Ezekiel 20:43: There you shall remember your ways, and all your doings, in which you have polluted yourselves; and you shall loathe yourselves in your own sight for all your evils that you have committed.
I had been contemplating for some days about the Yoruba traditional religion, particularly about the “personality” called ELA, the number 16, the Irunmole, and the Yoruba calendar otherwise known as Kojoda. I had wondered why and how it seemed that a of the people had forgotten or failed to consider the reason for the observance of their traditional practices. Rather, they seem okay with an attitude of “we inherited them from our ancestors”.
I had also studied the migration of the Yoruba and Ijebu peoples from the east, Canaan/Levant to be exact. Many want to deny this fact or think themselves too intellectually lazy to investigate. Yet there are many proofs relating to pointers like etymology and cultural anthropology that confirm the migration. The German anthropologist Dierk Lange, an emeritus professor of African History, has shown that the Yoruba people are the people of Israel who were deported from Assyria and migrated to West Africa.
Then, either on the 29th of August or 1st of September 2011, I had an argument with my dad concerning our understanding of the Word. This was after telling him the Yoruba/Ifa story concerning the establishment of the 7-day week.
Suddenly, it happened. The thought was distinctly “dropped” into my mind/heart and I was troubled. Rather, I was terrified. This is what was directed to me:
YESHUA ESHU
The name on the left is the Hebrew for the Son of God – erroneously taught worldwide as Jesus. That on the right is of the supposedly Yoruba trickster “divinity” who rebelled against God (some accounts say the rebel was actually Olosi and not Eshu) and was thus expelled from heaven, according to the Ifa literary corpus. If the first and last letters of the name YESHUA are removed we have ESHU which when spelled using present-day Yoruba alphabets is EṢU. Could this be just a coincidence? Coincidence can be ruled out given the Yoruba migration from Canaan. I was all the more upset as I am not given to judgment and condemnation without reason. I remembered the Ifa account of how Ela supposedly became the most senior of all the Irunmole after an act of love, humility, proactiveness and responsibility. I also called to mind how this same Ela or another who was the son of Moremi (said to be linguistically similar to Miriam/Mary) ascended to heaven of his own accord and saves man.
So I prayed to God about what I thought to be a dilemma for me as I knew HE did not see it as such — I wanted to be sure about the source of the thought. The following day I wanted to read part of the Book of Ezekiel (his hair had locks; Yoruba people and “blacks” possess this unique hair type). If I remember correctly I first opened my Bible to a passage from the Book of Jeremiah and these two verses immediately caught my attention:
“Jeremiah 23:26: How long shall this be in the heart of the prophets who prophesy lies, even the prophets of the deceit of their own heart?
Jeremiah 23:27: who think to cause my people to forget my name by their dreams which they tell every man to his neighbor, as their fathers forgot my name for Baal.”
That was the answer to my prayer — Israel was forgetting the name of God for that of Baal. I still was not totally sure but I then remembered that a particular Yoruba cult, that of Shango (Ṣango) who is said to have been a king (Alaafin) of the former Oyo Empire and who is also worshiped by members of that cult depict him as holding a bifid axe in the same posture as Baal. It seems many of such devotees spend more time extolling extolling the likes of Ṣango that they’ve forgotten the name of God the Father. This is not surprising as it is like a repetition of history.
The Ewe who are one with the Yoruba and acknowledge Ile-Ifẹ as their home, refer to God Most High as Mawu. Curiously, the Yoruba word for cattle is Malu, and Jeroboam caused his people to worship a calf as their creator (1 Kings 12:26-30; 17:16; 2 Chronicles 11:15); likewise Aaron Exodus 32). If the etymologies of Mawu and Malu prove that the words are cognates perhaps Israel abandoned the calf-worship but forgot the divine name.
Could it be that sometime after the emigration of Israel from Assyria that there was a deliberate and perhaps political attempt by some Yoruba cultural custodians via substituting and flipping names in order to prevent their people from remembering their home in the Levant? Such happened before during the reign of Jeroboam (1 Kings 12:26-33; 13:33) and could account for the non-recollection of the name of God among the Yoruba, especially custodians like Ifa priests.
I shuddered to think of the implications. If indeed there was a name substitution — YESHUA / ESHU — and they are truly cognates then the Holy Bible as written in Yoruba language would need to be edited appropriately if the devil is named as Eshu therein. Perhaps the name substitution could account also for the “organized chaos” and stunted growth that seem to be prevalent within Yoruba land and amongst Yoruba peoples today. Prayers, preaching, discussions and the likes within the society including religious institutions would need to be modified accordingly. There is hope for the lost sheep of Israel in confessing the name of God Most High as some of the lost seep like the Nigerian philologist Modupe Oduyoye have studied the Ewe/Yoruba dialects and noted the word Yehve/Yevheh/Yihve.
Nevertheless the questions that need to be answered to put this name substitution hypothesis to rest is:
- What is the meaning of the name (if it is a name and not an epithet) EṢU?
- What are the etymologies of Mawu and Malu?
