Igbo-Israel: A Comparison of Igbo and Ancient Israel’S Culture

By Odi Moghalu

The legend of The Lost Tribes of Israel remained for scholars, historians, archeologists, anthropologists and Hebraists a fascinating topic for millennia. When Israel faced an imperial conquest in the hands of the Assyrian empire in 722 B.C. as earlier warned by prophets Isaiah and Hosea, the nation also went on exile and into what seemed oblivion. A people who for penalty of apostasy became a dispersed people across the globe for nearly three thousand years creating a puzzle of identity and location for so long has suddenly began to emerge from the shadows of time. The account of their journey and experiences over this period had largely remained conjectures as they assimilated amongst foreign cultures. The Igbo, sojourned in the two sides of lower Niger, one of Africas great rivers second only to the Nile and like other exiled tribes of Israel was relatively unknown to those who never had any contacts with them. The era of trans-Atlantic forced migrations and European colonization opened this connection. The exposition of a peoples beliefs, behavior, attitudes and values within religious, cultural and political context had only affirmed their origin and identity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514403433

Odi Moghalu

Odi Arinze Robert Moghalu was born in the besieged breakaway republic of Biafra in 1967 in a post-pogrom, blockade-induced famine and devastating starvation in a vicious genocidal war that cost 2 million Biafran lives , the worst in Africa's multifarious twentieth century conflicts in both scale and severity. Mr. Moghalu worked in Nigeria as a journalist and human rights activist and in the United States as an educator.

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Copyright © 2015 by Odi Moghalu.

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Rev. date: 12/09/2015

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Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

FOREWORD

PREFACE

CHAPTER 1 WHO ARE THE IGBO?

MIGRATION NARRATIVES

CHAPTER 2 IGBO SOCIO-POLITICAL STRUCTURE: FAMILY TO SOCIETY

POLITICAL SYSTEM

CHAPTER 3 CALENDAR

CULTURE

IGBO-HEBREW CULTURE

CHAPTER 4 SYMBOLIC AND ARCHEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE

CHAPTER 5 MARRIAGE AND FESTIVITIES

CHAPTER 6 BIRTH OF A CHILD

PUBERTY CEREMONY

CHAPTER 7 AGRICULTURE

PALM TREES

FOOD

MAKING BREAD

CHAPTER 8 DRESSING

SPORTS AND WARS

ANCIENT IGBO MUSICAL AND OTHER INSTRUMENTS

ARCHITECTURE

CHAPTER 9 DEATH AND BURIAL

CHAPTER 10 IGBO-HEBREW CULTURALLY IDENTICAL BIBLICAL EXPRESSIONS

CHAPTER 11 ETYMOLOGICAL SIMILARITIES IN INDIVIDUAL AND TOWN NAMES

CHAPTER 12 RELIGION

CHAPTER 13 ANCIENT ISRAELITE RELIGIOUS AND CULTURAL PARALLELS TO IGBO PRACTICES

SACRED FEASTS OF THE FIRST COVENANT AND THE IGBO

FEAST OF PASSOVER (HEBREW – PESACH)

FEAST OF FIRST FRUITS (IGBO – IRI-JI AND HEBREW - YOM HABIKKURIM)

FEAST OF WEEKS OR HARVEST (IGBO – IFEJIOKU, AFIA-OLU OR IKEJI AND HEBREW – HAG HAKATZIR)

NEW MOON FEASTS (IGBO – IGU ARO)

SABBATH YEAR FEASTS (IGBO – IGBA ASALA)

CHAPTER 14 REFLECTION OF THE TABERNACLE IN IGBO RELIGIOUS AND CULTURAL PRACTICE (EXODUS 26-31)

CHAPTER 15 IKENGA

CHAPTER 16 NRI – A THEOCRATIC LEADERSHIP

OFO

PURIFICATIONS

COVENANT

OATH-TAKING RITUAL

BLOOD

SACRIFICES

CHAPTER 17 DEFILING THE LAND: ABOMINATION AND CURSES

CHAPTER 18 IGBO POLITICAL HISTORY

NRI POLITICAL HISTORY FROM 9TH-20TH CENTURY

CHAPTER 19 RACIAL DIFFERENCE IN DIASPORA HEBREWS

JEWS ACROSS THE SAHARA

ANCIENT HISTORICAL BACKGROUND TO ISRAEL

CHAPTER 20 POLITICAL HISTORY AND PARALLELS

CHAPTER 21 SPIRITUAL RENAISSANCE

TRANSITION OF FAITH

IGBO-ISRAEL – BIBLIOGRAPHY

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to the God of Israel (YHWH). God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in whose covenant with the patriarchs the descendants of Israel owe their profound experiences and inimitable heritage.

