Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T00:29:29.649Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From discursive resistance to new genealogies: rethinking Israelite identities in Africa through the case of Nuer Christian Zionists

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 November 2021

Yotam Gidron
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Scholars have commonly interpreted the emergence of claims of Israelite descent among African peoples as attempts of marginalized communities to construct empowering identities by drawing on biblical narratives. This article tries to make sense of such claims from a more emic perspective, not as an instrumental counter-discourse but as a genuine attempt to grapple with the nature of ethnic membership and the place of certain communities in relation to biblical genealogies, time and space. The article explores the claims of Nuer members of several Evangelical Zionist churches operating in western Ethiopia and South Sudan that the Nuer are among the ‘lost tribes’ of Israel. It demonstrates how Nuer Zionists have reinterpreted Nuer identity, known for its permeability and constructivist nature, in light of contemporary premillennialist Zionist notions of history and peoplehood, which emphasize ethnic fixity and focus on lineages, exclusive bloodlines and biological descent. The article offers a new perspective on Israelite identities in Africa and on the influence of born-again Christianity on the construction of ethnic identities.

Résumé

Résumé

Les chercheurs ont communément interprété l’émergence de prétentions à une descendance israélite parmi les peuples africains comme des tentatives, de la part de communautés marginalisées, de construire des identités valorisantes en s'appuyant sur des récits bibliques. Cet article tente de donner un sens à ces prétentions d'un point de vue plus émique, non pas en guise de contre-discours instrumental mais de véritable tentative de se colleter avec la nature de l'appartenance ethnique et la place de certaines communautés par rapport aux généalogies bibliques, au temps et à l'espace. Cet article explore les prétentions de membres nuer de plusieurs églises sionistes évangéliques, présentes dans l'ouest de l’Éthiopie et au Soudan du Sud, selon lesquelles les Nuer font partie des « tribus perdues » d'Israël. Il démontre comment les sionistes nuer ont réinterprété l'identité nuer, connue pour sa perméabilité et sa nature constructiviste, à la lumière des notions sionistes prémillennialistes contemporaines d'histoire et de peuple, qui mettent l'accent sur la fixité ethnique et se focalisent sur les lignages, les lignées exclusives et la descendance biologique. L'article offre une nouvelle perspective sur les identités israélites en Afrique et sur l'influence du christianisme régénéré sur la construction d'identités ethniques.

