Following Ur of Chaldees' History of the Chaldean Tribes, Where they Came From Part I

 Nadene Goldfoot                               

   We know Ur as Ur of the Chaldees.  Who were these people?  Abraham lived in the 2nd millennium about

1948 BCE.  The Babylonian Empire's heyday was in 1750 BCE, after Abraham's time.  CHALDEANS (Kaldu), West Semitic tribes of southern Babylonia attested in Assyrian texts from the early 9th century BCE.  By the middle of the 8th century they had lost their political and ethnic identity and became a constituent element in the population of Babylonia. Following Berossus, classical authors referred to Babylonians as Chaldeans and also used the name Chaldaioi as a synonym for astrologers and magicians.  

     

  

 

          

                          

The Chaldeans were traditional allies of the Elamites and Iranians in their struggle against the Assyrians.  

When the Chaldean chief, Merodach-Baladan, seized the Babylonian throne in 721 BCE, he organized an alliance between the Chaldean tribes and the Elamites against Assyria. 

Baladan, King of Babylonia lived from 721 to 710 BCE and for nine months in 703, maintained Babylonian independence in the face of Assyrian military supremacy for more than a decade.

 

Commencing in 728, the king of Assyria also officially held the title of king of Babylonia.  During that time, Merodach-Baladan, a member of the Yakin tribe, was a district ruler in Chaldea.  

 

During the unrest surrounding the accession 

of 

Sargon II of

 Assyria in 722, Merodach-Baladan entered 

Babylon and claimed the Babylonian throne, 

which had belonged to his forebear, E-

Marduk.  An attack by the Elamites two years 

later so weakened the Assyrians--though both 

sides claimed victory. 

   

The Merodach-Baladan Boundary Stone:  

Merodach-baladan II, chief of the Bit-Yakin tribe
and then King of Babylon reigned 722-710 + 703-702 BCE
boundary stone (kudurru) The king is evidently granting
property rights to one of his clients.

The Chaldeans seemed to come from the area of Parthia, which was today's Iran or yesterday's Persia. Ancient records called it  ‘Airyana vaeja’ – the ‘Aryan/Iranian expanse.’  Susa, a city, was in Persia.  

Sources: Albert T. Clay, Light on the Old Testament from Babel, 1906. Ira Maurice Price, The Monuments and the Old Testament, 1925.

According to Assyrian accounts, Sargon marched south against Babylonia in 710 BCE. After defeating the Elamites and Merodach-Baladan’s other allies, he turned toward Babylon. Merodach-Baladan fled, and the leading citizens of Babylon brought Sargon unopposed into the city, where he officially became king of Babylonia.

 In 626 the Chaldean leader Nabopolassar decided to renew the Babylonian struggle against Assyrian domination; he founded the Neo-Babylonian, or Chaldean, dynasty. In 614 the Medes of Media, led by King Cyaxares, captured the Assyrian capital, Aššur.   The Medes were sons of Japheth, and cooperated with the Babylonians in the 6th century  but later defeated by Cyrus of Persia.  

Resource:

from Encyclopedia Iranica

https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/chaldeans-kaldu-west-semitic-tribes#:~:text=CHALDEANS%20(Kaldu)%2C%20West%20Se

mitic,in%20the%20population%20of%20Babylonia.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Merodach-Baladan-II

Part 3: About the Kurds and the Position They Are In Now

Nadene Goldfoot                                       

                                                                         

Kurds fighting ISIS over Syrian border town 

The Kurds and the Jews share so much DNA that we know we are more closely related to them than to other people.  They have been fighting alongside the USA in Syria against ISIS, and now will stand alone since President Trump is pulling out the 2,000 soldiers that have been there acting as advisors and such as of now.  The presence of these combined soldiers has helped Israel from terrorists invading Israel, or their weaponry.  
                                                     

The Kurds and the Armenians are related linguistically to the Persians, and Jews lived in Persia way back in Queen Esther's day when Persia (Iran today) ruled almost half of the world, sometime before 330 BCE.  We have documented evidence of this in the scroll of Esther. 
                                                   

 "In the article in the November 2001 issue of The American Journal of Human Genetics, Ariella Oppenheim of the Hebrew University of Israel wrote that this new study revealed that Jews have a closer genetic relationship to populations in the northern Mediterranean (Kurds, Anatolian Turks, and Armenians) than to populations in the southern Mediterranean (Arabs and Bedouins). Many Kurds have the Cohen gene of the Jews, but then most Arabs also have the J1, even the J1c3d Yhaplogroup.   Initial research indicated that while only about 3 percent of general Jews have this haplotype, 45 percent of Ashkenazic Cohens have it, while 56 percent of Sephardic Cohens have it. David Goldstein, an evolutionary geneticist at Oxford University, said: "It looks like this chromosomal type was a constituent of the ancestral Hebrew population."

