Nadene Goldfoot
 |
From 1200 to 1050 BCE. Joshua followed the plan as to where they would
reside, but it changed somewhat in later periods. from Joshua
2nd Census taken by Moses was:
Reuben-43,730, Simeon-22,200
Issachar-64,300 Zebulun-60,500
Dan-64,400 Naphtali-45,400
Gad-40,500 Asher-53,400
Ephraim-32,500 Manasseh-52,700
Benjamin-45,600 JUDAH-76,500 |
The American Indians were once thought to be descended from the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel; and evidence supporting this theory is still being cited today. The Mormons have believed this theory as well as others. DNA shows that there is a a connection, but isn't completely true.
The Lost Ten Tribes originated from Jacob's 12 sons by 4 different women; 2 wives and their 2 handmaidens. Jacob was a direct descendant of Abraham, whose Y dna haplotype (male line only) would have shown he was a J1. This is the name of their branch on the tree of humanity which traces the line from father to son, to son, etc. The 2 tribes that were not taken by the Assyrians in 721 BCE were Judah, the largest tribe and part of Benjamin. Judah's name is the origin of Jews; the Jewish people of today. Then 10 other tribes were from northern Israel and Judah was the southern most of Israel which later broke off and created their own state of Judah after King Solomon died in 920 BCE.
" By the mid-ninth century B.C., the Assyrian menace posed a direct threat to
the small Syro-Palestine states to the west, including Israel and Judah." The Assyrians were some of the cruelest people on earth. "Assyria had emerged as a territorial state in the 14th century B.C. Its territory covered approximately the northern
part of modern Iraq.
The first capital of Assyria was Assur, located about 150 miles north of modern Baghdad
on the west bank of the Tigris River. The city was named for its national god, Assur, from which the name
Assyria is also derived." Assyrian reliefs of the day that have been uncovered show prisoners of Assyrians being led through the street like dogs with ropes attached to rings inserted in the septum of their nose. In other reliefs, parading Assyrians are holding Hebrew prisoners aloft, impaled on Assyrian spears. (http://faculty.uml.edu/ethan_Spanier/Teaching/documents/CP6.0AssyrianTorture.pdf)
The usual Assyrian practice towards the captive 10 Tribes was to deport much of the upper classes of Israel and then they would settle other people in their place. Those who remained would intermarry with the newcomers, and out of this came the Samaritans. Samaritans said they were descended from the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh (c. II Chron. 34:9, Jer. 41:5) with the admixture of non-Israelite colonists. Those who were deported were never heard from again.
Assyria itself was an ancient state of Western Asia of people who were also Semites.. They had had an aggressive kingdom from the time of the 20th century BCE. They had expanded quickly in the 13th and 10th centuries BCE. King Hosea of Israel in 726 BCE tried to throw off the yoke of Assyria which led to their
King Shalmaneser V's siege of Samaria and its capture in 721 by his successor,
Sargon.
 |
| Sargon was King of Assyria from 721-712 BCE. He seized the throne on the death of Shalmaneser III during the siege of Samaria which he brought to a successful conclusion, exiling many of the inhabitants. In 720, he defeated the military alliance which included the remnants of the Israelites of Samaria. His reign was marked by a series of victories. Then he was assassinated and succeeded by Sennacherib. |
Sargon annexed the country, deported 27,290 Israelites to Assyria and Media, and replaced them with Syrian and Babylonian prisoners.
 |
| Sargon II greeting a dignitary to Assyria |
In 1975,
Dr.Magen Broshi, an archaeologist at the Israel Museum, discovered that many Israelites had fled south into the neighboring Kingdom of Judah in order to escape the Assyrian onslaught. They had melded with their Hebrew cousins and kept their Hebrew identity.
He understood this by findings that
Jerusalem went through a large expansion during the 8th century BCE period. Until then, it was confined to the ridge east of the narrow, central valley of the city called the Tyropoean Valley. During this 8th century, the city exploded across the valley to the western ridge. At the end of the 8th century, the archaeological evidence showed that the city had expanded to 3 or 4 times its former size. Why?
