What Happened to the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel?

thanks to nordvpn for sponsoring this video the 12 tribes of israel if you know your bible odds are pretty good you've heard of them but how much do we really know about these tribes and what happened to them from nearly the beginning of the hebrew bible's vision of history the twelve tribes are the most common and most consistent definition of who the people of israel are twelve sons are born to the patriarch jacob between genesis 29 and 35 and before the end of the book they traveled down to egypt 400 years later 12 tribes followed moses out in a grand exodus they conquer canaan and divide the land into 12 different parts then they're led by the judges then by kings david and solomon and at that point according to first kings chapter 11 the kingdom of israel splits in two but even this division is described explicitly in tribal terms ten of the tribes form the northern kingdom which keeps the name israel while the remainder form a new kingdom called judah what happens next is disaster roughly 200 years later the assyrians conquer the kingdom of israel and take its people into exile from which they supposedly never return this event sparks the legend of the 10 lost tribes of israel what happened to them although the bible itself barely touches this subject for thousands of years people have speculated about answers to that question did they stay in assyria or go deeper into asia did they travel to africa as some ethiopians say or did they cross into some mystical geography across the legendary river zambation in addition to these legends of where the 10 lost tribes might have gone there are many groups who have claimed to be israel almost always claiming to be one or more of the lost tribes so even now there are self-proclaimed israels all over the world a phenomenon totally unparalleled in the history of any other identity what's going on here let's start with the historical origins of the legend are the 12 tribes of israel even historical in the first place well historians debate this question the evidence suggests early on there were some number of tribes of some sort but the exact number of tribes and what the tribes were actually called differs depending on which biblical text you read for example deuteronomy 33 an early text called the blessing of moses claims to bless all the tribes of israel but leaves out the tribe of simeon the most striking example though is judges chapter 5 or the song of deborah which many scholars believe is the oldest text in the entire hebrew bible this chapter describes a war between the king of canaan and many of the tribes mentioned by name however only 10 tribes are mentioned including a few not mentioned as tribes elsewhere in the bible like the tribe of gilead moreover judges 5 is specifically missing the tribes most often associated with the kingdom of judah levi simeon and well the tribe of judah itself judah is not mentioned in our earliest source this is important because the vast majority of descriptions of a specifically 12 tribe israel were not composed in the northern kingdom at all but in the southern kingdom of judah see after assyria conquered the northern kingdom the kingdom of judah survived another 136 years until babylon conquered them in 586. here there is another exile but not an endless one after the persians conquered the babylonians the judahites are allowed to return home and rebuild their lives in time the descendants will become the jewish people and it was during this time from 722 to after the babylonian exile that much of what we know as the hebrew bible was composed and edited by the people of judah so many scholars now believe that the twelve tribes vision itself is an idealized vision of a pan-israel identity an identity created by judah to include them and raise their profile on israel's history this narrative is not completely historical but it was based on an older smaller tribal system that actually did exist in early israel in fact some scholars question whether the early judahites even initially thought of themselves as israelites at all or whether later judahites adopted and adapted an israelite identity inventing an idealized 12-tribe system might have played a crucial part in forming this identity at the same time many scholars believed that there really were 12 tribes of israel early on which remained important throughout the history of both kingdoms so the scholarly debate does continue as for the famous legend of the 10 lost tribes well the answer is less complicated it is true that the assyrians conquered the northern kingdom in 722 and that many of the israelites were taken into exile at that time this actual historical event inspired the 10 lost tribes legend however in recent years we've realized that 2nd kings chapter 17 the text in the bible that describes this event in detail vastly exaggerates how many israelites were actually removed from the region in this text we're told that all the israelites were taken and replaced by foreign peoples brought in by the assyrians in reality archaeological evidence demonstrates that many israelites remained behind and likely went on living their lives much as they had before even though the assyrians now ruled the region many also likely fled south and integrated into the kingdom of judah so it's not entirely accurate to think of these deportations as the wholesale removal of the entire local population the assyrian empire's deportation and resettlement policy was very targeted when assyrian sources mention who is being deported they specifically mention the artisans scholars and urban elite as the esteriologist karen radner says these people were usually dispatched to the assyrian heartland to generate knowledge and wealth in other words the policy was a knowledge industry extraction program extracting the elite from conquered lands and transplanting them into the imperial center where they were best able to generate wealth for the empire and this was a well-organized policy by the assyrian bureaucracy so all this to say there were tens of thousands of lost israelites but there were never really 10 lost tribes the israelites that were lost were likely a cross-section of the urban elite and artisans who ended up in the assyrian heartland in what is now northern iraq but here it's again useful to remember the role that the kingdom of judah played in creating the bible as we know it second king 17 is likely a judaized effort to downplay the legitimacy of the remaining israelites of the northern kingdom so this famous legend may actually be based in an ancient rivalry between competing factions rather than an uncomplicated recounting of history but the bible itself is not very descriptive about this issue in fact second kings 17 never even says how many tribes of israel were lost in the end the legend of the ten lost tribes was a later invention a creation of early jewish and christian authors who exaggerated the exiled israelites as a vast multitude and who