Acknowledgement

It is with profound feeling of gratitude to God that I thank my lovely wife, Blessing Moghalu, for her invaluable contributions to this work. Her rich knowledge of the Igbo culture and language made this piece possible. In many days and nights as I searched myriad materials, sifting volumes of information for what I thought pertinent to the book title I discovered that the harder part of compiling information for public consumption was comparing and contrasting them for relevance and authenticity. That unknown effort that is ultimately exclusive of the literary product took about eighty percent of the time spent and many times myriad information one comes across was either not significant for use or had no logical or verifiable basis. Those frustrating moments often needed an intellectual support which I was glad to have gotten from my spouse. I honor my magnificent mother, Vidah Moghalu, whose disciplined and enthusiastic spiritual leadership of the family was an integral influence of this interest. I had wished that my late father Isaac Moghalu, Nigeria’s First Passport Control Officer, former Diplomat and Permanent Secretary, who proudly stood by his people, the Igbo, during the Biafra War, leaving his Nigerian diplomatic post in Washington D.C. in 1967 to return into Biafra, a people under threat of annihilation. He served in the Biafran Foreign Ministry creating the fledgling nation’s new International passport. It was into this doleful epic that witnessed the atrocious genocide of more than 2 million Biafrans, mostly children, through a cruel siege and organized starvation that I was born. It stirs a solemn wonder how valuable all those children would have been this day if that had not occurred. The attachment to this experience and history had ever been profound to me. My father ‘s trust in God through this trying period and always was an inspiration the abided with me. The scarcity of academic professionals and materials on the combination of culture and origin as the topic shows only brought challenges that I had to face alone.

Foreword

This book began by a spark of interest that gradually became a piecemeal contribution of what I believed to be relevant information to the topic that could no longer be ignored. Yes, it could n’t at least by the author because growing up in Nigeria, one always heard from parents and within social circles that Igbos are Hebrew. We were black and African and the Jews were white and mainly European. What possibly could connect these peoples, I thought. The inquisition which set out to settle what seemed a disturbing speculation became seven-year work which trickled into a collection of information I felt could be put together for an interesting readership. This is not the only work regarding this topic but is now one of the few. It is a personal research and effort at logically solving the puzzle for a generation emerging out of Africa’s most brutal and vicious war of the 20th century – the Biafra – Nigeria war. To be born amidst a people whose cultural attributes judged in obscure ways that it produces both admiration and animosity, elicits respect and incites conflict between them and their neighbors is a recipe to unsettling meditations. Hopefully this work will help that understanding amongst a people and their neighbors and inculcate a better disposition and approach to human differences. This journey on self comprehension is a message to all that encounter it. Its teachings are profound.

Preface

Ancestry and History of a people is an aspect of life sometimes not paid much attention to but certainly cherished. It stirs profound thoughts and deep emotions when those attentive begin to reflect on how integral and of direct consequence lives of relatives long passed have impacted theirs. The future is shaped by the present and the present by the past. It becomes therefore difficult to extricate these times from each other as like the birth of generations they function in a continuum. This writing is a reflection of the Igbo nation or people who inhabit both sides of the lower Niger River of West Africa. Their culture, religion, politics and social dynamics which on closer observation bears remarkable signs of its heritage in the Hebrew culture. Two authors whose testimonies precede the establishment of the modern State of Israel give contemporary evidence - an Igbo author, Olaudah Equiano (Oluda Ekweanuo) who published his experience in 1789 and the additional scholarship of George Basden, an English missionary in early 1900s, remains significant compelling pointers to this conclusion. The greatest pointer, however, is the Bible, a special book written over a remarkable period of 16 centuries, between 1500 BC and 100 AD by 40 authors, in 3 continents with 3 languages and sold over 4 billion copies being the most intensely and widely read literary work of all time. The parallels of its recorded history and culture with that of the Igbo is stunningly indelible.

