The Lost 10 Tribes of Israel in Europe
By Mikkel S. Kragh
Introduction
What are the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel? Israel originally consisted of 12 tribes. After the death of King Solomon, the 10 northern tribes of Israel seceded from the Royal House of David and Solomon in Jerusalem and created the Kingdom of Israel, while the two southern tribes continued under the name the Kingdom of Judah. Prior to, and culminating in, 721 BC the Assyrian Empire invaded the northern Kingdom of Israel and deported the 10 tribes of Israel out of the land of Israel and settled them in northern Assyria, in areas which today are in Iraq, Syria, Iran and Turkey.
We read in the Old Testament book of 2nd Kings:
“Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years. In the ninth year of [king] Hoshea [of Israel] the king of Assyria took Samaria [the capital of Israel], and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.” (2 Kings 17:5-6)
“Therefore the LORD was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight: there was none left but the tribe of Judah only.” (2 Kings 17:18)
Are the Jews all 12 tribes?
The most common belief, both among Christians as well as secular people, is that the Jewish people descend from all the 12 tribes of Israel, and that the names Jews and Israel are synonymous. That belief is incorrect.
Only after the Assyrian Empire deported the 10 tribes of Israel out of the land of Israel, the Bible starts to refer to the Kingdom of Judah as Jews. The reason is very simple. After the 10 tribes of Israel had been carried away from the land of Israel, the Covenant people of God consisted only of the Kingdom of Judah, which the tribe of Judah made up the majority of. That is why the latter part of the Old Testament and the New Testament refers to God's Covenant people as Jews, because they consisted mainly of the House of Judah and the tribe of Judah.
When God made covenants with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, God's people were not the Jews - that is, Judah – but all 12 tribes of Israel. Only after the Assyrian deportation of the 10 tribes in 721 BC did God's people become synonymous with the Jews.
Among modern Jews, there are many who believe that the 10 tribes not a part of the Jewish people, while there are also many Jews who believe they are. One notable Jew who holds the former view is the orthodox Rabbi Shmuley Boteach (born 1966), whom Newsweek magazine called “the most famous rabbi in America”. In his best-selling book Judaism for Everyone (2002), he wrote:
“An Israelite is someone who is a descendant of Jacob... After the dispersion of the ten tribes, the Israelites were referred to as Jews because the remainder of the Jewish nation, those who today form the bulk of the Jewish people - all stem from the tribe of Judah.” (Shmuley Boteach: Judaism for Everyone, p. 387, 2002)
The Jews of the 1st century AD believed the 10 tribes were far away
Not only do many modern Jews believe that the 10 Tribes are not a part of the Jewish people. But among the Jews in the 1st and 2nd century AD it was the generally accepted belief that the 10 northern tribes of Israel were not a part of the Jewish people, but that they were far away from the Jews and had been separated from the Jewish people for such a long time they had become “lost”.
Flavius Josephus was a leader in the Jewish rebellion against Rome AD 66-73, but surrendered and became a historian. His books are some of the most quoted sources, outside the Bible, concerning ancient Israel and the Jews in the 1st century AD. Josephus writes that the Assyrians deported ALL the Israelites of the northern kingdom of the 10 tribes out of the land of Israel and settled them in Media and Persia:
“WHEN Shalmaneser, the king of Assyria, had told him, that [Hoshea] the king of Israel had sent privately to So, the king of Egypt, desiring his assistance against him, he was very angry, and made an expedition against Samaria, in the seventh year of the reign of Hoshea; but when he was not admitted [into the city] by the king, he besieged Samaria three years, and took it by force in the ninth year of the reign of Hoshea, and in the seventh year of Hezekiah, king of Jerusalem, and quite demolished the government of the Israelites, and transplanted all the people into Media and Persia, among whom he took king Hoshea alive; and when he had removed these people out of their land, he transplanted other nations out of Cuthah, a place so called, (for there is [still] a river of that name in Persia,) into Samaria, and into the country of the Israelites. So the ten tribes of the Israelites were removed out of Judea, nine hundred and forty-seven years after their forefathers were come out of the land of Egypt, and possessed themselves of this country...” (Flavius Josephus: Antiquities of the Jews IX, XIV, 1, p. 211)
The Apocryphal book of 2nd Esdras is a pseudepigraphic book, which means that it is falsely, or wrongly, ascribed to Ezra (Esdras) of the Old Testament. Most scholars believe 2nd Esdras is written around AD 100. But some believe that Jesus quoted numerous times from 2nd Esdras in the Olivet Discourse (Matthew chap. 24-25), which would make 2nd Esdras much older. In any case, 2nd Esdras was written by Jews who stuck to Pharisaical Judaism, and it was viewed by the Jews as an important book, because it was copied and we still have it today. So regardless of when 2nd Esdras was written, we know that it reflects a mainstream view of Jews living in the 1st cen AD. In 2nd Esdras there is a passage about the 10 tribes of Israel, which the author writes had been carried away by the Assyrians and were now living in a distant land:
“And whereas thou sawest that he gathered another peaceable multitude unto him; Those are the ten tribes, which were carried away prisoners out of their own land in the time of Osea the king, whom Salmanasar the king of Assyria led away captive, and he carried them over the waters, and so came they into another land. But they took this counsel among themselves, that they would leave the multitude of the heathen, and go forth into a further country, where never mankind dwelt, that they might there keep their statutes, which they never kept in their own land. And they entered into the Euphrates by the narrow passages of the river. For the most High then shewed signs for them, and held still the flood, till they were passed over. For through that country there was a great way to go, namely, of a year and a half: and the same region is called Arsareth.” (2nd Esdras 13:39-45)
We therefore see that all Jews 2,000 years ago, as well as many Jews today, believed that the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel are to be found outside the Jewish people. We too, should therefore look for them outside the Jewish people.
Assyrian invasion and deportation
As we have seen, the Old Testament states, in plain language that cannot be misinterpreted, that the 10 tribes of Israel were deported out of the land of Israel and placed in the northern parts of the Assyrian Empire, and after 721 BC only the tribe of Judah was left in the land of Israel. Individuals of the 10 northern tribes stayed with the Kingdom of Judah, and individuals of Judah were deported along with the 10 tribes. But as tribes, the 10 tribes of Israel were removed out of the Holy Land.
Mainstream historians and theologians simply do not know what happened to the 10 tribes of Israel after that. That is why they are called the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel.
Different ethnic groups have been said to be the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel. The most popular are the Pashtuns of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Lembas of southern Africa, various Native America peoples of North America, as well as the peoples of north-western Europe and their descendants across the world.
Now, we are convinced that the peoples of north-western Europe and their descendants across the world are the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel. And we can prove it by lots of circumstantial evidence which in total means they are the one and only candidate to be the descendants of the 10 Tribes of Israel. But in this short video we can only skim the surface. Since I am from Denmark, we are going to start with presenting historical evidence of the Israelite ancestry of the Nordic and German peoples, and then present evidence of the Israelite ancestry of the peoples of the British Isles, the Netherlands and France.
Aser & Vaner
According to Snorri Sturlason of Iceland (early 13th cen.), the “father of Nordic history”, the Nordic peoples of Scandinavia, Iceland and northern Germany came from southern Russia, from where they had migrated under a chieftain-priest called Odin. Snorri wrote about this in two books, the Younger Edda (1220) and the Heimskringla (also known as the Chronicles of the Kings of Norway, 1230).
