December 23, 2013

  • Lost Tribes? Not So Lost.

    Lost Tribes? Not so lost.
    By Hezakiah Sammi Levinson on Wednesday, November 27, 2013 at 9:19am
    It seems that more and more Christians are thinking they are part of "the lost tribes" adopting the nonsense idea that all Jews are the tribe of Judah since the Southern Kingdom had the name.The fact is the Tanakh records where most of the Northern Kingdom went during and after the Assyrian invasion.

    There were members of all the tribes living in the Southern Kingdom.At the time of the disruption of the united kingdom in 930 B.C., Israelites from all the northern tribes joined their brethren in the south and continued their identity as part of the kingdom of Judah. Two books in Scripture that are strangely ignored by British-Israelites (Ephramites) are 1 and 2 Chronicles. These books make it clear that the tribes in the north continued their existence as part of Judah after 930 B.C. Consider 2 Chr 11:14, 16: “For the Levites left their suburban lands and their possession, and came to Judah and Jerusalem; for Jeroboam and his sons had cast them off from executing the priest’s office unto the LORD; …. And after them, out of all the tribes of Israel, such as set their hearts to seek the LORD God of Israel came to Jerusalem, to sacrifice unto the LORD God of their fathers.” These verses provide irrefutable proof that many individuals out of “all the tribes of Israel” rejected Jereboam’s idolatry and joined the southern kingdom. During the reign of Asa, others followed from Ephraim and Manasseh (2 Chr. 15:9).

    Thus, it is evident that the kingdom of Judah absorbed many from the northern kingdom through the years. Scripture teaches that Israelites continued to live there after the captivity of 721 B.C. Again, Chronicles helps us in this regard. At Hezekiah’s invitation, many from the north settled in Judah after the destruction of the northern kingdom (2 Chr. 30). Even later, in 622 B.C., more godly Israelites came to Jerusalem to help repair the Temple (2 Chr. 34:9), and later to celebrate the Passover (2 Chr. 35:17–18). If the northern tribes had become lost, how could these representatives have joined in worship in Jerusalem one hundred years after the Assyrian destruction? Judah rapidly increased after the fall of the northern kingdom as a result of the many refugees mentioned in 2 Chr. 11:14–16. In the annals of the Assyrian Sargon, he describes how he he carried away only 27,290 people and 50 chariots. Since estimates of the population of the northern kingdom are around 500,000, around one-twentieth of the population was deported, primarily the leaders from the area around Samaria. The ten tribes, therefore, were never lost because they were never completely deported! Their kingdom was destroyed, but most of them stayed, with some around Samaria intermingling with new immigrants to form the Samaritans (2 Kings 17:24–41).

    When the Jews returned from Babylonian captivity in 536 B.C., the Chronicler viewed the restored community as the remnant of all Israel, both north and south, and not just the tribe of Judah: “Now the first inhabitants who dwelt in their possessions in their cities were the Israelites, the priests, Levites, and the Nethinim. And in Jerusalem dwelt of the children of Judah, and of the children of Benjamin, and of the children of Ephraim, and Manasseh” (1 Chr. 9:2–3). According to these verses, we should look to find Ephraim and Manasseh, not in England and America, but in Jerusalem following the return from Babylon. Furthermore, the people at that time viewed themselves as part of all Israel, for they offered “twelve he-goats, according to the number of the tribes of Israel” (Ezra 6:17). Although British-Israelism confidently asserts that Judah and Israel are always separate and distinct, a concordance shows that in the Book of Ezra the restored community is called “Jews” only eight times and “Israel” fifty times. The writer viewed the terms as interchangeable, both terms applying to the same people after the captivity.

    Besides in real scripture, even the Christian book shows there were all the tribes in the Kingdom of Judah.It clearly indicates that in the first century “Jews” still maintained their tribal identities—some of whom were members of those supposedly lost tribes. Consider, for example, the aged Anna who beheld the baby Jesus in the Temple. Luke 2:36 states that she was of the “tribe of Asher.” When Paul spoke of his Jewish brethren, he spoke of a common promise and a common hope: “Unto which promise our twelve tribes, earnestly serving God day and night, hope to come” (Acts 26:7). James addressed his epistle “to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad” (James 1:1). He made no distinction between Judah and the ten tribes. All Jews were part of a common body, the only difference being that some were in the land of Israel and some in the Diaspora. Evidently, members of all the tribes existed both inside and outside the Promised Land.

    The Christian book uses the term “Jew” 174 times and the term “Israel” 75 times, clearly applying them to the same body of people. Paul referred to himself as both a “Jew” (Acts 22:3) and an “Israelite” (Rom. 11:1), and he never distinguished between Jews and Israel, as British-Israelism (Ephramites) does. If the so called lost tribes indeed resurfaced as the British people, and if Jeremiah eventually traveled to Britain to establish David’s throne there, one would expect some trace of these matters to be mentioned in their book. The silence of the writers in this regard, however, is deafening!