Applying the puzzles of known history creates a remarkable chronology and comprehension of this enigmatic scholarship. Information that astounds yet comes with profound understanding even to those of its direct reference. For the benefit of those who assimilate its valuable knowledge obtained from investigative study this expository seeks to add its enlightenment employing mostly comparative approach between ancient and modern realities. While myriad records, writings and other evidences remain for modern reference, the writer mainly used the Bible which contains the most sacred ancient texts of both the Hebrew and Christian faiths for this comparative expose. In it we witness the matching records of Igbo classical thought embedded in culture and faith. This is in other words mainly a biblical scholarship. It should not escape thought that the Hebrew Bible is mainly composed of Israelite religious and cultural historical experience. The Old Testament is used exclusively to identify the Hebrew Bible as the foundation and a portion of the Christian scriptures but its authorship is Hebrew not Christian. In fact the New Testament was written mainly by Jews who were followers of the new teachings of Christ. Paul (formerly Saul) was a prolific author of 14 books which was more than half of the New Testament and professed himself as a Jewish follower of Christ (Acts 22: 3). The Old Testament’s content deals with the religion, politics and culture of the ancient Hebrew people of Israel and not that of Christians which constitutes and is more pronounced in the practice of faith in the New Testament. It is mainly authored by priests, prophets and scribes. Christ was a Jew not a Christian but the followership and practice of his teachings was named after him. Christianity with its many variant interpretations and applications by gradual and steady followership as time passed became the world’s greatest religion. The contrast between Judaism and Christianity is relevant to the text and abetting to its comprehension. For this writing, in fact, the Bible and the Igbo culture, religion, social economic and political attributes in their static or necessary clarifications from the Bible as most of the quotations used from it are simply quoted in books, chapters and verses and may need references from its elaborate texts. It is a statement of a genuine perspective that aligns conclusively in solving the puzzle of a lost tribe of Israel.

Chapter 1

Who Are The Igbo?

From ancient times ethnic groups or races had often been identified by a number of factors like their domiciliary topography, linguistics, physical features or cultural attributes. These are also often by outside observations of other groups. Ethiopia was a name given to Africans by the upper Nile River by Greeks, meaning people of the sun-burnt skin,. Bilad-el-Sudan was given to Nubians by the Arabs from the Arabian peninsula and it means Land of the Blacks. In the hump of the West Coast of Africa is the principal river in the region known as the Niger River, a 2,600 mile-long crescent course originating from the Guinea highlands and discharging into Atlantic Ocean through the massive delta in Nigeria. The Igbo are ancient migrants who sojourn in both sides of the lower Niger River. They are, however, not known by the river’s name. The source of their modern name had different ascriptions by different historic schools of thought. One the prominent ones believes that the name originated from a linguistic transformation of the word, Hebrew, a view strongly supported by the striking cultural similarities between the modern Igbo and ancient Israel. The other school of thought believes it to be an ancestral name from northern Igbo land as professor emeritus of history in Rutgers University, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, wrote that terms for African ethnicities appearing in American documents arose not in Africa, but rather in the Americas. The Igbo were not identified by this name later generalized for its myriad independent communities in the 18th century in the course of middle-passage after most captives were first exposed to Africans unlike themselves. Prior to the appliance of this collective identity, the Igbo had no broader identity before they were brought to the Americas, were the Igbo ethnic identity arose. The Igbo constitute a major demographic component of Nigeria coerced into a union by an act of British colonial political interest. They speak the Igbo language and posses a distinct cultural identity.

"The sons of Gad; Zephon, Haggi, Shuni, Ezbon, Eri, Arodi and Areli."

––- Genesis 46: 16.

Nri Kingdom is the oldest Kingdom in Nigeria. It was founded around 900A.D. by the progenitor Eri, son of Gad. According to biblical accounts, Jacob had Leah as his wife who begot four sons for him. When Leah noticed she had passed child-bearing age, she gave her maid - servant, Zilpah to Jacob to wife, and through Zilpah he had a son named Gad. Gad then begot Eri, who later formed a clan known as Erites vide Genesis Chapter30 verse 9; 46 verse16 and Numbers Chapter 26 verses 15-19. Eri was therefore amongst the twelve tribes of Israel via Gad.

–––– Priest King, Eze Nri, Nri Enwelana II, Obidiegwu Onyeso as quoted by the Nri Progressive Union USA.

The Nigerian (Igbo) Jewish claim was bolstered several years ago with the discovery in the area of an onyx stone reportedly bearing the name Gad in ancient Hebrew. In addition, the Ibo Benei-Yisrael, as they sometimes call themselves, have traditions bearing some resemblance to Judaism. Among them are the circumcisions of new born males on the eighth day, the separation of women during menstrual cycles, the mourning period resembling a shiva and the prohibition of eating the meat of an animal that was not blessed. There is also the blowing of a ram’s horn, akin to blowing of the schofar.

–— Marc Perelman, Haaretz Israel Daily News, Tel Aviv, Israel October 6, 2008.

Migration Narratives

Between 2000 and 1,500 BC a new semitic people emerged in a largely Hamite inhabited area of what today is known as the Middle-East. They were the Hebrews. These herders would develop a major spiritually based civilization that would later have a remarkable influence all over the world. Not only did their culture spread across the globe but so did the people themselves. The Hebrew civilization developed gradually from about 1800 B.C. and flourished until