Snorri wrote that the ancestors of the Nordic peoples were two tribes called Aser & Vaner. These names are very similar to two of the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel, Asher & Dan. According to Snorri they lived in a city called Asgaard on the River Don, close to what today is the Russian city of Azov. Snorri also wrote that Odin had great estates south of the Caucasus Mountains, which happens to be right next to where the Assyrians had placed the 10 Tribes of Israel, including Asher & Dan.
The greatest Scandinavian historians wrote that Snorri's account that the Nordic peoples came from southern Russia was indeed true. This includes Olof Rudbeck, the greatest Swedish historian of his age who, wrote his main work Atland eller Manheim in the 1690s and first decade of the 1700s, and Peter Frederik Suhm, the greatest Danish historian of his age, who wrote his main works, such as Historie af Danmark, in the 1770s and 1780s.
To get back to Snorri Sturlason of Iceland of the 13th cen., the Aser & Vaner tribes left Asgaard when the Roman general Pompey the Great was fighting King Mithridates of Pontus in the 3rd Mithridatic War in the 70s-60s BC. It took place in Asia Minor and the Black Sea region, including the Crimea. The Crimea borders the Sea of Azov on the east, and on the western side of the Sea of Azov is the the city or Azov, and possibly Asgaard.
The Danes arrive in Denmark 1st to 3rd cen AD
According to the Danish historian Johannes Brøndsted, the ancestors of the Danes arrived to Denmark from the east in two waves, the first shortly after the birth of Christ and the second in the 3rd cen.
Johannes Brøndsted was a capable and respected archaeologist and historian, as well as director of the National Museum of Denmark. Brøndsted wrote this in Volume 1 of Politikens Danmarkshistorie. Politiken Publishers is one of the the largest publishers in Denmark, and also publish the liberal newspaper Politiken, one of the biggest newspapers in the country. Politiken is something like the “New York Times of Denmark”.
Johannes Brøndsted wrote that the ancestors of most modern Danes migrated into Denmark in two waves, one shortly after the birth of Christ and another in the 3rd century AD, and that they came from the region north of the Black Sea and brough along with them the Runic alphabet and the rye grain (Rye bread is the most popular bread in Denmark today.):
“Shortly after the birth of Christ, in other words in the start of the Older Roman Era, an immigration must have taken place into Denmark of decidedly longskulled people of the Nordic type. … It must also be assumed that a new immigration of the same type of people, that is people of the Nordic type, must have taken place in the Younger Roman Era, probably sometime in the 200s. … This way we get a picture, albeit lacking in details, that sometime in the 200s an invasion of Denmark from the east took place. It was a conquest which first subdued Zealand, then eastern Funen, and then the advance stopped, because the attempt to conquer the western parts of the country failed.
By chasing out the Heruli tribe in the Younger Roman Era, the Danes got control of the southern regions of the Nordic countries, which became their future homeland, called Denmark. Jordanes (c. 550) says concerning this place, and he is probably speaking of the Danes, that they claim to be the tallest of all the peoples of Scandinavia. This fits with the anthropological measurings of skeletons from Denmark from the Roman Era which show a rise in the average height of the males.
It can therefore not be denied that the thought of the Danes coming to our country sometime in the 200s can find some support both in archaeological and historical sources, even though the latter are both late and scarce. The theory is supported by the distribution of the ending of certain place names on Funen (-lev in the north-east, -inge in the south-west), which H.V. Clausen [1861-1937] wrote was connected with a presumed conquest originating from Zealand.” (Johannes Brøndsted: Politikens Danmarkshistorie, Vol. 1, pp. 490, 492)
Thor Heyerdahl
A rather recent affirmation of the eastern origin of the Norsemen was made by the Norwegian adventurer and ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl. Thor Heyerdahl is especially famous for the Kon-Tiki Expedition, where he sought to prove a link between Polynesians and South America. As the last project of his life, Heyerdahl wanted to test the veracity of Snorri's stories about Odin and the Aser and Vaner originating from somewhere north of the Caucasus. He travelled to Azerbaijan, where he met the Christian Udi (Odin) people, which unlike most other people in that country had not converted to Islam. He also made archaeological digs in the southern Russian city Azov on the Don River, which may have been where Asgard was situated. Azov also starts with an Az-, like As-gard. The Russian word for city is “gorod”, so Asgard/Asgorod would also mean “As[er] city” in Russian. Heyerdahl concluded that Odin and the Aser and Vaner tribes had indeed lived there and migrated to Scandinavia, just like Snorri and the other Nordic historians had written. He summarized his findings in the book Jakten på Odin (“The Search for Odin”):
“It is in a plain and simple language that Snorri Sturlasson has written about Odin's northward travel from the world's old cultural centers to the northern edge of Europe. … In a geographical summary which is impossible to misunderstand, Snorri first takes us from his own world in Western Europe through Gibraltar and the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea. There he places Odin in the court of the Aser on the eastern side of the border river Tanaïs' delta, where Azov is today. Then he determines the time when this event took place. It was when the Romans marched into the Caucausus area. Then we get a whole new travel route for Odin's flight, which also does not require any interpretation.
These people were obviously not gods, but they were also no ordinary entourage, who set their course towards the northern part of the world when the Romans entered Turkey. With his entourage of Aser and adopted Vaner, and under pressure from the invincible Romans, he starts an emigration out of the Caucasus area which is under threat. The route went from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea, and was forced to follow the great rivers through Russia's impenetrable primeval forests. As Snorri points out, first west through Gardarike, the viking name for Russia. Either through the Black Sea coast of southern Russia and up the Dnieper, or directly up the Don, and then pulling the boats across land - which the Vikings also did later - from the southern flowing rivers of Russia to the western flowing rivers of Latvia and Estonia, and into the Baltic Sea.” (Thor Heyerdahl & Per Lillieström: Jakten på Odin, p. 36)
The Lost 10 Tribes also known as House of Omri, Gimiri and Kimmerians
When the 10 Tribes of Israel were still living in the Holy Land they came under Assyrian domination a long time before they were deported. While still living in the land of Israel, the Assyrans referred to the northern Kingdom of Israel as the “House of Omri”, or “Bit-Khumri”, similar to the Hebrew “Beit-Omri”.
The American archaeologist E. Raymond Capt proved in the book Missing Links Discovered in Assyrian Tablets (1985) that the Assyrians and other peoples in the Middle East called the deported Israelites by various other names, such as “Khomri”, Cimmerians, Sacae, Sakka and Scythians.
Lots of people had already made this connection between the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel and the Cimmerians and Scythians, but E. Raymond Capt was the first one to conclusively prove this missing link.
“To summarize, we have observed from the Assyrian documents (tablets and inscriptions) that the Israelites were called 'Khumri' or 'Khomri' by the Assyrians before their captivity. However, after the reign of [King of Assyria] Sargon II (721-705 B.C.) that name is never mentioned again. Then, around 707 B.C., a people known as 'Gimira' and 'Gamera' are recorded as living among the Mannai. Their territory was only a few miles from the Medes, in the very areas where the Scriptures state the northern ten-tribed Kingdom of Israel had been placed just a few years previously. We have noted that the names 'Gimir', 'Gimira', and 'Gamera' could easily be corruptions of 'Khumri' or 'Khomri', the Assyrian name for the Israelites. The names 'Sacae' or 'Sakka' (Scythians) are probably derived from 'Isaaca' or 'house of Isaac'. It is further noted that the Assyrian name 'ga-me-ra-a-a' is translated into 'Cimmerian'. (Translation by Prof. Leroy Waterman-Royal Correspondence of the Assyrian Empire – published by the University of Michigan, 1930).
