Ten lost tribes

The Ten lost tribes is the name given to the Ten tribes which populated the Royaume of Israel before the destruction of this one into -722 before Jesus-Christ, and which have since missing.

Origin of the tribes according to the Bible

The first book of the Hebraic Bible or the Old Testament, the Genesis, finishes with the installation in Egypt of the Hebrew , or more exactly, of 12 wire of Jacob /Isra ël, founders of the 12 tribes. The twelve wire are:

Ruben
Siméon
Lévi (tribe dedicated to the service of the Temple of Jerusalem)
Juda (whose the dynasty comes from the king David)
Issacar
Zabulon
daN
Nephthali
Gad
Asher
Joseph (2 tribes of it results: Manassé and Éphraïm)
Benjamin.

After one period of division, the tribes are unified according to the Bible by the King Saül, which succeeds the King David and finally the King Solomon. After the death of this last, towards 930 before Jesus-Christ, the Bible indicates that its kingdom is cut into two: in north the Kingdom of Israel, centered on ten tribes and its capital, Samarie, and in the south the Kingdom of Juda, centered on two tribes (Benjamin, Juda and part of the Levites) and its capital Jerusalem.

The ten tribes of North are in fact 11: Ruben, Siméon, Issacar, Zabulon, daN, Nephthali, Gad, Asher, two half-tribes resulting from Joseph: Manassé and Éphraïm, and part of the Tribe of Lévi (sacerdotal tribe without territory).

Destruction of the kingdom of Israel

The kingdom of Samarie was invaded and destroyed by the Assyrie in 722 before the common era, which did one of its provinces of them. The kingdom of Juda accepted Assyrian suzerainty on the other hand, and thus survived. Juda took again a full independence only under the reign of Josias (from -639 to -609), until its destruction by the Babylonian and with the deportation of its population in 586-587 before the common era.

Deportation of the tribes

According to the Bible

According to the Bible (Second book of the Kings), which one about the middle of sixth century BC (that is to say at least 150 years after the events), population of the kingdom of Samarie considers written would have been off-set worms of other areas of the Assyrian Empire in punishment of his sins. It would have then mysteriously disappeared. They would be the ten tribes lost of Israel .

The Bible affirms that foreign populations would have been moved to replace them on their territory. These foreigners would have created a religion mixing pagan Jew influences and , thus giving rise to the Samaritains.

And Israel was taken along captive far from its country in Assyrie, where it remained so far. King d' Assyrie made come from people and establishes them in the towns of Samarie in the place of the children of Israel. When they started to live there, they did not fear the Eternal, and the Eternal sent against them lions which them tuaient.
One says to king d' Assyrie: The nations which you transported and established in the towns of Samarie do not know the manner of serving the god of the country, and it sent against them lions which make them die.
King d' Assyrie gave this order: There make go one of the priests that you took along from there in captivity and that he teaches the manner to them of serving the god of the pays.
One of the priests who had been taken along captive of Samarie was established in Béthel, and taught to them how they were to fear Éternel.
But the nations made each one their gods in the cities which they lived, and placed them in the houses of the high places built by Samaritains.
They feared also the Eternal and they served at the same time their gods according to the habit of the nations from where one had them transportés.
They follow still today their first usages.
The Eternal had made alliance with them, and this order had given them: You will not fear others dieux.
And they did not obey, and they followed their first uses. These nations feared the Eternal and served their images; and their children and the children of their children so far do what their fathers have fait.On note a contradiction in the second book of the kings: the new inhabitants of the old kingdom of Samarie (become Assyrian province) are described like foreigners, but it is as indicated as “the Eternal had made alliance with them”, as if they were the descendants of old the Jews. On a side they “feared the Eternal”, other “they served at the same time their gods”. The now identified population as “samaritaine” becomes thus an ambiguous population, mixes pagan foreigners and influences Jews, rejected overall community.

However, the Bible is it even sometimes ambiguous on the disappearance of the tribes Jews. Thus, the Livre of Jérémie reports that 150 years after the fall of the kingdom of North, just after the fall of Jerusalem in -586, of the Jews of North arised with offerings for the Temple of Jerusalem: “eighty men came from Sichem, Silo and Samarie, the shaven beard, torn clothing, the gashed skin of incisions. They brought cereal offerings and Encens to offer them in the Temple of the Eternal”.

