Customer Reviews

Entering the Promised Land

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Entering the Promised Land by Willie J. Alexander is an intense narrative-driven road map of what it took for him to succeed and what he feels is a blueprint for the recovery of the African-American community. Mr. Alexander gives us glimpses into his life and shows us through his endeavors what is available to those who live by biblical principles, the pursuit of education and nose-to-the-grindstone hard work. Entering the Promised Land is filled with scripture, which is used as a guideline for living full lives, having strong marriages and raising good kids. There is also much reference made to the civil-rights era, indicating if African-Americans were to reestablish those principles set forth by Dr. Martin Luther King we would be able to recover from many of the ills ravishing our communities today.

Mr. Alexander's strong message of self and community empowerment are on target. However, some readers might find the continued biblical passages a bit heavy-handed. Also, there is a bit of changing messages in the middle of chapters that can slow the reader down. I would recommend Entering the Promised Land to readers who can relate to a plan of empowerment with a strong, religious message.

Angelia Menchan
APOOO BookClub

Biblical scholars and learned theologians agree that the old testament of the Christian Bible is a collection of myths, legends, parables and metaphors. The early sections were handed down orally and it was some time before it was formally written down. Furthermore, it has been translated many times, so the words we see in what is known as the King James Version do not match the originals. There are contradictions and inconsistencies, some of which are natural and others due to changes in how words are used. Like every other document, the Bible must be interpreted in the cultural context in which it was written.
In this book, Willie Alexander uses references to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Civil Rights Movement, corporate giving, scientific knowledge and biblical verse to make some conclusions based on his personal perspective. There are two conclusions that are irrefutable. The first is that Jesus was a very dark skinned man and perhaps even African. The people who inhabit the area known as Palestine are dark skinned, some dark enough to be considered black. Furthermore, people from Africa and Asia Minor had been intermingling and interbreeding in that region for centuries before Jesus. The idea that Jesus was blond haired with a Northern European complexion is absurd, the images we are accustomed to seeing in paintings is totally due to cultural bias with no basis in fact.
The second irrefutable conclusion is that humanity arose in Central Africa and slowly migrated out to populate the Earth. By tracing changes in mitochondrial DNA, which is passed only through the mother, scientists have definitively been able to determine that we all have roots in Africa.
However, Alexander also goes off on some rather unusual and incorrect paths. There are many sentences that begin with "I believe." For example, on page 119 there is the sentence, "I believe that after the 135 A.D. Jewish Revolt, the descendents of Ham, the black Jews, just like their Semite brothers, were killed, persecuted or forced into a nomadic life leaving them vulnerable to slave traders." The author is referring to the Jewish rebellion against Roman rule of 135 CE that has been historically chronicled as the time a Jewish political entity in Palestine ceased to exist until it was reborn in the twentieth century. This is a historical fact and it is incorrect to refer to it as a belief.
On page 142, Alexander uses the modern usage of the word "eat" to conclude that Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden for engaging in inappropriate sexual intercourse. He claims that "eating from the fruit of forbidden knowledge" was a metaphor for engaging in sex. This is a most unusual interpretation of what is in fact a parable regarding children acquiring forbidden knowledge. Later in that same section there is the paragraph, "The definition of `'pleasure' as having sexual intercourse leads me to believe Eve wanted someone sexually. I believe the someone she wanted was the `serpent' who was also described in the scripture as a `tree.' My research of the words associated with the word `eat' leads me to believe Eve engaged in an extra-marital affair with the `serpent' and Adam discovered her infidelity. After being discovered by Adam she convinced him it was okay to engage in extramarital sex." This is nonsense and is contradictory to any reasonable interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve as a myth concerning the origin of humans. The bible is full of references to sex between people who were not married, including instances of incest, so there is no reason why it would be couched in euphemism here.
Had Alexander stayed within he bounds of the speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement, this would have been a decent book. However, these movements out into what can only be considered extreme personal bias in developing an interpretation turned it into an entry in the religious fringe.