Although the belief (based upon Biblical and historical records) that the Scythians and Cimmerians are descendants of the 'Lost Tribes' of Israel has been held by some Bible scholars for many years, archaeological evidence has been lacking. That is no longer the case. The clay cuneiform 'letters' found in Ashurbanipal's royal library in Kijunjik are the 'missing links' connecting the Israelites to the peoples of Western Europe and America who trace their roots to the Scythians and Cimmerians.
It can now be truly said – archaeology has solved two great mysteries, both occuring at the same time in history:
What happened to the countless thousands of Israelites that 'disappeared' into Assyrian Captivity?
Where did the countless thousands of Scythians and Cimmerians come from?
Both mysteries no longer exist. The so-called 'Lost Tribes' of Israel were really never 'lost'. They only lost their identity during their captivity in Assyria.” (E. Raymond Capt: Missing Links Discovered in Assyrian Tablets, pp. 122-123)
A further piece of evidence is the Behistun Stone. This is a giant inscription on a rock wall in western Iran written by King Darius the Great of Persia, maybe around 515 BC. The Behistun Stone is unique in that it is written in three different languages, and therefore provide clues as to what different languages called different ethnic groups. The three languages are Babylonian (Accadian), Elamite (Susian) and Persian. On the inscription the word 'Kana' – 'Canaan' – occurs 28 times, and Armenia – where the Lost 10 Tribes were placed – also occurs frequently. But in the Persian and Elamite rendering, one ethnic group is called Sakka, while in the Babylonian rendering they are called Gimiri. This shows that the Gimiri, or Cimmerians, and the Sakka, or some Scythians, were one and the same people (Capt, pp. 137-140).
We are going to add to this quote by E. Raymond Capt, that the area where the Cimmerians were found is almost exactly where Snorri Sturlason of Iceland wrote that Odin had great estates, at the time when he led the Aser & Vaner tribes to Scandinavia.
The connection between the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel and the Cimmerians, which later migrated to the area north of the Black Sea, is no far-fetched theory. In 1988 the Danish Assyriologist Anne K.G. Kristensen wrote Who were the Cimmerians, and where did they come from? which was published by the Royal Academy of Sciences and Letters, the most highly esteemed scientific society in Denmark whose meetings are sometimes attended in person by the Queen of Denmark. (I know this because my father also happens to be a member of it.) Here Anne Kristensen showed that the Cimmerians from the areas north of the Black Sea were in fact the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel:
“According to Herodotus and Greek tradition as a whole, the original home of the Cimmerians was north of the Black Sea in what was then known as Scythia. In spite of persistent archaeological excavations, however, it has not been possible to determine the presence of Cimmerians in Scythia or elsewhere. The question of the origin of the Cimmerians, therefore, remains somewhat of a mystery.
The author of the present investigation wishes to show, with an analysis of all available contemporaneous evidence from the time of Sargon II and Esarhaddon (8th to 9th centuries B.C.), that the Cimmerians were in fact identical with Israelites deported from Northern Israel after the fall of Samaria in 722 B.C. Large parts of these deportees were then posted or indeed settled in the Zagros area, under Assyrian supervision, and in garrisons along the frontier between Assyria and Urartu (Armenia), where we find them in 714.” (Anne K.G. Kristensen: Who were the Cimmerians, and where did they come from?, p. 2)
Ancient Greek historians such as Strabo tells us that the Cimmerians battled one after the other kingdom in Asia Minor, until they were finally driven out of Asia Minor by Scythians sometime around 525 BC and settled in the Balkans (Capt, pp. 127-129).
Ancient Greek historians also indicate that some of the Scythians were forced out of the Persian Empire into what today is Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Khazakstan. These Scythians were called Massagetae by the Greek writers, which meant the “Great Sakka Horde” (Capt, pp. 129-131).
Most modern historians believe that the Scythians were not one ethnic group, but rather a collection of different ethnic groups which happened to inhabit the same geographical territory. We hold to this view as well. The Scythians were probably not all Israelites, but there were no doubt Israelites among the Scythians. The Cimmerians, on the other hand, seem to have been Israelites.
Cimmerians & Scyths become one with Germanic and Celtic peoples
In ancient times, the steppes of Eastern Europe often received invaders from Asia. All mainstream historical accounts record that when the Cimmerians lived in the area north of the Black Sea (650-500 BC), they were driven west by the Scythians, who in turn were driven west by the Sarmatians (Capt, p. 141).
From here the descendants of the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel, some known as Cimmerians and others as Scythians, moved into areas where peoples speaking Germanic and Celtic languages lived, and ended up taking up the language of the Germanic and Celtic speaking tribes. That is why the descendants of the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel today speak Germanic, Celtic and Romance languages. (If you think that sounds far-fetched, consider that until the 1940s most Jews also spoke a Germanic language called Yiddish.)
One branch of the Cimmerians migrated to Jutland. Many historians have made the connection between the Cimmerians and Cimbrians of Jutland. Plutach writes in the Life of Marius: “They were called at first Cimmerians and then, not inappropriately, Cimbri.” The Stoic philosopher Poseidonius (130-50 BC) also records the Cimbri dwelling originally on the shores of the Black Sea where they were known to the Greeks as Cimmerians.
Peter Frederik Suhm was the leading Danish historian of the late 18th century, and he too was convinced the Cimbrians of Jutland were Cimmerians from the Black Sea region:
“Since the Nordic Cimbrians are, as I will show later, one and the same people as the Cimmerians, both when it comes to their origin, name and descent, then it is safe to assume that after the first time they were driven out by the Scythians a part of them went north, and brought the Cimmerian or Cimbrian name with them into the Nordic countries...” (Peter Friderich Suhm: Forsøg til et Udkast af en Historie over Folkenes Oprindelse I Almindelighed, som en Indledning til de Nordiske Folkes i Særdeleshed, p. 332, 1769)
Israelites & Indo-Europeans
At this point, when Israelites - known as Cimmerians, Scythians, Aser & Vaner - assimilated with Germanic and Celtic tribes, it is important to stress that we are now talking about a mixed people, partly Hebrew and partly Indo-European. The Germanic languages and the Celtic languages are, of course, related to the languages of India, Iran, Armenia, Russia, and, of course, the Latin languages.
The proto-Germanic peoples and the proto-Celtic peoples were therefore distinct from the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel. They were different ethnic groups, but mixed and became one people. In some areas, especially around the coastal areas of north-western Europe such as the British Isles, Scandinavia, Northern Germany and the Netherlands, the Hebrew elements became the dominant part. But in France and southern Germany, the Indo-European elements became the dominant part. In other outlying region, such as Spain, we can also detect Israelite influences, but here the Indo-European strain was by far the dominant part.
The tribe of Dan
In the migrations of the tribes of Israel, the tribe of Dan made a more noticeable trail than the other tribes. This is in in part because the tribe of Dan had an obsession with naming places after their father Dan, and in part because Dan - or some of the tribe of Dan – left the land of Israel before the other tribes.
Danites go to Greece during the Exodus
Shortly prior to the Exodus of Israel out of Egypt some of the Danites left Egypt and went to Greece. The ancient Greek historian Diodorus Siculus (1st cen. BC) records that a certain Israelite Danaus left Egypt for Greece around the time of the Exodus when Moses lead the bulk of Israel to Canaan. This Danaus was said by ancient Greek historians to be the forefather of the Danai, or Danaan, another name the the Argive or Achaian Greeks, who dominated the Peleponnese and led the Greek assault against Troy.
