Ephraim and Judah, Part I

This will be a bit of a lengthy post (or even two), with shades of religious, social and even political overtones.  It might even be seen as somewhat controversial, but I think it's well grounded in both scripture and observation.  To get around to this topic, I'll have to also establish a lot of context, and while I'm doing so, I'll eventually end up answering one of the very first topics that I outlined as one I wanted to discuss: what happened to the Lost Tribes?  That's actually incidental to what I really want to talk about, though.  What prompted this was a discussion on Facebook, where I referred to Ben Shapiro as a chickenhawk, who is constantly agitating for America to get involved in wars in which no American interest is served at all, in service to Israel.  In this, Shapiro comes from a long tradition of Jewish American politicians, pundits and other "people of influence" who clearly have divided loyalties; or rather; their true loyalty, in spite of their citizenship and paperwork, is more to Israel than to America.  A friend of mine had what I interpret as a knee-jerk, yet not unpredictable reaction against this, jumping to the conclusion that I had effectively turned my back on Israel, decided that we should let it burn, breaking our alliance with it, and essentially ushering in the End Times, or at least making them much worse then they arrive.

Like I said, this is a controversial topic, and one that is so because there is a long history of manipulative guilt-tripping with which we have spent our entire lives being indoctrinated.  In addition to exploring the ramifications of Ephraim and Judah, I will also be forced to evaluate the nature of the relationship between the two today and question whether or not it is a healthy one.  And as a quick foreshadowing of my conclusions, keep in mind that in Isaiah 11:13 it certainly suggests that up until the very Last Days, Ephraim shall envy Judah and Judah shall vex Ephraim.  That's still an ongoing issue right now.

Some Historical Context
While there were, of course, 12 tribes, a casual perusal of the blessings given to each of the 12 sons in Genesis 49 (or the reiteration of them spelled out in Deuteronomy 33) certainly suggests that Joseph and Judah most certainly get the blessings that make them relevant historically, while the others in most respects, do not.  The rivalry between Judah and Ephraim, as the more prominent portion of Joseph, came to a head fairly early, and the nation of Israel was divided into the Northern Kingdom of Israel, largely led by Ephraim, and the Southern Kingdom of Judah, led by—as you can imagine—Judah.  Already at this point, the other tribes, while present in the area, had faded from political and historical prominence.  The heirs of Solomon (who was of the Tribe of Judah himself) had styled themselves, as the Lord warned that they would, as potentates that taxed their subjects grievously.  Ephraim, already showing themselves (and this will be interesting later) unable to bear the burden of monarchical tyrants, rebelled and established their own kingdom.  Most of the rest of the Tribes flocked to them.

Some modern scholarship suggests that this political division may have been preceded by a vast cultural difference that grew out of the more urban, "sophisticated" core of Judah and its kings as opposed to the more rural, farm-steading and home-steading North (this is also a pattern that is shockingly consistent many centuries later.)  Be that as it may, the North Kingdom, as well documented in the Old Testament, due to wickedness and meddling in the affairs of greater empires around it, found itself effectively destroyed.  Assyria in several waves, sacked the kingdom, deported many of its citizens, and essentially demolished it as an independent polity.  As many have pointed out, this does not mean that literally every single Israelite citizen was carted off to Ninevah or elsewhere.  Some interesting scholarship suggests that no more than about 20% of the population was deported by Assyria, and that many in fact fled south and were assimilated into Judah; Jerusalem experienced a swelling of its population at that time.  Even if considerably more of the population was moved, there was still undoubtedly a not insignificant number of Israelites who stayed.

