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=> Email to Ray => Topic started by: Craig on August 19, 2006, 02:59:57 PM
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where did the remaining 11 tribes go?
Dear Reader:
Most emails I receive are entirely too long: yours is a little short. I assume you mean where did the Eleven tribes of Israel go after their respective captivities: Israel to Assyria and Judah to Babylon? Well actually, all twelve tribes were dispersed. Peter writes to: "the strangers [exiles of the dispersion SCATTERED...." (I Pet. 1:1).
James (who may have written the very first book of the New Testament (52-62 AD?) writes to: "the TWELVE TRIBES which are SCATTERED ABROAD" (James 1:1).
James and Peter address those who were believers in Christ Jesus who were at the time of their writing scattered abraod among many Gentile countries. Where are they today? I suspect that many of them are exactaly where they were when Peter and Paul wrote to them. Peter uses the broad area of "Asia" as the destination of many of them. Surely the whole of the Meditteranian countries (remember that Paul purposed to go as far as Spain to meet with Believers).
Some undoubtedly married into the nationalities of the countries in which they lived, while some may have migrated North and West into Europe. But remember that all the countries of Europe already had populations of unbelievers long before any of Israel's tribes would have migrated there. And so, I doubt that any one nation can be designated as a primary pure race of one of the Twelve original tribes.
Certainly I don't suspect that Russians, Japanese, most of Africa, or the New World to be of any of the direct lines of Israel. Hey, I am not an historian or a scholar, but I believe that what little I have presented has Scriptural grounds. I wouldn't get too caught up in such books as THE UNITED STATES AND BRITISH COMMONWEALTH IN PROPHECY, or JUDAH'S SEPTRE AND JOSEPH'S BIRTHRIGHT, if I were you.
God be with you,
Ray