I have decided to abandon my past flirtations with more epic and sexy theories about the Lost Tribes and simply focus on who makes the most sense based on the DNA evidence.
A lot of the discussion of Jewish DNA online has been in the context of refuting the Khazzar Conspiracy theory, Casual Historian and Chris White both have good YouTube videos on that subject. Studies of the DNA of various Jewish communities have shown them to be genetically closer related to other Jewish communities who might look different from them "Racially" then they are the Gentiles who do look like them "Racially". And have likewise shown them to be closely related to the Arabs. This applies equally to the Ashkenazim, Sephardi, Mizrahi, Maghrebi, Temani and other Middle Eastern Jewish communities, as well as the Persian Jews, Georgian Jews, Mountain Jews, Igbo Jews the Lemba and others.
What interests me today however are a handful of Gentile communities that are observed to be Genetically closer related to the Jews even then the Arabs. Since the Arabs are predominantly the descendants of Ishmael and Abraham's sons by Keturah, groups closer to the Jews then them must be either Edomites or fellow Israelites, but I think the Edomites were mostly absorbed into Ishmaelite populations when the Nabateans conquered ancient Edom.
Those groups are the Kurds, Armenians and the Lebanese Christians.
Sometimes Georgians and Anatolian Truks are added, but both those groups are today closely related to Armenians because probably many of them have Armenian ancestors somewhere within the last 2,000 years. Ancient/Medieval Armenia was larger then modern Armenia and in fact included a good chunk of western Turkey, and during the Crusades era there was an Armenian splinter state in Cilicia. Georgia's relationship to Armenia is uniquely complicated, they for a long time had a royal family that was a cadet branch of Armenia's Bagratid Dynasty.
Armenians actually classified as such are a smaller group today then they used to be largely because of the Armenian Genocide committed by the Young Turks during WWI.
I should note the fact that some of those Khazzar theorists out there will try to claim the genetic similarities Jews have to Armenians and Georgians is evidence for the Khazzar theory, however legitimate scientists know that doesn't work. They are on the wrong side of the Caucasus, the core of the Khazzar kingdom was way north of the Caucasus and then when it expanded it at it's greatest extent touched the norther slopes of the Caucasus, but they never held any dominion over Georgia much less Armenia. Also the Khazzars were a Turkic tribe, so like the other Altaic peoples their dominant Y Haplogroup would have been C which just so happens to be one that has never been found in a Jewish population, even as a tiny minority.
The Anatolian Turks however are genetically speaking not actual Turks, that's what all the discussion of studies of their DNA I've found show even when they don't bring up this relation to Jews. They are people who started speaking the Turkish Language after the Seljuks and Ottomans conquered the region, but they still more genealogically descend from those who were already there, the people of the Eastern Roman Empire.
Samaria=Kurds
1 Chronicles 5:26 refers to the Trans-Jordan Tribes being carried away by Assyria to Halah, Habor and Hara by the River Gozan. 2 Kings 17:6 and 18:11 also refer to those locations minus Hara but adds "Cities of the Medes" (some have argued it originally read "Mountains of Media", still implies the same general area) as being where the Captives of Samaria under King Hosea were taken. Then 2 Kings 19:12 and Isaiah 37:12 mentions Gozan and Haran as among nations Assyria had destroyed previously. From studying similar words in the Hebrew texts I think Hara is a shortened form of Haran, so it's like they're going full circle and being taken back to where Abraham was before he was called.
The River called Gozan in those verses is most likely the Khabur a significant tributary of the Euphrates that has tributaries of it's own, Guzana/Gozan is the name of an ancient city on that river who's remains are now called Tell Halaf, it may be a translation or scribal issue that switched the name of the river and city, or maybe they just were more interchangeable in Antiquity. Edessa and Nisibis are both cities on rivers that are tributaries of this river as are many other important cities of Syrian and Turkish Kurdistan. Antiochus Epiphanes renamed Edessa/Urfa as Callirrhoe or Antiochia on the Callirhoe, I'm not sure what exactly Callirhoe refers to here, but it could come from Halah given how Harran is similarly called Carrhae in Greek.
Ancient Media meanwhile overlaps with modern Iranian Kurdistan, and the Kurdish Language is classified as a Northwestern Iranian language closely related to the Median Language (as are the Zaza-Gorani Languages spoken by some Kurds). During classical Greco-Roman times this region included Corduene/Gordyene, Media Atropatene and Osroene, it's complicated however because multiple ethnic groups existed in those regions.
These were all territories at least partly under Assyrian Control in 740-720 BC, the more fanciful identifications for these places like Velikvosky's theories and those of British Israelism have Assyria somehow deporting Israelites to places Assyria never controlled.
