Lost Tribes follow up post

This is a follow up to many Lost Tribes relevant posts I've done on this Blog.  Starting with The Lost Tribes and Bible Prophecy.  To deal with some bad theology linked to the Lost Tribes I recommend my post Ephraim and The Fullness of The Gentiles.

Main thing in that I don't stand by anymore is the speculation on Samaria being Mystery Babylon.  My far more recent Mystery Babylon posts including about the Kings of The East all show how Babylon can only be in Mesopotamia.  But that the Lost Tribes are Relevant to that is still possible, because The Lost Tribes went East not West.

But I want to revisit my objections to Chuck Missler and Chris White's arguments against the Lost Tribes concept.  I largely still view things about the same, but I've also noticed the issue is much more complicated.  The question is how many Tribes were actually deported?

Biblically the number Ten is applied to the tribes that make up the Northern Kingdom only when it was founded, never of the deportation itself.  1 Kings 11 tells us Jeroboam was given Ten Tribes, while Solomon's son kept one for David's sake (Judah) and one for Jerusalem's sake (Benjamin).

Which tribes were those ten?  It's a bit of a controversy since the traditional assumption is Simeon was one even though Simeon's main allotment was south of Judah.  Genesis 49 foretells Simeon and Levi both to be scattered among the other tribes, and this was fulfilled in different ways.

You may think that only leaves nine tribes, but not quite.  One factor forgotten is that Manasseh was divided into half tribes on either side of the Jordan river.  Because he was the firstborn of Joseph and so had a double portion just as Joseph himself did. In the Song of Deborah, Manasseh is treated as two tribes, Machir and Gilead.

Or maybe the key to solving this riddle is in how the land seemed to be divided under Solomon in 1 Kings 4 7-19.

The deportation was indeed not really of the entire population.  The deportation under Tiglath-Pilesser III which is recorded in 1 Chronicles 5:26, and 2 Kings 15-16, was mainly of the three Trans-Jordan tribes and Naphtali.  And then 2 Kings 17 is mainly just talking about the capital, Samaria, and surrounding areas, which was in Ephraim but not all of Ephriam.

2 Chronicles 30-31 refers to survivors still in the land in West Manasseh, Ephraim, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun and even Dan.

So returning to my basic theory that besides much of Dan the "lost tribes" went East.  Let's talk about Daniel 7 and 8.

Daniel 7 is Aramaic Daniel while 8 is Hebrew Daniel.  I've speculated before on the significance of two Empires having different Beasts represent them in different visions, noting the Levitical cleanness of the Daniel 8 beasts.  If following the deportation of the Northern Kingdom, there are nations that have both an Israelite and Gentile heritage, maybe that is a reason for the different beasts.

So perhaps in Daniel 7 the gentile focused vision, the four headed Leopard is Javan who had four sons in Genesis 10, and the Bear is Madai and the Lion is Asshur.  While in the Hebrew focused Daniel 8 the He-Goat is Dan who Ezekiel 27 tells us became linked to Javan.  And the Ram is Naphtali, I will do a post in April to explain why I feel the "Hind" used to describe Naphtali in the KJV of Genesis 49 is really a female Ram, or maybe it's the Ram references that are mistranslated.  That would make Daniel 8 about the sons of Bilhah.

The Deutercanonical Apocryphal book of Tobit revolves around a family of the Tribe of Naphtali that become prominent in Assyria and Media after the deportation.  A person mentioned briefly there is Akhair who is more prominent in other more obscure apocrypha, and also maybe the same as a character in Judith.

I did a post on The Medes, Kurds and Adiabene that is relevant here.  And I've speculated before how Iran and Iranians could come from Eran and the Eranites of Numbers 26:36.  And that Pars and Persia could come from the Hebrew name Pharez. The first part of the name of Zarathustra/Zoroaster could also come from the Hebrew name Zerah, I believe the ancient traditional date for Zarathustra placing him around 600 BC.

The Persians were not Elamites, though they probably intermingled with them some.  That confuses people partly because of Isaiah 13.  The Persian king Teispes who lived about 675-640 BC, conquered the Elamite city of Anshan.  He had two sons, a Cyrus who was the grandfather of Cyrus The Great, and Ariaramnes who was the great grandfather of Darius I.  Teispes was the son of Achaemenes, who ruled from 680-655 BC and was born around 705 BC.  Greek writers tended to merge Achaemenes with Perses the mythical son of Perseus and Andormeda, who I talk about in my Tribe of Dan post.

So, I think Achaemenes could be a Naphtalite born in Exile.  Perhaps a relative of Tobit and Akhair.

Perhaps it's also a clue that Susa/Shushan the Persian Capital's name is also the Hebrew word for Lily, Strong Number 7799.  Hosea 14:5 uses the Lily as a symbol of Ephraim/Israel in a Prophecy of their restoration.  If the people saying they went West can use the name Gomer in Hosea to link them to the Cimmerians, then I can use Shushan the same way.

Actually the problem with the Cimmerian part of the Lost Tribes became Europeans argument is that the claimed link between the Cimmerians and the Gauls doesn't hold up.  The Gallic connection to that region went in the other direction, Gauls traveled to Asia Minor well after the Old Testament era ended and became the Galatians.  This was something I myself was still confused on the last time I mentioned the Cimmerians on this blog.  The Cimmerians first show up East of Lake Urmia, from there they migrated.  And their alleged connection to Crimea is based on the unreliable Herodotus.  I think maybe Crimea is the Gomer of Japheth and Ezekiel 38-39, and the Cimmerians the Gomer of Hosea.