But according to ancient Egyptian and Greek records, these Danai were actually Israelites. The German historian Maximilian Wolfgang Duncker, who was held in high regard when he wrote his works in the 19th cen., gives a fascinating account of the Exodus of Israel out of Egypt, but based on an Egyptian point of view, which he got from the Greek historian Hecataeus of Abdera from Thrace (4th cen. BC). When you read this account, compare it to the Book of Exodus. It sounds exactly like how the Egyptians would have written the history of the Exodus:
“The narrative of Hecataeus of Abdera, who was in Egypt in the time of Ptolemy I, and wrote an Egyptian history, gives us the most unprejudiced account, composed from the widest point of view, and connects the emigration of the Hebrews, whom he does not consider Egyptians, with the supposed emigration from Egypt to Greece.
[Hecataeus says,] “Once, when a pestilence had broken out in Egypt, the cause of the visitation was generally ascribed to the anger of the gods. As many strangers dwelt in Egypt, and observed different customs in religion and sacrifice, it came to pass that the hereditary worship of the gods was being given up in Egypt. The Egyptians, therefore, were of opinion that they would obtain no alleviation of the evil unless they removed the people of foreign extraction. When they were driven out, the noblest and bravest part of them, as some say, under noble and renowned leaders, Danaus and Cadmus, came to Hellas [Greece]; but the great bulk of them migrated into the land, not far removed from Egypt, which is now called Judea. These emigrants were led by Moses, who was the most distinguished among them for wisdom and bravery.” (Maximilian Wolfgang Duncker: History of Antiquity, I: 456-466)
Hecataeus of Abdera was a historian from Thrace in northern Greece, who lived in Egypt during the 4th cen. BC under the Macedonian King Ptolemy I, one of Alexander the Great's generals. As we read in the extract we just read, it is quite obvious that the Israelites whom Moses led to Canaan and the Danai who went to Greece were the same people, and that the Danai were in fact Israelite Danites.
Another marvelous account - which is also seen through Egyptian eyes and therefore gives greater creedence to its veracity, because it cannot be accused of being Christian or Jewish propaganda - is that of Lysimachus of Alexandria (355-281 B.C.), whose history was preserved by Flavius Josephus in Contra Apionem:
“At the time of king Bocchoris [possibly the Greek name for the Pharaoh of the Exodus], unclean and leprous men had come into the temples to beg for food. Hence there was a blight on the land; and Bocchoris received a response from Ammon [an Egyptian god], that the temples must be purified. The lepers, as if the sun were angry at their existence, were to be plunged into the sea, and the unclean were to be driven out of the land. Hence the lepers were...thrown into the sea; but the unclean were driven out helpless into the desert. These met together in council; in the night they lit fires and lights, and called, fasting, upon the gods to save them. Then a certain Moses advised them to go through the desert till they came to inhabited regions...they established a city Hierosyla [Jerusalem] in Judea...” (ibid., p. 463).
The Greeks historians we have just quoted provide evidence that the Exodus went not only to Canaan, but also the Greece, and that the tribe of Dan led the latter. (Jory Steven Brooks: The Forgotten History of the Danite Exodus from Egypt)
The Greek Danai or Danaan
Danaus became the forefather of the Greek tribe called Danai or Danaan, which dominated most of the Peleponnese Peninsula. For example, in the Iliad Homer simply refers to the Greeks who attacked Troy in the 12th cen. as Danai. The primary cities of these Greek Danoi were Mycenae, Argos and Tiryns in the north-eastern Peleponnese, and later Sparta in the southern Peleponnese.
The Greek Danai, Danoi or Danaan also settled in the Black Sea. The most famous of these was Jason and the Argonauts who settled in Colchis, a kingdom in what today is now western Georgia in the Caucasus Mountains.
Dan's connection with Phoenicians
The tribe of Dan lived right next to the Phoenicians, a Canaanite merchant people who lived in and around modern Lebanon and who were excellent sailors. It is no big mystery that Dan also had close connections with the Phoenicians. When Solomon built the Temple in Jerusalem, the King of Tyre for example sent a skilled master artisan to help him, who was the son of a man of Tyre and a woman of Dan (2 Chronicles 2:14) During the time of the Judges (app. 1285 BC), the Israelites Deborah and Barak defeated a Canaanite occupation army but complained that the Danites did not help them, moaning: “Why did Dan remain in ships?” (Judges 5:17) This was despite the fact that neither of Dan's two territories in Israel had any coastal areas. This was because the Danites were working close with the Phoenicians.
When the Assyrians first made the northern Kingdom of Israel a vassal state under King Jehu of Israel in the middle of the 800s BC, and later invaded and deported all of the 10 Tribes around 721 BC, Dan was the first of the 12 tribes to feel the Assyrian onslaught, because Dan was the most northern tribe. It is therefore easy to imagine that many Danites fled to escape the Assyrians. The easiest way to do so was to go to the neighboring Phoenician states of Tyre and Sidon, whose ships travelled far and wide. It was thus easier for the Danites to escape from the Assyrians than it was for the other Israelite tribes.
These Danites travelled by sea to Greece, where they joined their tribesmen, the Greek Danai, before they continued their migration to Ireland.
Dan in Ireland
Ancient Irish history speaks of two tribes which conquered Ireland. Both The Annals of Ireland by the Four Masters (1636), a work based on much older material, and Geoffrey Keatinge's History of Ireland (1634), says that a people called the Tuatha de Dannan – meaning the tribe of Dannan – conquered Ireland around 1200 BC. Around 1000 BC another people, the Milesians, arrived and became the masters of Ireland. The Tuatha de Dannan and the Milesians were of the same people, because when the Milesians arrived, they were able to communicate with the Tuatha de Dannan in their own language. According to The Annals of Ireland by the Four Masters the Tuatha de Dannan had lived a long time in Greece and had been working close with the Phoenicians.
According the Geoffrey Keatinge, the Milesians were also called Scots because they had lived in Scythia, the area north of the Black Sea, for 150 years, after they left their homeland. After the Milesians or Scots left Scythia, they continued to Greece, and then to Spain, and finally to Ireland. It was from these Milesians or Scots that Ireland got its ancient name Scotia. (The Romans also called Ireland Scotia. It was only in the 9th cen. AD that the name Scotia was applied to the northern part of the island of Great Britain which we today call Scotland.)
