Ten Lost Tribes

When the lost tribes of Israel ( Aseret ha - ha - schvatim or shvatim ) refers to the ten tribes of Israel who were relocated after the conquest of the northern kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians in 722/21 BC under Sargon II ( 2 Kings 17.6 EU) and since then regarded as lost. It is believed that small items returned when the Babylonian Empire, the Assyrian replaced later.

Hypotheses

The medieval tradition located the lost tribes on the edge of the world, somewhere in the Northeast Asia, beyond the legendary river Sambation, by which they are cut off from the world, because on the weekdays prevents the roaring and raging of the river a crossing on the Sabbath he calms Although, it is but the Jews were forbidden to ride the river. It was not until the coming of the Messiah, they would overcome the river, their appearance would be a sign of the end times. The people in the Middle Ages as the Red Jews ( Yiddish " rojite jidlech " ) known.

The since then Jewish and Christian religious history is full of attempts to identify the " lost tribes " with existing nations and tribes. For example, spread to England in the 19th century the theory of Anglo-Israelism, after the Anglo-Saxon peoples are descended over the Scythians by the Israelites.

Another, also popular in the 19th century hypothesis held the Indians for descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel. As evidence drew amongst others, author Jacob Adair zoom putative linguistic similarities. The ethnographer Garrick Mallery rebutted this view in his book ' Israelites and Indians ' answer.

Some tribes of the Pashtuns in Afghanistan and Pakistan say they went back to the Israelites, and maintain customs that are similar to the Jewish. The tribal names that are reminiscent of biblical patriarchs, but may have come also from Islam to them.

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

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

Criticism

Some newer exegetes assume that Israel has existed as a theological size after 722 BC. In this case, the federal government of the Twelve Tribes of Israel would be a fiction of later date without historical foundation and the search for the " lost tribes of Israel " obsolete. It is, however, to individual opinions.

Since most of these groups have only comparatively recent traditions, they can also be due to later Jewish colonies or their worship (along with the tradition of the lost tribes ) carried out by these.

Continued operation as a myth

Theison is 2010, the history of ideas of the "lost tribes " in South America and Europe since the forced conversion of the Jews in the Iberian peninsula in 1492 dar. The myth appeared in two directions: the Christian conquerors of South America, such as Diego de Landa, claimed that there Indians to have so indigenous people, with Jewish features found ( Hebraisms, light skin, even circumcisions, etc.). So the continent's Christian mission should be made available. Accordingly, John Eliot put the myth in the center of his missionary work. The millenialists John Dury and Thomas Thorowgood underpinned theologically and saw the discovery of " Native American Jews," a thousand -year Reich crack. Exemplary mass forced baptisms of Indians were the result to bring about the kingdom. The Indians should the Sambation cross the river the rabbinic tradition, in the direction of Christianity. This is the core of a " Puritan philo ".

Theison then represents the " opposite direction" of the myth, namely the Jewish side. The speculation Eliot and Dury went back to Antonio de Montezinos, actually Aaron Levi, whose new name him already as a very early " Zionists " (mons = mountain, and Zinos from Zion ) identifies. Its often translated fabulous treatise on Jews, members of the tribe of Reuven in the jungle of South America before the arrival of the remaining whites, is a moving document of the early modern Judaism. In an interview with the Indians Montezinos recognizes his Jewish identity again; only in America, a land of promise, he can return to his roots. Memory of the repressed in the face of other Lost: this is called Theison the beginning of a Jewish modernity.

The idea that the global spread of the Jews is a prerequisite for salvation is turned politically by Menasseh ben Israel. Relying on the myth and Montezinos he asks Oliver Cromwell, that Jews may immigrate again to the island of England ( " Hope of Israel " 1650). Manasseh says that the Jews have to lose only in New and Old World entirely to fulfill the history of salvation. Only England is still missing. Here are the beginnings of a Marrano theology, the Haskalah, is for Jewish thought from the 17th century, especially important. For the Jews, it becomes the duty to move on foreign territory without abandoning their own. Only when Israel will have completely passed through the stranger, the Messiah will guide the lost tribes over the Sambation.

Finally Theison Shabbtai Zvi mentioned. Already in 1665 there were reports in Europe from the East and from North Africa that the 10 tribes are on the march to Gaza and on the Moroccan " desert Goth", out of Shabtai. So it is also in the founding of Sabbatai Jewish theology the narrative of the lost tribes, it is even reinforced here. The transition to a different field and redemption belong together.

For this subject area also, not discussed in Theison, the myth of the Wandering Jew, who in his negative intensification in the form of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the Shoah was powerful history and continues to work worldwide under the anti-Semites.

The Book of Mormon is claimed, after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II and the beginning of the Babylonian exile was also a settlement of the Americas takes place; the settlers would have been divided into the Nephites who keep the commandments of God, and the apostate Lamanites. In the 5th century it has come to a fight between the groups, the Nephites were destroyed; the last surviving Nephite was the prophet Moroni been appointed to its appearance, the Mormons regarding the origin of their religion.