The “lost tribes” were the 10 tribes of Israel, the kingdom north of Judea, which were formed after Solomon became King. Before Solomon, during the reign of King David, there were two high priests. Solomon chose the one who favored him to remain and the other, with his followers, were banned from the kingdom. They formed the northern kingdom of Israel, while Solomon ruled Judea. Judea’s Jews, I believe, are now called the Kohanin (Cohens) and Levis - priests and their attendants - while Israeli Jews are called “other Israelis.” (Keller, Steinhardt, or someone else better edified can correct me.) The Assyrians conquered Israel, but not Judea, and the tribes of Israel were scattered.
About 50 years after Babylonia conquered the Jews, they were defeated by the Persians, who allowed the Jews to return home. Many remained out in the diaspora, but some filtered back to Jerusaleum, the home that G-D promised them, and it was at that time that the Torah was written.
I don’t believe that this is particularly accurate.
The kingdom of Israel is said in I Kings to have fissioned into its two components, Israel and Judah, after Solomon’s death, at the beginning of the reign of his son, Rehoboam. Abiathar (the high priest who backed Solomon’s half-brother, Adonijah, and as a result got deposed) was not banished from the kingdom; rather, he was sent back to his ancestral home in Anathoth (there is reason to believe, although not conclusive evidence, that the prophet Jeremiah was a descendant of Abiathar).
The division is a false one; kohanim are considered the descendants of Aaron, whilst the rest of the tribe of Levi (to which Aaron belonged) are, of course, Levites. Other Jews, nominally descended from the tribes of Simeon, Judah, and Benjamin, are all Israelites.
Abiathar’s followers did not form the Northern Kingdom; indeed, one of the charges leveled against Jeroboam I, leader of the revolt against Rehoboam and first king of the Northern Kingdom, is that he appointed non-kohanim as priests.
The Torah, whether a traditional or a liberal view is taken of it, was certainly composed before the Babylonian Exile. The Torah, of course, is not synonymous with the Tanakh (called by Christians the “Old Testament”); parts of the latter were composed after the Exile.
After Solomon was seated on the throne of his father, Adonijah asked Solomon’s mother, Bathsheba, to implore Solomon to allow him (Adonijah) to wed Abishag. Bathsheba did so, but Solomon’s reply was “Ask the kingdom for him as well, for he is my elder brother and has with him Abiathar the priest and Joab, son of Zeruiah… this day shall Adonijah be put to death.” Then King Solomon sent Benaiah, son of Jehoiada, who struck him dead. (1 Kings 12-25)
The Torah had a long oral tradition before it was reduced to writing and then redacted. There are strands of four different redactors, called Yahwist, Elohist, Priestly, and Deuteronomic strands. Each of these sources incorporated old material.
“This sacred history was formed within the bosom of early Israel, guided by the spirit of God. It was sung beside the desert campfires; it was commemorated in the liturgical feasts, such as Passover; it was transmitted by word of mouth from generation to generation—until all was brought together in writing, * about the sixth century B.C. *, when the literary formation of the Pentateuch came to an end.” The New American Bible, 1970. (My italics.)
jimmmy, who are these Slavic Kuzars? Never heard of them.
The theory of Khazar origins of a significant bulk of the Ashkenaz population is well known. Arthur Koestler popularized the idea in his book The Thirteenth Tribe. The Khazars were a Turkic people who lived along the lower Volga in the 9th century. The Karaim are a Jewish sect of Lithuania who follow the Torah but not the Talmud. They speak a Turkic dialect.
There was a Roman Jewish community in the south of France in the 1st century. Thus the legends of Mary Magdalene migrating there after Christ had been cruficied, or ascended, or whatever happened to him. The local legends of Mary Magdalene in the South of France have been current there for many centuries. The standard explanation for Ashkenazim origin is this French Jewish community migrating through the Rhineland and from there into Eastern Europe.
As for Yiddish being Slavic in origin, please don’t be absurd. Its grammar is thoroughly German, and its vocabulary is overwhelmingly German, with some Slavic loanwords.
The Khazar theory of Ashkenaz origin is very controversial, and from what I’ve heard, largely rejected by most historians. However, the fact is there was a large Khazar Jewish population in the lower Volga basin and the steppes north of the Caucasus. Did all those people have no descendants? What became of them? It seems plausible to me that after the fall of the Khazar state, with steppe nomads like Pechenegs, Cumans, and finally Mongols on the rampage in their former lands, they would have migrated north and west, and met the German-speaking Jews migrating east about the same time, and that the two populations merged to result in the Ashkenazim as we know them. The survival of Turkic-speaking Karaim in Lithuania (who didn’t assimilate linguistically because they held separate religious beliefs) lends weight to this possibility. I do not think the Khazars are a sufficient explanation for all of the Ashkenazim, but neither can they be entirely dismissed.
