THE TWELV-ISH TRIBES OF ISRAEL AND HOW THEY GOT LOST

Like the seven dwarves, most people can name a few Israelite tribes but very few can name all of them. Likewise, it is generally understood that there are twelve tribes, but that assumption isn’t true. There are actually thirteen tribes of Israel. This is not an alternative interpretation or conspiracy, it’s right there in the Old Testament.

Eleven tribes are named after the sons of Jacob/Israel born of four different women (two wives, two concubines), as follows in order of birth:  

Reuben (Leah)
Simeon (Leah)
Levi (Leah)
Judah (Leah)
Dan (Bilhah)
Naphtali (Bilhah)
Gad (Zilpah)
Asher (Zilpah)
Issachar (Leah)
Zebulon (Leah)

Benjamin (Rachel)

The outlier is Joseph, firstborn of Rachel, his father Jacob’s favorite. (He had to work 14 years to earn her, but that’s a different story.) Yet there is no tribe of Joseph.

Instead, the twelfth and thirteen tribes are the descendants of Joseph’s two sons: Ephraim and Manasseh. Just as the Messiah’s genealogy is tainted with Canaanite and Moabite blood, it is of interest that the lineage of these two Israelite tribes is half Egyptian. As viceroy, Joseph was a high official in the Pharaoh’s court and was married to Asenath, daughter of the high priest of Egypt. He was even mummified and given a royal Egyptian burial, as was Jacob. This could not have pleased YHWH. although his comments are not recorded. 

Joseph’s sons’ offspring are referred to as half tribes, which is a bit misleading (in fact Manasseh had by far the largest land grant). The origin of this tribal distribution is the inheritances assigned by Jacob/Israel on his death bed. According to tradition, first born Reuben should have been awarded a “double portion,” but Jacob revoked his inheritance because of his bad habit of doing the nasty with Dad’s concubine Bilhah (she was also birth mother to his brothers Dan and Napthali). As a consequence, Reuben’s extra share of the estate was given to Joseph’s sons. They were full tribes and received land allotments in the Book of Joshua.

There is a slightly funny passage in Genesis 38 which describes the blessing scene.

“So Joseph brought them from beside his knees, and he bowed down with his face to the earth. And Joseph took them both, Ephraim with his right hand toward Israel’s left hand, and Manasseh with his left hand toward Israel’s right hand, and brought them near him.” - Genesis 48:12-16.

But simple Bible math shows that the two “boys” were at least twenty years old, so being beside Joseph’s knees would have been awkward.

The thirteenth tribe is Levi: the Levites, Moses’s clan. If Judah is the tribe with the highest profile historically and geographically, then the Levites have to be a close second. As the priestly group, they did not get a land allotment, but instead got dinner. As the officials in charge of sacrifices and – by extension – the economic benefits of the Tabernacle/Temple, they were on the receiving end of animal barbeques, shew bread and grain offerings. If you have ever wondered about the high standards specified for sacrificial offering ingredients found in Leviticus and elsewhere, consider who wrote the scripture and who benefitted.

Although God assigned the Levites to the priesthood, it was certainly not because of their moral standards. Levi himself was one of the ringleaders of a horrible, sneaky and otherwise reprehensible massacre of recently circumcised men of Shechem in Ex. 34 (see Fun Bible Story X). Later in Ex. 32, when Moses calls for men to execute attendees of the raucous golden calf soiree, it is the Levite family who answer the call. That’s  3,000 YHWH-sanctioned murders about ten minutes after the sixth commandment got inscribed.

Furthermore, we can find Levites behaving very badly in at least two other stories in Judges. So their appointment to the Hebrew priesthood must have been yet another component of YHWH’s inscrutable plan.

According to the Hebrew Bible and supported by actual history, the Assyrians deported the population of Israel – the Northern Kingdom – in 722BCE. At this point in the Iron Age, the Northern Kingdom (which was Samaria) and the Southern Kingdom of Judea were separate and estranged nation states. 

Sargon II annexed Samaria to the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The scattering of the population was a tragedy certainly, but entirely consistent with the martial protocols of the time. The mass deportation policy was intended to minimize revolts in conquered regions.

Traditionally the number of lost tribes is ten, but to be consistent with the scriptures it should be only nine. There were twelve land allotments in total and Benjamin and Simeon were part of Judea, which leaves nine to be deported. There were also Levites scattered throughout the tribal regions.

To be clear, the Assyrians didn’t care what tribes they were exporting because they didn't know they were biblical, so we don’t have the benefit of the Chaldeans' documentation. 

None of this has dampened thousands of years of conspiracy theories.

A somewhat credible narrative has the lost Jews migrating northward, where they evolved into the Scythians, an Iranian, horse warrior clan who may have eventually become Crimeans. There are some suggestions that Scythian is the etymological root of Ashkenazi. There are those who insist the deported Northern Kingdom tribes hooked up with the Goths and eventually evolved into the Anglo-Saxons who settled Great Britain. 

Could Sting be Jewish? 

A belief system known as British Israelism claims they have proof that the British Royal family is descended from the lost tribes. I’m keeping an open mind about this theory, which is more than I can say for the Encyclopædia Britannica. An entry in the 1910 edition says: “The theory of British-Israelism rests on premises which are deemed by scholars—both theological and anthropological—to be utterly unsound."

Even less likely is an ambitious scenario from Israel United in Christ, which posits that the various tribes are the forebears of a wide range of ethnicities: Simeon became black Dominicans, Judah became American Blacks, Benjamin became West Indians, Levi became Haitians, Ephraim became Puerto Ricans and Napthali became Argentinians. 

Mormons – who seem so sane but are actually as bat shit crazy as any chemtrail proponent – believe that Native Americans were derived from the lost tribes. The angel Moroni discovered them in 421 AD. LDS also believe good Mormons get their own planet and wear magic underwear.

Others claim the Japanese and other peoples in Africa and Asia are the lost Israelites. But chances are they are wrong.

The historical people of Judah and Israel are less likely to be the offspring of a legendary Bible patriarch and more likely to be a key component of the Hebrew origin myth. These geographic regions were historically parts of Canaan, and the individual tribes were involved in the assimilation process that followed the Late Bronze Age collapse. That is a different conversation.

The umbrella tribe of Judah (Judah, Benjamin and Simeon plus left over Levites) hung on in the south until the Babylonians had enough of them. In 586 BCE King Nebuchadnezzar sent them into exile six hundred miles away into far eastern Iraq. 

Upon their return, this region of the south eastern Mediterranean coast became the Persian / Greek / Roman province of Judea.