The Conquering Lion of Judah

[bananabrain]

Muslim is not bloodline. Jewish is. Not that I am trying to get into debate about his heritage or anything.

"bloodline" is a bit simplistic. tribal, cultural and family affiliations go through the paternal line, judaic status is conferred *only* by the mother or a conversion. if selassie's mum was muslim, he ain't jewish unless he converted, which he didn't. enough already!

canuckrasta: thank you for posting those links, they were really interesting.

i can see that rastafarianism is clearly a) monotheistic and non-idolatrous b) a religion that observes the noahide laws and c) a religion that draws heavily on jewish and christian sources - in fact, it appears more jewish than christian. my previous understanding of it (drawn from a three-hour conversation on a plane sitting next to a knowledgeable chap with massive dreads) was that it's actually a modern religion, created in the 20th century. where i kind of draw the line is in the almost divine status accorded to haile selassie, who was clearly a very real and influential person and worthy of respect, but it seems to me that much of the stuff is projected onto him. of course, in this, he's no different from other historically verifiable people. i just wonder what he himself thought of it - as i understood it, the downtrodden and marginalised black jamaicans saw this amazing, dignified, regal figure with a proud personal history - everything that had been stolen from them - and wished to identify themselves with all this. of course, this is all very well as long as there is some reason to be able to connect oneself ethnically with africa and/or ethiopia - it wouldn't make sense for a white person to convert to it if you see what i mean, because it's so specific to the *racial* experience of the dispossessed, alienated black man. it's a *black*-oriented religion, intentionally and specifically and it seems pretty well-thought-out to me, even if some of the theory and history is a bit questionable. but there's no reason it shouldn't survive and prosper as it evolves over time.

from a jewish point of view, we would approve of people behaving ethically, being proud of their origins, defining group behaviours and ascribing this to jewish influence. actually, from my point of view i'd give much of the same credit to the seventh-day adventists, who seem like a fairly sensible bunch to me.

the thing that does emerge from the essays linked to, however, is that the people who wrote the essays don't actually know that much about judaism. they actually read kind of like school projects. there are a number of inaccuracies and you could drive a cart through some of the assumptions and lacunae - there is not much evidence, for example, that "ras tafari" is etymologically connected to "rosh tiferet" - if i could see a few more examples, i might be a bit more convinced, especially given that the beta yisrael (the ethiopian jewish community) don't use hebrew but ge'ez - not that i am questioning their authenticity. there's one guy whose "jewish authority" is the owner of a judaica store in connecticut!

i'll happily go further into some of the other connections if you want to address them individually.

b'shalom

bananabrain

[CanuckRasta]

bananabrain,

I'd have to agree with that it seems they didn't really know about Judaism, they really didn't know a whole lot about Rastafari either.

Everyone, and I mean everyone who writes in academic paper on Rasta generalizes. All Rastas believe something different.

Anyways, I would be interested to get your opinion on the scripture that pertains to the "blackness of Solomon, David, etc. They were outlined in the last article, I just want to know if he was correct??

One Love
CanuckRasta

[bananabrain]

All Rastas believe something different.

you mean different from each other? there's no central authority, then. would someone from the ethiopian royal family have this authority - and are there any of them left or were they all murdered in the coup?

Anyways, I would be interested to get your opinion on the scripture that pertains to the "blackness of Solomon, David, etc. They were outlined in the last article, I just want to know if he was correct??

umph. well, in the song of songs, the black person is definitely female. however, depending on how you interpret this, the person might be the queen of sheba but it is more reasonable to consider her either as the Shekhinah or Divine Presence, or the jewish people - the relationship between us and G!D is most accurately categorised as between bride and bridegroom, G!D Being the bridegroom, but both work equally well. now, the advantage of this is that the jewish people are then identified with the "black" woman - but then you end up with G!D being white, as the bridegroom, who is described later on as being "ruddy", with various body parts described as "alabaster" or "golden" i think. the main issue is this; "black" as described in the song of songs is not about ethnicity; the text says quite clearly that sunburn is responsible. now, in the context, sunburn is something that happens to people who are low-class, peasanty outdoors types. in other words, the "king" has a "desk job", whereas as the woman has spent time outside, she has been "burned by sin", as it were. in other words, she wasn't "black" to start with. lamentations 8:4 and the other quotes used are the same, blackness here is metaphorical, not ethnic - there's a clear suggestion of blame. nonetheless, there is no suggestion that i have so far seen in the text that black people are black *for this reason*, ie because of something they did wrong; even the punishment of noah's son ham, from whom the egyptians, cushites and other africans are descended, is not connected to anything to do with ethnicity.

the other interesting episode that you might look at is the punishment of miriam for racism - she criticises moses for marrying a "cushite" (although zipporah was actually a midianite) - but, interestingly, the etymology of "QUShi" connects it to beauty. thus we can conclude that zipporah was dark, but that this was considered attractive! at any rate, she gets punished by tazria, which is usually mistranslated as "leprosy", but is considered to be a complete loss of pigmentation, or covering the skin with "pure, snowy whiteness" - poetic justice, one might suggest, showing her that too much "whiteness" was perhaps not as great as she seemed to think!

obviously there's a lot of short-circuit thinking that goes along with the symbology of white-good, black=bad, but to be quite honest, "white" people aren't white - they're pink. and "black" people are pretty much brown as far as i can tell. personally, i'm browny-green (or olive, if you like) as you might expect and i think the whole thing is nonsense. likewise, the description of david does not suggest he was anything but "ruddy", whatever that means - possibly with sunburn - he was a shepherd after all!

i personally think there's a lot more potential in the identification of rastafarians as akin the jewish people if you look at amos 9:7 - "'Are you not like the children of the Ethiopians to me, O children of Israel?' says HaSHEM." in fact, if you go and take a look at mentions of ethiopians in the bible, there's a lot more interesting stuff there than in mentions of "black" or "scorched" people.

b'shalom

bananabrain

[CanuckRasta]

I give thanks for the info, bananabrain.

The Ethiopian Imperial Family does maintain some symbolic control over the Rastafari faith. That said they do not dictate theology or doctrine, they assist with organizations such as the Ethiopian World Federation and other bodies that allow for repatriation. Haile Selassie's grandchildren are also regular speakers at Rastafari events.

There is currently no central body within the movement. We have no Pope nor Patriarch. The closest figure to this was Prophet Gad (not to steal from the Pope but Gad recently died and no one cared ), leader of the Twelve Tribes of Israel order, which in my opinon is the section within Rastafari most similar to Christianity - with some Jewish influences as well.

It would seem the movement as a whole is propelled by common goals and aims rather than a head figure or authority. I personally though would prefer to see a common spokesperson in the future.

One Love
CanuckRasta