A biblical template of Jews explained unknown peoples and served colonial rule

Evidence

In his detailed and carefully researched work Merker believed that he had found significant parallels between the Masais’ myths and customs and those of the biblical Hebrews. Merker discovered parallels between the beliefs and customs of the ancient Jews including: similarities in the names of God; in circumcision; in a belief in the figure of Moses (whom Merker identified with the Masai Marumi or Musana); and in a variety of legends that included the stories of the creation of the world, Adam and Eve and the fall of man, the story of the flood, the theft of the birthright, the bronze serpent, and the ten commandments. He concluded that both the Masai and the “oldest” Hebrews originated from the same people. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 338 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

A hitherto unobserved feature of colonial discourse is the astonishing way in which a construction of Jews, quite unrelated to any objective feature pertaining to the Jews of the time, was used throughout the world as a means of explicating unknown or little-known peoples of wildly differing characteristics. This construction arose in part because past Europeans were so imbued with the Bible that it was the first thing they turned to when in doubt, and thus the ethnography of the Israelites was the most available. It arose also because Western and particularly Protestant missionaries longed for the return of the Christian Messiah, before which long-awaited event Jews had to be found in every corner of the globe; thus Jews were “invented” in the most remote regions to facilitate the Second Coming. Finally, it arose as a means of favoring certain “superior” peoples in the colonial enterprise of divide and rule. This stratagem, particularly in the African context, was a way of suggesting that anything fine or noble came from outside, from Europe or the Middle East. Thus many peoples who appeared to have a more advanced way of doing things or who had “noble” physical or social features were perceived of as coming from elsewhere—very frequently from “biblical lands.” The factors that were adduced in this discourse vary from place to place and from time to time but they generally include such features as the supposed similarity of certain languages to Hebrew and, from the seventeenth century on, the physical and moral resemblance of many different peoples to Jews. Religious features supposedly resembling aspects of the religious practices of Israelites were found among just about every society on earth. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 306 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Zionist secularization reinterprets biblical myth through colonial frames — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 326; Colonial discourse projected an invented Jewish identity onto unknown peoples worldwide; For four centuries a theory of Jewish origins dominated explanations of Native Americans (+13 more)

Broader Connections

• Colonial scholars mapped biblical Hebrew traits onto African peoples like the Masai #exemplifies (0.95) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 338
• Colonial Europeans projected Jewish identity onto distant peoples to legitimate divide and rule #corroborates (0.92) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 306