Babel's Gods, the Nations' Altars, and the Grafting of All Peoples into Yisra'el through Yeshua
Seventy received the nations. One asked for them back.
The one who divided the nations is named in a verse most Bibles do not contain. Devarim 32:8 says the Most High set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. The Septuagint says it. A Hebrew scroll from Qumran says it. The Masoretic text that nearly everyone reads in Western English says the sons of Israel, and the difference is the whole subject of this book.
Seventy nations were counted at Babel. Seventy were scattered. And something received them. The Seventy and the One follows that arrangement across the world and finds it standing everywhere: in a grove below Kirinyaga, on a platform in Kena'an, in the groves of Uppsala, at the Templo Mayor, and on an island four thousand kilometres from anywhere. Peoples separated for thousands of years built the same religion, with the same furniture, asking for the same three things: rain, children, survival. No trade route explains it. No missionary carried it.
Then a man asked His Father for the nations, and was given them.
Written from Nairobi by a son of people who took a ram to a fig tree, this is an account of what stood behind those altars, what ended it, and what a man must put down to walk out, and what he is permitted to keep.
The whole argument turns on one verse, and Appendix B is a full dossier on it: Devarim 32:8 and 32:43 across the Septuagint, the Masoretic text, 4QDeut-j and 4QDeut-q. Appendix C does the same for Amos 9:12. A reviewer is handed the evidence rather than the conclusion.
Eleven chapters walk the same pattern through twelve regions of the earth, including chapters most books of this kind do not attempt: Rome's second allotment, the Middle Passage religions, and the allotment in the modern West.
Chapter 19 treats the nations of Kenya by name and at length. This is a book that takes African religion as seriously as it takes Greek and Norse religion, and subjects all three to the same test.
Parts Five and Six give the practical exit: renunciation liturgies, a household liturgy for entering the mo'edim, the ancestor question addressed directly, and the Four Cuts. Usable by a congregation, not only readable by a scholar.
The argument closes in a scored anthem, printed with its full arrangement and recorded. Few books of this kind give a congregation something to sing at the end of them.
It stands beside The Ivri Heritage Bible and six further volumes, and cites Scripture from that rendering throughout.
For readers ofMichael Heiser, Margaret Barker, John Walton and Tim Mackie; and of Mbiti, p'Bitek and Idowu on African traditional religion.
The book ends in a song, printed in full at page 364 with its arrangement marked through: an opening oud over distant floor toms while Devarim 32:8 is spoken, three verses on a marching rhythm, a long cinematic break in which the minor chords resolve into the major, and a final chorus at full voice. The refrain is the book's thesis in four lines. A studio recording exists, six minutes and twenty-four seconds, sung in English with a Hebraic accent.
Malkiy'el Yashar Tsadiq is the founder and principal of Beit HaEmet Brit Chadashah — House of Truth in the New Covenant Publishing — in Nairobi, and leads a Hebraic Messianic Natzarene assembly. He holds a Bachelor and Master of Theology and a Diploma from Central Bible College, with ministerial certifications and ordination through Christ Dominion Church Kenya. He is the editor and translator of The Ivri Heritage Bible, a Septuagint-primary rendering of a hundred and seventeen books in four Seasons, and the author of The Two Tests and Shilachim. Of Kikuyu heritage, he is a grandson of Kung'u Karumba of the Kapenguria Six.
“You are not losing your ancestors. You are putting down a debt they never sent you.”Choose an edition · from KES 1,299