The Bibliotheca (Ancient Greek: Βιβλιοθήκη, Bibliothēkē, "library"), in three books, provides a comprehensive summary of traditional Greek mythology and heroic legends, "the most valuable mythographical work that has come down from ancient times," Aubrey Diller observed,^[1] whose "stultifying purpose" was neatly expressed in the epigram noted by Patriarch Photius I of Constantinople:

It has the following not ungraceful epigram: 'Draw your knowledge of the past from me and read the ancient tales of learned lore. Look neither at the page of Homer, nor of elegy, nor tragic muse, nor epic strain. Seek not the vaunted verse of the cycle; but look in me and you will find in me all that the world contains'.^[2]

The brief and plainly expressed accounts of myth in the Bibliotheca have led some commentators to suggest that even its complete sections are an epitome of a lost work.

Pseudo-Apollodorus[link]

A certain "Apollodorus" is indicated as author on some surviving manuscripts (Diller 1983). This Apollodorus has been mistakenly identified with Apollodorus of Athens (born c. 180 BC), a student of Aristarchus of Samothrace, mainly as it is known—from references in the minor scholia on Homer—that Apollodorus of Athens did leave a similar comprehensive repertory on mythology, in the form of a verse chronicle. The text that we possess, however, cites a Roman author: Castor the Annalist, a contemporary of Cicero in the 1st century BC. The mistaken attribution was made by scholars from Photius onwards. Since for chronological reasons Apollodorus of Athens could not have written the book, the author of the Bibliotheca is conventionally called the "Pseudo-Apollodorus" by those wishing to be scrupulously correct. Traditional references simply instance "the Library and Epitome".

Manuscript tradition[link]

The first mention of the work, ignored as a popularised handbook by Classical authors, is by Photius. The work was almost lost in the thirteenth century, surviving in one now-incomplete manuscript,^[3] which was copied for Cardinal Bessarion in the fifteenth century; from Bessarion's copy^[4] the other surviving manuscripts depend.

Unfortunately the Bibliotheca has come down to us incomplete. It is undivided in the manuscripts but conventionally divided in three books. Part of the third book, which breaks off abruptly in the story of Theseus, has been lost. The Patriarch Photius had the full work before him, as he mentions in his "account of books read" that it contained stories of the heroes of the Trojan War and the nostoi, missing in surviving manuscripts. Sir James George Frazer published an epitome of the book by conflating two manuscript summaries of the text,^[5] which included the lost part.

Printed editions[link]

The first printed edition of "Apollodorus" was published in Rome in 1555, edited by Benedetto Egio (Benedictus Aegius) of Spoleto, who divided the text in three books,^[6] but made many unwarranted emendations in the very corrupt text. Hieronymus Commelinus published an improved text at Heidelberg, 1559. The first text based on comparative manuscripts was that of Christian Gottlob Heyne, Göttingen, 1782-83.^[7]

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• Apollodori Bibliotheca, edition by B.G. Teubner, Lipsiae (Leipzig), 1854. Original Greek text.
• Online Text: Apollodorus The Library translated by J. G. Frazer segmented English text with copious footnotes
• Apollodori Bibliotheca Electronica: searchable and annotated online bibliography: history of the text, printed editions,textual criticism, etc.
• Apollodorus the Mythographer
• Online Text: Apollodorus The Library translated by J. G. Frazer condensed text (4 pgs)
• Perseus Encyclopedia, "Apollodorus" (4)

Further reading[link]

• Diller, Aubrey (1983). Studies in Greek Manuscript Tradition, (Amsterdam) pp. 199–216. Abstract. Originally as "The Text History of the Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus", in Transactions of the American Philological Association 66 (1935), pp. 296–313.
• Hard, Robin (1999). The Library of Greek Mythology (Oxford University Press).
• Smith, R.S. and S. Trzaskoma (2007). Apollodorus' Library and Hyginus' Fabulae: Two Handbooks of Greek Mythology (Hackett Publishing).