A Spanish priest Joaquin Villanueva even wrote a book entitled Phoenician Ireland (1837), where he sought to prove that the Tuatha de Dannan and the Irish in general were of Phoenician origin. In this book he wrote that the ancestors of the Irish were the people of the city of Dan, where they worshipped the graven image given to them by Micah and where King Jeroboam of Israel set up the golden calf. These references are from the Book of Judges and are about the tribe of Dan, and not about Phoenicians. (J.C. Gawler: Dan: The Pioneer of Israel, pp. 41-43)
Dan in Scotland
In 1320 Scottish nobles tried to seceed from English rule and signed a Declaration of Independence, which they sent to the Pope in Rome. This declaration is called the Declaration of Arbroath. In this the Scottish noblemen, led by Robert the Bruce, wrote that the ancestors of the Scots had come from Scythia. We read:
“Most Holy Father and Lord, we know and from the chronicles and books of the ancients we find that among other famous nations our own, the Scots, has been graced with widespread renown. They journeyed from Greater Scythia by the way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any race, however barbarous. Thence they came, twelve hundred years after the people of Israel crossed the Red Sea, to their home in the west where they still live today.” (E. Raymond Capt: The Scottish Declaration of Independence, p. 41)
A curious side-note to this is from U.S. News and World Report in 1987 reporting about the St Patrick's Day parade. When the then Mayor of New York City, Jewish Ed Koch, was asked why he participated, the newspaper noted that Mayor Koch:
“explained his presence at the head of the grand parade thusly: 'It's a part of my roots. The 10 lost tribes of Israel we believe ended up in Ireland.'” (Stephen E. Collins: The “Lost” Ten Tribes of Israel... Found!, p. 123, quoting from U.S. News and World Report, March 30, 1987, p. 7)
Biblical prophesies & identifications
In the Bible we find a long list of prophecies which God gave to the 12 tribes of Israel, which would come to pass, because when God makes a prophecy, it will be fulfilled. But there are also a long list of prophecies which God gave specifically to the 10 tribes of the House of Israel, which were distinct from the prophecies He gave to the House of Judah (the Jews). The nations of north-western Europe and their descendants, and no other people, fulfill these prophecies.
The 10 Tribes were prophesied to be numerous as the sand of the seashore, and God would again make them His people. Speaking specifically of the 10 tribes of Israel, Hosea prophecies in the middle of 700s BC about what would come to pass after their future deportation:
“Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered; and it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God.” (Hosea 1:10)
The 10 Tribes of Israel would become Christians, while Judah would not. Around 600 BC, at the time of the Babylonian captivity of Judah, Jeremiah prophesied that God would sometime in the future make a new covenant, different than the Covenant of Moses, with the House of Israel – the 10 tribes – and the House of Judah. But also that the covenant would end up being only with the House of Israel, and apparantly not with the House of Judah:
“Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.” (Jeremiah 31:31-33)
Note that first Jeremiah states that God will make a new covenant with both the House of Israel and the House of Judah. But he ends the prophecy only mentioning the House of Israel and not the House of Judah. That was because the Jews rejected the New Covenant by rejecting Christ.
Israel would live north-west of the land of Israel and a few of them on the southern hemisphere. Isaiah prophesied that when the 12 tribes are going to be regathered at the 2nd Coming of the Messiah, Israel would live north-west of the land of Israel – from where Isaiah was prophesying – and some in the “land of the south”:
“Behold, these shall come from far: and, lo, these from the north and from the west; and these from the land of Sinim.” (Isaiah 49:12)
If you draw one straight line west from Israel, and another straight line north from Israel going over the North Pole, they will meet in the Pacific Ocean, and encompass all of Europe and North America. These are the areas where 95% of the western nations which we identify with the Lost 10 Tribes, are situated, as well as half of all Jews (if you do not count the State of Israel). The meaning of the “land of Sinim” ia not generally agreed upon. But according to the Medieval French Rabbi Rashi (Shlomo Yitzchaki, 1040-1105) it means the “land of the south”. In the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible, “Sinim” is translated “Australis”, which means “south”. The name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis, which means the South Land. The “land of Sinim” is therefore prophesying of Israelites living on the southern hemisphere in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. (Yair Davidiy: Ephraim: The Gentile Children of Israel, p. 102)
Israel would possess the gate of their enemies, in other words be the most powerful military power. This promise was given both to Abraham and and his daughter-in-law Rebekah:
“thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies” (Gen 22:17)
“let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them.” (Gen 24:60)
This is fulfilled in the western nations, especially from the Protestant Reformation until their mainstream rejected Christianity in the 1960s, where they were dominated the world and even ruled over most of the Muslim world, which previously had tried to conquer Europe.
When Isaac blessed Jacob, he prophesied that Jacob's descendants would be rich and prosperous and rule over other people. This is fulfilled in the western nations having been colonial powers and ruled over most of the world, and indeed is still the de facto rulers over much of the world. (But not necessarily for the good of the rest of the world, because at the present moment, the western nations are not following God.):
“Therefore God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine: Let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother's sons bow down to thee” (Genesis 27:28-29)
When Israel would follow God, they would become prosperous, lend to other nations, and become the leading nations of the world:
“And the LORD thy God shall make thee plenteous in goods, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, and the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers to give thee. The LORD shall open unto thee his good treasure, the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, and to bless all the work of thine hand: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow.” (Deuteronomy 28:11-12)
This is fulfilled in the western nations, which became prosperous and the leading nations of the world after they became Christian nations. The part of about lending to other nations when Israel followed God is also fulfilled in the premier western nation of the world, the United States. When the U.S. followed and revered Christ in public in and after World War 2, the U.S. lent money to numerous nations around the world. But today, after the mainstream U.S. has turned away from spreading the Gospel to spreading Woke and LGBT ideology, the U.S. is in such a giant debt that it is in effect bankrupt if its debtors wanted to get their money back.
Israel would spread the New Covenant, i.e. the Gospel, to the non-Israelite peoples of the world:
“And he said, It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light of the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth.” (Isaiah 49:6)
This is also fulfilled in the western nations, which historically, and also today, have been responsible for the vast majority of the evangelization of the world.
The 10 Tribes of Israel would have a strained relationship with Judah. One might assume that since the Lost Tribes had a common origin with Judah, they would naturally be the best of friends. According to Bible prophecy, that is not the case. Isaiah prophesied that Israel and Judah would have a relationship with “envy, adversity and vexation” - or in the words of the New International Version: “jealousy, enmity and hostility” - but at the 2nd Coming of the Messiah that strained relationship would finally turn into fraternity:
“And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea. And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. The envy also of Ephraim shall depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off: Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim.” (Isaiah 11:11-13)
According to the prophet Zechariah, the brotherhood between Israel and Judah (the Jews) was broken at the time when Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus to the Jewish leadership:
“And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. And the LORD said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD. Then I cut asunder mine other staff, even Bands, that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.” (Zechariah 11:12-14)
This broken relationship between the Jews and the Lost 10 Tribes will be healed at the 2nd Coming of the Messiah. Now that we know that both we and the Jews are of the 12 tribes of Israel, and that we are going to be reunited in a soon-to-be future, we are, of course, working to build bridges between the Lost 10 Tribes and Judah. But the final reunification will only the done by the Messiah.
Common sense identification
The next subject which will help us track the modern descendants of the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel is what I call “Common Sense Identification”. God made a whole lot of prophecies and promises to Israel, some of which were unconditional, some of which were conditional. But to look for the Lost 10 Tribes today, we can first look at the Jews, the descendants of the Kingdom of Judah.
Most can agree that the Jews as a people are more gifted, powerful and influential than other peoples of their number. For example, Jews make up app. 15 mio. people as of 2023, which is 0,2% of the world's population. And yet, of the 900 people who have received the Nobel Prize, 20% have been Jews. Another example is the the countries in the world with nuclear weapons, which is a total of 8. Of these, Israel is by far the smallest country, both in size and population.
To say that the Jewish people “punch above their weight” is an understatement. And yet, the Jews, as a people, have been cut off from a relationship witht the God of Israel since they rejected Christ 2,000 years ago.
