{"id":1676,"date":"2021-01-03T15:41:07","date_gmt":"2021-01-03T15:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/feedmethewordtoday.com\/?p=1676"},"modified":"2024-01-28T21:36:34","modified_gmt":"2024-01-28T21:36:34","slug":"the-ten-lost-tribes-of-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/udiwonder.com\/word\/the-ten-lost-tribes-of-israel\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ten Lost Tribes Of Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0ten lost tribes<\/b>\u00a0were the ten of the\u00a0Twelve Tribes of Israel<\/a>\u00a0that were said to have been deported from the\u00a0Kingdom of Israel\u00a0after its conquest by the\u00a0Neo-Assyrian Empire\u00a0circa 722 BCE.<\/sup><\/sup>\u00a0These are the tribes of\u00a0Reuben<\/a>,\u00a0Simeon<\/a>,\u00a0Dan<\/a>,\u00a0Naphtali<\/a>,\u00a0Gad<\/a>,\u00a0Asher<\/a>,\u00a0Issachar<\/a>,\u00a0Zebulun<\/a>,\u00a0Manasseh<\/a>, and\u00a0Ephraim<\/a>; all but\u00a0Judah<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Benjamin<\/a>. Claims of descent from the “lost tribes” have been proposed in relation to many groups,<\/sup>\u00a0and some religions espouse a\u00a0messianic\u00a0view that the tribes will return.<\/p>\n

The ten lost tribes refer to the legend concerning the fate of the ten tribes constituting the northern Kingdom of Israel<\/span>.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Kingdom of Israel\u00a0– consisting of the ten tribes (the\u00a0twelve tribes\u00a0excluding\u00a0Judah\u00a0and\u00a0Benjamin\u00a0who constituted the southern\u00a0Kingdom of Judah) – fell in 722\u00a0B.C.E.<\/small> and its inhabitants were exiled by the Assyrians. In general, it can be said that these tribes disappeared from the stage of history. However, the passage in 1 Chronicles 5:26\u00a0to the effect that the ten tribes were there “unto this day” and the prophecies of\u00a0Isaiah (11:11),\u00a0Jeremiah (31:8), and above all of\u00a0Ezekiel (37: 19\u201324)\u00a0kept alive the belief that they had maintained a separate existence and that the time would come when they would be rejoined with their brethren, the descendants of the\u00a0Exile<\/span>\u00a0of Judah to Babylon. Their place in history, however, is substituted by legend, and the legend of the Ten Lost Tribes is one of the most fascinating and persistent in\u00a0Judaism<\/span>\u00a0and beyond it.<\/p>\n

The 12 sons of Israel became the 12 tribes of Israel. God freed them from slavery in Egypt and brought them into the land \u2013 Israel \u2013 that He promised to their forefathers.<\/p>\n

Centuries later, after King Solomon died, the Israelites divided their kingdom in two. The north became Israel with 10 tribes. The other two tribes in the south were called Judah.<\/p>\n

In 722 BC, Assyria conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel. While many of the 10 Northern tribes migrated to Judah, some members of these tribes fled were taken captive or deported to other lands. (See 1 Kings 5:26 and 2 Kings 17:5\u20136.) These became known as the 10 \u201cLost Tribes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Where did they go?<\/h4>\n

Captives from Israel\u2019s 10 tribes were taken north, south, and east. Some who fled captivity went south into Egypt while others followed trade routes eastward into the Orient, some continuing their migration across the millennia.<\/p>\n

Where are they now?<\/h4>\n

Did they disappear? Did they assimilate into other societies? Were they persecuted and wiped out?<\/p>\n

Because of persecution over the centuries in many of the countries in which they now live, many hid their Jewish heritage by practicing their faith in secret. Some are locally known to be Jewish \u2013 and suffer prejudice and persecution because of it \u2013 but have only recently become known to the rest of the world.<\/p>\n

In the last 75 years or so, Jewish communities have become known in Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, India, China, and other surprising countries. Even more surprising to some is that members of the Lost Tribes living in these countries look like any other people native to these regions.<\/p>\n

Even though the \u201cLost Tribes\u201d are found, the name stuck because it says so much about their history.<\/p>\n

