No description available.

Nazirites are a well-documented phenomenon within the context of the Hebrew Bible. The bulk of research has focused mainly on the role of Samson as a life long Nazirite, but little has been done concerning the role of women within the context of the Nazirite Vow. The goal of this paper will be to examine the role of women within the Nazirite Vow, as well as examining the constraints that might arise when one takes into account the purity laws. The Nazirite Vow is the only vow within the Bible that explicitly mentions the inclusion of women. The question I am interested in addressing is, are there circumstances that might exclude the woman? The idea behind the Nazirite vow is that one is consecrating oneself to YHWH, or setting oneself apart. If one were setting oneself apart then these rules that they would have to follow would not supersede the purity laws. I would suggest that beyond the regular constraints, avoiding dead bodies, grape products, and cutting ones hair, one would still be responsible to keep the purity laws. Therefore, when one takes an issue like menstruation into account, this severely limits the amount of time a woman has to complete the Nazirite Vow. As I will detail in this paper, this leads to the conclusion that if the vow lasted for more than thirty days the only women who would be able to complete the Nazirite Vow successfully would be pregnant women or a woman who is postmenopausal. This could suggest a certain amount of restriction regarding the woman's ability to perform this vow and may suggest why the inclusion of women is made explicit within the context of Numbers 6. Furthermore, this could suggest that fertility might be an aspect of the Nazirite Vow. / Religion

Deux mouvements théologiques et culturels actuellement en croissance rapide suscitent un intérêt mondial, Ibandla lamaNazaretha et les Rastafari. Fondé par le Zulu prédicateur Isaiah Shembe pendant les années 1910, Ibandla lamaNazaretha prend son origine d’une église hiérarchique célébrant dans des temples extérieurs dans la province de KwaZulu-Natal et inclut maintenant un certain nombre de factions regroupées autour de la péninsule de l’Afrique du Sud. Le groupe des Rastafari, quant à lui, né en Jamaïque, a commencé comme une idéologie à plusieurs têtes qui a fleuri dans des zones éparses de l’île des Caraïbes. Il découle des interprétations d’une prophétie généralement attribuée à Marcus Garvey, concernant un roi devant être couronné en Afrique (circa 1920), et qui fut appliquée aux années 1930, avec le couronnement de Ras Tafari Makonnen comme Haile Selassie I, 225e empereur d’Éthiopie. Les adhérents et sympathisants de ces deux mouvements se comptent en dizaines de millions et ils exercent plusieurs types d’influences, tant aux niveaux politique, théologique, social que culturel, en particulier en Afrique et dans les Caraïbes aujourd’hui. Cette thèse soutient que les deux, Ibandla lamaNazaretha et les Rastafari, perpétuent un amalgame entre le « Naziréat » de l’Ancien Testament (Nombres 6:1-8) et le « Nazaréen » de l’évangile de Matthieu (2:23), à travers la dévotion à un seigneur contemporain: Haile Selassie I dans le cas du mouvement Rastafari et Isaiah Shembe dans le cas du mouvement Ibandla lamaNazaretha. Dans ce cadre théologique, à la fois les Rastafari et Ibandla lamaNazaretha ont réanimé les anciens rites de purification judaïques du naziréat jusque-là disparus, et les ont également adaptés, dans le contexte du messianisme, aux préoccupations postcoloniales de l’autochtonie. Grâce à la persistance de l’autochtonie, l’influence des idéaux indiens de résistance non-violente, et l’appropriation des différents thèmes bibliques, les deux mouvements africains noirs ont habilité avec succès leurs membres « dépossédés ». Ils l’ont fait par la création de communautés liminales, alors que des modes de vie agraires et auto-suffisants s’épanouissent en dehors des auspices d’une élite dominante : une herméneutique du nazaritisme unifie les diverses racines hybrides africaines, judaïques, chrétiennes, indiennes, et européennes. / Two rapidly growing theological and cultural movements currently sparking global interest are Rastafari and Ibandla lamaNazaretha. Founded by the Zulu preacher Isaiah Shembe during the 1910s, Ibandla lamaNazaretha originated as a hierarchical church order that worships at outdoor temples in the province of KwaZulu-Natal and currently comprises a number of splinter groups centralized around the Southern African peninsula. Rastafari, however, born in Jamaica, commenced as a multi-headed ideology that blossomed in scattered pockets across the Caribbean island and stemmed from the interpretations of a prophecy generally attributed to Marcus Garvey about a king to be crowned in Africa (circa 1920) as applied to the 1930 coronation of Ras Tafari Makonnen as Haile Selassie I, 225th Emperor of Ethiopia. Today, Ibandla lamaNazaretha and Rastafari comprise adherents and sympathizers numbering in the tens of millions and their presences connote varying degrees of political, theological, social, and cultural influence, especially in Africa and the Caribbean today. This dissertation argues that both Ibandla lamaNazaretha and Rastafari perpetuate a conflation between the “Nazirite” from the Old Testament (Numbers 6:1-8) and the “Nazorean” of Matthew 2:23 through the hailing of a contemporaneous saviour: i.e. Haile Selassie I for Rastafari and Isaiah Shembe for Ibandla lamaNazaretha. Within this theological framework, both Rastafari and Ibandla lamaNazaretha have provided renewed life to the long defunct Ancient Judaic purification rites of the Nazirite, but have also adapted them in the context of messianism for the benefits of Africanness and the postcolonial concerns of indigeneity. Thus, through the persistence of indigeneity, the influence of Indian ideals of peaceful resistance, and the appropriation of various biblical themes, both Black African movements have successfully empowered the dispossessed by creating liminal communities wherein expressions of agrarian self-reliance flourish outside the auspices of a subjugating elite; a hermeneutic of naziritism unifies the discernable African, Judaic, Christian, Indian, and European hybridic roots.

