Europeans classified southern African peoples as descendants of biblical Jews

Evidence

Kolb claimed that the customs of the Hottentots were similar to those of the Jews. He enumerated what he saw as the similarities between their sacrificial customs, their moon festivals, circumcision rites, and soon. But he also asserted that the Hottentots could be counted among the children of Abraham, that they were of Jewish descent. Specifically he maintained that they were descended from Abraham via the troglodytes, issue of his wife Ketura (Gen. 25: 1–4). Further proof of this was adduced from the fact that, like the Jews, they were so resistant to Christianity. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 328

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader history of colonial racial classification through biblical genealogy — Ham’s curse and Lost Tribes theories — which also appear in writing about Indigenous Americans and later Mormon theology.
• DEFINE: Shows how ‘racial’ and ‘religious’ classification of colonized peoples were merged into a single explanatory framework.