The Berber people are the indigenous inhabitants of the Maghreb in Northwestern Africa. They are denizens of Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Mali, Mauritania, and the Sahara. To its east lies Egypt.
Berber tongues belong to the Afroasiatic language family. More than 40 million people use Berber. Its written script is ancient, but has been preserved by the Tuaregs and is still in usage today. (Mena B. Lafkioui, “Berber Languages and Linguistics,” Oxford Bibliographies, 2022.) Berber is also written in Latin and Arabic scripts.
At the time of the crucifixion of Jesus, a man visiting Jerusalem for Passover, a Jew called Simon the Cyrene, was conscripted into carrying the cross of the Lord by Roman soldiers. (Mark 15:21) Cyrene was a major port city of northern Libya; it had been established by the Greeks in approximately 600 BC. There a sizable Jewish community lived, to which Simon belonged.
At Pentecost, Libyans from around Cyrene were also present in Jerusalem.
“Now there were Jews residing in Jerusalem, devout men from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, the crowd came together and they were bewildered, because each one of them was hearing them speak in his own language. They were amazed and astonished, saying, ‘Why, are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we each hear them in our own language to which we were born? Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya around Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes..’” (Acts 2: 5 -11)
Mark, the writer of the Gospel of Mark, was from Cyrene. His father and mother Mary from the tribe of Levi, had moved him to Jerusalem. (Acts 12:12) (Daniel Isgrigg, Ph.D.) The Apostle Mark took the Gospel through the desert to Libya.
At the time of the early church, Cyrene was part of the Roman Empire.
The Gospel came to Cyrene through Mark. It arrived via Egypt, from Jerusalem. The Good News spread among Jews, Greeks, Romans and native Berber tribes.
The Gospel moves with people, on boats along the coast and inland on foot or camel with caravans, as it was with the early church.
Ancient fathers of the church are the descendants of this mixture of peoples.
Mouloud Mammeri (b. 1917) of Algeria was a linguist, researcher and writer. He wrote that though the church fathers, ie. Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine and others, used Latin, their books demonstrated their Berber roots. Mammeri maintained that Berber was the local tongue while colonizing languages were used for written purposes, to include Phoenician, Latin, Greek, Arabic, and French. (Mena B. Lafkioui and Vermondo Brugnatelli, “Berber in contact: linguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives,” University of Leiden, Netherlands, 2008.”)
The apologist Tertullian of Carthage, born 155/160 AD in present day Tunisia, spoke against Gnosticism and was the first theologian to write in Latin. He was both a trained lawyer and a priest. Tertullian “set the tone for how many of the subsequent church fathers approached their theologian discussions.” (Concordia Seminary)
Cyprian, (b. 200 AD) of Carthage, also believed to have been Berber, became a priest, a developer of Christian thought, a bishop and finally a martyr. His teacher was Tertullian.
In 203 AD, a group of believers was each put to death by the sword within a Roman arena in North Africa. This included Perpetua and Felicitas—women of Carthage. Perpetua left a written record of her imprisonment. “The Martyrdom of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas,” from The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, Translation by MUSURILLO, S.J., Rev. Herbert Anthony, Papyrologist, Oxford Univ Press, 1972.)
Augustine was born (354 AD) in Thagaste, North Africa—a city of Romanized native Berbers—and educated in Carthage. He was a priest and bishop who battled against competing heresies. A prolific writer, Augustine’s work explored and set precedents for Christian exegesis, the concept of free will, the sin of abortion, original sin and the Trinity.
These three men among others affected generations of believers worldwide for 2,000 years. The followers of Jesus in North Africa were extremely important to the church, even today.
By the fourth century AD, several Christian Berber kingdoms existed; by them, the Christian faith stretched into present day Morocco. (BBC)
Then came 80,000 of the Germanic Vandals from Spain. For 99 years, from 435 to 534 AD they ruled parts of North Africa persecuting Christians. (FOURNIER É. The Vandal Conquest of North Africa: The Origins of a Historiographical Persona. The Journal of Ecclesiastical History. 2017;68(4):687-718. doi:10.1017/S0022046916002827)
Islam came out of Arabia and swept across Egypt (639 AD) and Northern Africa.
In 642 AD, Islam destroyed Cyrene. In 698 AD, Carthage was captured by the Muslims. Many Christians fled to Sicily Italy, Spain and other locations around the Mediterranean coast. A few went north to Germany. Through the tenth century, orthodox churches remained opened in North Africa. At this time, Latin in the local North African churches was replaced with Arabic.
The Arabs mixed with the local populations as well. When Muslim men married native women, the children were automatically deemed Muslim at birth.
Christian centers of thought were no more. Christian kingdoms were finished. Christian communities shrank. (Britannica) By the 11th Century, three exoduses of believers from North Africa had occurred.
Christianity in North Africa was hit over and over by outside attacks: Roman, the Vandals, and Islam. It took time. (Isichei, Elizabeth, “A HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN AFRICA: From Antiquity to the Present,” Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Great Britain, 1995.)
Each invader brought its own type of false religion, none of which were friends of Christianity.
When persecution of Christians comes, some become martyrs. Others flee. And a few survive and remain as a remnant on the land.
The Berbers have remained a remnant on the land throughout North Africa. Today, they are resisting Islam’s foreign culture, language and religion. Many are coming to know the Jesus that their forefathers knew. (“Berber Christians in Algeria,” VOM)
They are the spiritual and physical descendants of the early church. The Berber tongue was an early church language.
It is vitally important that the church remembers this division of the body and the sacrifices and contributions that their forefathers made to keep Christianity alive in North Africa. May the church not forget the Berbers who helped develop the framework for Christian thought that exists today in every congregation of the Lord.
To honor the Lord and the early and modern Berber speaking church in North Africa, the Name of “Jesus” or ⵢⴻⵛⵛⵓ in the Tarafit script has been embroidered in this artwork titled “I AM.”
Watch the story of Jesus in Berber/Tarafit:
