Lost Tribes of Israel

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The lost tribes of Israel (aseret ha-schvatim or ha-shvatim) are the ten Israelite tribes that were founded after the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom of Israel in 722/21 BC. Were resettled under Sargon II ( 2 Kings 17.6  EU ) and have since been considered lost. Small parts are believed to have returned when the Babylonian Empire replaced the Assyrian about 100 years later. Over time, various groups have been believed to be descendants of the lost tribes.

Hypotheses

Medieval tradition localized the lost tribes on the edge of the world, somewhere in northeast Asia , across the legendary Sambation River , through which they are cut off from the world, because on the weekdays the raging and roaring of the river prevents a crossing, on the Sabbath it calms down but then Jews are forbidden to navigate the river. Only with the coming of the Messiah would they overcome the river; their appearance would be such a sign of the end times . The people were known in the Middle Ages as the Red Jews ( Yiddish “rojite jidlech”).

The Jewish and Christian religious history since then is rich in attempts to identify the “lost tribes” with existing peoples and tribes. For example, in England in the 19th century, the thesis of Anglo-Israelism , according to which the Anglo-Saxon peoples should descend from the Israelites via the Scythians , spread.

Another hypothesis, also popular in the 19th century, held the Indians to be descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. The writer Jacob Adair , among others, used alleged linguistic similarities as evidence . She also continues to represent Mormonism in her scriptures ( Book of Mormon , Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price ). The ethnographer Garrick Mallery, however, invalidated this view in his book Israelites and Indians .

Some Pashtun tribes in Afghanistan and Pakistan claim that they were descended from the Israelites and have customs similar to Jewish ones. The tribal names, which are reminiscent of biblical patriarchs, can also have come from them through Islam.

The tribe of the Bnei Menashe from India , who had retained a primitive form of the Jewish religion, have more recently been recognized by Jewish clergy and the State of Israel as Jews in the religious sense. Your name suggests a connection with the Manasseh tribe .

The Falascha from Ethiopia were recognized as Jews because of their religion.

The Lemba in southern Africa are considered to be descendants of the Jewish priestly caste due to genetic testing .

In the United States , the Black Hebrews , a group of African Americans , claim that they are descended from ancient Israelites.

criticism

In recent times, individual exegetes have assumed that Israel as a theological greatness only came after 722 BC. Has existed. In this case, the Covenant of the Twelve Tribes of Israel would be a later fiction with no historical basis and the search for the "Lost Tribes of Israel" would be obsolete. However, these are individual opinions.

Since most of the groups mentioned only have comparatively young traditions, they can also go back to later Jewish colonies or have taken over their cult (in addition to the tradition from the lost tribes) from them.

According to a theory of Kamal Salibi the Israelites lived before the Babylonian exile in today's region of Asir in Saudi Arabia . Accordingly, the search for the lost tribes would have to be restarted.

Persistence as a myth

In 2010, Theison presented the history of ideas of the “lost tribes” in South America and Europe since the forced conversions of the Jews on the Iberian Peninsula in 1492. The myth worked in two directions: the Christian conquerors of South America, e. B. Diego de Landa , claimed to have found Indians there, i.e. original inhabitants, with Jewish characteristics (Hebraisms, fair skin, even circumcisions, etc.). This was to make the continent accessible to Christian mission. Accordingly, John Eliot placed myth at the center of his missionary work. The millennialists John Dury and Thomas Thorowgood substantiated this theologically and saw the dawn of a millennial empire with the discovery of "Indian Jews" . Mass compulsory baptisms of the Indians were the result to bring about the empire. The Indians were supposed to cross the Sambation , the river of rabbinical tradition, towards Christianity. That is the core of a "puritanical philosemitism ".

Theison then represents the "opposite direction" of the myth, namely the Jewish side. The speculations by Eliot and Dury went back to Antonio de Montezinos , actually Aaron Levi, whose new name already identifies him as a very early "Zionist" (mons = mountain and mountain zinos from Zion). His often translated fairy-tale treatise on Jews, members of the Reuven tribe in the jungle of South America, before the arrival of the other whites, is a moving document of early modern Judaism. In conversation with the Indians, Montezinos recognizes his Jewish identity again; only in America, a land of promise, can he return to his roots. Remembering the repressed in the face of other lost people: This is what Theison calls the beginning of a Jewish modernity.

The idea that the worldwide expansion of the Jews is a prerequisite for salvation is politically turned by Menasse ben Israel . With reference to myth and Montezinos, he demands from Oliver Cromwell that Jews should be allowed to immigrate to the island of England again ("Hope of Israel" 1650). Menasse believes that the Jews first have to lose themselves completely in the New and Old World in order to fulfill salvation history. Only England is still missing. Here are the beginnings of a Marran theology, which is important for Jewish thought from the 17th century, especially the Haskala . It becomes a duty for the Jews to move into foreign territory without giving up their own. Only when Israel has completely crossed the stranger will the Messiah lead the lost tribes over the Sambation.

Finally, Theison Schabbtai mentions Zvi . As early as 1665 there were reports in Europe from the Orient and North Africa that the ten tribes were approaching Gaza and the Moroccan "Goth Desert", led by Sabbatai. So there is also the narrative of the lost tribes in the Jewish theology based on Sabbatai, it is even reinforced here. The transition to another's field and salvation belong together.

This complex of topics also includes, not addressed by Theison, the myth of the wandering Jew , which in its negative exaggeration as an anti-Semitic stereotype in modern anti-Semitism, for example in the Protocols of the Elders from Zion to the Shoah, became historically powerful and continues to have an impact among anti-Semites worldwide.

The Book of Mormon claims that after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II and the beginning of the Babylonian exile, America was also colonized; the settlers would have split into the Nephites, who kept the commandments of God, and the apostate Lamanites. In the 5th century there was a battle between the groups, with the Nephites being destroyed; the last surviving Nephit was the prophet Moroni , on whose appearance the Mormons refer to the origin of their religion.

See also

literature

  • Philipp Theison: At the Sambation. Modern history is rooted in the myth of the lost tribes ; also the history of the Jewish modern age. Upper title: Discovery and Displacement. A myth and its variants. In: Structure . 10, October 2010, pp. 12-14.
  • Édith brother: Black Jews of Africa. Oxford 2008 (English).
  • Tudor Parfitt: The Lost Tribes of Israel. The History of a Myth. London 2002 (English).
  • Shalva Weil: Beyond the Sabatyon. The Myth of the Ten Tribes. Tel Aviv 1991 (English).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rebekka Voss: Of muscular Jews and redheads. In: Research Frankfurt 3/2011, p. 37.
  2. ↑ Garrick Mellery: Israelites and Indians. An ethnographic parallel. Translated by Friedrich S. Krauss. Leipzig, 1891.
  3. ↑ Cf. RG Kratz: Israel as a state and as a people. In: Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 97, 2000, pp. 1–17. Uwe Becker: From the state religion to monotheism. A chapter in the history of Israeli-Jewish religion. In: Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche , 102, 2005, pp. 1–16.
  4. ↑ Isn't the Bible Right ?, Part 1. Der Spiegel , September 16, 1985, accessed August 1, 2015 .
  5. ↑ Isn't the Bible right after all ?, Part 2. Der Spiegel , September 23, 1985, accessed August 1, 2015 .
  6. ↑ Isn't the Bible Right ?, Part 3. Der Spiegel , September 30, 1985, accessed August 1, 2015 .