Archives for September 2019

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A common argument for American slavery during its long life was biblical: Noah cursed his son Ham (Gen 9.18-27), who is the ancestor of the African peoples (Gen 10.6-20), and the curse included the statement that “a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren” (Gen 9.25). So, says the exegete, while I don’t like slavery any more than you do, and it’s really too bad, yet this is what God has determined for these people, and we can’t fight it. Blacks are going to be the slaves of whites.

Or something along that line.

I should add here that the abolitionist movement in both the US and Britain was also peopled—and in fact instigated and led—by Christians, who read and believed their Bibles, and who pointed out, as I’m about to, that the above argument is a textbook example of lousy hermeneutics and thus nonsense.

Let us count the ways.

To begin with, it’s true that Noah’s son Ham incurred his father’s wrath for something he did while his father was sleeping off an apparently unanticipated episode of drunkenness (Gen 9.21-22). We’re not told clearly what angered Noah; all the passage says is that Ham “told his brothers” that their father was naked in his tent. The fact that the subsequent curse seems to be quite an overreaction to that simple act has led to lots of speculation about what really happened; some have suggested that since the phrase to “uncover [someone’s] nakedness” is later used as a euphemism for sexual activity (Lev 18.6-19; 20.11, 17-21; Ezk 16.36; 23.18), perhaps Ham took sexual advantage of his father’s incapacity, thereby committing rape, incest, and homosexuality all at the same time, and then humiliating his father by bragging about it.

Maybe. Maybe not. We don’t know, and we should say we don’t know.

But from this point, pretty much everything about the pro-slavery argument goes badly off the rails.

First, we don’t know that Ham was the ancestor of Black Africans. He’s identified as the father of Cush, which is commonly understood to be modern Sudan; Mizraim, which is almost certainly Egypt; Put, which is likely Libya; and Canaan, which is, well, Canaan. None of those regions involve sub-Saharan Africa, and the North Africans are generally more Arab-looking than “African”-looking.

Second, the slavery apologists seem never to notice that Ham himself was not cursed; Noah turned the curse on Ham’s son Canaan (Gen 9.25). Now, that’s a bit of an interpretational puzzle; some commentators speculate that Noah really, really wanted to hurt Ham and so cursed his (youngest?) son. Others speculate, with equally absent evidence, that Canaan might have been somehow involved in his father’s act. In the end, we don’t know why Canaan got the curse. But it’s interesting to note that of the four sons, the ones who apparently populated at least part of the African continent are precisely the ones not cursed.

Third, we really don’t know for sure that God intended to carry out Noah’s wishes. All that my confident belief in inerrancy requires is that the Bible accurately records Noah’s words. No context, narrow or broad, places divine endorsement on the prophecy, and while Noah is initially said to have “found grace in the eyes of the Lord” (Gen 6.8), and to be a recipient of God’s deliverance from universal judgment (Gen 6.13ff), and to be a New Testament example of faith (Heb 11.7), his words here do seem inexplicable in the little context we have. Not to mention that he was coming out of a drunken stupor.

In any case, he cursed the Canaanites. And we find, sure enough, that the Canaanites eventually experience God’s wrath and decree of extermination—not because Noah cursed them, but because they were intensely evil idolaters, sacrificing their living infants in fire to their imagined gods. Interestingly, God, who characterizes himself as longsuffering, patiently endured centuries of their violent misbehavior, giving them time to come to their senses; he tells Abraham that he couldn’t possess the Promised Land in his lifetime, “for the iniquity of the Amorites [a Canaanite tribe] is not yet full” (Gen 15.16).

So were blacks biblically cursed with a fate as slaves?

That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

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We’ve seen that there’s no evidence—of any merit—that the birthright lines of Ephraim and Manasseh (particularly Ephraim, Gen 48.14) migrated northwestward from the Assyrian captivity and became the genealogical forebears of the Anglo-Saxons. Anglo-Israelites add the claim that the kingly line of Judah (Gen 49.10), established in David (2Sam 7), is connected with the British royal house, embodied today in Queen Elizabeth II.

