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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| considered to have been an African and was sometimes depicted as black, or, as at Canterbury and Chartres Cathedrals, accompanied by negro servants. Many renaissance painters were inspired by the story and gave ample scope to their imagination against lavish, romanticised backgrounds while the African setting was gradually abandoned. Jewish tradition, which does not seem to be greatly enamoured of the whole story and has been inclined to identify the queen with Lilith, the queen of the demons and the great temptress, leans towards the African place of birth. For the Ethiopians, of course, her African homeland is undisputed. This was also the view of Josephus, who, writing in the first century AD, recounted the Sheba story essentially as it is told-in the Bible. He described the queen twice as Queen of Egypt and Ethiopia and once as Queen of Ethiopia, but never called her Queen of Sheba. This name is also absent from the New Testament, where she is called Queen of the South. In the Kebra Nagast, the classic Ethiopian saga, she enjoys both the title Queen of Sheba and Queen of the South as well as the names Candace and Makeda. If neither Josephus nor the Gospels call her by her biblical name it is possible that it could have been introduced under the influence of the genealogical lists of the descendants of Noah included in the Book of Genesis. There we learn, in chapter 10, that the sons of Ham are Cush (Ethiopia) and Mizraim (Egypt), Phut (Upper Egypt) and Canaan, and the sons of Cush are Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, and Sabtecha; and the sons ofRaamah are Sheba and Dedan (probably northern Hejaz). Sheba thus becomes a grandson of Cush. Some of these names are duplicated in describing the descendants of Shem, including both Sheba and Havilah (the gold land beyond Abyssinia mentioned in Genesis 2: 11) who were sons of Joktan ( Qataban) together with, among others, Ophir. Thus Sheba is represented on both sides of the Red Sea and is associated with Cush, 'a vague term connoting the entire Nile Valley, south of Egypt, including Nubia and Abyssinia' .(1) The association of Sheba (or Saba) with Cush in the genealogy of Noah could explain how the two became linked in Jewish tradition. This might also be the reason for Josephus's statement that 'Saba was a royal city of Ethiopia which Cambyses afterwards named Meroe after the name of his own sister'.(2) Josephus would have known of the capital of Cush (or Ethiopia) in his time as Meroe but somehow it had to be explained how the Queen of Sheba got the name by which she was called in the Bible narrative. (1) Ethiopia and the Bible, p. 5. |
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