But certainly enough of Israel was carried off that they were later able to become lost to history and the knowledge of their kin, and became the so-called Lost Tribes.  Judah, of course, was also famously conquered and its citizens carried off, this time by the Babylonians who inherited the mantle of the Assyrians.  In this case, however, the Jews did not lose sight of their identity, nor become "lost" and later under the aegis of Persian kings, they returned to Judea, and rebuilt the temple, and reestablished their nation.  They were later expelled from their homeland again in the time of the Romans, most decisively by Hadrian who prompted their ultimate diaspora by renaming Jerusalem Aelia Capitolina and renaming the entire province of Judea Syria Palaestina, and banning Jews from living there.  It's not my purpose to try and summarize the long Jewish diaspora, though, or explore (much) in the way of how it came to come to an end of sorts with the establishment of the modern nation of Israel and its call of aliyah to all Jews—many of still live in exile, although it certainly appears from scripture that Israel is the homeland assigned by God Himself to the Jews and that's where they're expected (eventually) to go.  Just because I'm not summarizing it, though, doesn't mean that it isn't pretty well known.  The Jews were never "lost" and they have, in fact, reestablished their nation on its native soil once again.  They appear to have maintained a high degree of social and political cohesion for the most part, and they even appear to have done a decent job of maintaining genetic and ethnic cohesion throughout their Exile, so the Jews are not only self-aware of who they are, but so is everyone else.  The same cannot be said for Ephraim (and the rest of the tribes, for that matter) so the next section will be exploring where the Lost tribes may have gotten off to.  It's clear from the blessings given to them and the prophecies concerning them that having them just disappear never to be heard from again is not the destiny of the tribes of Joseph.

But first a small digression.  The ethnic group that calls itself the Samaritans were a remnant of the tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh and some other Hebrew elements, particularly some of the Levites.  This group was formerly relatively populous, but are now nearly extinct.  For the most part, they've either assimilated into either the modern Israeli ethnic grouping, or have assimilated into neighboring Muslim populations.  Many were also killed during an uprising against the Byzantines, in who's territory they lived.  When the Jews returned from their first exile under the protection of the Persians, they looked in askance at the Samaritans, who's confessional tradition had diverged somewhat from their own.  They also saw them as hybridized with non-Hebrew natives, or even as not Hebrew at all (the pejorative Cuthim designation was meant to imply that they were merely Arameans from nearby Kutha who had moved into the depopulated land of Israel and were aping some of the traditions of the Jews.)  Ezra famously did not allow them to aid the returned Jews in the building of the temple, or even of Jerusalem itself.  There were probably good reasons for this; reasons which our own culture has largely forgotten—the Jews had managed to maintain religious and cultural continuity and had been sharply chastened for mingling with outsiders which had introduced traditions, religions, and temptations which were sharply at odds with their divinely inspired and guided worship of Jehovah, with disastrous consequences.  The Jews had been very explicitly instructed not to develop a pluralistic society, and were under no illusions that something equivalent to the cultural Marxist mantra of "Diversity is our strength" was true; they knew that homogeneity and strict adherence to tradition was their strength.  Diversity had very nearly been their complete and total downfall.

The Lost Tribes
"We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes; that Zion (the New Jerusalem) will be built upon the American continent; that Christ will reign personally upon the Earth; and that the Earth will be renewed and receive its paradisaical glory."

Article of Faith #10, among many other scriptural references, clearly refer to separate bodies of Israelites other than the Nephites/Lamanites and the never-lost Jews.  The extended metaphor of the olive tree by Zenos recounted in Jacob 5 refers to at least three groups, corresponding to the Jews, the Nephites/Lamanites, and another anonymous group of Israelites that have been separated from the main body.  We also know that Christ visited another group of Israelites other than the Jews and the Nephites; in 3 Nephi 15-16, he refers to visiting the Lost Tribes.  In various sources, some of them apocryphal (but also in the Doctrine and Covenants, section 110, for example) it speaks of the Lost Tribes having gone north.  The apocryphal book of Esdras says, "These are the ten tribes which were led away captive out of their own land in the days of Josiah [Hoshea] the king, which (tribes) Salmanassar the king of the Assyrians led away captive; he carried them across the River, and (thus) they were transported into another land. But they took this counsel among themselves, that they would leave the multitude of the heathen, and go forth into a land further distant, where the human race had never dwelt, there at least to keep their statutes which they had not kept in their own land. And they entered by the narrow passages of the river Euphrates. For the Most High then wrought wonders for them, and stayed the springs of the River until they were passed over. And through that country there was a great way to go, (a journey) of a year and a half; and that region was called Arzareth. There they have dwelt until the last times."  2 Kings and 1 Chronicles also agree with this in broad strokes, and in Jeremiah 23 it states; "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that they shall no more say, The Lord liveth, which brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt;  But, The Lord liveth, which brought up and which led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all countries whither I had driven them; and they shall dwell in their own land."