Since 1968, due to regaining land from the 1967 attack by Jordan, Egypt and Syria and coming out of it the winner, Israel archaeologists were able to find this evidence of growth. In 1970,
Professor Nachman Avigad found a huge wall between 20 to 23 feet wide on the western ridge which he dated toward the end of the 8th century. By that time, this section of the city was already enclosed by a wall. Underneath this wall, so earlier than it, he found a structure which may date even earlier in the 8th century, showing that the western expansion of the city started before the building of the wall there. More excavations west of the wall show us that by the end of the 8th century, Jerusalem had extensive suburbs outside the city wall.
Other excavations on the western ridge of the city which were in the Citadel, the Armenian garden and on Mount Zion, have also showed evidence of initial occupation during this period. Dr. Broshi said, "that Jerusalem at about 700 BCE had mushroomed, historically speaking, overnight." It cannot be explained by natural population growth or by normal economic growth. It was a sudden, not a gradual expansion.
For millennia, the Jebusite city of Jerusalem had been confined to a small area on the eastern ridge. It was in the Middle Bronze Age of 2000 to 1550 BCE that the Canaanites first established themselves in the country and laid down the foundations of this city. It was used as the capital of a Canaanite city state. It seems to be the very same city of Salem that was ruled by Melchi-Zedek, priest of the most high "god" who was honored by Abraham in Genesis 14:18-19. The Hyksos revolution left behind in Jerusalem elements of Hittite and Hurrite habitation. In the Tel el Amarna Period of the 15th century BCE, the city was ruled by a king who was menaced by the Habiru invaders (us Jews) so their king appealed to his pharaoh for help. the Egyptians maintained a Cushite garrison in Jerusalem at that time. Joshua came along with Moses on the Exodus in about 1320 BCE and fought Adoni-zedek, Jerusalem's king and defeated him at Aijalon, but the city remained an independent enclave between the tribal areas of Benjamin and Judah. In the 12th century, Jebus-Jerusalem kept its independence with Philistine help,
until its capture by David in about 1010 BCE.
Jerusalem now became the capital of a united Israel as told in II Samuel 5:6-8. Also, this is found in I Chronicles 11:4-6. David dealt leniently with the
Jebusites, a hill people of Canaan that was defeated by Joshua. They were eventually assimilated into the Israelites. David established himself in the city, adding the fortress of Zion and also a House of Heroes for his guards. He also built a tomb inside the city for himself and his dynasty. By transferring the Ark of the Covenant there, David made Jerusalem the religious center of Israel. By his conquest, he made it the capital of an empire reaching from the Red Sea to the Euphrates. David's City was also limited. Jerusalem is called Yerushalayim in Hebrew. It is also called Zion after David's fortress, and is also known as the City of David. In the Bible it is referred to as the city of righteousness, the faithful city, the city of G-d, the holy city, city of truth. When it fell to the Romans in 70 CE, they called it Aelia Capitalina. Arabs call it el-Kuds.
It was
King Solomon, David's son, who expanded the city northward to include the area of the present Temple Mount. This extra area was used mainly just for the Temple, Solomon's royal palace and an administrative area for government buildings.
Solomon died in 920 BCE, and from this time to the end of the 8th century BCE, almost 200 years, the city limits changed very little. Then, toward the end of the 8th century, the city expanded by 3 to 4 times. The population increased from about 7,500 to about 24,000! Where did these people come from?
Dr. Broshi attributed this expansion to 2 big waves of immigration. The 1st was a population flight from the northern kingdom of Israel as a result of the Assyrian conquest in 721 BCE. According to his theory, a large number of the "lost tribes" took up residence in the newly settled parts of Jerusalem. I would think that those closest to the Judean border would have been able to reach it and be part of the 16,500 population increase in Jerusalem overnight. They would have been Dan, Benjamin, Reuben, Ephraim, Gad, and Manasseh. Working northward, there was also Issachar, Zebulun, Asher, Naphtali and finally Manasseh of the NE quadrant.
 |
Jerusalem in 1862
Population in 1838 rose from 11,000 (3,000 Jews) to
1910 and 68,000 (50,000 Jews). New quarters built outside the Old City wall
were built by Sir Moses Montefiore from 1855. By 1880s, Jerusalem was connected
with Jaffa by a railway line. WWI interrupted building, population fell to 50,000.