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Frances Cress Welsing
Born	1935 Chicago, Illinois
Occupation	writer, and psychiatrist

Frances Cress Welsing (born March 18, 1935 in Chicago) is an African American psychiatrist practicing in Washington, D.C.. She is noted for her "Cress Theory of Color Confrontation", which explores the practice of white supremacy. She is the author of The Isis Papers; The Keys to the Colors (1991).^[1][2]

Views[link]

Cress Welsing states that a system is practiced by the global white minority, on both conscious and unconscious levels, to ensure their genetic survival by any means necessary. According to Cress Welsing, this system attacks people of color, particularly people of African descent, in the nine major areas of people's activity: economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, sex and war.^[2] Cress Welsing believes that it is imperative that people of color, especially people of African descent, understand how the system of white supremacy works in order to dismantle it and bring true justice to planet Earth.^[1]

In The Isis Papers she postulates the melanin theory, a hypothesis that has been called pseudoscientific and black supremacist,^[3] that white people are the genetically defective descendants of albino mutants. She posits that because of this defective mutation, they may have been forcibly expelled from Africa, among other possibilities.^[4] Welsing proposes that, because it is so easy for pure whiteness to be genetically lost during interracial breeding, light-skinned peoples developed an aggressive colonial urge and their societies dominated others militarily in order to preserve this light-skinned purity. Welsing ascribes certain inherent and behavioral differences between black and white people to a "melanin deficiency" in white people. Welsing proposes what she calls a "functional definition of racism":

Functional Definition Of Racism = White Supremacy = Apartheid: As a black behavioral scientist and practicing psychiatrist, my own functional definition of racism (white supremacy) is as follows: "Racism (white supremacy) is the local and global power system and dynamic, structured and maintained by persons who classify themselves as white, whether consciously or subconsciously determined; which consists of patterns of perception, logic, symbol formation, thought, speech, action, and emotional response, as conducted, simultaneously in all areas of people activity (economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, sex, and war); for the ultimate purpose of white genetic survival and to prevent white genetic annihilation on planet Earth - a planet upon which the vast and overwhelming majority of people are classified as nonwhite (black, brown, red and yellow) by white skinned people, and all of the nonwhite people are genetically dominant (in terms of skin coloration) compared to the genetic recessive white skin people."^[5]

Welsing discusses her "Unified Field Theory Psychiatry" as a broader framework, encompassing biology, psychology, and physics, as prerequisite to understanding the etiology of a unified field of energy phenomena, specifically the "behavior-energy" underlying racial conflict. She states that her position is more analogous to the "determinist" model of physicist Albert Einstein, than to the "indeterminacy" theories of Max Born and Werner Heisenberg. Furthermore, she asserts that both homosexuality and sexism are necessarily derived from this behavior-energy system.

As a psychiatrist, a large part of Welsing's writings also pertain to Freudian theory, and particularly to analysis of the meaning of symbols. She presents an extensive interpretation of broad categories of symbolic objects: guns and weapons, Christ and the Holy Cross, ball games, boxing, smoking objects, paper money and gold.

Other essays concern the meaning and symbolism of rape and of justifiable homicide. Her analysis of mass-homicide, or genocide, concludes that the Holocaust and systematic destruction of European Jewry was caused by white fear of genetic annihilation by "non-Aryan" peoples. Therefore she believes that the function of Jews as a "Chosen People" is to illustrate to all non-white ethnicities that they are in peril of extermination:

No matter how much you may shrink the size of your nose, no matter how many doctors, lawyers, judges, professors, scholars you may produce, no matter how many Einsteins, Freuds, Marxes, or Rubensteins you produce, no matter how much money, diamonds, and gold you may obtain, if you are classified as "non-white" under the conditions of white supremacy domination, when the hammer of white supremacy falls, you will be under that hammer.

According to Welsing, various cultural practices express white people's sense of their own inferiority:

On both St. Valentine's Day and Mother's Day, the white male gives gifts of chocolate candy with nuts…. If his sweetheart ingests "chocolate with nuts", the white male can fantasize that he is genetically equal to the Black male…. Is it not also curious that when white males are young and vigorous, they attempt to master the large brown balls, but as they become older and wiser, they psychologically resign themselves to their inability to master the large brown balls? Their focus then shifts masochistically to hitting the tiny white golf balls in disgust and resignation — in full final realization of white genetic recessiveness.^[6]

Welsing further contends that chauvinism of white males is rooted in envy, "because Black is always genetically dominant to white":

...I have said all of the above to state that, yes, there is envy in the white supremacy culture, but it began with the white male's envy of the genetic power residing in the Black male's testicles and phallus. Perhaps there was also envy of the comparatively longer length of the Black phallus. The sense of his relative genetic weakness and inferiority compared to Black males (because Black is always genetically dominant to white) caused the white male to attempt to project "inferiority" on white females as well.^[7]

Cress Welsing has been criticized for stating that black male homosexuality is consciously imposed on the black man by the white man to destroy the black family, that black homosexuality is a sign of weakness and that homosexual patterns of behavior are simply expressions of black male self-submission to other males in the area of sex, as well as in other areas such as economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, and war.^[8]

Film appearance[link]

Cress Welsing made a rare screen appearance when she starred in the documentary 500 Years Later (2005) starring Maulana Karenga, Muhammed Shareef, Hakim Adi, Kimani Nehusi, Paul Robeson Jr, Nelson George, and many more. The directed by Owen Alik Shahadah and written by M.K. Asante, Jr.