Type
Israelite identities in Africa
Information
Africa , Volume 91 , Issue 5 , November 2021 , pp. 832 - 851
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ariel, Y. (2013) An Unusual Relationship: evangelical Christians and Jews. New York NY: New York University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bruder, E. (2008) The Black Jews of Africa: history, religion, identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bruder, E. and Parfitt, T. (2012) African Zion: studies in Black Judaism. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar
Crapanzano, V. (2000) Serving the Word: literalism in America from the pulpit to the bench. New York NY: The New Press.Google Scholar
Dereje, Feyissa (2011a) ‘Electoral politics in the Nuer cultural context’ in Tronvoll, K. and Hagmann, T. (eds), Contested Power in Ethiopia: traditional authorities and multi-party elections. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Dereje, Feyissa (2011b) Playing Different Games: the paradox of Anywaa and Nuer identification strategies in the Gambella region, Ethiopia. New York NY: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Dereje, Feyissa (2013) ‘Alternative citizenship: the Nuer between Ethiopia and the Sudan’ in Vaughan, C., Schomerus, M. and de Vries, L. (eds), The Borderlands of South Sudan: authority and identity in contemporary and historical perspective. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Devir, N. P. (2017) New Children of Israel: emerging Jewish communities in an era of globalization. Salt Lake City UT: University of Utah Press.Google Scholar
Engelke, M. (2010) ‘Past Pentecostalism: notes on rupture, realignment, and everyday life in Pentecostal and African Independent Churches’, Africa 80 (2): 177–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Esposito, D. (2004) The Chosen People. Carteret NJ: Word of Truth Publications.Google Scholar
Geschiere, P. and Nyamnjoh, F. B. (2000) ‘Capitalism and autochthony: the seesaw of mobility and belonging’, Public Culture 12 (2): 423–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gidron, Y. (2020a) Israel in Africa: security, migration, interstate politics. London: Zed Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gidron, Y. (2020b) ‘The Nuer Messianic Jewish movement: authority and authenticity in Ethiopia's western frontierlands’. PhD thesis, Durham University.Google Scholar
Haynes, N. (2015) ‘“Zambia shall be saved!” Prosperity gospel politics in a self-proclaimed Christian nation’, Nova Religio 19 (1): 5–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutchinson, S. E. (1996) Nuer Dilemmas: coping with money, war and the state. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutchinson, S. E. (2000) ‘Nuer ethnicity militarized’, Anthropology Today 16 (3): 6–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutchinson, S. E. (2002) ‘Spiritual fragments of an unfinished war’ in Hassan, Y. F. and Gray, R. (eds), Religion and Conflict in Sudan: papers from an international conference at Yale, May 1999. Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa.Google Scholar
Ilona, R. (2014) The Igbos and Israel: an inter-cultural study of the largest Jewish diaspora. New York NY: Epicenter Stories.Google Scholar
Imhoff, S. and Kaell, H. (2017) ‘Lineage matters: DNA, race, and gene talk in Judaism and Messianic Judaism’, Religion and American Culture 27 (1): 95–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Intrater, K. (2003) From Iraq to Armageddon: the final showdown approaches. Shippensburg PA: Destiny Image Publishers.Google Scholar
Johnson, D. H. (1982) ‘Tribal boundaries and border wars: Nuer–Dinka relations in the Sobat and Zaraf valleys, c.1860–1976’, Journal of African History 23 (2): 183–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keane, W. (2007) Christian Moderns: freedom and fetish in the mission encounter. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Larkin, C. (1920 [1918]) Dispensational Truth or God's Plan and Purpose in the Ages. Glenside PA: Self-published.Google Scholar
Lis, D. (2015) Jewish Identity Among the Igbo of Nigeria: Israel's ‘lost tribe’ and the question of belonging in the Jewish state. Trenton NJ: Africa World Press.Google Scholar
Lis, D., Miles, W. F. S. and Parfitt, T. (eds) (2016) In the Shadow of Moses: new Jewish movements in Africa and the diaspora. Los Angeles CA: Tsehai Publishers.Google Scholar
Malkki, L. H. (1995) ‘Refugees and exile: from “refugee studies” to the national order of things’, Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 495–523.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Markó, F. D. (2015) ‘Negotiations and morality: the ethnicization of citizenship in post-secession South Sudan’, Journal of Eastern African Studies 9 (4): 669–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marshall, R. (2009) Political Spiritualities: the Pentecostal revolution in Nigeria. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marshall-Fratani, R. (2006) ‘The war of “who is who”: autochthony, nationalism, and citizenship in the Ivoirian crisis’, African Studies Review 49 (2): 9–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McKinnon, S. (2000) ‘Domestic exceptions: Evans-Pritchard and the creation of Nuer patrilineality and equality’, Cultural Anthropology 15 (1): 35–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyer, B. (1998) ‘“Make a complete break with the past”: memory and post-colonial modernity in Ghanaian Pentecostalist discourse’, Journal of Religion in Africa 28 (3): 316–49.Google Scholar
Miles, W. F. S. (2019) ‘Who is a Jew (in Africa)? Definitional and ethical considerations in the study of sub-Saharan Jewry and Judaism’, Journal of the Middle East and Africa 10 (1): 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Obadare, E. (2018) Pentecostal Republic: religion and the struggle for state power in Nigeria. London: Zed Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Neill, K. L. (2010) City of God: Christian citizenship in postwar Guatemala. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Parfitt, T. (2013) Black Jews in Africa and the Americas. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Ranger, T. (1984) ‘Missionaries, migrants, and the Manyika: the invention of ethnicity in Zimbabwe’ in Vail, L. (ed.), The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Robbins, J. (2004) Becoming Sinners: Christianity and moral torment in a Papua New Guinea society. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Salomon, N. (2014) ‘Religion after the state: secular soteriologies at the birth of South Sudan’, Journal of Law and Religion 29 (3): 447–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spear, T. (2003) ‘Neo-traditionalism and the limits of invention in British colonial Africa’, Journal of African History 44 (1): 3–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stringham, N. (2016) ‘Marking Nuer histories: gender, gerontocracy, and the politics of inclusion in the Upper Nile from 1400–1931’. PhD thesis, University of Virginia.Google Scholar
Sugirtharajah, R. S. (2001) The Bible and the Third World: precolonial, colonial and postcolonial encounters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
TallBear, K. (2013) Native American DNA: tribal belonging and the false promise of genetic science. Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tamarkin, N. (2020) Genetic Afterlives: Black Jewish indigeneity in South Africa. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Tounsel, C. (2015) ‘“God will crown us”: the construction of religious nationalism in Southern Sudan, 1898–2011’. PhD thesis, University of Michigan.Google Scholar