King lists and genealogies in the Hebrew Bible and in Southern Africa

Abstract

King lists and genealogies are used in this article as a point of reference from which to consider similarities between the historiographical perspectives of early Israel and traditional Africa, with special reference to the Lemba people of Southern Africa. Several Lemba king lists / clan lists and genealogies are examined, and compared with similar texts from the Hebrew Bible. Interesting findings include the unusual brevity of the Lemba genealogies in comparison with both Ancient Near Eastern and other African genealogies, and a cultural paradigm occurring both in Genesis and in Lemba texts, where the heir to a father's leadership is not his oldest son but rather the son of the pre-eminent wife.