• The kingly line was dethroned with the deportation to Babylon of Jehoiachin (2K 24.6-16) and his uncle Zedekiah (2K 24.17-25.11), the last two kings in the Davidic line. (Nebuchadnezzar’s puppet governor, Gedaliah [2K 25.22ff], was not Davidic.)
• But Jeremiah the prophet was left behind in Jerusalem when the exiles were taken to Babylon (Jer 40.1-6), along with certain members of the royal line (Jer 41.1), including some of the king’s daughters (Jer 41.10).
• After the assassination of Nebuchadnezzar’s puppet governor, Gedaliah (Jer 41.1-3), fearing retribution from Babylon, Judah’s ad hoc leadership decided to go down to Egypt to seek protection there (Jer 41.4-6, as implied in the succeeding passage).
• Though Jeremiah argued strongly against this decision (Jer 42.7-22), the leaders carried out their plan, forcibly taking Jeremiah himself with them (Jer 43.1-7).

The biblical account ends the story with this group of Jews in Egypt, hearing God’s judgment pronounced on them by Jeremiah (Jer 44.24-30). But Anglo-Israelites continue the story by drawing on various alleged ancient traditions.

• Jeremiah eventually left Egypt, taking with him one of King Zedekiah’s daughters, Tea-Tephi by name.
• They arrived in Ireland in 569 BC.
• She married the king of Ireland, whose line continued to Scotland and was eventually embodied in King James VI.
• James VI eventually became King James I of Great Britain, establishing there the House of Stuart. He was also, incidentally, the king who ordered the translation of the King James Version of the Bible.
• With some twists and turns, the line eventuated in Elizabeth II, the current Queen of Great Britain.
• The kings of this line (along with the occasional queen) have been coronated in Westminster Abbey on a throne that encases the Stone of Scone. This is the stone that Jacob used as a pillow  (Gen 28.11) when he dreamed of the staircase descending from heaven at Bethel, and where he received the Abrahamic covenant from God.

There are several indisputable points in this sequence. Most obviously, the former bulleted list is in the biblical account, and as a conservative, I would accept all of it. Jeremiah did indeed go to Egypt (Jer 43.8). The Jewish leadership brought a lot of people with them, including the king’s daughters (Jer 43.6).

Second, the accession of James VI of Scotland to the British throne in 1603 is a well-established historical fact. And Queen Elizabeth II is currently on the throne.

But the rest of it is sketchier. A lot sketchier.

Jeremiah visiting Ireland? No mention of it in any of Irish history, despite the repeated claim in Anglo-Israelite writings that the story comes from “the Annals of Ireland.” Time for these folks to produce an original source, rather than just quoting one another.

A daughter of Zedekiah marrying the king of Ireland? Same. No documentation of this either. None. Let’s have an original source.

As to the Stone of Scone, it’s sandstone, of which there is little to none in the region of Bethel, where Jacob found himself in need of a pillow—though it’s common on the Israeli coast and further south, in the Negev and over toward Petra on the Jordanian side. The predominant sedimentary geology around Bethel is limestone. Sandstone, however, is common in Scotland, which is where British tradition places the origin of the Stone of Scone.

As we found with the “evidence” for the northwestward migration of the ten Northern tribes, this evidence is just worthless. I’m happy to see evidence that’s serious, but so far absolutely nothing rises to that standard.

Next time, an idea from outside Anglo-Israelism proper: Noah’s curse on all the black folks. And a lesson in hermeneutics.

Part 8

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Is it possible that the descendants of the leaders of the ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom, exiled in Assyria, made their way northwestward across Europe, perhaps over multiple generations, eventually arriving in the British Isles?

There’s not much in the way of evidence from the period.

I say “not much” because there’s a teeeeeeny little bit, but it doesn’t get us very far. In the apocryphal book of 2 Esdras, a Jewish apocalyptic writing probably from around the time of Christ, there’s a brief account (13.40-47) of the exiles from Assyria determining to escape over the Euphrates into a land called “Arsareth.” But the name is mentioned nowhere else in ancient writing; and nobody knows where it was, or even if the name was intended to be a place name at all.

