Re: OT: Jewish Tribes

At 9:43 am -0400 18/9/00, Steg Belsky wrote:
[....]
>
>The Samaritans' Judaic component came about from the remnants of the
>Northern Kingdom.  Whoever was left around and didn't get exiled merged
>with the foreigners from other places who got exiled *to* Israel.
Yes, of course.  I had once known that, but it had slipped my mind.  Thanks
for putting me right on that, Steg.

Yep - this was the Assyrian method IIRC - you don't exile whole groups
en_masse, as the Babylonians later exiled the southern kingdom, because, as
the case of the Jews in Babylon shows, such groups tend to remain cohesive.
And such cohesive groups can be a source of opposition (or at least
annoyance) to the ruling group.

From what I remember, the Assyrians _dispersed_ populations so that, as
Steg says above, a remnant of Israel was left in the north and peoples
[sic] from other diverse places were moved there.  No way would the
assyrians have kept the 10 tribes - or even any one of them - together:
_dispersal_ was the name of the game.

Thus the most likely fate of these people is that the majority (if not all)
lost their separate identity & were absorbed into the mingled populations
of the Assyrian Empire.  Any who retained a vestige of their
Hebrew/Israelite traditions would surely have made it back to the Holy Land
after the return of the Jews from Babylonia under the Persians and have, as
Steg suggested, been absorbed into the post-exilic Jewish kingdom.
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At 9:52 am +0930 18/9/00, Adrian Morgan wrote:
>Raymond Brown wrote:
>
>> I think, in fact, that one will find claims of remnants of one or more
>> of the "lost tribes of Israel" making it to every continent on the
>> globe.
>
>Antarctica. I dare ya :-)
>
>(what? who's in a silly mood?)
....where they set up a settlement & survived for a time but were
eventually killed off by disease and the harsh climate?

It would not surprise me one iota if someone had made that claim.  IMHO
it's no sillier than some of the other claims I've come across.

Ray.





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A mind which thinks at its own expense
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