Ben Ammi Ben Israel: Black Theology, Theodicy and Judaism in the Thought of the African Hebrew Israelite Messiah

by M. Mark Miller

Publisher:

Bloomsbury Academic

, 2023

Overview

This text introduces Ben Ammi, the leader and theologian of the African Hebrew Israelite community, as a systematic thinker and theologian. It examines his many books and speeches in order to provide a comprehensive introduction to his thought in the context of both African American and Jewish contemporaries and precursors.

Divided into three thematic sections, History, Law, and Language, the text introduces Ben Ammi’s understanding of the nature of God, the responsibilities of the human, and the narrative of history. Ben Ammi was a deeply spiritual but also remarkably modern thinker who blended scientific thought into his evolving socio-theology, while seeking to remove religion from the realm of mythology. The book evaluates how Ben Ammi’s theology is one bound to concepts of humility and learning how to go with the grain of the natural world in order to find humanity’s true center as a part of nature.

Key Features

Offers a comprehensive overview of the thought of the most successful and influential Hebrew Israelite leader
Provides a new angle on the Black Power movement that has maintained itself into the present day
Explores the meeting of Black and Jewish worlds and thought, in a time when Black-Jewish relations are often fraught and difficult questions are being asked

Contents

Introduction
1. By Means of a Beginning: History, Race, and Truth
2. As in the Days of Noah: Eschatology and Apocalypticism
3. Black Messiah: Ben Ammi, Yeshua, and Messianism
4. Pneumatic Immanence: God, Ontology, and Law
5. Divine Justice/Deserved Liberation: Suffering, Agency, and Chosenness
6. The Vital Self: Body, Soul, Spirit, World
7. The Power to Define: Words, Ideas, Names, and Scripture
8. Revolutionary Conservatism: Social Theory, Human Life, and Gender
Conclusion: Gnostic and Kabbalistic Reflections
Bibliography
Index

Praise for Ben Ammi Ben Israel

Ben Ammi Ben Israel, the man and messiah figure, is one of the most interesting spiritual leaders to emerge in African American history. This thorough and thoughtful book by Michael Miller takes him seriously as a revolutionary thinker who challenges much of what we think we know about black politics, culture, language, life and death today.

This well-researched book fulfils a long-felt need – a thorough analysis of the philosophy of Ben
Ammi Ben Israel and the beliefs of the Hebrew Israelite movement.

Ben Ammi Ben Israel is not a name that is burnished on the consciousness of many people
outside of the relatively small world of those interested in and committed to Black
liberation. Miller’s book is therefore a timely and a bold restatement of the man
and his theological, political and ethical ideas concerned with the selfactualisation
and self-determination of Black people ... This excellent text is a reminder of an important voice in the Black radical tradition that should be reclaimed.

Product Details

• Title: Ben Ammi Ben Israel: Black Theology, Theodicy and Judaism in the Thought of the African Hebrew Israelite Messiah
• Author: M. Mark Miller
• Series: Bloomsbury Studies in Black Religion and Cultures
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Print Publication Date: 2023
• Logos Release Date: 2024
• Pages: 254
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9781350295155, 9781350295131, 1350295132, 1350295159
• Resource ID: LLS:9781350295155
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T10:48:45Z

About M. Mark Miller

M. Mark Miller is a fifth-generation Montanan who grew up on a ranch in southwest Montana 90 miles from Yellowstone Park. His interest in early park travel began when he was a small boy listening to his grandmother's tales of baking bread in geysers and tossing red flannels into Old Faithful so it's next eruption would be tinted pink.

While attending the University of Montana, Miller worked for The Montana Standard and The Daily Missoulian. After graduating, he worked for newspapers in Utah and Tennessee before earning a doctorate at Michigan State University. He taught journalism for 25 years at the Universities of Wisconsin and Tennessee.

In addition to his academic duties, Miller retained an active interest in the history and literature of the American West. Because of this avocation, the University of Tennessee asked him to lead a book discussion group focused on the Montana novel.

Miller has been researching early travel to Yellowstone since 2003. His expertise on the history and literature of Yellowstone has won him a position on the Speakers Bureau of Humanities Montana, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. His articles on Yellowstone Park and Montana history have appeared in the Big Sky Journal and the Pioneer Museum Quarterly. He is working on a novel for young adults about a 14-year-old boy's adventures in Yellowstone Park in 1871 and a history of Yellowstone travel.