                                                     

"The Jewish Kingdom of Adiabene in Ancient Kurdistan

In ancient times, the royal house of Adiabene and some of the common people of Adiabene converted to Judaism. The capital city of Adiabene was Arbela (known today by Arabs as Irbil and by Kurds as Hawler). King Izates became closely attached to his new faith, and sent his sons to study Hebrew and Jewish customs in Jerusalem. His successor to the throne was his brother Monobazos II, who also adopted Judaism. 
                                                       

Kurdistan with Adiabene here someplace.  

In her 2001 study, Oppenheim references the kingdom of Adiabene, but suggests that while Adiabene's conversion to Judaism "resulted in the assimilation of non-Jews into the community ... This recorded conversion does not appear to have had a considerable effect on the Y chromosome pool of the Kurdish Jews." (Oppenheim 2001, page 1103). Some of the Jewish Adiabenians may have eventually converted to Christianity." (Queen Helena of Adiabene lived in the first century C.E. in the semi-autonomous kingdom of Adiabene in the upper Tigris region of Assyria. She famously converted to Judaism and spent many years in Jerusalem—where her generosity and piety earned her a lasting legacy.)  This reference said she converted to Judaism, but we hear it that she converted to Christianity, which was just in the first stages.  
https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/ancient-cultures/ancient-israel/the-tomb-of-queen-helena-of-adiabene/

                                                         

 Syria’s ethnic Kurdish minority took up arms amid the chaos of Syria's Civil War. The Kurds carved out a de facto ministate and have gradually taken territory they see as Kurdish — sometimes with backing from the United States, which sees the Kurds as an ally against jihadist groups. While Mr. Assad has not focused on fighting the Kurdish groups, they are opposed by neighboring Turkey, which is in conflict with its own Kurdish minority.

 The Kurds are Muslims but very disgruntled ones as they see so much terrorism coming out of it.  They live in several countries of the Middle East in Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Israel.  Evidently some are turning to Zoroastrianism, from which they started their religion.  They had their own county of Kurdistan, a mountainous region.  It's now divided among Turkey, Iran and Iraq.  

                                                       

It was Cyrus II who died in 529 BCE, King of Persia,
overran the Babylonian Empire which included Israel and Judah.  His
policy of dealing with the people was very enlightened for that day
 and in 538 BCE granted permission to the exiles of Judah to return
to their homeland and rebuild the Temple (Ezra 1:1-44)The Jews
regarded him as a Divine agent.  

                                                        

 The Kurds inhabit the mountainous region that overlaps parts of Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran, which is described as extremely rugged mountains of the Zagros range. 

They belong to the Iranian branch of the large family of Indo-European races. In prehistoric times, kingdoms called Mitanni, Kassites and Hourites reigned these mountainous areas, situated between the Iranian plateau and the Euphrates. In VII BCE, the Medes, the Kurds' equivalent of the Gauls for the French, founded an empire which, in 612 BCE, conquered the powerful Assyria and spread its domination through the whole of Iran as well as central Anatolia. The date 612, is moreover, considered by Kurdish nationalists as the beginning of the 1st Kurdish year; for them we are at present in 2601!."  Islam's calendar starts with Mohammad and the Jewish Calendar puts today in the year 5779, edging closer to the year 6,000.  

Media was an ancient Asiatic country.  The Torah refers to the Medes as the sons of Japheth who was a son of Noah. Japheth had been promised by his father to have wide territories.  Genesis 10:2 has him as the progenitor of 14 peoples- living from the Caucasus to the Aegean who would be a part of the Indo-European language group.   They had cooperated with the Babylonians in the 6th century BCE but were defeated by Cyrus of Persia.  Greek writers have confused the Medes with the Persians.  
                                                      

Ezra, reading the Torah to the returned Exiles
in Jerusalem 534 BCE from Babylonia

Jews had gone there to live back in the time of Ezra, who was the first to return to Jerusalem from the Babylonian exile.  He was a Cohen and lived in the 5th Century BCE.  With his testing the waters for the return of the Jews that had been taken to Babylon forcefully by Nebuchadnezzar in 597 and 586 BCE and returning finally in 539 BCE with a change of Babylonian leadership, others followed.  That's probably when our DNA intermingled.  Some had moved onto Kurdistan.  We figure that Jews were in Kurdistan very early on because of their Aramaic dialect spoken by Kurdish Jews right up to our modern times.  During the 20th Century, Kurdish Jews numbered from 12,000 to 18,000 and were scattered in numerous villages and townlets living as merchants, peddlers and craftsmen.  After 1948, most emigrated to Israel and found homes in or near Jerusalem.  
                                                       

