Agreed but how do you KNOw that ancient culture is yours? How much work do you do digging into scrolls looking for yourself when it’s NOT going to change who YOU are?
Really it’s not even about that. We don’t relate to it that way. None of the ancient culture is anyone’s culture today purely in physical terms.
Even while Israel was still yet a nation, Paul wrote this:
“For
no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly,
nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter.” (Romans 2:28-29)
See his point is it’s not enough to just have the blood of an Israelite. You have to LIVE like one spiritually. That’s what allows you to claim the culture.
No one today is an Israelite physically as that was over 2000 years ago, and ever since then it ceased to be a nation. People can spend all the time they want tracing bloodlines for any personal reasons. Like I said, only issue is when they start worshiping the culture or put it in on a pedestal viewing it as some kind of moral standard.
The Apostle Paul who basically had the “right” to flex his lineage and culture didn’t even do this:
“
for we are the true circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and take pride in Christ Jesus, and put
no confidence in the flesh, although I myself could boast as having confidence even in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he is confident in the flesh, I have more reason: circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless
But whatever things were gain to me, these things I have counted as loss because of Christ. “ (Phillipians 3:3-7)
I don’t disrespect anyone doing the research but I do worry when the data is murky and unclear. I also have BEEN to these places and I know it is IMPOSSIBLE to know what village or tribe or clan any of us came from UNLESS you have a specific family tree that you can point to.
the people of Africa are as diverse as European cultures if not MORE and some are tribal as hell. If you don’t know a specific person that can track your family line...you are NOT one of them. So how much work people on these threads gonna do? And to what end?
if you are doing it for information purposes - I get it.....but if you looking for an identity in Africa I am telling you you are not gonna find it. Well again unless you are like Obama that knows your actual African family.
And at the same time black Americans worried about being pharaohs won’t even give up their seat on the train to a old man wearing a Tuskegee Airman hat.
Yea I think the person’s motive should be considered. If their motive is on some moral high ground then it disqualifies all the digging they’ve been doing. If it’s just for personal reasons then I’m just like, okay. I personally would never waste all that time going to such lengths, but we can’t control what other people do.
