The Falashas: The Forgotten Jews of Ethiopia, by David Kessler
Today's date is: 5/12/2025
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The Falashas: The Forgotten Jews of Ethiopia, by David Kessler
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| In Jewish folklore, stories about the Queen of Sheba do not appear until the later Midrashim, or biblical explanations. The most important source, says Ullendorff, (1) is the Targum Sheni, or interpretation to the Book of Esther, whose date is somewhere between 500 and 1000 AD. This story tells how King Solomon, who held command over birds and beasts, was informed by a hoopoe, one of the most attractive of subtropical birds, that it had found a country in the east full of gold and silver and watered from the garden of Eden; its ruler was the Queen of Sheba. The king instructed the hoopoe to deliver a message to the queen inviting her to visit him. When she complied she found the king sitting on a throne apparently surrounded by water, which in reality was glass. She lifted her skirt to approach the throne and in doing so exposed her hairy legs - some versions say they were the legs of a goat. Solomon remarked: 'Thy beauty is the beauty of women, but thy hair is the hair of man; while hair is an ornament to a man, it is a disfigurement to a woman. (2) She then proceeded to ask the riddles with which she intended to test his wisdom but there is no mention of carnal relations. Though we may doubt whether the Queen of Sheba came from Arabia or lived in Axum or visited King Solomon, it is possible that she belonged to the royal family of Meroe, It is interesting to observe that in the Kebra Nagast she is often called Candace, which was a Meroitic, not an Abyssinian, royal title. Similarly, we may question whether the Jewish religion could have reached Axum by the tenth century BC, while recognising that it could have penetrated as far as Napata, the first Meroitic capital, before the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC. Evidence on which to base a firm conclusion about Jewish penetration is scarce but, fortunately, the Bible comes to our assistance. There are three references which throw some light on the subject and all belong to the same period when the Middle East was in ferment and the great powers of the day were struggling for supremacy. In Palestine, Solomon's successors had partitioned the Kingdom into Judah and Israel. The latter had been conquered and its people taken into captivity by the Assyrians. The Jewish diaspora had begun and the Prophets were already calling for a return of the exiles to the homeland. Zephaniah was among the first to take up the cause. He is described as 'the son of Cushi',(3) which would seem to indicate that he himself had some family connection with Ethiopia. He refers (1)Ethiopia and the Bible, p. 138. |
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