Ethnogenesis As An Arena: Were The Lemba Black Jews

Abstract

In mid-July 2006, a colleague in the Department for the Study of Religions in the University of Ghana informed me that the Department was resuscitating The Ghana Bulletin of Theology. He asked me to contribute, at a week's notice, a one-page review of a book of my own choice. So, I looked at the books on my desk, spotted Magdel Le Roux's on the Lemba, and decided that her book dealt with a matter of interest to scholars of the religions of Africa, and that I might try to supply the requested review in a week, or at most in a fortnight. The one or two page review I planned has, however, meanwhile grown into review article, because the more closely I studied the book, the more I began to doubt whether, despite numerous qualifications, she is correct in presuming that the Lemba were indeed ' black Jews' with a past reaching into pre-exilic Israel. An alternative explanation of the data Le Roux provides seemed required. This article is an attempt at formulating one . .