While I agree that the currently accepted theory is that Yiddish began as a Germanic dialect, it is hardly fair to label a possible Slavic origin as “absurd” when a number of linguists, including Paul Wexler, have been studying that very possibility. (I am not yet persuaded that they are correct and they are distinctly a minority; I just think that a dismissal as “absurd” is premature. If it was Wexler, alone, he might just be an odd duck, but there were a pair of researchers at the University of Jerusalem (whose citation I cannot find, worse luck) who also put forth the posibility of a Slavic origin around 1997.
tomndebb, I’m sorry, but there is no way, speaking as a linguist who has studied both Yiddish and German as well as Balto-Slavic, there is simply no way that Yiddish can be Slavic. The verb structure, the noun structure, the sentence structure, are all as Germanic as can be. Yiddish does that German thing of breaking the pieces of the compound verb up and moving them to different parts of the sentence. Yiddish uses the definite and indefinite articles, which are features of English, Dutch, and German, but unknown in Slavic.
OK Jojo Mojo Earlier in my post I clearly say Slavic and Khurzars but later I call the khuzars Slavic & of course they are Turkic.
re the Language I merely posted a quote from a genetics company that quoted “linguists”. I don’t know if that was absurd or not, but it sure sounds like some responsible linguistic voices disagree with you – maybe you are right I have no way of telling.
But Hey let me say : how about me getting an assist from one of the boards masters of biblical/pre- history (polycarp & tamerlane being the others). That was great. It is kind of like Annie Hall when Marshal Mcluhan suddenly appears in and helps Woody out.
It is all controversial. The OP is controversial. Lets put it this way & you guys synthesize and hack this is a straw man:
The main pre-genetic problem of Western origin (traditional) for the Ashkenazim is that there simply aren’t enough Jewish bodies in the West in 1000 for what we see in the East in 1700.
Does anyone have a responsible cite that argues this isn’t a problem? Assuming no, (this is pretty uncontroversial) then the solutions would seem to be:
A. The numbers from the West are screwed up.
B. The numbers in the east are from a huge well (maybe as much as circa 20% of then-world jewery) of unknown jews living in the Balkans or asia minor – or even somewhere else- waiting to migrate north
C. There were significant conversions and admixture from the east maybe exactly as the linguist Mojo lays out so well for us. A great cite is Sept 17, 2003 Am J of Hum Gen which has an an article on Multiple Origins of Ashkenazi Levites 73:000, 2003 which says basically they come from everywhere including Turkic people. Copyright prevents posting it and I can’t link to it – can anyone?
Does anyone have a great/better cite, offering the best solution or mix of solutions, or this destined to go off to GD/IMHO?
BTW: Tho I think we all agree Jews were in European coastal towns from Pre-classical times & that might be literally the answer to the OP to the letter, I’m not sure it does so in spirit, unless you are arguing a few thousand 9at most ) jews scattered around a few club med trading towns gave birth to Eurpoean Jewery.
And don’t forget the Lemba tribe of South Africa. According to the NOVA story, they are of jewish descent (mitocondrial DNA IIRC). Typical black african appearance, but practice circumcision, variations of Kosher diet, etc. I have been wondering about Israel and the right of return about them.
My favorite diaspora story was when I visited a Synagoge on the island of Rhodes. The old woman who was passing out the skullcaps asked if either my companion or I spoke Spanish. I do, so we had a nice conversation. Aparently there was a moderate sized Jewish community on the island. It was founded in 1492 when the jews were expelled from Spain. They continued to speak spanish until, what 1943 when their hosts gathered them up and shipped the to Auschwitz. Bastards. Anyway. I got the chance to speak spanish to an Auschwitz survivor.
The Jews of Sarajevo, Bosnia, speak Judeo-Spanish too. The Judeo-Spanish language is also called Ladino.
The Spanish-speaking Jews came to populate the Balkans beginning in 1492, when they were expelled from Spain. The Ottoman Turkish Sultan Bayezid II saw a population of educated, skilled people who would be an asset to developing his own civilization, so he invited the Jews to settle in Ottoman lands. Those were the days when Jews and Muslims thought of themselves as natural partners in civilization.