Israel's African Ancestry

Whereas the prevailing argument among academic scholars today is that the Israelites descended mainly from Canaanite tribes and maybe even Egyptians, Israel's African Ancestry: The Ethnic and National Genesis of the Israelites takes this claim to further heights. Combining archaeological, ethnological, biblical, historical, and epigraphic data, a well-rounded, comprehensive investigation is presented into the formation of Israelite identity. This book is based on a plethora of primary and secondary source materials, synthesized with existing research on the historiography of the so-called Near East. Tracing the origins of the Israelites back to a group of Neolithic Kushites called the Anu peoples, the evolution of Israelite identity is mapped from the earliest primordial recollections of Judean scribes, which go back to the Late Neolithic Period [5th millennium BC], to the earliest historical reference to the Israelites on the Merneptah Stele, dating to the Early Iron Age [c. 1200-1000 BC]. The process of Israelite identity formation is categorized and described in three phases: the Anu identity phase, the Canaanite identity phase, and the Israelite identity phase. Groundbreaking information is presented throughout this book, challenging the predominate scholarly view that the events in the biblical account that took place before the Assyrian exile are mainly ahistorical or not related to history. Much of the biblical account, from Genesis to 1 Kings, is put into historical context, authenticating several characters of the Hebrew Canon as being, at the least, renditions of genuine historical personages.