Sacred Texts  Africa 

The Holy Piby

by Robert Athlyi Rogers

[1924-8]


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The Holy Piby was written by Robert Athlyi Rogers, who founded an Afrocentric religion in the US and West Indies in the 1920s. Rogers' religious movement, the Afro Athlican Constructive Church, saw Ethiopians (in the Biblical sense of Black Africans) as the chosen people of God, and proclaimed Marcus Garvey, the prominent Black Nationalist, an apostle. The church preached self-reliance and self-determination for Africans.

The original is very rare. There are no copies listed in either the Library of Congress or the University of California catalogs, which is highly unusual. The Holy Piby was banned in Jamaica and other Caribbean Islands in the middle and late 1920s. Today the Holy Piby is acclaimed by many Rastafarians as a primary source.


Title Page
Contents
Preface
Proclamation of the House of Athlyi

The First Book of Athlyi Called Athlyi

Chapter 1. The Creation
Chapter 2. Dead Became Alive

The Second Book of Athlyi Called Aggregation

Chapter 1. Heaven Grieved
Chapter 2: Presentation of the Law
Chapter 3. God's Holy Law to the Children of Ethiopia
Chapter 4. The Law Preached
Chapter 5. Athlicanity Preached
Chapter 6. Solemnity Feast
Chapter 7. Marcus Garvey
Chapter 8. Athlyi Sent Abroad
Chapter 9. The Word of the Lord
Chapter 10. Rejoicing in the Light
Chapter 11. Returned to Newark
Chapter 12. The Guiding Light
Chapter 13. Athlyi Bleeds
Chapter 14. Heaven and Hell
Chapter 15. The Beggar

The Third Book of Athlyi Named The Facts of the Apostles

Chapter 1. Apostles Anointed
Chapter 2. God Spoke to his Apostles
Chapter 3. Standing Before Elijah
Chapter 4. Apostles Exalted

The Fourth Book of Athlyi Called Precaution

Chapter 1. A Buggy from Tokio to Los Angeles, A Bicycle from London to Anguilla
Chapter 2. Held Out His Morsel
Chapter 3. The Clean Should not Accept the Invitations of the Unclean
Chapter 4. Shall Suffer

 

Questions and Answers
The Shepherd's Command by Athlyi