The Chagga scapegoat purification ritual and another re-reading of the goat of Azazel in Leviticus 16

Abstract

The Chagga people of Tanzania live "in the shadow of one of Earth's most magnificent structures" (Dundas 1924:5).The structure being referred to here is none other than the great Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa. When Iohannes Rebmann, one of the pioneer European missionaries and explorers to set foot in the interior of East Africa in the recent period, sent reports back to his home of a snow-capped mountain in East Africa on the Equator which he had witnessed on November 10, 1848, his report was dismissed by one WiIliam Desborough Cooley in the Athenium, a scientific publication of 1852 in Europe as a "most delightful mental recognition, only not supported by the evidence of his senses" (see Dundas 1924:11). Cooley had concluded: "I deny altogether the existence of snow on Mount Kilimanjaro. It rests entirely on the testimony of Mr Rebmann .... And he ascertained it, not with his eyes, but by inference and the visions of his imagination" (see also John Reader, Kilimanjaro, 1982:9). So easily was Rebmann dismissed in the name of science.