The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum Old Testament Law

Thredrice,<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>[color:"blue"]Recently at work I've been in conversation with a guy that is part of a group called the Hebrew Israelites. I would greatly appreciate any Scripture, opinions & insights regarding the issues above. Thanks much.</font><hr></blockquote><p><br>Black Hebrew Israelite sects include "The Stream," "Original African Hebrew Israelite Nation of Jerusalem," "Nation of Yahweh (Yahweh Ben Yahweh)," "New York Yahweh," etcetera. <br><br>In many ways, Black Hebrew Israelite beliefs are a mirror image of the white supremacist Christian Identity religion, which holds that northern Europeans, not Jews, are God's true chosen people. Both see Jews as the spawn of Satan and accuse them of secretly controlling society by Machiavellian string-pulling. Tom Metzger, leader of the White Aryan Resistance, has said, "They're the black counterpart of us." <br><br>Black Hebrews believe the descendants of American slaves and the indigenous peoples of the Americas make up the 12 tribes of Israel. They expect to some day return to Israel (which they call "Northeast Africa"). Adherents reject black Africans, who are usually seen as ''traitors'' who sold their black brethren into slavery.<br><br>The origins of the Black Hebrew Israelite religion may stretch back to before the Civil War. By 1896, "Prophet" William Crowdy founded a sect in Kansas. The religion permitted polygamy, forbade birth control and decreed strict dietary laws similar to Judaism. <br><br>By World War I, there were congregations in several major cities. By the 1980s, others had appeared in Israel and several other countries. <br><br>"he racism, paranoia and millenialism that they have is very flammable," says Suliman Nyang, an expert at Howard University. "They want to take on the entire system, the entire world that they think is evil and against them. The line between reality and imagination doesn’t exist for them." <br><br>Source: Rough Waters, 'Stream of Knowledge' Probed by Officials, Southern Poverty Law Center, Intelligence Report, Fall 1997.<br><br><br>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br><br><br>The very words cause many people to grin at what appears to be simply a play on words. No one reads about such people in european authored history books and there are only a few references to "Ethiopian Jews" in white Jewish sources. Yet Black Hebrews have existed since biblical times. In fact, they are the original or proto-typical Hebrews. <br><br>Their story begins with the Patriarch Abraham (2117-1942 B.C.), a native of the Sumerian city of Ur in ancient Mesopotamia. Archaeological discoveries have proven that the earliest inhabitants of southern Mesopotamia were members of the ''Brown Race,'' i.e., the Negroid branch of humanity. <br><br>It has been confirmed that the ancient Sumerians were akin to the modern Black Dravidians of India. The Sumerians also had an affinity with a people known as the Elamites, the very first Semitic group mentioned in the Bible (Gen. 10:22). The Elamites were a black-skinned and woolly-haired people as the colorful glazed artwork on the royal palace walls of the ancient Persian city of Susa clearly show.Thus Abraham, the native of Sumerian and the founding father of the Israelite nation, was a black man. The black racial origins of the Patriarchs is not based on mere conjecture, it is in complete agreement with the picture one gets from examining the identity of the earliest inhabitants of southern Mesopotamia. <br><br>This truth is grossly neglected, suppressed, and distorted in most European and American historical texts which are flavored with race prejudice. Fortunately, however, there are enough well authored and highly researched works by Black historians that challenge the Eurocentric revisions of history and correct the various erroneous views regarding the ethnic identity of the Hebrews. <br><br>Biblical history relates that the descendants of Abraham, namely Jacob (Israel) and his twelve sons and their wives, 70 in all, migrated from Canaan to Egypt around the year 1827 B.C. During their sojourn in Egypt the Children of Israel multiplied from being a family of 70 souls to a nation of over 3 million people at the time of the Exodus which took place in 1612 B.C. <br><br>This astounding number of people in so short a time can only be adequately explained by intermarriage between the family of Jacob and the native Egyptian populace. It is an established fact that the ancient Egyptians were a black African people. Thus, even if the Hebrews were not black before they arrived in Egypt, which is unlikely given Abraham's background, they were definitely black by the time they left Egypt under Moses <br>[...more...] Black Hebrew Israelites<br><br><br>