The belief in the continued existence of the ten tribes was regarded as an incontrovertible fact during the whole period of the Second\u00a0Temple<\/span>\u00a0and of the\u00a0Talmud<\/span>. *Tobit, the hero of the apocryphal book of his name, was depicted as a member of the tribe of Naphtali; the\u00a0Testament<\/span>\u00a0of the 12\u00a0Patriarchs<\/span>\u00a0takes their existence as a fact; and in his fifth vision,\u00a0IV<\/small>\u00a0Ezra<\/span> (13:34\u201345) saw a “peaceable multitude\u2026 these are the ten tribes which were carried away prisoners out of their own land.” Josephus (Ant., 11:133) states as a fact “the ten tribes are beyond the Euphrates till now and are an immense multitude and not to be estimated in numbers.”<\/p>\n

Paul (Acts 26:6) protests to Agrippa that he is accused “for the hope of the promise made unto our fathers, unto which promise our twelve tribes, instantly serving God, hope to come,” while James addresses his epistle to “the twelve tribes which are scattered about” (1:1). The only opposing voice to this otherwise universal view is found in the\u00a0Mishnah<\/span>. R. Eliezer expresses his view that they will eventually return and “after darkness is fallen upon the ten tribes light shall thereafter dwell upon them,” but R. Akiva expresses his emphatic view that “the ten tribes shall not return again”\u00a0(Sanh. 10:3<\/a>). In consonance with this view, though it is agreed that\u00a0Leviticus<\/span>\u00a026:38\u00a0applies to the ten tribes, where R. Meir maintains that it merely refers to their exile, Akiva states that it refers to their complete disappearance (Sifra, Be-\u1e24ukkotai, 8:1).<\/p>\n

Their inability to rejoin their brethren was attributed to the fact that whereas the tribes of Judah and Benjamin (the Kingdom of Judah) were “scattered throughout the world,” the ten tribes were exiled beyond the mysterious river\u00a0*Sambatyon\u00a0(Gen. R. 73:6<\/a>), with its rolling waters or sand and rocks, which during the six days of the week prevented them from crossing it, and though it rested on the\u00a0Sabbath<\/span>, the laws of the Sabbath rendered the crossing equally impossible. According to the Jerusalem Talmud, however\u00a0(Sanh. 10:6<\/a>, 29c), the exiles were divided into three. Only one-third went beyond the Sambatyon, a second to “Daphne of Antioch,” and over the third “there descended a cloud which covered them”; but all three would eventually return.<\/p>\n

Throughout the Middle Ages and until comparatively recent times there were claims of the existence of the ten lost tribes as well as attempts by travelers and explorers, both Jewish and non-Jewish, and by many naive scholars, both to discover the ten lost tribes or to identify different peoples with them. In the ninth century\u00a0*Eldad ha-Dani\u00a0claimed not only to be a member of the tribe of Dan, but that he had communicated with four of the tribes.\u00a0David *Reuveni\u00a0claimed to be the brother of Joseph the king of the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh who were settled in Khaybar in Arabia, which was identified with the Habor of\u00a0II<\/small> Kings.<\/p>\n