In D&C 133, Joseph Smith wrote the following, from the Lord: "They who are in the north countries shall come in remembrance before the Lord; and their prophets shall hear his voice, and shall no longer stay themselves; and they shall smite the rocks, and the ice shall flow down at their presence.  And an highway shall be cast up in the midst of the great deep. … And they shall bring forth their rich treasures unto the children of Ephraim, my servants.  And the boundaries of the everlasting hills shall tremble at their presence.  And there shall they fall down and be crowned with glory, even in Zion, by the hands of the servants of the Lord, even the children of Ephraim.  And they shall be filled with songs of everlasting joy."  Without getting ahead of myself, I'm going to posit that that prophecy has largely already come true.

If the Lost Tribes went northward, where did they go?  While I like some of the old romantic notions that some early members of the church believed of a Hollow Earth or the Lost Tribes living at the North Pole, naturally, I don't actually believe it.  Therefore, the Lost Tribes are not still lost out there somewhere; they had to have lost their identity, assimilated into some other population, forgotten who they were, become genetically, culturally and linguistically swamped, and now we know what's left of them by some other name.  In spite of that, the Lord does not forget the covenants made to the House of Israel, and even those who are descended so remotely from Israel that there is no genetic marker that can be identified by science, are yet subject to the covenants made by the Lord unto his distant ancestor.

This makes our search for the Lost Tribes both easier, and yet more difficult.  We don't expect to find genetic clues (or we would have already) or any hint of a a "pure" Hebrew population in the historical record, because they don't exist.  But it means that whatever solution we do find has to be, by its very nature, somewhat speculative.  In the past, people often looked for the former; actual remnants of Israel that remained "pure".  Among these was a movement called British Israelism, which posited that the British were literal descendants of the Lost Tribes.  Sadly, it has been scientifically refuted, but only because the hypothesis was actually incorrectly stated.  If, instead of trying to identify various historical populations as the "Lost Tribes" one assumes that various historical populations inherited a minute element from the Lost Tribes, which eventually through intermarriage, spread the legacy of the Covenant with Abraham more widely through the population, you can get the seemly contradictory (yet not really) notion that many nations of the Gentiles could actually be Covenant People—subject to the covenant through their descent, thin enough to not appear in genetics, but not forgotten by the Lord—more widely throughout the population.

But before we get too far; let's get into some of the speculation and interpretation that has gone on with this subject over the years.  The British Israelism movement was the most developed of these, and articulated much of what went for theory in those days of the Lost Tribes eventual destination and identity.  It was very popular to assume that the Scythians/Saka were the Lost Tribes at one point.  This is both unlikely and unnecessary.  The Scythians and Saka (two reflections of the same name) are quite well known to history, and we even know a fair bit about their language—an eastern dialect of it known as Khotanese Saka is quite well known, and the Ossetian language spoken in the Ossetian region on the Russian/Georgian border is the sole living example of it.  It is, unsurprisingly, not a Hebrew language, but an Iranian one, and shows no signs of having even a Hebrew substrate.  Their archaeology, linguistics and genetics all point to a Pontic-Caspian steppe origin for the Scythians.

The British Israelists also were big fans of the Cimmerians; a slightly more anonymous blip on the historical record.  Nobody knows for sure who the Cimmerians were, although it's mostly believed that their origin was also on the steppe.  They have been proposed as an Iranian tribe, a Thracian tribe, or even a kind of "missing link" between the Thracian and Iranian peoples.  The Cimmerian label has been applied to all kinds of archaeological cultures from the northern Middle East with very little regard for any way in which they might be related to the Gimirri or Kimmeroi mentioned by the Assyrians and the Greeks respectively, which are (perhaps without merit) been conflated together and Anglicized as Cimmerian.  They seem to have been briefly important wandering barbarians who conquered and otherthrew the Phrygian and Lydian kingdoms.  After only about ten brief years, Cimmerian power was broken due to a combination of plague and the forceful response by new Lydian king Alyattes II, and they completely disappear from the historical record.

There isn't really any good reason to associate the Cimmerians with anyone other than one of many wandering early Indo-European tribes; probably of a Thracian or Iranian ancestry, except for the completely unscientific and poor parallels drawn by some (in defiance of any kind of systemic comparative linguistic method, I might add) between their name and both the Cimbri and the Cymry; the former a tribe of northern barbarians of possibly either Celtic, Germanic or both extraction, the latter being the Welsh name for themselves.  Because of this completely coincidental kinda sorta similarity in name, the British Israelists have looked at the Cimmerians as their possible ancestors, and because of a kinda sorta geographic proximity, they have associated the Cimmerians with the Lost Tribes.  Ultimately, this is a line of inquiry that goes absolutely nowhere.  As a literary aside, however, this was briefly popular at the time Robert E. Howard was writing.  His most famous character, Conan the Cimmerian was meant to be a kind of prehistoric/fictional analog to the Celts, and he believed at the time he wrote that in the Cimmerian/Cymric connection and that the historical Cimmerians were proto-Celts; hence he borrowed their name to apply it to his famous fictional barbarian.