When we look for the 10 tribes of Israel today, we must first remember that they are 5 times as many tribes as Judah, 10 tribes compared to 2 tribes. Secondly the 10 tribes were specifically prophesied to become extremely numerous, which was not prophesied of Judah. Thirdly, the 10 tribes were prophesied to enter a new covenant with the God of Israel, in other words, to become Christians.
If the Jewish people, which is much smaller than the Lost 10 tribes, and are not in a relationship with the God of Israel, is so gifted, powerful and influential, we can deduct that the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel today are much more powerful and influential than the Jews are. If we again look at the number at Nobel laureates, the nations which we associate with the Lost 10 Tribes have received 77% of all the Nobel prizes (that is including Jews from those nations), while the combined number of non-Israelite nations have received 20% of the Nobel prizes (approximately the same number as Jews have received). In other words, the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel are the most powerful, richest and influential group of nations in the world.
Physical appearance
In the Bible it is not expressly stated what physical appearance the Israelites had. But there are physical descriptions of some Israelites, which gives us an idea of how they looked. King David, for example, is described as “ruddy” (1 Sam 17:42), or as another translation puts it “reddish” (New American Standard Bible). The word translated “ruddy” is from the Hebrew “Admoni”, which - according to Yair Davidiy from Jerusalem, author of numerous books on the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel - more correctly means “red-haired or golden-haired”. (Yair Davidiy: The Physical Anthropology of the Hebrew Peoples) To be ruddy or reddish is something that is only seen among light-skinned people, such as modern northern Europeans. David must therefore have been light-skinned and blonde or red-haired.
King Solomon, on the other hand, seems to have been darker than David, because in the Song of Songs, Solomon describes a man – presumably himself – with hair “black as a raven” (Song of Solomon 5:11).
Jacob's twin brother, Esau, a.k.a. Edom, is also described in the Bible as an “admoni” and as having red hair: “And the first came out red, all over like an hairy garment; and they called his name Esau.” (Gen 35:25) If Esau was red-haired, Jacob is therefore also likely to have been red-haired or golden-haired.
Jacob's father-in-law was Laban, and his name mean “white” (Hebrew word #3837 in Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible). We must assume that the reason why Laban got his name was because he was unusually white. If everyone in the area where Laban was born had a similar color as him, there would be no reason to call him the “white one”. But if he was unusually white, there would be. For example, the name Lebanon is derived from the same Semitic root word. The country of Lebanon is named after Mount Lebanon – which is actually a mountain range and not one mountain - which means the “white mountain”, because it has snow on the top, unlike most other mountains in the region. It is unusually white, hence the name.
Laban was the father of Leah and Rachel. We must therefore assume that their children were also more white than most people around them.
Yair Davidiy writes that the ancient Egyptians depicted Israelites with blonde, red and black hair, and frequently with blue eyes and red beards. The Egyptians called people living in and area the land of Israel as “Amuru” (Amorites). But those whom the Egyptians called Amuru often meant Israelites. An example of this is from illustrations from the Egyptian campaign around 924 BC, where Pharao Shishak of Egypt invaded the Kingdom of Judah. In these illustrations the Israelites and Judahites are depicted in the same style as the Egyptians otherwise depicted the “Amuru”.
Yair Davidiy also mentions several examples of how ancient Israelites are described in Talmudic literature:
“Joseph, the son of Israel, was described in a Midrash (Genesis Rabah 83:6) as looking like a GERMANI (i.e. someone from the North, very white, fair, according to Maimonides) and in another passage (Talmud Sota 36), as having a face that was 'pink like a rose'. It follows that Joseph was considered to have been of Nordic appearance which was a known familial trait since Joseph is also said to have looked exactly like his father”. (Yair Davidiy: The Physical Anthropology of the Hebrew Peoples)
The 12 sons of Israel all married non-Israelite women, and for a simple reason: Because Jacob only had one daughter, Dinah, whom none of the 12 patriarchs married. That means that from the inception of the nation of Israel, the 12 tribes had different genetics and different physical appearances.
Yair Davidiy continues:
“According to the Bible and later Jewish legends (as recorded in 'Seder HaDorot', and 'Sefer HaYashar') the tribal Heads married women of various nations. Joseph married an Egyptian woman (Genesis 41;45), Machir, son of Menasseh had an Aramean concubine (1-Chronicles 7; 14). Reuben married a Hivite. Levi and Asher married descendants of Eber. Judah had one Canaanite and one Semite wife. Zebulon married a Midianitess and Issachar a descendant of Sem. Benjamin married a daughter of Zimran, son of Abraham and Keturah. Dan took a daughter of Lot, nephew of Abraham. Naphtali took a daughter of Nahor, as did Gad, and so on. The Apocryphal Book of Jubilees (ca. 200 BCE?) also says that the Tribal Patriarchal heads married women of different nations and mentions Canaanite, Egyptian, Semitic, and Mesopotamian women.” (Davidiy: The Physical Anthropology of the Hebrew Peoples)
Non-white people among the ancient Israelites
This does not mean that all the ancient Israelites were fair or even white. One of the commandments in the Law of Moses is that foreigners who live among Israel and follow the God of Israel are to be treated like neighbors. They are to become adopted into Israel, to become naturalized Israelites:
“And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD you God.” (Lev 19:33-34)
Moses, for example, had a black African wife. Aaron and Miriam rebuked Moses for having a black wife, but God punished Miriam by making her white, in an undesirable, but just, way – by making her a leper for 7 days (Numbers 12). Moses' black African wife might have been a wife he had married while he was still a Prince of Egypt. After Moses was driven out of Egypt by Pharoah, he married a Midianite woman. But when Moses led Israel out of Egypt, he apparently brought along his black African wife.
Another example of a black woman among the ancient Israelites is again found in the Song of Solomon. Here a woman, presumably one of King Solomon's concubines (he had a total of 1,000), says: “I am black, but comely... Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun has looked upon me...” (Song of Solomon 1:5-6) From this we can gather that black women did contribute to the ancestry of the Israelites. And we can also gather that black people were a rather special, unique and rare sight in ancient Israel, because the black woman complains that people look down at her because of her skin-color. If black people had been common among the ancient Israelites, her skin-color would have been considered normal and she would not have been looked down upon.
In the genealogy of Christ in Matthew, it is also mentioned that Ruth the Moabitess was among the ancestors of Christ. There are mentioned only two women in the genealogy: Ruth the Moabitess and Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite. They are obviously mentioned for a reason. Ruth is mentioned because she was a non-Israelite, and yet became an ancestor of Christ. Bathsheba is mentioned because she became David's wife through sin, and yet she became an ancestor of Christ.
This goes to show that the ancient Israelites were, generally speaking, a white people, some blonde hair and some with dark hair, and some with blue eyes and some with brown eyes, but also that non-white individuals became a part of the Israelite bloodstream.
Physical appearance of Jews & the Lost 10 Tribes
Some expect that the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel should look like Jews, and have the physical appearance of Jews. But this is an erroneous assumption.
The 12 tribes of Israel were together in Canaan, Egypt and Israel for far less time than they have been separated. The 12 patriarchs were born sometime between 1,900 BC and 1,600 BC. The United Kingdom of Israel was divided app. 931 BC, and the 10 Tribes were deported around 721 BC. That means that the 12 patriarchs and tribes were together between 1,200 and 900 years, while they have been separated geographically and ethnically for more than 2,700 years. That means that they have been separated for 3 times as long time as they were united, or at least geographically together.