Beyond this ambiguity, the orthodoxe Jews, and with their continuation the Christians, considered that the Samaritans could not claim to be the descendants of the tribes of Israel. Those are thus not survived through the latter, but mysteriously disappeared.

According to the Assyrians

The archeologists exhumed a good part of the files of the Assyrian empire. Assyrian chronicles of Sargon Ⅱ, the king who overcame the kingdom of Samarie, indicates:

I besieged and occupied the town of Samarie, and took along 27.280 of his captive inhabitants. I travelled by 50 tanks to them, but left them the remainder of their affaires.

Certain translators are not agreement with the precision brought (“town of Samarie”), considering that the original text lets plane the doubt between the city and the State de Samarie.

There is a common point with the Livres of the Kings: deportation of the Jew S.A. well take place. But there is also an important difference: the number of the deportees. For the Second book of the Kings, it is all the population or almost which was off-set. For Sargon II, it is a minority. The archeologists indeed estimate the population of the kingdom of Samarie at: 200000 people, according to the found cities and villages. There had been a first deportation well ten years earlier, when the Assyrian king Teglath-Phalasar III had conquered the Galileo. But it also was quantified to the Assyrian texts. The total of the two deportations reaches approximately: 40000 people, is 20% only total of the inhabitants. Undoubtedly primarily the elite. The historians think that certain Jews of North would have also left as refugees towards the Kingdom Juda.

The establishment of foreign colonists is indicated several times in the remainder of the text, but in connection with other conquests. Perhaps this policy of establishment was obviously current, and was thus made in Samarie, as the book of the kings indicates it.

According to archeology

One found, in Gézér and in the surroundings, of the wedge-shaped texts of seventh century BC containing of the Babylonian names. The deportation of alien populations in Samarie (at least in certain zones), affirmed by the Books of the Kings, thus is well confirmed. The Archéologie states on the other hand that this repopulation is far from being massive. The potteries, inscriptions, villages, etc… show a great continuity with the former period.

According to the genetics

The genetics was requested to bring certain answers when at the origin of the Samaritains. The study of Shen and Al, in 2004 thus related to the comparison between the Y chromosome of 12 Samaritains men and those of 18-20 men not Samaritains, divided between 6 Jewish populations (of origins Ashkénaze, Marocaine, Libyenne, Ethiopian, Iraqui woman and Yemeni) and 2 Israeli not-Jewish populations (Druzes and Palestinians). The results of preceding analyzes on groups of African and Europeans were integrated in the statistical analysis. DNA mitochondrial (inherited the women) was also compared. The study concludes that significant resemblances exist between the Y chromosomes (male) Jewish and Samaritans, but that DNA mitochondrial (inherited the women) differs between the Jewish populations and samaritaines. “To our surprise, all the Y chromosomes of the Samaritans non-Cohen not to the sacerdotal family belong to the group Cohen” (a genetic characteristic which one mainly meets at the Jews cohanim, i.e. supposed to go down from Aaron. “The data indicate that the Y chromosome Samaritans and Jews have an affinity much larger than those of the Samaritans and their geographical neighbors of long time, Palestinians”. “However, it is not the case for the haplotypes of DNA mitochondrial. the distances between Samaritans, Jews and Palestinians for DNA mitochondrial are about identical. Moreover, low diversity suggests that the maternal gene flow in the community samaritaine was not very high” (few entries of women in the community).

The authors of the study lean finally in favor of a mixed approach between replacement and continuity: “we suppose that characteristic genetics samaritaines introduce a sub-group of the priests Cohanim Jew of origin which is not left in exile when the Assyrian conquered the kingdom of North, but which married Assyrian and exiled women reinstalled starting from other conquered grounds”. Two points should however be noted: on the one hand “the high diversity of the Haplotype S of DNA mitochondrial among Israelis suggests that the female founders of each Jewish group were very few and of various ascents”. The specificity of the genetic markers female Samaritans is thus difficult to interpret in the light of the specificity of the female genetic markers of each Jewish group. In addition, the appearance of specificities is not dated. It can go up front, for or after the period of the Assyrian conquest, and thus does not inform us inevitably about the events caused by this one.

According to the Samaritans

The population samaritaine claims to go down from the ten tribes, more specifically of the two half-tribes resulting from Joseph: Manassé and Ephraïm, as well as sacerdotal tribe of Levi.

According to certain historians

The current religion of the Samaritans, strictly based on the Pentateuque, does not present a trace of Paganisme.

At sixth century BC, the book of Jérémie, already quoted, show them making offerings with the temple.