Supporters of Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani wave flags and chant slogans at a rally in Irbil, Iraq, for an upcoming vote on independence. (Chris McGrath / Getty Images)as seen in article of September 23, 2017

They're a people who have been following Islam, but have been very tolerant of other beliefs, as we see with the Jews.  "Religious diversity has been a feature of Kurdistan for many centuries: " Islam has gained strong popular support and historically acted as a back-bone of the Kurdish Movement."  Not today though, with these off-shoot splinter groups such as ISIS who has been out to create THE ISLAMIC CALIPHATE with more than strict adherance to Islamic expectations.  They've gone from their renounced "religion of peace" such as the Kurds actually were practicing to the religion of "you do exactly as we say or you get your heads cut off."  That's extremism to the danger point.  
                                                             

The reign of the Medes lasted until  6 BCE , but their religion and civilization were to dominate Iran until the time of Alexander the Great.  This young man took a shine to Israel and favored them.  Many Jews were so enamored with him that they named their children "Alexander."  Today you might see it used as a surname.  Alexander was the young king of Macedonia from 336-323 BCE.  Josephus describes how he went to Jerusalem which was giving the high priest, Jaddua, a high honor, and gave many privileges to the Jews.  Historians doubt Josephus's account, but the Talmud has him meeting with him.  Alexander did suppress a Samaritan revolt which gave the Jews of Jerusalem to stress their own loyalty.  Alexander became a hero in talmudic, midrashic and medieval Jewish writings.  You have to hand it to the Medes.  They had conquered the Assyrians who had hauled away 10 of our 12 tribes that lived in southern Israel in 721 BCE of which we are just now finding; many being the Pashtuns of Afghanistan and Pakistan, no mousy pikers when it comes to fighting.  They chased out the Russians.  
                                             

Kurds Throughout the Centuries

        From this date right until the advent of Islam, the fate of the Kurds, who geographers and Greek historians call Karduchoi, was to remain linked to that of the other populations of the empires which succeeded one another on the Iranian scene: Seljuks, Parthes and Sassanids."

   Islam, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Yarsanism, Yazidism, Alevism, and Judaism were seen in Kurdistan. Today, Sunni Islam is the most adhered religion in Kurdistan
                                                       

Zoroastrianism is a religion founded by Zoroaster of the 7th century BCE, a prophet in ancient Persia.  Their thrust of belief was on light and righteousness and marriage and agriculture were prominent in their belief.  They believed in turning the earth from a waste into G-d's kingdom, and it bears some resemblance to Judaism, but Judaism rejected its dualism. Isaiah 45:7 stated that "I form the light and create darkness;  I make peace and create evil:  I am the Lord that doeth all these things," emphasizing ONE G-d.  

"Zoroastrianism was one of the dominant religions in Kurdistan before the Islamic era. Currently, Zoroastrianism is an officially recognized religion in Iraqi Kurdistan and Iran. On 21 September 2016, the first official Zoroastrian fire temple of Iraqi Kurdistan opened in Sulaymaniyah. Attendees celebrated the occasion by lighting a ritual fire and beating the frame drum or 'daf'. The Zoroastrian faith have around 50,000 followers according to a official research from the religious affairs committee from the parliament."
                                                        

Iraqi Kurdistan, 2017

 The Kurds had lost their land.  Arif, President of Iraq,  was overthrown because of the demands of Barzani, a Kurdish leader,  for Kurdish self-determination.  In 1961 Barzani led a revolt in Iraq that grew by 1962.  .  
                                                                       

Kurds in Dohuk, Iraqi, KurdistanDuhok has borne the brunt of Kurdish refugees throughout the Ba’athist ethnic resettlements and regional conflicts over the last two decades

"“The people of Kurdistan no longer know which Islamic movement, which doctrine or which fatwa, they should be believing in,” Mariwan Naqshbandi, the spokesperson for Iraqi Kurdistan’s Ministry of Religious Affairs, told NIQASH. He says that the interest in Zoroastrianism is a symptom of the disagreements within Islam and religious instability in the Iraqi Kurdish region, as well as in the country as a whole."

“For many more liberal or more nationalist Kurds, the mottos used by the Zoroastrians seem moderate and realistic,” Naqshbandi explains. “There are many people here who are very angry with the Islamic State group and it’s inhumanity.”                                 

