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

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.

Durable Resolutions

“…Community justice, in turn, connects these nodes with each other by regulating and sustaining relationships across time and space. This is comparable to activities in churches and other ethnic or clan-based associations (Gidron 2021;Gidron and Carver 2022). The following example from Gambella illustrates the kind of transnational linkages that community justice helps sustain, despite people's constant mobility and dispersal across borders.…”

Christianity in (South) Sudan: Historical backgrounds, contemporary contestations, and future directions

“…In the last 5 years, new work has been published that illustrates the field's continued dynamism and diversity. There is Yotam Girdron's article that considers Israelite identities in Africa through the lens of Nuer Christian Zionists (Gidron, 2021); Modi, Opongo, and Smith's piece that considers religious leaders in the recent South Sudan conflict (Modi et al., 2019); and Naomi Pendle's forthcoming Spiritual Contestations: The Violence of Peace in South Sudan (Pendle, 2023).…”

Jewishness without Jews? Ontological Security, Ethnonationalism, and the Social Power of Analogical Reasoning in Postcolonial Nigeria

“…The Hamitic Hypothesis and the Construction of Igbo Jewishness Before delving into the racist origins of the Hamitic hypothesis, I should like to state that the Igbo are one amongst the many ethnic groups in Africa that claim Jewish ancestry. From Ethiopia, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, and South Africa to Cameroon, Ghana, Rwanda, and Nigeria, ethnic groups in Africa increasingly claim Jewish descent (Kaplan 1999;Bruder 2008;Bruder and Parfitt 2012;Lis 2015;Lis, Miles, and Parfitt 2016;Devir 2017;Gidron 2021). Miles (2019) divides emerging Jewish movements in Africa into three different categories: vague Israelitism, Hebraic eclecticism, and orthopraxis.…”