The rabbinical treaties dating from the beginning of the Christian era indicate that this strict Monothéisme is very old. The treaty Chullin (or Houllin ) accepts the meat of the animals which they killed like Casher, if a Jew were pilot demolition, and the treaty Orlah of the Talmud of Jerusalem admits their bread under certain reserves. In another treaty of Talmud of Jerusalem, which would date from the 1st century, their food is regarded as legal. A minor treaty ( Massecheth Kuthim ) confirms their partial acceptance: “when could they be received in the Jewish community? When they give up Har Garizim (the Mont Garizim) and recognize Jerusalem and the resurrection of deaths”. The same treaty recognizes as in the majority of their uses, they resemble Israélite S.
Ainsi, at the beginning of the Christian era, the charge of Paganisme it is given up by certain Jewish monks, even if the charge not to be of ascent Jew remains.

The Assyrian files speak about a restricted deportation, and archeology seems to confirm it.

For all these reasons, the dominant thesis at much of historians is thus rather than 80% of the inhabitants of the old kingdom of Samarie remained on the spot, and became the Samaritans (with the religious direction of the term) cities by the book of the kings. The deportees, rather very few, would have ended up being assimilated in the surrounding populations.

Accordingly, the ten mysteriously disappeared tribes of Israel would be only one myth invented to justify the exclusion of the Samaritans of the community Jew: one did not break with other Jews, one noted their mysterious disappearance and their replacement by foreigners.

The reasons of this final rupture would be especially:

the question of the centrality of the temple of the Mount Garizim (the principal holy place Samaritan) or of that of Jerusalem in the worship.

the place of the Torah oral (compiled later in the Mishna, the Gémara then the Talmud) at Judéens, and refused by the Samaritans.

The research of the ten tribes

Whatever the historical reality, the supposed disappearance of the ten tribes caused as of the antiquity of many assumptions at the orthodoxe Jewish , and to their continuation among Christians. The simplest assumption seemed to be the assimilation of the deportees to the means-Eastern populations, which they are Jewish or not-Jewish. But the idea according to which the tribes had been able to find refuge in moved back areas of the world was advanced by much, and involved many research.

This research still has an influence important for certain populations. Thus the Falashas of Ethiopia could obtain to be recognized like Jews, and thus to immigrate in Israel thanks to their recognition like descendant of the lost tribe of daN by large the Rabbin Sépharade of Israel, Ovadia Yossef, in 1973.

In the same way, “in March 2005, after having studied the question, chief rabbi [[séfarade] of Israel, Rabbi Shlomo Amar] formally identified the Bnei Menashe as a " descendants of Israël" , confirming their claim with a Jewish ascent”. The Bnei Menashe are an Asian group of appearance living on the Burmese border, in the North-East of India, and affirming since the years 1950 to go down from the Tribu of Manassé, which would have come to find refuge at the bottoms of Asia. Surroundings 1.000 always live in the Mizoram, awaiting an official conversion.

There is also the case Lemba or Lembaa, an ethnicity (black) of Southern Africa. With the number of envion 70.000, they are present in South Africa (in particular the province of Limpopo), but also Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique. Although they speak about the languages bantoues close to those to the other ethnicities which they côtoient, they have of the religious practices similar to some of those partiquées in the Judaism, and a tradition of wandering people with origins supposed in North Africa or the the Middle East. According to their oral tradition, their ancestors would be Jews which would have come from a place called Sena to be established in West Africa. According to the research undertaken by the British Tudor Parfitt, Sena would be in the area of the Yemen. Lemba have a bond with Large the Zimbabwe. They established a Synagog there, with their own rabbis. Lembas have restrictions on the inter-ethnic marriages with non-Lemba, and it is particularly difficult for a man to become Lemba. Lemba present a proportion except standard of men having a polymorphism of the known Y chromosome under the name of Haplotype modal Cohen, which indeed suggests a connection with the traditional Jewish populations. A under-clan of Lembas, the Buba Clan, is regarded by Lemba as their caste of priests. Among Bubas, 52% of the men have the Haplotype modal Cohen, which corresponds to the proportions found at the Jews " Cohen" (priests). Lembas also have an important percentage of genes often found at the Arab Sémite S not .

Other not recognized groups as Jewish affirm an origin come from old the Royaume of Samarie, or are suspectés from their habits to have such an origin.

There exist associations which are devoted to the research of the ten lost tribes.

See too

Internal bonds

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