speculated about what really happened to them so let's examine those later speculations because when you ask the question what happened to the 10 lost tribes many people to this day have very specific answers even claiming to be descendants of one or more of those tribes why did the legend of the 10 lost tribes become such a big deal for so many people later in history a new book by the hebrew bible scholar dr andrew tabalovsky ties all this together by offering a new perspective on the history of what he calls becoming israel the practice of claiming and constructing new identities by adapting the twelve tribes tradition the book the myth of the twelve tribes of israel explores this history through a series of case studies beginning with the hebrew bible itself and continuing through discussions of the samaritans medieval lost tribe legends the mormons and the beta israel of ethiopia though there are many other groups that we could talk about including the black hebrew israelites and followers of british israelism this is a groundbreaking book because it not only ventures into a topic dominated by conspiracy theorists instead of critical scholarship but it also is an extensive comparative study that spans thousands of years of history his argument starts with this simple fact the hebrew bible's vision of a tribal israel is a judahite vision though historians debate how much of the 12 tribes tradition is historical there's no debate that the tradition itself was shaped in judah after the assyrians conquered the northern kingdom this means that the bible's vision of israel was shaped after the heyday of the tribes of israel whatever that originally looked like in other words the first group of people to use the 12 tribes tradition to shape an israelite identity was judah and the way judah used the tradition is not all that different from how other groups used the tradition throughout history so let's go through some of those other examples in tabalovsky's book starting with the people known as the samaritans also known as the samaritan israelites the samaritans are a religious group numbering about 1 000 people living in two main places the town of halon on the outskirts of tel aviv and near their holy site mount gerizim and the palestinian territory of the west bank it was long believed that the samaritans descended from foreigners brought into israel by the assyrians after their conquest this idea comes from second kings 17 which we mentioned before it claims that the region was resettled by colonists who were eventually taught to worship god but their foreign influence corrupted how they worshipped him the samaritans themselves have always claimed otherwise saying they are the direct descendants of israel but their vision of israel's history differs from that of judaism the samaritans also worship one god but they believe mount gerizim is god's holy site rather than jerusalem they also have a pentateuch but it's a different version than the pentateuch found in the hebrew bible in recent years historians have realized that their claim of israelite ancestry is correct they actually do descend from ancient israelites themselves the ones who were never exiled from the northern kingdom thus the account in 2nd kings 17 now appears to be an anti-samaritan passage that aimed to delegitimize the samaritan's claim to israeli identity what this means is that even in the ancient world and even outside of the hebrew bible there were different groups with a legitimate claim to israelite ancestry different groups that were already using the same 12 tribes tradition to construct different visions of israel sometimes even in opposition to each other as what we see when we compare the samaritan pentateuch with the hebrew bible's pentateuch in other words as i say in another video the samaritan israelites don't so much tell a different history of israel as they tell a counter-history of israel a story with all the same elements but arranged in a way that counters the judahite narrative of the hebrew bible and constructs their own vision of israelite identity our next case study examines medieval legends linked to the mythical king prestor john prester john was thought to be a priest king of the east with a supposedly mighty army that would one day rescue the european crusaders the medieval text called the letter of prester john says that the lost tribes live on his border and part of his role is to control and contain them unless they break through his defenses and destroy the world a legend that reflects varieties of medieval anti-semitism tabalovsky argues that these medieval legends became a framework for how europeans understood the world and the other societies they came into contact with any time europeans encountered a new people they asked the same question which biblical people group is this the lost tribes were a common answer to fill in that blank but there were others europeans also like to look to the family of nations passage in genesis chapter 10 which describes the whole world as the descendants of noah's three sons we see this framework in action when the europeans first encountered the mongols in the 13th century at first europeans theorized that at last the armies of presterjohn have arrived to help us with the crusades but as the mongols appeared more threatening it became more common to imagine that they were instead the lost tribes of israel here to bring about the end of the world these myths also popped up in the stories of individual explorers during this period eldad hadani was a jewish merchant and traveler who arrived in north africa in the late 9th century claiming to come from the lost tribe of dan benjamin of trudella was a jewish traveler from spain who went east and returned with stories of the mighty free israelites of asia all this searching and finding of the lost ten tribes laid the groundwork for the next phase in the search for israel the exploration of the new world almost from the time of columbus himself many people believed that the indigenous people of the americas were the lost tribes of israel a belief that blossomed into something often called the jewish indian theory or the hebraic indian theory which is preferred by some scholars even some of the founders of the us bought into this theory such as benjamin rush a famous patriot and doctor who asked lewis and clark to keep an eye out for evidence on their expedition out west the most famous expression of the jewish indian theory is the book of mormon which tells the story of how a group out of the tribe of manasseh made their way to america around the time of the babylonian conquest and became some or all of the native peoples at first the mormons broadly understood themselves as gentiles discovering and converting the lost of israel but very quickly mormon theology landed on the position that they themselves were in fact israelites and that those predisposed to convert to this new belief system probably had israelite ancestry themselves even today an important coming-of-age