Re: OT: Jewish Tribes

Leo Caesius wrote:
>
> Dan Seriff wrote:
>
> "Actually, I've read some rather interesting work expounding on the
> literally thounsands of shared words between Japanese and Ancient Hebrew.
> The claim is that the Japanese are a fragment of the lost exiled
> tribes of (the northern kingdom of) Israel."
>
>     Ah, but what about the sound correspondences?  "Shared words" are
> useless unless you can prove regular correspondences.
I have no idea, as I haven't done any study of it myself. I wish I knew more.

> "There's a group in eastern India that call themselves Manasseh."
>     Actually, they call themselves Menmasseh.  Ethnically, the Menmasseh are
> related most closesly to the people of Myanmar across the border, and the
> language spoken by most Menmasseh, Manipuri, belongs to the Tibeto-Burman
> branch of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages.
I was just repeating what I saw on an A&E special a few months ago about
the lost tribes of Israel.

> "Some nomadic group has the tribal divisions of Simeon, Reuben,
> Gad, and some others, I think."
>      This is also news to me.  I'd be very interested if you could provide
> me some more references.  This sort of thing fascinates me!
I think they're called the Pathians. They have fringed shawls, 8th day
circumcision (as opposed to the surrounding Muslims, who practice
circumcision only in about the 12th year), wear tefillin, etc. etc.
Interesting stuff.

--
Daniel Seriff
microtonal@sericap.com
http://members.tripod.com/microtonal

Si iterum insanum me appelles, oculum alterum tuum edem.