Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Because there are some religious groups of people out there that have some strange
beliefs centered on the one in the so-called "lost tribes of Israel" and because some
of those groups promote the absurd belief that most of the ancient Greeks would
have been the descendants of Abraham (from his earthly seed), like the Jews were,
using a false scheme of understanding by literally interpreting some Bible verses
from the Books of the Maccabees or from the New Testament, below you can read
about the Scriptural proofs against this claim:
The Alleged LOST TEN TRIBES Of Israel
There have been several misguided Biblical Theologians of late who have insisted
on making a fuss over whether or not ALL 12 Tribes of Israel were literally
'REPRESENTED' as National Israel at the time of Jesus' ministry. The following
Scriptures should put to rest any and all claims that inaccurately suggests that they
did not.
After the breakup of national Israel as a direct result of the repugnant sins of King
Solomon (1 Kings 22:31), national Israel became divided into two Houses - the
southern House of Judah and the northern House of Israel.
1 Kings 11:31 (KJV)
And he said to Jeroboam, Take thee ten pieces: for thus saith the LORD, the God of
Israel, Behold, I will rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give
ten tribes to thee
As the argument for the LOST TEN TRIBES goes, following the capture and
captivity of the 10 northern Tribes of Israel (House of Israel) by the Assyrian
Empire, it is suggested that when allowed to return to their homeland Israel, the
House of Israel chose not to return, but subsequently became LOST throughout
Europe and the rest of the world, which resulted in their LOST IDENTITIES. To
this end, according to the proponents of this lost identity theology the House of
Israel were therefore NOT represented during the ministry of Jesus - ONLY the
House of Judah (the Jews). So to make a long story short there was NO national
representation of all 12 Tribes during the Ministry of Jesus.
However, as stated above the following Scriptures shed overwhelming light on the
FACT that the House of Israel WAS indeed represented (all of national Israel)
during the Ministry of Jesus.
Matthew 15:24 (KJV)
But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of
Israel.
2
You will notice in the above Passage that Jesus declared that He was ONLY sent to
the Lost Sheep (lost souls and NOT lost identities) of the House of Israel, meaning
that His message of the Gospel according to the Abrahamic Covenant was to be
given to the Jews FIRST (national Israel's right of first refusal), and is restated by
Jesus Himself in John 4:22 and also by Apostle Paul in Romans 1:16. Therefore, if
the proponents of the Lost 10 Tribes are correct and we should define the House of
Israel as they suggest, which is only to include the Lost 10 Tribes and NOT the
House of Judah - Jews, then this poses a serious conflict between what they suggest
and what Jesus actually reveals in the two Passages below. Thus, if they are correct,
then which of the two Houses did Jesus actually come to first - the House of Israel
or the House of Judah - the Jews? Common sense teaches us that this notion is
baseless and that Jesus came to BOTH Houses of Jacob/Israel - the House of Israel
and the House of Judah (National Israel).
John 4:22 (KJV)
Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the
Jews.
Romans 1:16 (KJV)
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto
salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
Meanwhile, if we once again assume what the preponderates of the Lost 10 Tribes
suggest, and that the Israel of Romans chapter 11 pertains to the House of Israel
(not the House of Judah/Jews) as paralleled in 1 Kings 19:10, & 18 - the northern
Kingdom House of Israel, we see that God reserved to Himself even at that time of
the Prophet Elijah, Seven-Thousand of the House of Israel, whom Apostle Paul
calls the Seven-Thousand 'elect AND remnant' of God (Rom. 11:4-5,7), and that
(elect/remnant) existed in his day, then are these ELECT/REMNANT of God
directly applicable to those who would have represented the 10 Tribes of Israel
during the Ministry Jesus?
1 Kings 19:10 (KJV)
And he said, I have been very jealous for the LORD God of hosts: for the children
of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy
prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it
away.
1 Kings 19:18 (KJV)
Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto
Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him.
3
Here is the story behind that district division: Around 500 BCE, a man called
Kleisthenes overthrew the power of an earlier ruler in the Greek region Attica, and
made himself the ruler. In connection with this, perhaps for the purpose of securing
his power-position, he re-modeled the administrative division of that area.
Before this, Attica with Athens used to be divided into four phylai (clans or
tribes) which were called Geleontes, Hopletes, Aigikoreis and Argades, named
after the legendary sons of Ion, who was a figure in Greek mythology. Those four
phylai were based on family relations.
Kleisthenes discontinued that earlier tribal division, and divided the area into
administrative districts: Ten phylai, around fifty naukrarioi and perhaps one
hundred demoi.
