"Jewish" practices customary in Southern Sudan (xposted widely)

[davidfcooper]

This begs the chicken & egg question: do these practices indicate Jewish ancestry of the southern Sudanese, or OTOH were the customs codified in the Torah more wide spread in ancient northeast Africa and west Asia?

http://www.jewishpost.com/jewishpost/jp0202/jpn202e.htm

Comments

[luckycee.livejournal.com]

That was an interesting post. I know nothing of the Sudan, I'm sorry to say. I wasn't aware of the jihad happening there, either.

It would seem likely that originally they were jews, otherwise why adopt the customs in the first place? It's my understanding that most non-hebrew tribes found their customs distasteful.

[theservant.livejournal.com]

Another option is that they were exposed to these customs by Christians spreading the Hebrew Bible (as the Old Testament) and picked them up that way. My guess (which by now should count as an educated one) is that many of the customs in the Bible were not that widespread; many of them seem to be designed, some explicitly, to be DIFFERENT from what was generally done, rather than a codification of local practices. There is a constant phobia that the Israelites are going to start doing all the things that their neighbors are doing and not maintain distinctiveness. There are certain customs, such as the levirate marriage described in this article, and the blood avenger custom, which do seem to be local customs that for whatever reason the Torah chooses to regulate rather than forbid, but many customs seem to be deliberately specific.