Black Athena is largely about the way the Western view of the world has changed over the years. Bernal brings forth the idea of the Ancient Model, where Egyptians and Phoenicians largely influenced Ancient Greece, as opposed to the Aryan Model, or the model the Western world has been using for the past 200 years which describes Ancient Greek culture as coming from the Hellenes (white invaders) (Bernal 2001: 2-3).

Bernal explains that around the 1800s, ethnocentric views began to discredit the Ancient Model, leading to the Aryan model’s rise to power. Eventually, a modified Aryan Model became accepted, where the Egyptians were seen as having some impact on Ancient Greece, but it still left out the Phoenicians (Bernal 1987: 439-443).

Bernal wrote that this was all part of a large conspiracy by classicists to cover up the contributions of races they saw as inferior (Bernal 1987: 17).

Bernal explains he wrote Black Athena to open up the topic of study to researchers more qualified than him (Bernal 1987: 73). While he did do this, many of his responses were attacks on his abilities as a researcher as well as the research he conducted.

The most scathing criticism I found of Bernal and his research was in “Comment on Black Athena. “This work, though full of gross errors of fact and interpretation, has not received the sharp criticism which it deserves, obviously for political reasons” (Kristeller 1995: 125).

While strongly worded, it isn’t an uncommon stance on Bernal’s academic work.
In “Black Athena versus traditional scholarship,” Muhly states that Bernal takes evidence and tries to fit it into his own view of history instead of using the evidence to construct a view of history, which is what a historian is supposed to do (Muhly 1990: 88). Kristeller claims Bernal does not cite evidence to support his claims (Kristeller 1995: 127).

Molly Levine feels Bernal’s need for the revision of history through “competitive plausibility” is not an adequate view for him to take, because it leaves Bernal and his detractors open to debates that consist of them telling each other “I am not persuaded” in their responses and responses to responses (Levine 1992: 442-443).

Even while she does go through his arguments with a fine tooth comb and study others’ responses to him, she states he brings a passion to his work and was the first to bring together research of the Egyptians’ influence on Greece and combine it with the theory that racist ideology prevented the truth from coming out all those years (Levine: 444).

The only scholar I found who didn’t work at lengths to discredit and blast Bernal’s theories was Berlinblau in Heresy. Many detractors label Bernal’s work as Afrocentric mythology; Berlinerblau believes the truth is much more complicated than that (Berlinerblau 1999: 134). He also said Black Athena caused many historians to contemplate popular social science (Berlinerblau 1999: 180).

Bernal states the Western view of Ancient Greece is formed by years of racism and anti-Semitism  (Bernal 1987: 382). Kristeller responds that this shows Bernal’s own anti-German bias, because Bernal focuses on Germany in many of his claims against historical racism. Kristeller says he did learn about Egyptian influence on Greek culture in German schools (Kristeller 1995: 126).

Bernal says he uses Egyptian sources and studies Greek culture for Egyptian influences (Bernal 2001: 21). He says there is a marked Egyptian influence found in artifacts dating back to the 8th century B.C.E, notably weapons, chariots, and iconography (Bernal 2001: 48). Bernal also states Egyptians probably did travel, citing how the Chinese population has changed over centuries therefore Egyptians probably have too and mentioning bas reliefs of Egyptian fleets (Bernal 2001: 73-74).

Tritle counters this by saying the Egyptians did not take kindly to “barbarians” and wouldn’t have traveled (Tritle 1992: 320).

Bernal says all of this was covered up because of racist motives and historians covering up evidence, while Muhly says he doesn’t take into account that the sources he says were discriminated against were probably ignored because of lack of credibility, not because of academic racism (Muhly 1990: 86).

Berlinerblau brings up the fact that Bernal states the most frequent Greek contact with the African and Phoenician foreigners occurred between eighteenth and thirteenth centuries, deviating from dates many historical scholars agree upon (Berlinerblau 1999: 49).

Bernal states the Phoenicians had a major impact on the forming of Ancient Greek society, but Muhly says there is no archeological evidence to support it (Muhly 1990: 95-96). Muhly also denies Bernal’s claims that the Phoenicians provided the basis of Greek democracy on the grounds that they used a much different system than the Greeks (Muhly 1990: 87).

As for the issue of race, Bernal says he stands by his mentions of the Egyptian rulers being black, even though there has been an outcry against the term (Bernal: 2001 23). Muhly disputes the claim that there is no real proof; if they were black, Muhly states, it wasn’t important to the Egyptians who favored political power over race (Muhly 1990: 100-101).

The most interesting argument I found is that Bernal uses sources that support his theories while ignoring others, which was illustrated by Molly Levine. In Bernal’s book, he uses the claims of Herodotus, because they support his work, while he ignores Thucydides, because he did not include the Egyptian origins of Greece and therefore must have been another nationalistic writer hiding the truth (Bernal 1987: 98-103). Levine brings up the point that many scholars do the same thing in using only source materials that prove their point (Levine 1992: 447).