There’s another relevant reference in Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews,11.5.2, where Josephus observes off-handedly that “the ten tribes are beyond Euphrates till now, and are an immense multitude, and not to be estimated by numbers.” Josephus is writing in the first century AD.

Here’s the thing. Neither of these sources is reliable. 2 Esdras is filled with bizarre visions and is at best deuterocanonical; the Orthodox tradition gives it that status, but the Roman Catholic church doesn’t. And Josephus tends to include unconfirmed historical accounts, especially if they portray the Jews, his people, in a good light.

So we have two accounts that may or may not agree, and we can’t trust either one of them. That’s not much of a basis for connecting my WASPy brethren to Joseph’s birthright.

A second line of evidence for the idea comes from biblical passages.

• Israel will be regathered from “the north and the west,” presumably with reference to the land of Israel (Is 49.12). But the same passage also refers to people coming “from the land of Sinim”; and while Anglo-Israelites suggest that the phrase literally means “the land of the South” and refers to Australia, the two standard Hebrew words for “south” are teman (e.g. Dt 3.27) and darom (e.g. Ezek 40.24), and the place name Sin is used elsewhere (Ezek 30.15) to refer to a location in Egypt, probably Syene (modern Aswan). The point of the passage, which I believe looks to a time yet future, is the gathering of peoples from all directions to worship Yahweh’s Servant. The use of similar passages, such as Isa 11.11, 24.14-15, and Hos 11.10-11, in support of the tribes in the west is similarly weak.
• Allegedly Zaraphath (Ob 1.20) is a reference to France. But the only other biblical reference to the place (1K 17.9-10) speaks of it as in the vicinity of Sidon (Lebanon).

A third line of evidence is from names that sound like biblical names or words.

• The word Saxons is allegedly from “Isaac’s sons.” Sounds cool, but it’s just simply not true. The fact that words sound alike—seem and seam, for example—is absolutely no evidence at all they are related to one another. In practice, they usually aren’t.
• It’s suggested that the Danites left their tribal name in place names all across Europe—the Danube, Don, Dneister, and Dneiper rivers; Denmark and Danzig; and even London. We can observe first that there are other origins for those names given in the standard reference works—you can Google them yourself. But further I note the following place names in Vietnam: Danang, Dien Bien Phu, Nam Dinh, and Don Duong. Seems as though those Danites really got around. Why do you suppose the name of Dan shows up so often, and not the name of, say, Naphtali, Zebulun, or Issachar? I think the question answers itself.
• The name America allegedly comes ultimately from hamachiri, “the Machirites” (Num 26.29), descendants of Manasseh’s son Machir. Unfortunately, though, no standard source derives the Italian name Amerigo, the immediate source of America, from Hebrew. Several sources are suggested—and you should be warned that the alleged meanings in those “baby names” books are highly unreliable—with the most popular being “house ruler” from Germanic.
• Yankee is allegedly a form of the name Jacob. While there’s again a lot of uncertainty, most place it from the Dutch janke, meaning “little John.” The Hebrew form of John is Yohanan (e.g. Jer 40.13); while the English form of the Hebrew Jacob is James. Even if Yankee were connected etymologically to the name Jacob, it would be exceedingly difficult to show that it was a reference to the biblical Jacob; there have been a lot of Jacobs over the years. The argument that “GI Joe” is a reference to Jacob’s son Joseph is similarly poorly founded.

All the evidence of a migration of the ten tribes northwestward to Europe—all of it—is poorly based and ephemeral and thus worthless. If the migration happened, we’re going to need better evidence before we believe it.

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Most of us learned in Sunday school the basics of Israel’s history—

• The call of Abraham (c. 2000 BC)
• The Exodus (c. 1500 BC)
• Establishment of the monarchy under David (c. 1000 BC)
• Civil War (c. 900 BC)
• Deportation of the Northern Kingdom of Israel by Assyria (722 BC)
• Deportation of the Southern Kingdom of Judah by Babylon (586 BC)
• Return from Babylon (536 BC)
• Dedication of the Second Temple (516 BC)

And likewise most of us know what’s missing: the Return from Assyria. Because there was none.

