A Response To Martin Bernal's Not Out Of Africa

“Ordinarily, if someone has a theory which involves radical departure from what the experts have professed, he is expected to defend his position by providing evidence in its support.” Professor Mary Lefkowitz makes this statement in her book Not Out of Africa, a response to Martin Bernal’s Black Athena. Bernal’s book argues that Ancient Egypt along with other civilizations “… played fundamental roles in the formation of Ancient Greece.” Lefkowitz, being a classical scholar disagrees with Bernal as well as Dr. Yosef A. A. ben-Jochannan’s claim that Aristotle stole his philosophy from the Library of Alexandria and the notion that Socrates was black. Although Lefkowitz attempts to refute these arguments, the evidence she uses to support her claims are very weak and, as a result, detrimental to her argument.
ben-Jochannan’s lecture at Wellesley College, she asked why he claimed that Aristotle stole his philosophy from Egypt. She was interested to know his evidence because she was under the understanding that the library was built after Aristotle’s death. In her evidence that she uses to refute Dr. ben-Jochannan’s statement, Lefkowitz argues: “Aristotle never went to Egypt, and while the date of the Library of Alexandria is not known precisely, it was certainly only built some years after the city was founded, which was after both Aristotle’s and Alexander’s deaths” (2). What makes her point ill-founded is that she did not take into account that fact that Aristotle could have had access to the Ancient Egyptian knowledge before his death and before that library was built. Although her statement about Dr. ben-Jochannan not giving evidence to support his claim is valid, she should have given adequate evidence to support her claim, which would, therefore, make her argument stronger and more