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The word "Bible" is generically associated with the Holy Bible in Western societies. Nonetheless, a quick search on Amazon will also turn up other applications of the word such as The Barbeque Bible, The Boomer Bible, The Organic Cooking Bible, etc. No matter what kind of itch you have, you'll likely find an authoritative Bible on Amazon that scratches it. Now there's another Bible on Amazon, and it is just as serious, just as large and just as old as the Torah and New Testament combined. It is The Kolbrin Bible and it is first ancient wisdom text to honor the Phoenicians from whom we derived the word "Bible" because of the wonderful gift of knowledge we inherited from them.

School children know the word "Bible" comes from the Greek word "bublos," which describes papyrus (an ancient Egyptian writing material made of reeds), and which is derived from the name of Byblos, an ancient Phoenician port that once thrived on the coast of present day Lebanon. What is not commonly known is that the Greek alphabet was developed from the 22-letter Phoenician alphabet. Likewise, the Latin, English and Cyrillic alphabets were also derived from the Phoenician alphabet.

The Phoenicians based their alphabet on an ancient Egyptian hieratic script. This is why the history of The Kolbrin Bible makes it the first Bible of any kind to honor a history that begins in the days following the Jewish Exodus from Egypt.

The Torah (Old Testament) version of the Ten Plagues of Egypt is the history of a nation and it describes a righteous victory of Moses over Pharaoh. In simple terms, it is the story of Exodus as told by the victor. Conversely, the first six books of The Kolbrin Bible, which are collectively referred to as the Egyptian texts, contain the story of Exodus as told by the defeated some 3600 years ago. While there are many similarities between the stories of the Torah and the Egyptian Texts, it is the latter that offers a truly unvarnished account of a nation shaken to its core.

According to the Egyptian Texts, Pharaoh and his army caught the Jews in the midst of their Red Sea crossing and slaughtered better than half of them before the waters swept them away as well. Weakened by plagues that devastated the whole world, the misery of Egypt was only half-fulfilled.

Militarily decimated, Egypt's treasuries and granaries became the prized targets of the starved hoards who invaded from the South. Much blood was shed to repel them. Yet, there was an even worse fate in store. The Egyptians were shaken to their national core by an experience many times worse than 9-11. This is because 9-11 never made America lose it's faith in God, whereas Exodus left the Egyptians with impotent and unworthy gods.

As the Jews wandered the Sinai writing their Torah, a studious new Pharaoh and his humbled Egyptian intelligentsia reasoned that Jews were onto something, so they resolved themselves to find the one true God of Abraham. What ensued was perhaps one of the most remarkable wisdom-gathering events of the ancient world as the Egyptian intelligentsia fanned out to the farthest reaches of the kingdom's trading sphere to conduct a first ever regional anthropological study.

During the day, scribes and academics conducted business as usual, and then during off hours, they interviewed the wisest of many lands. Their field notes accompanied usual shipments back to Egypt and were then compiled into a secular work titled the Great Book. Penned in an ancient hieratic script, the Great Book was over four times the size of The King James Bible, and one part titled the Sons of Fire contains a significant amount of ancient Phoenician folklore; an ancient maritime nation well worth remembering.

The Phoenicians were the first mariners to navigate their ships by Polaris, the North Star, and to circumnavigate the African continent. Their primary trade routes stretched through the Mediterranean; up along the Western shores of Europe; and North to Britain. During the late Bronze Age, Britain was a major exporter of tin, which when smelted with copper, makes bronze. Savvy traders, the Phoenicians plied the waters between the Middle East and Britain carrying lucrative cargoes of Egyptian papyrus and British tin.

Deeply enamored of the Egyptian Great Book, the Phoenicians translated several copies of it into their own 22-letter alphabet, from which our own English alphabet is derived. One copy made it to Britain, where it was warmly received by the Celtic priests there because many of its stories reminded them of their own Druid folklore.

Sadly, the Phoenician civilization was later smashed by the Roman Empire, and little is left their history, and a similar fate almost befell the Great Book. Much of the original Phoenician translations were destroyed during the 1184 arson fire at the Glastonbury Abbey, and what remained was combined with a collection of ancient Celtic texts called the Coelbook. The texts were later translated into English and collectively published as The Kolbrin.

Your Own World Books, the new publisher of this work chose to re-title it as The Kolbrin Bible: 21st Century Master Edition to honor the Phoenicians and their home port of Byblos. Without them, the wonderful historical accounts of this 3600-year old work would have been forever lost in time.

Marshall Masters *2006 All Rights Reserved