Syrian Kurdish women going through similar angst like Jews did
in early history of Israel's creation

There are Kurds living in Israel today.  "Kurds in Israel refers to people of Kurdish origin residing in Israel. The Kurdish population in Israel is small and is mainly composed of individuals and families, who fled Iraq and Turkey during the Iraqi–Kurdish and the Kurdish–Turkish conflicts during the 20th century, as well as temporal residents arriving in Israel for medical care." "Historically, a small Arabized population of Kurdish origins exists in Galilee and Jerusalem area, though it has mostly intermixed with local Arabs; their exact numbers are not  available since they are counted as ethnic Arabs in the official Israeli census. Some Arabized families of Kurdish background can still be identified by specific surnames."  "In 2007, 40 Iraqi Kurdish children, mostly from Iraqi Kurdistan, were hosted with their parents and medically treated in Israel, as part of the project initiated by Israeli Save a Child’s Heart Organization (SACH). In 2013, it was reported that Israel accepted three Kurdish children from Iraqi Kurdistan for medical treatment. The children were settled into Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, southern Tel Aviv area. They were some of the 183 children with Iraqi nationality, entering Israel for medical treatment since the establishment of the program."
                                                    

Israeli Kurdish Jews support the Kurdish Independence in Iraq. 

Israel is a home to some 200,000 Jews of Kurdistani origins, who are mostly descended from nearly 50 thousand Kurdish Jews evacuated from Iraq during Operation Ezra and Nehemiah in the early 1950s. Israeli Jews of Kurdistani background preserve ties with the ethnic Kurdish communities in the Middle East, including with the Kurdish individuals residing in Israel.

                                              

I'm sure they will be very concerned about the Kurdish fighters left to fight alone in Syria now.  Last year, this was what was of concern in Iraq.  "An oil-rich province in the north of Iraq plans to vote in a referendum on Kurdish independence later this month, prompting fears of regional conflict as tensions escalate over who owns a portion of the country's crude.

Resource: https://www.institutkurde.org/en/institute/who_are_the_kurds.php https://www.juancole.com/2015/06/abandoning-zoroastrianism-disgust.

htmlThe New Standard Jewish Encyclopediahttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_KurdistanMiddle East, Past & Present, textbook by Yahya Armajani and Thomas M. Rickshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurds_in_Israelhttp:

//www.2001translation.com/Kurds.htm

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/19/world/middleeast/syria-civil-war-bashar-al-assad-refugees-islamic-state.

htmlhttps://thekurdishproject.org/kurdistan-map/iraqi-kurdistan/dohuk/

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/15/kurdistan-referendum-iraq-could-be-about-to-split-in-two-but-its-oil-riches-may-spark-a-war.html

Why Finding Israel's Lost Ten Tribes Has Been Important

Nadene Goldfoot

Will Jews ever unite with their lost ten tribes?  What happened to them after they were taken away?

The Assyrians attacked Israel in 721-715 BCE and took away a good portion of 10 of the 12 tribes.  King Manasseh of Judah was exiled to Assyria in 652 BCE.  After this, Assyria declined rapidly and was succeeded by Babylon.

Ezekiel, from the 6th century BCE, one of the exiled  to Tel Abib on the Kebar River in Babylonia where he prophecied for 22 years,  made prophecies 37:16, 17  which connected the final Redemption with the reunion of the whole house of Israel.  He had said, "Now you, Son of Man, take for yourself one piece of wood and write upon it, "For Judah and for the Children of Israel, his comrades."; and take one piece of wood and write upon it , "For Joseph,  the wood of Ephraim and all the House of Israel, his comrades. Then bring them close to yourself, one to the other, like one piece of wood, and they will become  united in your hand."  The 12 tribes had been from the 12 sons sons of Jacob; Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, Benjamin, Dan, Naphtali, Gad and Asher. Jacob was the grandson of Abraham.  His father was Isaac.

 Moses (1391-1271 BCE),  our Prophet of Judaism, had picked Levi to carry on the priestly office as he and his brother Aaron were of this tribe.  Levis were not allotted territory in the land division between tribes, so to keep the number 12, Moses divided the tribe of Joseph into 2 tribes for his sons, Ephraim and Manasseh.  The Levis' job was to be teachers, so were to move around to each tribe and live with families, very much like teachers did in early America.  We had 603,550 tribal members entering Canaan with Judah having 74,600 and Benjamin with 35,400.  Ephraim had 40,500 and Manasseh had 32,200.

