine mother and child, centuries older than the Madonna and child, in museum collections you can go and see.
Where it's my reading: The trade network and frankincense route framing that links these southern origins to the wider African world is my own reading of the evidence. I keep the claim to the borderlands where Africa and Arabia meet.
Scholars to look up
Where the established academic work sits.
- Mark S. Smith: the standard treatment of YHWH emerging from the Canaanite gods and merging with El.
- Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (1979): the accessible way into the Gnostic material.
- Sabrina Higgins: the careful academic work on Isis imagery and the Virgin Mary.
Where it's my reading: I hold that the imagery and the idea of the divine mother were absorbed and inherited, not that anyone sat down and renamed Isis as Mary. On Persia, the influence of Zoroastrian ideas on Jewish thought after the exile is widely argued but not settled. I find it the strongest explanation, not proof.
Africa's history, told from the inside
These deserve solid references, so here are the institutions that actually hold this heritage.
- UNESCO, which lists Timbuktu as a World Heritage Site.
- The Ahmed Baba Institute in Timbuktu, which houses tens of thousands of the surviving manuscripts.
- SAVAMA-DCI, the librarians who smuggled hundreds of thousands of manuscripts to safety when militants occupied the city in 2012.
- UNESCO's General History of Africa: the fullest source on Mali, Songhai and the fall at Tondibi in 1591, written largely by African scholars.
- The Tarikh al-Sudan and Tarikh al-Fattash: chronicles written by West African scholars themselves.
Where it's my reading: On the Dogon and Sirius, I don't claim it as proven. I looked at the original claims and the serious challenges to them, and I use it as an honest example of how contested that ground is.
History anyone can check
The men in this book are not obscure. They're some of the most written about figures in history.
- Constantine and the Council of Nicaea (325 CE): an emperor called the meeting, and the bishops voted on which version of Christ would be official.
- King James I and the Bible that bears his name (1611), and the later use of it to justify slavery.
- The Royal African Company, chartered under his grandson Charles II.
Spotted a mistake?
Tell me and I'll fix it in the next edition: [email protected]. That's what "hold me to account" means.