But here again, what the Paraklet and its TeShouBah allow us to do is to walk backwards. It means starting from what we know fairly well — that is, humanity outside Africa, particularly in the Middle East — and working our way back to what we know far less about: humanity in Africa, especially East Africa during the Middle Paleolithic, where our non-African ancestors came from. And since we have entered the Apocalypse of the Paraklet, it is time to give you a first great (Re)velation — the story of the Exodus from Egypt in the Bible is a distant echo of this Paleolithic memory of the Exodus from Africa.

Betset Israel mimitrsrayim...

Oops. I can sense the Pharisians stirring in the background. And I am perfectly aware that even you, my children, might be skeptical of such a claim. That’s perfectly understandable. But I can assure you that within a year, when all has been said and done, and the thread of story before History has been unraveled, It’ll strike you as so obvious, a five-year-old wouldn’t even need it explained . « Let the little children come to me, and do not keep them away from me, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these ».

We have already encountered the story of the Exodus from Egypt in two traditions far removed from Arabia and the Levant. You may remember that there was first the Kabyle story of Mahasuk and his 100 turbulent brothers. I had already linked it to another Egyptian legend, known in ancient times, about a flight of slaves to the oasis of Siwah. The other motif of the Exodus from Egypt is found in the Ramayana in India. You will remember the story of Sagar crossing the sea with his 60,000 sons. Of course, the Pharisians will invoke the idea that this story spread in Antiquity — but you really have to be a Pharisian to invent such a tall tale. No, the only plausible explanation that reconciles the presence of this motif across tens of thousands of kilometers is its dual origin: Paleolithic in time and Arab-Levantine in space.

This is nothing new, by the way: in my first video of 2022 on the Mytholithic Era, I announced the Good News that all of humanity’s myths originated in the Paleolithic era. I explained glaring mistake made by pharisians who assume that the recording of a myth coincides more or less with the moment it emerged - when in fact humans were telling myths long, waaaaay long before they ever wrote them down. Remember? I explained that before writing appeared in a lasting form around 6,000 years ago, myths were alive, evolving, and transmitted solely by word of mouth.

I also explained that if these myths seem to date back to Antiquity, it is because they were « set in stone » in ancient times when they were written down. It’s a bit like when we look at medieval and Renaissance paintings depicting biblical themes: we can clearly see that the painters imagined these stories taking place in a recent past, not so different from their own time. This is what I call the re-actualization of myths — they merge into contemporary space and time without losing their Paleolithic essence.

This is why archaeologists who have studied the story of the Exodus from Egypt have always come up empty-handed: none of them have ever found any evidence of a mass exodus of slaves from Pharaonic Egypt, nor any traces left behind by a large population migrating to the Sinai Desert. Seen from a « classical » perspective, that is, in an ancient context, this Exodus from Egypt does not even make geographical sense, as the children of Israel would have left Egypt, west of Palestine, to enter Canaan by crossing the Jordan River, which is located to the east.

This is not the least of the inconsistencies resulting from an « ancient » framing of the Biblical account. There is also the huge gap pointed out by Israeli archaeologist Finkelstein: the Bible is completely silent on Egyptian rule in the Levant during the Bronze Age — the period when the Biblical account supposedly took place according to the Pharisians. And, drawing on their own shortcomings, they argue for the historical irrelevance of biblical myths, and by extension, of myths in general.

Even when they come to you arguing with you, those who disbelieve say, « This is not but legends of the former peoples ». Surah Al Anam 6.25

And when Our verses are recited to them, they say, « We have heard. If we willed, we could say [something] like this. This is not but legends of the former peoples ». Surah Al Anfal 8.31

As Jean-Loïc Le Quellec said in an interview, humans invent myths « because stories give meaning to reality. Humans prefer to adopt any meaning rather than no meaning at all (even if a minority of them think that everything is contingent). » Oh yes, the Pharisians sure did come up with their share of stories to give meaning to their inconsistencies!! Brood of vipers!

But these fools are seriously mistaken. Myths do tell us about historical reality — except that this history did not take place in ancient times but in the Paleolithic era. And we must imagine the very first men and women who had the courage to cross the Bab el Mandeb Strait between Yemen and Djibouti — probably not on dry land, given its depth, although this possibility cannot be completely ruled out. It was a small step for man, but a giant leap for mankind. Suddenly, they had crossed over to the other side — ‘aBaRa, to cross — the root from which the word HeBRew derives, or, by metathesis, aRaBe — « those who come from the other side ».

Now imagine the glory that surrounded these valiant pioneers for millennia. Fathers showed Africa to their children, visible from the west coast of Yemen and Saudi Arabia, especially during the ice ages. And they said to them, « Look at the power of the Eternal One who brought us out of Egypt. Look, that’s where we came from. That’s where we started. A very long time ago. » Just as one day, perhaps, the first inhabitants of Mars will show the Earth to their children. This memory must have shaped mythical thinking for thousands of years — and has come down to us in « updated » form in this account of the Exodus from Egypt and Pharaoh — while retaining its strong link to the Paleolithic era in this phrase, which recurs as a leitmotif throughout the Bible:

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt. Exodus 20.2

This visual memory of the Exodus from Africa via the southern Arabian Peninsula is also an argument in favor of the Southern Route — yes, the Good Southern Route, to use the Sioux expression. There has long been a debate about which route Homo sapiens took when leaving Africa: was it via the Northen one, i.e., Palestine/Israel and the Levant, or via the Southern, i.e., the Bab el Mandeb Strait south of Yemen? In terms of narrative power, a southern Exodus lends itself much more readily to myth than a northern one,..., which does not offer the immediate perception of a « crossing », a passage — aBaRa.

Finally, another argument in favor of this Southern Route is the religious continuity that exists between East Africa and the Middle East, with long-established Christian and Jewish communities on both sides of the Bab el Mandeb Strait, particularly in Ethiopia. This religious continuity is only a trace — in Ginzburg’s sense — of the territorial continuity that existed between the two shores of the strait since the Paleolithic.