(Those phylai or ten main districts were named after the Greek idols Erechtheus,
Aigeus, Pandion, Leos, Akamas, Oineus, Kekrops, Hippothoon, Aias and Antiochos.
But, those districts were not a tribal division. They were administrative districts,
counties.)
For some reason, a number of Anglo-Israelist writers have claimed or insinuated
that those by Kleisthenes created ten administrative districts were somehow
connected to the ten lost tribes of Israel. Those writers have referred to certain
words and things and said that they point to Israel. Thus, they have presented the
Greek idol Danae and a people called Danaoi, as supposed references to the tribe
of Dan of Israel. It is clear that the by Kleisthenes created ten administrative
districts had nothing to do with Israel or its tribes, but what about Danae and the
Danaoi?
Danae was a goddess, an idol in the Greek mythology. In those myths, she was the
daughter of Akrisios, and conceived Perseus by Zeus. Of course, the idols Zeus and
Danae and things named after them, have nothing to do with the tribe of Dan of
Israel.
Regarding the name Danaoi, it occurs some 140 times in the ancient Greek
idol-myth Iliad. Some say that in such myths, the Danaoi were subjects of the
mythical ruler Danaos, the son of Belos and Anchinoe (and twin of Aigyptos), born
in Panopolis in Egypt. Danaos was a king of Argos which was a district in ancient
Greece. In those myths, Danaos and Aigyptos father Belos was the son of Libye,
who was the granddaughter of Io and the river-god Poseidon. As you can see, the
Danaoi of Greek myths had nothing to do with Dan the son of Jacob (Israel).
Also, John R. Salverda, an apologist for Anglo-Israelism, a user of casually racist
language about the Blacks and the Negroes, denies the well-known belief that
Europe was named for the Greek myth of the Phoenician maiden Europa, the sister
7
of Cadmus, whom Zeus carried away in the form of a bull. His reason for it is that
he thinks that there was an actual historical event that led to the naming of Europe.
(Europe only became the name of a continent in the Hellenistic period, gradually
expanding from limited use for the lands below the Balkans.) It turns out that
Europe was named by some of the Lost Tribes of Israel and he laments that the
public knows pagan myths better than the Jewish myth of the Lost Tribes.
Salverdas warrant for this is a rationalizing account of the Europa myth offered by
Herodotus in Histories 1.2 whereby the Greek author reported his belief that the
bull form of Zeus represented a raiding party of Cretans, who were long famous for
their use of bulls in ritual. Salverda thinks that he can rationalize the story in a
different way, taking the maiden Europa to be allegorical. He claims that one
particular Semitic people, the Jews, symbolized nations as virgins, giving the
examples of the virgin daughter of Sidon for Phoenicia (Isaiah 23:12), the virgin
daughter of Babylon for Chaldea (Isaiah 47:1), and the virgin daughter of Egypt
(Jeremiah 46:11). He might also have mentioned the inverse of this, the whores that
represent Israel and Judah in Ezekiel 23:4, clearly playing off of this trope.
From this, he notes that the northernmost leader of the Jews was Jeroboam, and
thus claims that the Greeks feminized and transliterated Jeroboam into Europa, and
the golden calves he set up in Bethel and Dan (1 Kings 12-26-30) into the taurine
Zeus. This is problematic as an assertion since the Greek translators of the
Septuagint transliterated it as Hieroboam, which is unlike Europa; no plausible
philological path from Jeroboam to Europa can be found, even given the Greeks
notoriously bad transliteration skills. Worse, Jeroboam reigned in the late tenth
century BCE, more than three centuries after the fall of the Mycenaeans, who had
had regular contact with the Levant. Europa is already firmly entrenched in Greek
mythology by the time of Homer (Iliad 14.321) around 750 BCE, giving a scant
150 years for Jeroboam to be transformed into a Phoenician maiden. That time can
be cut significantly if we accept that eight glass plaques depicting a woman riding a
bull that were found in a beehive tomb at Midea and date to Mycenaean times were
meant to represent Europa. If this is correct, as Martin Nilsson argued in
Minoan-Mycenaean Religion, then the story of Europa predates that of Jeroboam.
The identification of this and other Mycenaean depictions of women on bulls is not
undisputed.
Salverda would like people to parallel Biblical accounts of the scattering of the
Lost Tribes to Greek myths of various Mediterranean cultures tracing their lineage
to the sons and brothers of Europa: Considering the Scriptural narrative
concerning the scattering of Israels Ten Tribes, the Greek myth of Europa and, the
ensuing accounts, describing the western migrations by her Levantine kinsmen,
display remarkable historic accuracy. This need not be due to Biblical influence.
The Greeks could see where the Phoenicians established colonies, and it takes no
8