Sheba

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180 THE ARK OF THE COVENANT AND ISRAELITE INFLUENCES Zadokite prestige in Judah. In later years the Jurhum showed that an ousted priesthood could reassert its prestige elsewhere. The Zadokites must have had a center where they regrouped and eventually returned to power. One clue that this may have been in Ethiopia or southwestern Arabia comes from DNA testing undertaken in the late 1990’s on the Lemba, a 40,000 strong southern African people (South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Malawi), with seemingly pagan-Hebraic customs that include a kosher diet, circumcision and ritual purity. Jewish hereditary priests, the kohenin, are traditionally believed to be direct descendants of Aaron, the brother of Moses. DNA testing has revealed that members of the kohenin do indeed have a high percentage of common ancestry, since 45 per cent of Ashkenazi (European Jews) priests and 56 per cent of Sephardic (Iberian, North African, Middle Eastern and Arabian Jews) priests share the same Y chromosome, exclusively passed down the male line. This Y chromosome has only a 3 - 5 per cent occurrence in Jewish populations in general and is rare or absent in other groups. Based on the study of DNA generational mutations, their common ancestor would have lived between 2,650 to 3,180 years ago (ca. 1180 – 650 B.C.E.). It is therefore more likely that the kohenin are descendants, not of Aaron (ca. 1400-1200 B.C.E.), but of a member of the priestly House of Zadok. 9 per cent of Lemba men carry the kohenin chromosome, but it also occurs in 53 per cent of the members of their priestly clan, the Buba. 3 A Lemba tradition states that their ancestors were from a place called Senna, which may be Senna in Yemen, near Tarim, the ancient capital of the Hadramawt Kingdom, and the port of Sayhut. 4 While the Lemba priestly clan appears indubitably linked to the Israelite priesthood, their traditional customs and religious beliefs indicate that, if their culture is Hebraic in origin, it is very weak. Legends pre-dating the colonial era connect Menelik with volcanoes in Tanzania (where a legend says he died on Kilimanjaro) and the Comoros Islands (where he fled with Solomon’s throne). Hebraic practices have been recorded on the Kenyan coast among the Wakilindi; and the Malagasy language of Madagascar appears to contain elements of a Semitic language that one researcher linked to Hebrew. 5 However, the Lemba have neither Old Testament oral traditions nor pre-colonial written records, and in the past were mainly regarded as a metal working artisan caste. While claiming a link with the medieval kingdoms of Mapungubwe, which flourished just south of the Limpopo river in South Africa ca. A.D. 950 – 1270; and its successor, Great Zimbabwe, ca. 1270 – 1600, the Lemba kohenin do not appear to have played a significant role in the administration or religion of
QUEEN OF SHEBA AND BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP 181 either state. If Buba, the ancestor of the Lemba priestly clan, did originate in Yemen he may have been a member of the Zadokite priesthood during one of its periods either out of favor with the Judaean monarchy ca. 920- 642 B.C.E., or during the period following the 586 B.C.E. Babylonian conquest when it may not have been prudent to identify with a failed and unpopular regime. The Lemba’s adherence to some of the basic aspects of the Torah but ignorance of Ezra’s Judaism may also indicate that Buba was a member of the Samaritans, whose priests are also kohenin, or another, unknown, Hebraic group. Whatever Buba’s origin, the Lemba DNA evidence appears to support an ancient Hebraic or Israelite presence in the area of Ethiopia and southwestern Arabia. The present South African Lemba westernized assimilated elite strongly, but most probably erroneously (like the airlifted Beta Israel), identifies with modern Israel and “normative” Judaism. The <strong>Sheba</strong>-Menelik Cycle may be in origin a text composed by a Zadokite priest of Azariah’s line bolstering the new Israelite state in Africa. The Arabic version probably came either from Alexandria or from southern Arabia. It would be unusual if its author(s) wrote nothing else. Besides the Ark, the major candidate for possible First Temple Zadokite influence in Ethiopia is, as mentioned above, the design of Ethiopian churches. The nature of the Zadokite restoration under Hilkiah (ca. 640 B.C.E.) suggests he struck from a secure, long-established theological center. It was certainly a time of disruption. Some researchers have suggested Israelite refugees entered pre-Aksumite Ethiopia at this time fleeing Assyrian devastation. In addition, the Egyptians were taking a greater interest in the Red Sea and eventually the pharaoh Necho (ca. 610-595) dispatched a successful 2 - 3 year circumnavigation of Africa. The Judaean ruler Manasseh (ca. 687-642 B.C.E.) had horrified the Zadokites by tolerating not only paganism but also human sacrifice. Perhaps the refugees, joining other elements in southern Arabia and in Ethiopia convinced the Zadokites to seize the initiative. Had the Zadokites been in a respected but not dominant position in pre-Aksumite Ethiopia or Arabia (a situation similar later to the Persian ruled Babylonian Jews ca. 529 B.C.E.), this option would have been more attractive than occasionally having the ear of various pagan monarchs. If the Zadokites had endured 300 years in disfavor for losing or stealing the Ark, it is unlikely they would have mentioned it in the sacred texts they subsequently collected and amended to create the Old Testament. Christianity became the mass religion of the Aksumite Empire in the sixth century through the efforts of the Nine Saints and Caleb’s military
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Queen of Sheba and Biblical Scholar
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QUEEN OF SHEBA AND BIBLICAL SCHOLAR
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CHAPTER ONE Sheba, Zionism, and the
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CHAPTER TWO The Search for Evidence
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CHAPTER THREE Writing the Old Testa
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CHAPTER SIX Western Arabia and the
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Sheba

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