Posted on 03/06/2010 5:29:06 AM PST by decimon
In many ways, the Lemba tribe of Zimbabwe and South Africa are just like their neighbours.
But in other ways their customs are remarkably similar to Jewish ones.
They do not eat pork, they practise male circumcision, they ritually slaughter their animals, some of their men wear skull caps and they put the Star of David on their gravestones.
Their oral traditions claim that their ancestors were Jews who fled the Holy Land about 2,500 years ago.
It may sound like another myth of a lost tribe of Israel, but British scientists have carried out DNA tests which confirm their Semitic origin.
These tests back up the group's belief that a group of perhaps seven men married African women and settled on the continent. The Lemba, who number perhaps 80,000, live in central Zimbabwe and the north of South Africa.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Lost and found ping.
Well, the Bible does say that the Jews would be scattered to the ends of the earth before their final ingathering....and this didn’t just mean to Elephantine in Egypt and Babylon in Mesopotamia!
Has anyone ever performed DNA testing on the Jews that Koestler refers to as the 13th tribe?
Aside from the Star of David, those are Muslim customs as well.
Oy vey.
The clincher was some years ago, when it was discovered that these people had a very distinct DNA segment unique to the Jewish priestly subdivision of the Levi tribe, called the Kohanim, the modern descendants of which is Cohen, Kohn, and other variations of that name.
Unlike the other tribes, the Levi were not granted territory, but were supposed to be itinerant (travelers) in the territories of the other tribes. But with the diaspora, the Kohanim eventually settled down where other Jews lived, more or less. One of their big enclaves was in Yemen. And this is where this southern African tribe is believed to have originated.
In their tribal mythology, a great leader named “Bubu”, or something like that, took a large number of the Kohanim from Yemen and led them through Africa to their destination in the south of the continent.
Fascinating.
Wow... neat.
Still, some of them were very primitive ~ I recall reading about one group that didn't have a word for "ball".
They claim to have the Ark, does anybody have a picture of their artifact
Awesome!
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Thanks decimon. A Lemba update. |
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I still think that the articles about the Taliban being descended from Jews is more bizarre, LOL
A well-known story. The BBC is a little late getting to it. PBS did an hour’s documentary on the matter about five or six years ago. But still fascinating!
The DNA analysis is likely new.
Ping!
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