During their almost 3 millenia long separation, both Judah and Israel intermarried with non-Israelite people. And the non-Israelite people they intermarried with were different in physical appearance, which has given the Lost 10 Tribes and the Jews different appearances. The Lost 10 Tribes intermarried especially with Indo-European peoples of Germanic and Celtic languages. The Jews, on the other hand, intermarried with various peoples from the Middle East, Europe and North Africa.
Despite their common origin, the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel and the Jews have aquired different physical appearances. This is what could be expected when they have been separated for more than 2,700 years. But this difference is small – actually really small - when compared to other groups which are claimed to belong to the Lost Tribes, such as the all-black Lemba tribe of southern Africa, the Pashtuns of Pakistan and Afghanistan and certain Native North Americans.
Semitic origin of the Runes, Part I: Kjell Aartun
The Runes were the alphabet used in ancient Scandinavia. They are usually believed to have been adapted from Roman letters. But Professor Kjell Aartun (1925-2023) - a Norwegian theologian and linguist who was considered a leading expert in Semitic languages and was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters – was convinced that the Runes was a Semitic alphabet which had come from the Middle East to Scandinavia. In 1994 he wrote:
“Outside Central Europe and the Nordic countries the Runic writings have as of this date been shown in two of the important old oriental cultures: the former Trojan culture in Asia Minor by the Dardanelles and the old high culture in the Syria and Palestine area, which were basically identical.” (Kjell Aartun: Runer i kulturhistorisk sammenheng, p. 13)
Professor Aartun writes that when the Runes emerged around Troy and Syria-Palestine they were already a fully developed alphabet which was intended to express a written Middle Eastern language.
Semitic origin of the Runes, Part II: Jørgen Chr. Bang
Assistant Professor Jørgen Chr. Bang of University of Southern Denmark said in 1997 that the similarities between the Runes and the Semitic letters are so great that the Runes cannot have sprung from the Roman alphabet:
“There exists historical accounts which makes it probable that around the year 0 there was a larger immigration into Denmark of a people of culture originating from the regions around the Black Sea and also cultural plants of Middle Eastern origin. The Runes and the the Old Norse language may have come here with this people. … I find it interesting, and almost symbolic, that rye, our 'national' grain for our daily bread, seems to have followed the same route as the Runes in my hypothesis, that is from the Middle East to southern Russia and Central Europe, where it paused for a longer while, until it reached us in the Older Roman Times, that is prior to AD 200.” (Jørgen Chr. Bang: Runernes herkomst og medbyrd, pp. 1, 8)
Professor Bang mentions Johannes Brøndsted, the author of Politikens Danmarkshistorie Vol. 1 (1963) mentioned above, concerning the theory that the Danes came to Denmark in two waves, one around the birth of Christ and another in the 3rd century, and adds:
“I find it completely in accord with these data that we can imagine that the Runes in the shape of the Futhark [the Runic alphabet] got here with the last immigration of the Danes, and that both the previous immigration and the immigration of the Danes were Germanic-speaking peoples of culture from the Black Sea region, where they had close relationships with the Goths and perhaps the later Slavs. And that this people, just like the rye grain, had a cultural past in the Middle East. It is not impossible that a part of the Indo-European Germanic branch, that is the Danes, not only brought along the rye as a cultural plant from the Middle East, but that they also conserved the cultural writing from these areas, that is the writing which came to the Nordic countries in the shape of the Futhark and the Runic alphabet.
Considering this there may be more truth in the stories of the historian of old, Snorri of Iceland (c. 1220-1240), about the arrival of Odin and the Danes into the Nordic countries than one might imagine. Snorri tells that the Danes lived by the Black Sea and the reason why they changed their residence to the Nordic countries: When the Romans intermeddled too much in the Black Sea region, the foresighted Danes decided that it would be easier for them to keep their traditions and culture by moving to the North. This they did, bringing along with them their most precious belongings (here I see the Runes and the Futhark as possible, precious belongings), and they were received with admiration. The language and culture of the Danes spread across all the Nordic countries, and they intermarried with the native inhabitants, though some in England kept their native language. Maybe Snorri is referring to Celtic.” (ibid, pp. 9-10)
Semitic origin of the Runes, Part III: Örjan Svensson
The Swedish linguist Örjan Svensson has written four books about the Runes and how they were originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic. Örjan Svensson shows that the Runes were originally written from right to left, like modern Hebrew and Arabic, and that those people who wrote the Runes were Israelites from the Lost 10 Tribes who had blended in with the Germanic-speaking tribes which settled Scandinavia and northern Germany from app. 100 BC and onwards.
Mr. Svensson devotes a chapter to the older Gallehus Horn, one of two golden horns found in southern Jutland, Denmark, found in 1639. The horn contains no explicit Runes or other writings, but instead a linear depiction of animals, people, weapons and other symbols. Mr. Svensson takes the Hebrew name of these symbols and translates them into meaning:
“'Since I am a praised and merciful ruler:
The whole glory to our ruler.'
This indicates that the golden horns of Gallehus originally belonged to a ruler of the early Danes, who originally descended from the Israelite tribe of Dan. It is also interesting to note that the combined runic gematria of the deciphered text is equal to 17 + 27 + 54 + 55 + 7 + 17 + 35 + 42 + 20 + 69 = 343 = 7 x 7 x 7.”
7 is a holy number in the Bible, so Mr. Svensson concludes that the Hebrew origin of the text is proved by Gematria. (Örjan Svensson: Scandinavian Secrets: The Hebrew Code of the Runes, pp. 234-237)
In 2003 John Troeng wrote an article in Fornvännen (“The Friend of Ancient Things”) - an archaeological magazine published by Vitterhetsakademien, the most prestigious scientific society in Sweden - entitled A Semitic origin of some runes – An influential foreign presence in Denmark c. AD 200, where he shows that some of the Runes must have been of Semitic origin. One of the reasons he mentions is that the Runes were written without space between the words, just like other Semitic inscriptions. (ibid, p. 10)
Germanic-Hebrew similarities, Part I: Louis Hjelmslev
The Hebrew of the Old Testament is usually considered belonging to the Hamito-Semitic group of languages, whereas the Germanic languages - including the Nordic languages and English - belong to the Indo-European group of languages. One of the world's most respected linguists was the Dane Louis Hjelmslev of the University of Copenhagen. In 1963, Hjelmslev wrote in his landmark book Language: An Introduction, that:
“A genetic relationship between Indo-European and Hamito-Semitic was demonstrated in detail by the Danish linguist Hermann Møller, using the method of element-functions, in studies dating from 1906-17.” (Louis Hjelmslev: Language: An Introduction, p. 79, 1963)
By comparing them, Hjelmslev substantiated the theory that the Semitic, Indo-European, and Finno-Ugrian languages were derived from one single original ancient language, which he called Nostratic. Hjelmslev did not believe that other languages - such as Chinese, Turkic and Native American languages - had a common origin with Nostratic.
Germanic-Hebrew similarities, Part II: Terry Marvin Blodgett
The American Terry Marvin Blodgett, University of Utah, summarized his account in the doctoral thesis from 1981: Phonological Similarities in Germanic and Hebrew:
“... the findings of this chapter open up the possibility that the linguistic similarities between Germanic and Hebrew, as presented throughout this dissertation, might be explained as the basis of Hebraic migrations to Germanic territory, possibly as early as 700 B.C., with other groups arriving during the ensuing centuries.” (Terry Marvin Blodgett: Phonological Similarities in Germanic and Hebrew, p. 155, 1981)
Blodgett also showed in details that the vowel changes Ablaut and Umlaut, today known in High German, was common both in Hebrew and Germanic languages, but not in other Indo-European languages.