ceremony called the patriarchal blessing typically involves revealing to the blessed what tribe they descend from according to the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints many members specifically descend from the tribe of ephraim the final case study examines the jewish community of ethiopia called the beta israel there are about a hundred seventy thousand ethiopian jews the vast majority of whom live in israel and their story of their immigration from ethiopia to israel is in a sense a story of the twelve tribes tradition enabling them to become israel twice first building an israelite identity in ethiopia and then centuries later being recognized by the state of israel in the 20th century for hundreds of years legends have been told in ethiopia about the descendants of king solomon and the queen of sheba a mysterious monarch long associated with ethiopia who visits king solomon in first kings chapter 10. ethiopians later expanded on the source text the most extensive expansion is found in the text called the kebra nagast in this legend solomon and the queen of sheba have a son named menelik who after visiting his father in israel returns home with an honor guard of israelite tribal leaders and the ark of the covenant in the 13th century a local ethiopian ruler named yakuno amlak overthrew the rival zogway kingdom and formed a new dynasty that came to be known as the solomonic dynasty which ruled ethiopia until the overthrow of the last emperor in 1974 as the name suggests the solomonic dynasty claimed to descend from menelik and as a result many ethiopian christians have identified as israelites for a long time the beta israel community likely from around the time of its inception in the 14th century ce understood themselves as israelites ii according to the kebra's tradition but distinct from these christian israelites by virtue of the fact that they held to their pre-christian jewish roots their claim to israelite identity got even stronger in the 19th century when jewish travelers entered the region searching for the lost tribes of israel courtesy of eldad hadani the same medieval traveler we discussed before see eldad not only identified himself as a member of the lost tribe of dan but he claimed that these danites lived in a land called cush a biblical place name that had long been associated with ethiopia so when these jewish travelers entered ethiopia they encountered jewish israelites precisely where they thought they would find them and came to believe that they discovered the lost tribe of dan this is significant because it was this identification as the tribe of dan that enabled the beta israel to be recognized by the rabbinic court of israel in the 1970s this shows the flexibility of the twelve tribes tradition as tabalovsky argues in his book the tradition in ethiopia was initially a native tradition focused on internal ethiopian politics and society especially regarding the foundation of the solomonic dynasty but in the 20th century the 12 tribes tradition enabled the beta israel to reorient themselves to a vision of israel recognized by people outside of ethiopia recognized by the external world of judaism as well this shift cleared the way for their move from ethiopia to the state of israel where the vast majority of the community now live so as we've seen depending on who you ask you get a lot of different answers to the question what happened to the 10 lost tribes in fact many of these people adopted and adapted an israelite identity by claiming to be one or more of the tribes of israel whether it's the tribe of ephraim or the tribe of dan or others the hebrew bible helps these claims seem more plausible because the bible is silent about the destiny of the vast majority of these tribes since the source material simply does not say what happened to them this leaves the door open to finding them anywhere in almost any form but the tribal tradition itself makes this even more possible by offering at least 12 different options to claim to be israel which leads us to tabalovsky's research on genealogies now i know what you're thinking genealogies are some of the most boring sections of the bible to read if you've read the hebrew bible you know what i'm talking about huge walls of text that list father to son or mother to daughter for page after page after page scholars call this a linear genealogy because if you draw it would look something like a straight line abraham begot isaac isaac begot jacob and so forth but there's another type of genealogy very important to toblasky's argument what he calls a segmented genealogy what does he mean by that well especially in the book of genesis biblical authors will describe entire family trees in genesis chapter 10 for example we get an account of the descent of all of humanity from the three sons of noah each of these lines are segments of the overall genealogy tabalovsky points out that the segmented structure of the twelve tribes tradition makes it possible to adopt an israelite identity in so many different places and times because israel was born divided into 12 pieces it can go on being divided not just between the kingdoms of israel and judah or even israel and assyria but it can be divided across the entire world from ethiopia to north america in other words separating israel into parts not only makes it possible to write a story about judah becoming the most important tribe but separating israel to parts also enables a story about how a group out of the tribe of manasseh came to america and became a huge people group while some of these claims to israelite lineage have more to them historically in a sense all of the people groups claiming israelite identity are doing essentially the same thing placing themselves on one or some of the branches of the genealogical tree but all of this would hardly matter if being israel was not also desirable in the first place the idea of israel as god's chosen people the role its restoration plays in the fulfillment of biblical prophecies and the prestige and popularity of this ancient people all come together to create a global fascination with where the people of israel is located what it has become and what will happen next the result is a world full of self-proclaimed israels an unprecedented phenomenon for any people group in all of history thanks to nordvpn for sponsoring this video nordvpn is a virtual private network service that encrypts your connection between your device and the internet so you can surf the web privately while protecting your data and your identity as of right now nordvpn has launched their cybersecurity awareness campaign whether it's someone trying to steal your password or attacking your device with malware the internet can be a dangerous place but nordvpn now comes built in with a new 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Channel: ReligionForBreakfast

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Length: 20min 32sec (1232 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 31 2022