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"Answering Questions in Prophecy Biblically"
WENDY WIPPEL
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Tudor Parfitt, like most historians, had been long intrigued by legends of Israel's lost tribes. Professor at the University of London, he had also been interested since boyhood in African history, and in 1984 these two interests brought him to Ethiopia to write a paper on the socioeconomic status of Ethiopia's Falasha Jews. He arrived just in time to witness the covert airlift of the Falasha (Operation Moses) which transported about 8,000 Falasha to Israel. Parfitt wrote the commissioned report and followed it up with his own book about the Falasha's rescue. Then he went back to his day job. Soon after he was invited to Johannesburg to deliver a lecture on his experiences with the Falasha. The attendees gathered were the expected scholarly types, with one exception. In the back, a small group of black men in threadbare clothing and skullcaps waited patiently. When Parfitt finished, the men approached him and asked for help. They were descendents of a lost Jewish tribe, they said, and begged Parfitt to help them prove their claim. They called themselves the Lemba. Parfitt was skeptical. He knew of no historical Jewish populations in ancient Africa, and the men had little more to add to their story. They had left Israel long ago, they said, in a group that included several priests. They built a town called Sena. They then traveled south and then came to Africa, where they built two more Senas. Once they were white, with long beautiful noses-- free and the owners of lands rich with gold and cattle. They built the Great Zimbabwe stone city. Other than that they knew little more. Their story seemed wildly improbable. They looked African; they spoke Bantu. They claimed, however, to have lived for centuries in Africa as Jews. They believed themselves chosen by Mwali, the creator God, and kept one day holy to praise him. They practiced circumcision and ritual sacrifice, they did not eat pigs (or even hippopotamuses, who resemble pigs). Parfitt's colleagues dismissed the Lemba’s claims as an echo of past contact with missionaries and urged Parfitt to dismiss them. But would missionary contact produce an obsession with Old Testament practices, particularly in an African tribe with a proud history of their own? Until the coming of the white man to Africa, they said, they were a proud and powerful tribe. Now they were scattered, subjugated, and losing their identity. Parfitt was skeptical, but intrigued, and agreed to give it a try. In Johannesburg he met more tribal leaders. One proudly read Nehemiah 7:38 (recently discovered) that records that 3930 Jews returned to Sena from the Babylonian captivity, a verse which, in his opinion, confirmed their story. Another, Professor Matashaya Mathivha, had compiled Lemba oral histories and was able to fill in some holes in their story. According to his sources, a man named Buba, a priest, led the Lemba out of Judea about 2700 years ago. They built a city called Sena. They left that Sena going south, crossed the "Pusela", and boarded ships to Africa. They built another Sena on the banks of the Zambezi, left that one, and built another. Mathivha believed that if these oral legends could be confirmed, it would also confirm their claim to be sons of Jacob. Parfitt started by looking for a city named Sena-- and found lots of them. There were two Senas on medieval maps of Africa (one on the Zambezi River, another on the southern coast). The capital of Yemen, Sanaa, was an ancient city and another possibility. There was also the capital of a medieval Persian province, Sennah, as well as Sennar, capital of a Muslim sultanate in southeastern Sudan. Since the Lemba had insisted that they traveled south from the original Sena, Parfitt started his exploration in Yemen, and immediately discovered that its Sanaa had had a huge Jewish quarter which had relocated in 1948 to the newly established Jewish state. Were there records of any earlier exodus of Jewish groups from Sanaa? A visit to Sanaa answered his question. The ancient Sanaa in Yemen was an important stop on the old incense route and had had a large contingent of Jews. (One nearby city, Habban, contained a "pool of the Jews" in which generations of Jewish residents had carved their names.) Sanaa's Jews had, in fact, been driven out by Muslim conquest. And any exodus from Sanaa would necessarily have moved south towards the sea by crossing the valley Masila on its way to the ancient port of Aden. And Aden was a mere 20 miles across the Bab-al- Mandeb strait from the African shore. Tudor Parfitt would later remark that he didn't really believe the Lemba's story, but was intrigued by the hints of a Semitic past, particularly their emphasis on ritual slaughter (relatively unknown in Africa). His skepticism gradually turned to awe as the pieces came together. He identified tribal names in Sanaa identical to those among the Lemba. The geographical need to cross the "Masilah" to get to the sea explained the Lemba oral history of crossing the "Pusela". And past the Masilah it's little more than a stone's throw from Africa. By traditional anthropological investigation, Tudor had confirmed the Lemba's oral tradition and thus their descent from Jewish refugees. Parfitt published his experiences, Journey to the Vanished City: Search for a Lost Tribe of Israel, in 1992. Which happened to be just about the same time DNA testing was being developed. Any remaining doubt of the Lemba's story was eradicated in 1999 when that testing proved that the Lemba were definitely Jewish in origin; their Buba tribe, in fact (the hereditary priesthood) carried the same genetic signature as the Jewish priesthood, and at a much higher frequency (52%) than even the normal Jewish population. The Lemba now are being instructed by Israeli rabbis in traditional orthodox Judiasm in preparation for an eventual return home. One other vestige of Judaism among the Lemba was that they absolutely refused to marry outside the tribe. They seemed to have taken to heart one other exhortation to Jewish exiles: Set up signposts, Make landmarks; Set your heart toward the highway, the way in which you went. Turn back, O virgin of Israel, Turn back to these your cities.Jeremiah 31:8,21. Specifically, in the form of their Ndinda Festival Song: We came from Sena, we crossed Pusela, we rebuilt Sena. They made sure they remembered the route, anticipating their return. And it was that deliberate retention of the route that enabled their verification as Jews. What's more, it fulfilled prophecy: Though I scatter them among the peoples, yet in distant lands they will remember me. They and their children will survive, and they will return. Zechariah 10:9. As always, God knows the end from the beginning. Prophecy is nothing more than watching God keep his promises, and isn't it fun?
Israel does the Lemba
Prophecy - Signs
Wendy Wippel
In Sena they died like flies.
We came from Hundji, to Chilimani.
From Chilimani to Wedza.
The tribes went to Zimbabwe.
They built the walls and lived on the hill.
Mwali sent the star.
From Zimbabwe to Mberengwe.
From Mberengwe to Dumghe. …
We came to Venda, Solomon led us.
Baramina was our ancestor.
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