Deux mouvements théologiques et culturels actuellement en croissance rapide suscitent un intérêt mondial, Ibandla lamaNazaretha et les Rastafari. Fondé par le Zulu prédicateur Isaiah Shembe pendant les années 1910, Ibandla lamaNazaretha prend son origine d’une église hiérarchique célébrant dans des temples extérieurs dans la province de KwaZulu-Natal et inclut maintenant un certain nombre de factions regroupées autour de la péninsule de l’Afrique du Sud. Le groupe des Rastafari, quant à lui, né en Jamaïque, a commencé comme une idéologie à plusieurs têtes qui a fleuri dans des zones éparses de l’île des Caraïbes. Il découle des interprétations d’une prophétie généralement attribuée à Marcus Garvey, concernant un roi devant être couronné en Afrique (circa 1920), et qui fut appliquée aux années 1930, avec le couronnement de Ras Tafari Makonnen comme Haile Selassie I, 225e empereur d’Éthiopie. Les adhérents et sympathisants de ces deux mouvements se comptent en dizaines de millions et ils exercent plusieurs types d’influences, tant aux niveaux politique, théologique, social que culturel, en particulier en Afrique et dans les Caraïbes aujourd’hui. Cette thèse soutient que les deux, Ibandla lamaNazaretha et les Rastafari, perpétuent un amalgame entre le « Naziréat » de l’Ancien Testament (Nombres 6:1-8) et le « Nazaréen » de l’évangile de Matthieu (2:23), à travers la dévotion à un seigneur contemporain: Haile Selassie I dans le cas du mouvement Rastafari et Isaiah Shembe dans le cas du mouvement Ibandla lamaNazaretha. Dans ce cadre théologique, à la fois les Rastafari et Ibandla lamaNazaretha ont réanimé les anciens rites de purification judaïques du naziréat jusque-là disparus, et les ont également adaptés, dans le contexte du messianisme, aux préoccupations postcoloniales de l’autochtonie. Grâce à la persistance de l’autochtonie, l’influence des idéaux indiens de résistance non-violente, et l’appropriation des différents thèmes bibliques, les deux mouvements africains noirs ont habilité avec succès leurs membres « dépossédés ». Ils l’ont fait par la création de communautés liminales, alors que des modes de vie agraires et auto-suffisants s’épanouissent en dehors des auspices d’une élite dominante : une herméneutique du nazaritisme unifie les diverses racines hybrides africaines, judaïques, chrétiennes, indiennes, et européennes. / Two rapidly growing theological and cultural movements currently sparking global interest are Rastafari and Ibandla lamaNazaretha. Founded by the Zulu preacher Isaiah Shembe during the 1910s, Ibandla lamaNazaretha originated as a hierarchical church order that worships at outdoor temples in the province of KwaZulu-Natal and currently comprises a number of splinter groups centralized around the Southern African peninsula. Rastafari, however, born in Jamaica, commenced as a multi-headed ideology that blossomed in scattered pockets across the Caribbean island and stemmed from the interpretations of a prophecy generally attributed to Marcus Garvey about a king to be crowned in Africa (circa 1920) as applied to the 1930 coronation of Ras Tafari Makonnen as Haile Selassie I, 225th Emperor of Ethiopia. Today, Ibandla lamaNazaretha and Rastafari comprise adherents and sympathizers numbering in the tens of millions and their presences connote varying degrees of political, theological, social, and cultural influence, especially in Africa and the Caribbean today. This dissertation argues that both Ibandla lamaNazaretha and Rastafari perpetuate a conflation between the “Nazirite” from the Old Testament (Numbers 6:1-8) and the “Nazorean” of Matthew 2:23 through the hailing of a contemporaneous saviour: i.e. Haile Selassie I for Rastafari and Isaiah Shembe for Ibandla lamaNazaretha. Within this theological framework, both Rastafari and Ibandla lamaNazaretha have provided renewed life to the long defunct Ancient Judaic purification rites of the Nazirite, but have also adapted them in the context of messianism for the benefits of Africanness and the postcolonial concerns of indigeneity. Thus, through the persistence of indigeneity, the influence of Indian ideals of peaceful resistance, and the appropriation of various biblical themes, both Black African movements have successfully empowered the dispossessed by creating liminal communities wherein expressions of agrarian self-reliance flourish outside the auspices of a subjugating elite; a hermeneutic of naziritism unifies the discernable African, Judaic, Christian, Indian, and European hybridic roots.

The lives of women are largely hidden in the Old Testament. New archaeological investigationsinto the households of Iron Age I have brought forward new evidence that sheds light on theauthority status and roles of women in the pre-monarchic tribal community. Conventional theory perceives that women were always oppressed and marginalised under a malevolentsystem of male rule in the Bible. The evidence indicates differently. Investigations in thedomestic sphere, where the household processes were under women’s control and management, imply that women held authority that was equal to male power in the public domain. It has been revealed that women held significant positions in the public sphere as well.This study, therefore, is an investigation into women’s status and the wide-ranging socioeconomicand religious roles they held within a system of male rule that allowed women theirauthority and autonomy in a unique period of Israelite history. / Biblical and Ancient Studies / M. Th. (Biblical Archaeology)