Works[link]

• The Isis (Yssis) papers. Chicago: Third World Press, c1992 (3rd printing). ISBN 0-88378-103-4, ISBN 0-88378-104-2.

Cress Welsing made a rare screen appearance when she starred in the documentary 500 Years Later (2005) starring Maulana Karenga, Muhammed Shareef, Hakim Adi, Kimani Nehusi, Paul Robeson Jr, Nelson George, and many more. The documentary was directed by Owen Alik Shahadah and written by M.K. Asante, Jr.

Footnotes[link]

Further reading[link]

• Ortiz de Montellano, B. (2001) Magic Melanin: Spreading Scientific Illiteracy to Minorities.

External links[link]

• Interview with Francis Cress Welsing

See also[link]

• Melanin Theory
• Black supremacy
• Afrocentrism

Yosef Ben-Jochannan (born December 31, 1918), also known as Dr. Ben, is an African American writer and historian. He is considered one of the more prominent Afrocentric scholars.^[1]

Early life and education[link]

Ben-Jochannan claims to have been born the only child of an Afro-Puerto Rican Jewish mother named Julia Matta and an Ethiopian father named Kriston ben-Jochannan, in a Falasha community in Ethiopia.^[2][1]

He was educated in Puerto Rico, Brazil, Cuba, and Spain, earning degrees in engineering and anthropology.^[2] In 1938, Ben-Jochannan earned a BS in Civil Engineering at the university of Puerto Rico, despite the fact that the University of Puerto Rico did not offer this degree, nor was there an Engineering Department until 1942.^[3] In 1939 a Master's degree in Architectural Engineering from the University of Havana, Cuba.^[2] He received doctoral degrees in Cultural Anthropology and Moorish History from the University of Havana and the University of Barcelona, Spain. ^[2]

Career and later life[link]

Ben-Jochannan immigrated to the United States in the early 1940s. He worked as a draftsman and continued his studies. He claims that in 1945, he was appointed chairman of the African Studies Committee at the headquarters of the newly founded UNESCO, a position from which he stepped down in 1970. In 1950, Ben-Jochannan began teaching Egyptology at Malcolm King College, then at City College in New York City. He claims that from 1976 to 1987, he was an adjunct professor at Cornell University.^[4]

Ben-Jochannan is the author of 49 books, primarily on ancient Nile Valley civilizations and their impact on Western cultures.^[2] In his writings, he argues that the original Jews were from Ethiopia and were Black Africans, while the white Jews later adopted the Jewish faith and its customs.^[5]

Ben-Jochannan has also made a number of appearances on Gil Noble's WABC-TV weekly public affairs series Like It Is.

Ben-Jochannan has been criticized for allegedly distorting history and promoting Black supremacy. In February 1993, Wellesley College European classics professor Mary Lefkowitz publicly confronted Ben-Jochannan about his teachings. Ben-Jochannan taught that Aristotle visited the Library of Alexandria. Lefkowitz showed this to be impossible since Aristotle was dead before the library's construction.^[6]

According to the Skeptic's Dictionary, much of Ben-Jochannan's publications are influenced by earlier Afrocentric work by George James.^[7]

In 2002, Ben-Jochannan donated his personal library of more than 35,000 volumes, manuscripts and ancient scrolls to The Nation of Islam.^[8]

Ben-Jochannan currently lives in the Harlem section of New York City.

Selected bibliography[link]

• African Origins of Major Western Religions
• We the Black Jews
• Black Man of the Nile and His Family
• Africa: Mother of Western Civilization
• New Dimensions in African History
• The Myth of Exodus and Genesis and the Exclusion of Their African Origins
• Abu Simbel to Ghizeh: A Guide Book and Manual

See also[link]

	Puerto Rico portal
	New York City portal
	African American portal

• Afrocentrism
• Ancient Egyptian race controversy
• List of notable Puerto Ricans
• Jewish immigration to Puerto Rico
• Anti-Europeanism
• Pseudohistory

References[link]

External links[link]

• African American Racism in the Academic Community
• The Twin Towers of Afrikan Knowledge: Dr. Clarke and Dr. Ben Unearthed Africa's Truths