Ten Lost Tribes

From RationalWiki
(Redirected from Lost tribes of Israel)
Jump to: navigation, search
One of many articles on

Judaism

Icon judaism.svg
topics of interest

As readers of the Old Testament know, the ten lost tribes of Israel are those Jewish tribes that did not accept Solomon's son Rehoboam as their king upon Solomon's death. These tribes formed the Kingdom of Israel, or the Northern Kingdom; the two southern tribes formed the Kingdom of Judah, which outlasted the Northern Kingdom and in which the religion ancestral to today's rabbinic Judaism was formed.

Contents

[edit] In the Bible

There are multiple accounts of what the Twelve Tribes were - with no two lists in the bible agreeing with each other.[1][2]

Traditionally, the tribes of Israel, named after the twelve sons of Jacob, are:

  1. Reuben
  2. Simeon
  3. Levi
  4. Judah
  5. Issachar
  6. Zebulun
  7. Dan
  8. Naphtali
  9. Gad
  10. Asher
  11. Joseph
  12. Benjamin

Of these tribes, Levi did not receive a specific allotment of land; they were granted the Cities of Refuge and various other towns distributed among the other territories. Joseph had two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh; they became two separate tribes, and there is no tribe of Joseph in those terms.

The actual Biblical text is relatively clear as to what happened to the lost tribes of Israel. They were conquered by the Neo-Assyrian empire around 722 BCE. Earlier Assyrian conquests had already conquered part of the Northern Kingdom's territory; in this first forced population transfer, "the king of Assyria went up against Damascus, and took it, and carried the people of it captive to Kir." (2 Kings 16:9). The remaining parts of the Northern Kingdom lingered for several more years as a tributary state of Assyria, until the Assyrians doubted their loyalty. Then:

Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria; and Hoshea became his servant, and gave him presents.

And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea: for he had sent messengers to So king of Egypt, and brought no present to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year: therefore the king of Assyria shut him up, and bound him in prison. Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years.

In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.
—II Kings 17:3-6.
And the king of Assyria did carry away Israel unto Assyria and put them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes: because they obeyed not the voice of the LORD their God, but transgressed his covenant, and all that Moses the servant of the LORD commanded and would not hear them, nor do them.
—II Kings 18:11-12.
Successive deportations of the Hebrew people out of the Northern Kingdom into Assyria.

So the Bible says straightforwardly when and where the Israelites were taken, and history loses track of them under their former names at this point. Some were sent to the kingdom of the Medes, in present day Iran. But the notion that the tribes were "lost", rather than scattered and losing their distinctiveness as a people, assumes that they somehow survived in hidden form, waiting to be recognized.

At any rate, the Israelites were not wholly lost; some remained on the land around the capital of the Northern Kingdom, which was Samaria by Mount Gerizim; these are the Samaritans, who preserve the original Hebrew alphabet[3] and a version of Judaism based entirely on the Torah and parts of the Book of Joshua. Bad blood between Samaritans and Jews forms part of the backdrop of the teachings of Jesus. A small number of Samaritans continue to this day.

[edit] In Pseudohistory

See the main article on this topic: British Israelism

The kings and rulers of the northern kingdom of Israel were fairly consistently portrayed by the authors of the Books of Kings and Chronicles to have been wicked rulers who displeased God. The Bible also portrays the conquest of the northern kingdom as the judgment of a righteous God for their sins.

Despite this, various people seek to claim these tribes as illustrious ancestors. This is also fostered by the reappearance of the several lost tribes in apocalyptic and Messianic prophecies. In Revelation 7:5 - 8, a cohort from most of the tribes is "sealed" for special blessings at the end of the world:

of the tribe of Judah twelve thousand were sealed;
of the tribe of Reuben twelve thousand were sealed;
of the tribe of Gad twelve thousand were sealed;
of the tribe of Asher twelve thousand were sealed;
of the tribe of Naphtali twelve thousand were sealed;
of the tribe of Manasseh twelve thousand were sealed;
of the tribe of Simeon twelve thousand were sealed;
of the tribe of Levi twelve thousand were sealed;
of the tribe of Issachar twelve thousand were sealed;
of the tribe of Zebulun twelve thousand were sealed;
of the tribe of Joseph twelve thousand were sealed;
of the tribe of Benjamin twelve thousand were sealed.

This fortunate 144,000 are "servants of God" (Rev. 7:3) apparently will reap special blessings in the end times, together with a "great multitude ... of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues"[4] who will serve God in his temple and reap special blessings at the end of time:

Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple. And He who sits on the throne will dwell among them. They shall neither hunger anymore nor thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any heat; for the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to living fountains of waters. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
—Rev. 7:16 - 18

Note that the original tribes of Dan and Ephraim are omitted entirely from this list.

Apparently getting into this blessed host is better if you get in as a tribe member. This motivates a number of Christian claims that identifies the scattered tribes with contemporary nations. Chief among these theories is British Israelism, which holds that the British nation is descended from the tribe of Ephraim, while the United States continues Manasseh.

[edit] Lost and "Found"

Here are some of the many claimants to being one of the lost tribes, in decreasing order of likelihood:

  • The Falasha (Beta Israel) of Ethiopia. The Falasha are the most likely to be an actual lost tribe if there are any true claimants. They were ignored by mainstream Judaism for centuries, they originally spoke a Semitic language (Ge'ez), and they maintained vestigial cultural-religious aspects of Judaism.
  • The Lemba tribe of southern Africa. The Lemba speak a Nilo-Saharan language, not a Semitic language. Some of the male members of the Lemba have the "Cohen modal haplotype" in their DNA, which is an indicator of Jewish ancestry through the male line.[5] Since there is no proven matrilineal descent, they may not be "true" Jews.
  • The Bnei Menashe of India. These are not the people of the traditional Jewish communities of India (Cochin Jews) who had maintained continuous links with Judaism over the centuries but rather tribal people who speak Tibeto-Burman languages. The Bnei Menashe have at least some economic interest in "returning" to Israel. Israel allowed 1700 to migrate, then banned them from migrating when they realized they weren't Jews at all, then changed policy again and allowed them to migrate again when they realized they weren't Muslims.[6]
  • The Gogodala of Papua New Guinea. One of the authors of the Lemba study, Tudor Parfitt, went off the deep end and decided to investigate claims by the Gogodala that they were one of the lost tribes.[7] Given that the people who speak the Gogodala language arrived no sooner than 40,000 years ago and were completely isolated from continental Asia, Europe and Africa until recent historical times (primarily 1800 onward), the Jewish connection is beyond implausible to say the least but it is a great publicity stunt.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

Personal tools
Namespaces

Variants
Actions
Navigation
Community
Tools
support