Nuer prophets: a history of prophecy from the Upper Nile in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Johnson, Douglas H. (Douglas Hamilton)

Book

Nuer prophets: a history of prophecy from the Upper Nile in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Clarendon Press ; Oxford University Press • Oxford • Published In 1994 • Pages:

By: Johnson, Douglas H. (Douglas Hamilton).

Abstract
An excellent monograph on Nuer prophetic tradition in which Johnson argues that Nuer prophets were first and foremost peacemakers and overseers of a moral community. They served the same role as the earth-masters, AKA leopard-skin chiefs, but appealed to a larger pan-tribal constituency. Prophets protected their people against crop failures, disease, and infertility. The most famous prophet, Ngundeng (d.1906), was possessed by the free-deity Deng, the Dinka sky god, whom Ngundeng elevated above all other divinities. Johnson shows how Ngundeng was able to organize the Nuer and Dinka by appropriating their gods and forming a pantheon under Deng. According to Johnson, the prophetic tradition was more limited among the Western Nuer on account of different ecological and frontier conditions. Johnson also discusses prophets in the recent Civil War (1955-1972, 1983-present) and Ngundeng's lingering influence.

Topography and geology

Lineages

Inter-community relations

External relations

Warfare

Peacemaking

Revelation and divination

Prophets and ascetics

Nuer

HRAF PubDate

2002

Region