There is, however, a clue that is both irrefutable and also very important for our search; the revelation given from the Lord to Joseph Smith both as a reference in 2 Nephi 3 and in the Joseph Smith Translation add-ins to Genesis 50 where it is very explicitly stated that Joseph Smith himself was a literal descendant of Joseph of Egypt.  Since Joseph Smith is more naturally seen as a fairly typical member of the race of British settlers who made up the vast majority of the American nation at its founding, this would seem to imply that among the British there was at least a thin strain of Ephraimite descent.

Some other evidence seems to also support this.  For one thing, the prophecies of the gathering of Israel, starting especially with Ephraim, who's role is the prepare the way for the Second Coming of the Lord (according to D&C 133, and various other sources) suggest that much of the very early growth of the Church was to take place among the actual descendants of Ephraim.  And who were the early converts to the Church?  In America, they were overwhelmingly among ethnic Americans.  America, at the founding of the nation, was of 85% British ancestry, about 9% German ancestry, and 3.5% or so Dutch ancestry (which completely eviscerates the notion that America was a propositional nation based on ideals and theory rather than a completely traditional nation based on shared cultural, linguistic and ethnic bonds—but again; let's not get ahead of ourselves quite yet.)  The other major contributor to the early church membership was European missions, which were especially successful in the British and Scandinavian countries.  This is circumstantial, yet oddly pointed, evidence that among the Germanic peoples of northern Europe in particular was concentrated a high degree of inheritance of Ephraim.  And even today, in America at least, if you see a member of the church, there's a pretty good chance that said member has either a British or Danish last name and a northern European physical appearance.

Dr. Terry Blodgett, a linguist at Southern Utah University, has proposed that Grimm's Law, the sound shift that separated the Germanic languages specifically from its sister-languages in the greater Indo-European family, can be rather remarkably explained as the absorption of a Hebrew stratum.  In addition to the Grimm's Law sound shift that "created" Germanic from some generic Indo-European dialect that was probably operating in a geographical setting not too far removed from wherever we first lose sight of the Lost Tribes, he points out that numerous other explanations that can be explained as linguistic borrowing from Hebrew appear, including several sounds and pronunciations that would have been foreign to Indo-European, the vast reduction of the inherited Indo-European case system to a more simplified one that more closely resembles that of Hebrew, and a number of words.  It's long been noticed by linguists that Germanic vocabulary is only about two thirds native Indo-European in origin; Blodgett makes a case that you can create cognates with at least some Hebrew words.

Dr. Blodgett's work is, as far as I know, unpublished in mainstream linguistics journals, and it stands alone, without the type of peer review or peer critique that such theories usually are subject to.  However, the idea that Germanic evolved from undifferentiated dialects of Indo-European under the influence of formerly non-Indo-European speakers who spoke a "broken Germanic" is hardly a new one.  As of right now, his work can at best be seen as the first glimmering of smoke, which should indicate to others looking to find research projects where there might be a fire.

Keep in mind; according to LDS doctrine, none of the Germanic peoples is required to be a literal descendant of Israel excepting Joseph Smith himself.  Just because the shoe seems to fit and it makes a nice story doesn't mean that it's true.  Because the blessings of the covenant apply to those who are adopted into Israel by means of joining the Church and receiving their Patriarchal blessings equally as those who are born to the birthright, nobody has to be an actual descendant of Ephraim (again; except for Joseph Smith.)  But it certainly does seem likely that some descendants of Ephraim did make their way into northern Europe and got seeded throughout the Germanic population.  They were (eventually) culturally, linguistically, and genetically swamped and there is as of yet no known archaeological signature of them, and yet the Lord does not forget his covenants even if those to whom he made them do.