Benjamin of Tudela has a long description of the ten tribes. According to him, the Jews of Persia stated that in the town of *Nishapur dwelt the four tribes of Dan<\/a>, Asher<\/a>, Zebulun<\/a>, and Naphtali<\/a>, who were then governed “by their own prince Joseph Amarkala the\u00a0Levite<\/span>\u00a0[ed. by N.M. Adler (1907), 83], while the Jews of Khaybar are of the tribes of Reuben and Gad<\/a> and the half-tribe of Manasseh” (ibid.<\/i>, 72), as was also stated by Reuveni. Persistent was the legend that they warred with Prester\u00a0John<\/span>\u00a0in Ethiopia, a story repeated by\u00a0Obadiah of *Bertinoro\u00a0in\u00a0his first two letters from\u00a0Jerusalem<\/span>\u00a0in 1488 and 1489. The kabbalist\u00a0Abraham<\/span> Levi the elder, in 1528, identified them with the Falashas (see\u00a0*Beta Israel\u00a0).\u00a0Abraham *Farissol\u00a0gives a long account of them based upon conversations with David Reuveni not to be found in the latter’s diary, while the most expansive is that of\u00a0Abraham *Jagel, an Italian Jew of the 16th<\/sup>\u201317th<\/sup>\u00a0centuries, in the 22nd<\/sup>\u00a0chapter of his\u00a0Beit Ya’ar ha-Levanon<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Jacob<\/span>\u00a0*Saphir\u00a0(1822\u20131888) cherished the hope that he would discover the lost tribes. He tells the story in great detail of Baruch b. Samuel, a Jew of\u00a0Safed<\/span>\u00a0who, sent to seek them, had visited Yemen and after traveling through an uninhabited desert established contact with a Jew who claimed to belong to the “sons of\u00a0Moses<\/span>.” However, Baruch was murdered before he could visit them (Even Sappir<\/i>, 1 (1866), 41), and in the following chapter Saphir transcribes word for word the evidence given by a certain Baruch Gad to the rabbis of Jerusalem in 1647 that he had met the “sons of Moses” in Persia, who gave him a letter to Jerusalem. He concludes wistfully, “Were I able to give full credence to this letter\u2026 I would subject it to meticulous analysis and would learn from it matters of supreme importance, but the recollection of the fraud of Eldad ha-Dani brings suspicion upon Baruch the Gadite, for one supports the other\u2026 I have done my duty by putting the facts down and you may judge for yourselves and I will hear also what contemporary scholars say about it.”<\/p>\n

Various theories, one more farfetched than the other, have been adduced, on the flimsiest of evidence, to identify different peoples with the ten lost tribes. There is hardly a people, from the Japanese to the British, and from the Red Indians to the Afghans, who have not been suggested, and hardly a place, among them Africa, India, China, Persia, Kurdistan, Caucasia, the U.S., and Great Britain. Special interest is attached to the fantastic traveler’s tale told by Aaron (Antonio)\u00a0Levi de *Montezinos\u00a0who, on his return to Amsterdam from South America in 1644, told a remarkable story of having found Indians beyond the mountain passes of the Cordilleras who greeted him by reciting the\u00a0Shema<\/span><\/i>. Among those to whom Montezinos gave his affidavit was *Manasseh Ben Israel, then\u00a0rabbi<\/span> of Amsterdam, who fully accepted the story, and it devoted his\u00a0Hope of Israel<\/i>\u00a0(1650, 16522<\/sup>) which he dedicated to the English Parliament. In section 37 he sums up his findings in the following words:<\/p>\n

“1. That the West Indies were anciently inhabited by a part of the Ten Tribes, which passed thither out of Tartary, by the Streight of Anian.<\/p>\n

2. That the Tribes are not in any one place, but in many; because the Prophets have foretold their return shall be into their Country, out of divers places; Isaiah especially saith it shall be out of eight.<\/p>\n

3. That they did not return to the Second Temple.<\/p>\n

4. That at this day they keep the Jewish Religion.<\/p>\n

5. That the prophecies concerning their return to their Country, are of necessity to be fulfilled.<\/p>\n

6. That from all coasts of the World they shall meet in those two places, sc. Assyria and Egypt; God preparing an easier, pleasant way, and abounding with all things, as Isaiah saith, ch. 49, and from thence they shall flee to Jerusalem, as birds to their nests.<\/p>\n

7. That their Kingdom shall be no more divided; but the twelve Tribes shall be joined together under one Prince, that is under Messiah, the Son of David; and that they shall never be driven out of their Land.”<\/p>\n

The Latin word was translated into English the same year it was published and ran through three editions in as many years, and Manasseh Ben Israel used this “evidence” of the dispersal of the Jews throughout the world as an argument to Oliver *Cromwell in his appeal to permit the return of the Jews to England, then the only country which had no Jews. As long as this situation existed, the fulfillment of the prophecy that the coming (or the second coming) of the Messiah<\/span>\u00a0would take place only when the Jews were scattered in the four quarters of the world (section 35). Both through the translation and the correspondence which the story initiated between Manasseh Ben Israel and theologians in England, it played a significant role in creating the atmosphere which eventually brought about the return of the Jews to England.<\/p>\n

Reference:<\/strong><\/p>\n