Colonial missionaries read Zulu customs as distorted remnants of Jewish practice

Evidence

As he explained in his book, Narrative of a Journey to the Zoolu Country in South Africa, what struck him most about the religion of the Zulus was the immanent albeit almost forgotten presence of the memory of a supreme deity. But immediately he took the customs of the Zulus to be “apparently of Jewish origin.” Some of the customs he enumerated included circumcision, the tradition of a younger brother marrying the widow of his deceased brother (levirate marriage), the daubing of the lintels of homes in times of sickness, the festival of the first fruits, and so on. As a way of connecting them with Israelite sacred history while at the same time explaining their distance from the traditions set out in the Bible, he also mentioned that the name “Ham” was a common one among the Zulus. Ham, son of Noah, was taken to be the progenitor of the African peoples. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 330 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

John Colenso, a Cambridge-educated mathematician who was ordained bishop of Natal in 1853, was convinced that the two Zulu names for God embraced perfectly the notions of the divine “contained in the Hebrew words Elohim and Jehovah.” So close indeed were the resemblances, according to Colenso, that frequently the point was made that anyone who really wanted to understand the Bible had best study Zulu customs. Zulu “habits and even the nature of their country so nearly correspond to those of the ancient Israelites, that the very scenes are brought continually, as it were, before their eyes, and vividly realized in a practical point of view.” Practically everything about the Zulus from their lunar calendar to the order of religious feasts seemed to reflect an Israelite past. “The Zulu keeps his annual feasts, and observes the New Moons as the old Hebrew did. The very Zulus have their festivals at the beginning of the Southern Spring and at the end of their Autumn, corresponding to the ‘feast of the first fruits’ and the ‘feast of the ingathering’ of the ancient Hebrews.” — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 333 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: European missionaries read Indian religions as versions of Judaism; British missionaries in the 1830s read Zulu customs as remnants of Jewish origin — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 330; Colonial missionaries mapped Zulu religion onto ancient Israelite customs — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 333 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• British missionaries in the 1830s read Zulu customs as remnants of Jewish origin #corroborates (0.98) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 330
• Colonial missionaries mapped Zulu religion onto ancient Israelite customs #expands (0.95) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 333
• Idealizing Africans as ancient Jews erased living Jews from sacred history #complicates (0.75)