This scenario has a few added benefits: they fit additional prophecies.  In Genesis 49, Jacob's blessing to Joseph says that his descendants shall be particularly numerous (he is a fruitful bough) who will expand beyond the traditional inheritance of Israel (who's branches run over the wall).  In verse 26, it even talks about Joseph being separated from his brethren and his descendants spreading to the utmost bounds of the everlasting hills; language that will look familiar if you read D&C 133 again.  Deuteronomy 33, which restates Jacob's blessings to his sons, also refers to the Land of Promise destined to belong to Joseph in the "ancient mountains" and "lasting hills" as well as being separated from his brethren.  It also talks about his numerousness compared to the other tribes: "the tens of thousands of Ephraim and ... the thousands of Manasseh."  Joseph Smith eyed the West from Nauvoo often, and he, Brigham Young, Orson Hyde and many other early leaders of the church explicitly made a connection between the "everlasting hills" referred to in Isaiah, Deuteronomy and the Doctrine and Covenants with the mountains to the West of North America.

Combining D&C 133, Deuteronomy 33, Genesis 49, the 10th Article of Faith and the JST of Genesis 50, it's not hard to see that you can already fit historically known events into those prophecies.  If the Germanic people bear the covenant of Ephraim, or at least some portion of the Germanic people do, then they have indeed come out of their countries to the North to the land of their inheritance "over the wall" in the New World; the land of ancient mountains and everlasting hills, gathered unto the Church of God to build the New Jerusalem on the American continent. They have made a highway in the midst of the great deep as their ships sailed from Europe to America. That is the fulfillment of prophecy, an integral part of the gathering of Israel, and the prophecy of the return of the Lost Tribes... or at least the first wave of them.

It's curious that Patriarchal blessings in the church tend to support that as well.  My father, who is a Patriarch, mentioned off-hand to me once that it is extremely unusual; almost beyond the Pale, to see at this point anyone with a lineage other than Ephraim, Manasseh (fairly common in the American Indian and South American population of the church) or Judah.  Does this mean that more is yet to come, or that the other tribes have been pretty much simply absorbed, subsumed or assimilated into those three?  Unsure.  I actually suspect the latter.  Have you seen the birthrights of, say, Simeon or Rueben?  Plus, the way population genetics works at high time depths means that shared ancestry becomes almost inevitable.

What does this mean?  Well first, it's important to keep in mind that the blessings of the covenants made by the Lord to Israel are primarily spiritual in nature, though, not genetic.  Since shared ancestry being inevitable means that practically everyone is descended from, say, both Ephraim and Judah at the same time, the birthright, or Patriarchal lineage to which one belongs is not decided by genetics.  Or at least not solely.  So merely finding genetic descent, if it can be done, doesn't mean that there is spiritual descent.  But it does mean that there can be.  What do I mean when I say that shared ancestry is inevitable?  This is an interesting theory of population genetics.  Let me demonstrate, if I can, via example.  Everybody's family tree is branching.  Every person has two parents.  This means every person has four grandparents.  And sixteen great grandparents.  As you backwards in generations, the number of ancestors that you have increases exponentially.  From a mathematical standpoint, you will soon find that you have more ancestors in a given time from than there were people alive.  This is obviously nonsensical.  Family pedigrees have to start to fold in on each other.  An interesting study published in Nature a couple of years ago showed via genetic sampling that this folding effect means that everyone living in Europe today is descended from the exact same ancestors 1,000 years ago as everyone else living in Europe today.  Mathematically, the folding of ancestors means that you get to the point where you literally cannot find a person who left a single descendant in Europe 1,000 years ago who won't eventually get teased out as one of the lines in the pedigree of every person living in Europe today.  When people talk about their descent, what they really mean is who managed to transmit their culture and maintain enough prominence that as ancestors they stand out more than other ancestors.

This is a bit of an odd counter-intuitive conclusion, but it also means that if Joseph Smith is a direct descendant of Joseph in Egypt, then so am I.  So is everyone else who's ancestry is British, for that matter.  Even if there's no genetic evidence of it; given that he's a single ancestor from several thousand years ago, his DNA has obviously been swamped by all of the other ancestors, and therefore becomes invisible to later analysis; only the Lord can perceive it.

I have quite a bit more to talk about this subject; especially with regards to the more recent interactions between Ephraim and Judah, but we have to first establish the above; i.e., that the descendants of northern Europe, especially the Germanic peoples who joined the Church and their kin, are what I mean when I refer to Ephraim.  I am accepting the notion, which is admittedly somewhat speculative, that the American nation and the founder nations from which the American settlers came, can be seen as interchangeable with Ephraim to at least some degree, when referred to in the scriptures.  But more to come in Part II.