The two exiles are fundamentally different in that respect. Judah comes back. Israel doesn’t.

Judah is re-established as a country—though never as an independent, self-governing entity, at least in biblical times. It exists as a vassal state under Persia, then Greece, then the Ptolemies and Seleucids, and finally Rome, which eventually destroys it (AD 70) and scatters it to the nations, not to reassemble until modern times as the State of Israel (AD 1948, to be precise). Self-governing once again. At last.

But the Northern Kingdom? It disappears.

Whatever happened to those 10 tribes?

Well, to begin with, we need to talk about the numbers. Jacob (named “Israel” by God [Gen 32.28]) had 12 sons—the 12 tribes of Israel—one of whom was Joseph. Jacob gave Joseph, in effect, the birthright, which included a double portion of the inheritance—which Jacob indicated by granting both of Joseph’s two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, full standing as tribes.

So now there were 13 tribes—not counting Joseph as distinct from his sons.

After the Israelites conquered Canaan under Joshua, the land was apportioned among all the tribes (Josh 13-19)—except Levi (Josh 13.14, 33), which received no land inheritance but was given property within the apportionments of each of the other 12 tribes, so that they could serve as teachers of the Law throughout the Land (Josh 21.1ff).

To complicate matters, several tribes—Reuben, Gad, and half the tribe of Manasseh—requested land allotments east of the Jordan (Num 32.1-5), a request Moses granted (Num 32.33). So now we’re back to 13 allotments again, with a West and East Manasseh.

And further, Simeon’s land is placed inside Judah’s, as an enclave (Josh 19.9).

So how many tribes are there in the North? How many in the South? Three (Judah, Ephraim, Simeon)? Or four (Judah, Ephraim, Simeon, Levi)? out of 12, or 13? or 14, counting Manasseh twice?

I have no idea. :-)

Well, however many tribes there were in the North, the Assyrians invade in 722 BC and take the leaders of the Northern Kingdom into exile, but not everybody. How do we know that?

• That was the normal practice; you distribute the exiled leadership across the empire, and move in people from across the empire, so that they’ll intermarry with those not exiled and lessen the likelihood that the nationalist / tribal spirit will endure, thereby lowering the likelihood of future rebellions. That’s what Nebuchadnezzar did a little more than a century later (2K 25.12).
• Sargon, the Assyrian king, claimed that he took 27,290 Israelites into exile. This is not likely to have been the entire Northern population, given that 70 years before the exile Judah’s King Amaziah had hired 100,000 Israelite troops as mercenaries to help him fight against Edom (2Chr 25.6). If the Northern army could spare 100,000 soldiers, their entire population must have been quite a bit larger than that.
• There’s evidence that at least some Israelites migrated to the South before the exile, either for religious reasons—for easier access to the Temple in Jerusalem—or to escape the impending Assyrian invasion. There’s a debate between a couple of well-known modern Israeli archaeologists as to how extensive that migration was, but nobody says that no members of the Northern tribes came South.
  • Some from Ephraim and Manasseh had moved south during Asa’s reign, 150 years before the exile (2Chr 15.9).
  • Ephraim, Manasseh, and “all the remnant of Israel” donated to the renovation of the Temple under Josiah in 621 BC (2Chr 34.9), a century after the exile.
  • All 12 tribes were (apparently?) represented at the dedication of the Second Temple in 516 BC (Ezra 6.17, 8.35).
• Several passages in the New Testament speak of the existence of the “exiled” tribes—
  • Anna, the prophetess who welcomes the baby Jesus at the Temple, is of the tribe of Asher (Lk 2.36).
  • In his speech to Agrippa, Paul seems to think of all 12 tribes as still in existence (Ac 26.7).
  • James writes his epistle “to the twelve tribes that are in the Dispersion” (Jam 1.1).

What does all this mean? It means that there are no “ten lost tribes of Israel.” The tribes never left and thus were never lost.

But it’s clear that some from the ten tribes were exiled. Could they have traveled, over several generations, to Britain? We’ll take a look at that next time.

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