December 1917-city was occupied by General Allenby, British army. |
The 2nd wave of immigration which is shown by the expansion of Jerusalem came later in the 8th century from the Judean territories. It was a result of Sennacherib's invasion of Judah at the end of the 8th century. Judah lost a lot of territory in the SW part of the kingdom to Assyria, which Assyria had then ceded to the Philistine city-states. Many of the Judeans uprooted by this invasion also fled to Jerusalem.
What had been part of the Transjordan of King Abdullah, grandfather of today's King Abdullah of Jordan, were the Israelite tribes of Reuben, Gad and half of Manasseh. There also were the Cananite kingdoms of Sihon, Og, Ammon and Moab. (Tanakh-Stone Edition).
In 1967 and 1968,
Professor Moshe Kochavi of Tel Aviv University showed that almost half of the towns in the Judsean hills which were occupied during the Judean monarchy were founded during the century before the 1st Temple was finally destroyed in 587 BCE. Other scholars have found that many sites in other parts of the Kingdom of Judah; the Negev, in the Judean desert and along the Dead Sea, were first intensively settled in the 8th century BCE.
Dr. Broshi concluded that the Israelites from the northern kingdom fled not only to Jerusalem, but also to many other sites in Judea which remained untouched by the Assyrians.
In this way, large number of people from the so called Lost Tribes of Israel had melded into the society of their sister kingdom of Judah.
A similar population increase at these same sites also followed the loss of the western provinces of Judah at the end of the 8th century.
In getting back to the American Indians, today called the native Americans being connected to the 10 Lost Tribes, DNA shows that many are of the Q Y haplogroup, which originated in Siberia, Mongolia and parts of Turkey. They are found not only in North America but also in the South American Indians. My brother has the haplotype of Q1b1a, an Ashkenazi Jewish line found in Lithuania, Poland and Russia. This Q haplogroup makes up 5% of the male Jewish population. That means my brother, father, grandfather, etc all had this same Q1b1a tag. Not only my brother but our found 3rd cousin, also a Goldfoot, has this tag so also sits on the same twig on the genealogy tree as well. Other's may have the Q haplotype with slight variations, showing their connection. How did the Q's become part of the Jewish 12 tribes of Israel when they should all be J1 or J2?
If a man does not produce sons, or his sons are killed before producing children, his line ends. If he was part of a tribe, his line ended and probably a daughter's husband took over the leadership of the family tribe or clan. Being it was the men that did most of the protecting, this would have easily happened. Also, baby boys die more frequently than girl babies. We girls are a little tougher in that way. Thus, though J1 and J2 are the most prevalent DNA Y haplogroup for Jews, there are also other lines that are very common in the Jewish family; E, I, Q, R.
So, in conclusion, many of Judah's Jews of Ashkenazim and Sephardim carry genes from many of the 12 tribes of Israel. Probably, the majority are from Judah, but some should be from others as well. The fact remains that Jerusalem was highly populated when the Romans destroyed the 2nd Temple in 70 CE and though some remained, more likely in a hidden state in other parts of the land, many, in order to survive, fled. We have to remember that a huge number of the population were attacked and killed, and others were starved to death. The Assyrians had had competition in their reputation of savageness. The Romans were, also. From 721 BCE to 70 CE, little fury had changed towards Jacobs' 12 tribes.
Updated: 8/9/16 7:46pm.
Resource: Jewish digest December 1975, Found: Part of the Ten Lost Tribes from THE BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY REVIEW of Sept 1975, Vol. 1, #3 from Washington DC 20006.
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-haplogroup-we-be.html
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
The Jewish Connection by M. Hirsh Goldberg, page 106.
Tanakh, Stone Edition, Appendix page 2035 The Tribal Census.