Germanic-Hebrew similarities, Part III: Grzegorz Jagodzinski
The Polish linguist Grzegorz Jagodzinski came to the same conclusion in 2005 in his critical comparisons between Indo-European and Semitic languages:
“It is worth noticing that there exists especially much convergence between the Semitic languages and the Germanic branch [of the Indo-European languages*].” (*My parenthesis) (Grzegorz Jagodzinski: Indo-European and Semitic Languages, 2005)
Germanic-Hebrew similarities, Part IV: Isaac Mozeson
Isaac E. Mozeson, a Canadian born Jew from the Yeshiva University in New York City, wrote the book The Word: The Dictionary That Reveals the Hebrew Source of English (1989). In this book, Dr. Mozeson showed how 22,000 English words had a Hebrew origin. Examples are the English words skunk, gopher, giraffe and horse, which in Hebrew have the meanings stinker, digger, neck and plower.
Celtic-Hebrew similarities
There is also significant proof of Hebrew and Phoenician influences the Celtic languages of the British Isles.
According to William H. Worrell (1879-1952), professor of Near Eastern Languages at the University of Michigan, insular British Celtic tongues, and especially colloquial Welsh, show certain peculiarities which are reminiscent of Hamitic and Semitic tongues and are unparalleled in Aryan languages (William H. Worrell: A Study of Races in the Ancient Near East, 1927).
Similarly, according to the Swiss linguist and Celtologist Heinrich Wagner:
“Irish... has as many features in common with non-Indo-European languages, especially with Hamito-Semitic languages, as with other Indo-European languages.”
“Insular Celtic languages... the grammatical categories having many affinities with non-Indo-European languages, in particular Basque and Berber.”
"The comparative typology of insular Celtic initiated by Morris Jones and further developed by Pokorny, G.B. Adams, and myself has revealed that most of the many peculiar features of insular Celtic rarely traceable in other Indo-European languages have analogies in Basque, Berber, Egyptian, Semitic, and even in Negro languages.”
“Certain features (of marginal influence only) of Old Irish verb forms can be understood only in the light of Hittite, Vedic, Sanskrit, and Mycenean Greek.” (Henrich Wagner: Studies in the origins of the Celts and of early Celtic Civilisation, 1971)
According to the Welsh grammarian, academic and Welsh-language poet Sir John Morris Jones (1864-1929):
“The pre-Aryan idioms which still live in Welsh and Irish were derived from a language allied to Egyptian tongues.”
(Yair Davidiy: Ancestry: The Hebrew Identity of Celtic Races, p. 144)
The English Lt.-Col. Charles Vallancey (1731-1812) was sent by the English government to Ireland as the military surveyor of the Ireland, and ended up becoming an expert on Irish history, philology and antiquities. In 1772 he wrote the famous work Essay On The Antiquity Of The Irish Language, Being A Collation Of The Irish With The Punic Language, where he wrote that the Irish descended from Carthaginians, the Phoenician settler colony in northern Africa. Punic is the Roman name for Phoenician, and in particular the Carthaginians. We have previously in this study shown that many Danites travelled with the Phoenicians, and that Danites and Phoenicians therefore often were looked upon as one people
“On a collation of the Irish with the Celtic, Punic, Phoenician, and Hebrew languages, the strongest affinity, (nay a perfect identity in very many words) will appear; it may therefore be deemed a Punic-Celtic compound; and the following Essay will prove this to be somewhat more than a bare conjecture. The Irish is consequently the most copious language extant; as from the Hebrew proceeded the Phoenician, from the Phoenician, Carthaginian, or Punic, was derived the Æolian, Dorian, and Etruscan, and from these was formed the Latin...”
“The Irish historians do all agree, that they received their letters from the Phoenicians, and that their language was called bearla Féne or the Fenician dialect, of which their ancient manuscripts bear sufficient testimony.” (Charles Vallancey: Essay On The Antiquity Of The Irish Language, Being A Collation Of The Irish With The Punic Language, 1772, pp. 21-22)
Conclusion no. 1
We can therefore conclude that the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel migrated into areas where non-Israelite peoples speaking Germanic, Celtic and Finnish languages lived and picked up the language of those non-Israelite peoples, but also added Hebrew words into the vocabularies of those languages. In other words, the proto-Germanic, proto-Celtic and proto-Finnish peoples were not Israelites, but some of them assimilated with the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel and became the nations of north-western Europe.
We find a somewhat similar example with the Ashkenazi Jews, who today make up app. 70% of all Jews worldwide. The Ashkenazi Jews lived in Germany, which they called Ashkenaz. In the 9th century the German Jews started to talk their own version of High German mixed with Hebrew and Aramaic words. They called this language Yiddish. The Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews later moved into Eastern Europe and Russia, but kept the Yiddish language. (Most of the Jews which perished in the Holocaust were Yiddish-speaking, and after WW2 most of the survivors stopped speaking Yiddish.) Even though most Jews prior to WW2 spoke a Germanic language, it does of course not mean that they descended from Germans.
Other peoples claiming to be of the Lost 10 Tribes
There are also other peoples which claim to be, or are claimed to be by others, of the Lost 10 Tribes. Most notable of them are the Pashtuns of Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Lemba tribe of southern Africa & some Native north Americans.
The Pashtuns number 65 mio. and are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. Almost all Pashtuns are Muslims, and they make up most of the Islamist Taliban militia. They also claim to be descended from the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel and keep some customs from the Old Testament.
The Lemba tribe of southern Africa number only app. 50,000 and claim that their male ancestors came from a distant country to seek gold. DNA studies have actually shown some genetic relationship with Jews.
The Pashtuns and the Lembas may very well have a small amount of Israelite ancestry, as their historical traditions and genetic studies indicate. But neither of them fulfill the prophecies of the Lost 10 Tribes. They may have a slight connection with the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel, but as nations they cannot be said to be of the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel.
Some Mormons claim that some North American Native Americans are Lost Israelites, because that is what the Book of Mormon claims. But there is no proof for this claim outside the Book of Mormon. Native North Americans are not Israelites in any way. (By the way, there are also quite a lot of Mormons who subscribe to our view that the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel are among western nations.)
Conclusion no. 2
It is an undeniable fact that the 10 Tribes of Israel are not a part of the Jewish people, and that they must therefore be somewhere else.
When we look outside the Jewish people, everything points to the north-western European nations and their descendants across the world being the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel, both history, archaeology, DNA, linguistics, national characteristics, and most important of all Bible prophecy.
It does not require faith to believe this. Rather, it requires faith to NOT believe it.
Past Bible prophecies have been fulfilled. Unfulfilled prophecies concerning Israel will therefore also be fulfilled in the genetic descendants of the 12 tribes of Israel. Since most Christians agrees that we are living on the brink of the Great Tribulation and the 2nd Coming of the Messiah, we can therefore expect the prophecies about the 10 Tribes of Israel to be fulfilled in the western nations, and the prophecies about Judah to be fulfilled in the Jewish people.
An erroneous understanding of the identity of the House of Israel and the Judah of Judah can give God-fearing men and women doubts, and in worst case even make them question the Bible, when they see events take place which does not fit their interpretation of prophecy. But if they, on the other hand, have a correct understanding of who Israel and Judah are, their faith and trust in God will only become stronger.
September 2023
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