Joshua led everyone into Canaan and was in charge of the assignment of land.  Reuben, Gad and half of Manasseh were to live in what was later called Transjordan (today's Jordan).. Naphtali and Asher were given the Sidonian frontier in Galilee, around where I lived in Tzfat (Safed).  Issachar and Zebulun were to have the Valley of Jezreel area (Megiddo, Beit Shean, Afula) .  Ephraim and the other half of Manasseh were to live in the mountains of Samaria (now the West Bank) with Benjamin to their south and Judah further south.  Dan got to live along the seacoast where Jaffa and Tel Aviv  lie.  Simeon got the Negev, which is a desert area and today makes up half of Israel.  Beersheba, Makhlesh Ramon, Kibbutz Sde Boker and Eilat are in the Negev.  .

When King Solomon died, Israel split into two states.  Judah, Simeon and most of Benjamin became the southern state  of Judah.  Then the Assyrian kings invaded in 732 and 721 and exiled the northern tribes of Israel to Assyria, Media and the neighboring lands of Aram-Naharaim.  Later more were exiled by the Babylonians in 586.

Assyria was an empire in existence from the 25th Century BCE to 608 BCE.  It included today's Syria when Damascus was an important center, Turkey, Iran and Iraq.  Today, Media (Medes) constitutes the NW part of Iran.  The empire extended from Aran (Azerbaijan) to Afghanistan.  Persian speakers, Kurds and Azaeris  are the descendants.   Mesopotamia is today's Iraq and the homeland of Babylonia. Shortly after Muhammad died in 632, the Muslims conquered it in 637. Jews who had been expelled from Arabia settled here in Kufa, which was 110 miles south of Bagdad.  .

Since 1948, Israel's re-birth in today's period, Jews have been again returning to their Holy Land.  I lived there from 1980-1985 and saw Jews from every country imaginable who no doubt are representatives of mainly, only 2 of the tribes.  We have been seeking the other 10 and wonder what happened to them and if there are any remnants of those tribes still living.  The hunt has turned up some surprising results. totday's Jewish population is almost 6 million.

It turns out that the Taliban contains many Pashtuns of Pakistan and Afghanistan who claim descendancy of the lost 10 tribes.  There are 15 million Pathans.  Not only that, but their culture has included many Jewish practices in their homes, but not in their religion, which today is Islam.  They do such things as circumcise their boys at 8 days, wear a fringed garment like a tzizit, light candles on Friday night and have food taboos similar to today's Jews.  However, those I have spoken with claim to hate Jews.  As one very influential young man told me, "Let me be straightforward towards you.   Like my friends I too am against Jews, and dislike Jews and their views.  It doesn't matter what you think about me after this comment of mine. I might have lost Israelite roots but I reject that and I declare I have Aryan roots from now on, so that I don't be related or bonded with any Jew."

Historically, some people from the 10 tribes remained in their homeland living with the other remaining 2 tribes.  They most likely were absorbed with the last Judean exiles who were deported to areas nearby in 597-586 BCE such as Media, Assyria and Mesopotamia.   The Pashtuns could have been part of this group who have definitely assimilated but still recall  their past history.  What they'd like to do is just take all of Israel and especially Jerusalem, as many Muslims have as a goal.

Throughout history, we have received reports of such claims.  Eldad Ha-Dani thought he found them in  African mountains. Today the Lemba tribe is found to have the Cohen gene, tested and found by Tudor Parfitt in his search for the Ark of the Covenant. A group of Ethiopians claim descendancy from the Queen of Sheba who visited Solomon.  They have been airlifted to Israel. Their dna does not reflect this with today's testing, but they have been practicing much of Judaism for a long time and see themselves as Jews.     Benjamin of Tudela heard rumors of them living in Central Asia.  David Reuveni said he was the brother of one of their rulers somewhere in Arabia.  We now know that there were many  Jewish tribes in Saudi Arabia at the time of Muhammad (570-620 CE).  Antonio de Montezinos said he found them in South America.  Shabbetai Tzevi (1626-1676) was  a false messiah from Turkey,  appointed rulers over various tribes. The Turks forced him to convert to Islam.   One rumor was that they were the Japanese, and another thought the Anglo-Saxons were the lost tribes, even thinking that the royalty of Britain were from them.

If we are still depending on our final Redemption to take place when our 10 tribes unite with us remaining 2, it is not happening soon.  It would be wonderful, though, if only in peace.

Reference: The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://www.taroscopes.com/miscellanous-pages/medes.html
http://www.aina.org/brief.html about Assyria
The Lost Ark of the Covenant b Tudor Parfitt
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Society_&_Culture/geo/Jezreel.html
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vie/desert.html - Negev
http://www.geni.com/projects/Where-are-The-Ten-Lost-Tribes-of-Israel/3474
Tanach, The Stone Edition, Art Scroll Series