The passages including Naphtali in the Captivity don't specifically refer to these locations, But the Deuterocanonical book of Tobit gives us good reason to believe Naphtalite clans were actually living in the heart of Assyria itself (I know that the main protagonists of Tobit are in Media, but it established Ahkir an important Vizer of Assyria as their cousin), and 2 Kings 17:23 also refers to captives being taken to Assyria. So I think they are the ancestors of first century Adiabene who's capital was Arbela and through them the Kurds of Iraqi Kurdistan who's chief city is Irbil.
Corduene/Gordyene was inhabited by a people called the Carduchoi/Carduchi who are also popularly proposed to be ancestors of the Kurds. There is a medieval Jewish legend that the Corduene were the result of Solomon marring some of his Jinn to 500 Jewish Women. That is a weird legend which is certainly not correct, but it does show that ancient Jews thought of these people as in some way related to them. It could partly have it's roots in 1 Kings 4's account of Solomon marrying two of his daughters to Northern Governors, one of them being governor of Naphtali.
A region in Media Atropatene called Cadusia may have also been named after Gad. A city in northwestern Iran is called Zabad, possibly related to the Zabad of 1 Chronicles 7's Ephraimite Genealogy. There is also a city in Iranian Kurdistan called Salmas who's name could be related to the Biblical name Salma or to Shillem a clan of Naphtali from Number 26:49 and Genesis 46:24. Salmas first appears in the historical record right at the same time the Parthian Empire was conquered by the Sassanids.
The proper Kingdom of Media of classical antiquity didn't actually begin till just after when the Northern Kingdom of Israel was conquered. Deioces is the name given in Classical sources for it's first King, there are conflicting dates for their reign between the different sources, but when analyzed they can be explained by Deioces being a Median name given to King Hosea. Deioces is also speculated to be the same person as Hushung in the Sahanameh, Hushung is a name that both phonetically and in meaning could be a poetic adaptation of the name of Hosea. So Media Atropatene could be the Arsareth that II Esdras says King Hosea lead some of the exiles to.
Dejoces is a direct ancestor of Astyages who's daughter was the mother of Cyrus. Media Atropatene was the one former Persian territory not fully conquered by the Greeks under Alexander, it remained Semii-Independent till the 1st century when their Royal Family became the main Parthian Royal Family and through them of Armenia as well.
Saladin was of Kurdish ancestry.
The rest of the Northern Kingdom was not carried away into captivity. Those who accepted Hezekiah's Passover invitation in 2 Chronicles simply became Jews (citizens of Judah/Judea), and is known to have included people of Manasseh, Issachar, Zebulun and Asher. (Anna the Prophetess of Luke 2 was of the Tribe of Asher.) For the most part though in NT times they became the Galileans and Jews of southern Phoenicia. Those of Manasseh and Ephraim who rejected Hezekiah' invitation became partial ancestors of the Samaritans by mingling with the gentiles Assyria settled there. And the Tribe of Dan's unique History had them mostly separated from the rest of the Northern kingdom well before the captivity happened.
Actually even Assyria's deportation of Naphtali seems to have been the core Natphalite settlements along the Sea of Galilee, while Naphtali's allotment included much of Eastern Lebanon, where there were places they never drove the Canaanites out of.
Dan=Maronites
Most Christians in Lebanon are Maronites, the Maronites are also seemingly the oldest Christian community in Lebanon.
Among the parts of Lebanon demographically dominated by the Maronites are places on the southern Border just north of Israel's Northern Border. And the oldest Maronite Community within Israel was in a village north of Mount Meron just south of the Lebanese border. Thus fitting Dan's Biblical association with Israel's northern border.
Lebanon is the region that in Biblical Times was the homeland of the Sidonians known to the Greeks as the Phoenicians who's chief cities were first Sidon then Tyre. The Tribe of Dan had a unique relationship with the Sidonians and their territory from Joshua 19 to Judges 18 to Hiram architect of Solomon's Temple.
The last time I talked about this theory of mine I tied it into rejecting Tel-Dan as being Biblical Dan, but that I've changed my mind on. I now know that we've found the ruins of an old Temple at Tel-Dan likely to be where Jeroboam's Calf was worshiped. There used to be a more significant Maronite presence in the Golan Heights but now they've dwindled to just a small community in Ein Qiniyye not far from Tel-Dan. [My opinions continue to fluctuate on that subject. But now even the more Northern sites I'm considering are also in Maronite territory.]
In the KJV of 1 Kings 5:18 "stonequarers" is a translation of Giblites, which is the spelling also used of inhabitants of Gebel the Semitic name for Byblos, the YLT translates this verse correctly. Since these Giblites are implied to be involved in the construction of The Temple which was overseen by the half-Danite half-Phoenician Huram, I'm willing to consider this circumstantial evidence for significant Danite presence in the region of Byblos, which is today the core of Maronite Lebanon. Gebel/Byblos was also a port city, so the seafaring Danites mentioned in the Song of Deborah might be who settled there.
There is a tradition among some Maronites that they at least partly descend from the Maradites, a group of Byzantine Christians who migrated from the Taurus Mountains region of Turkey into Syria during the 7th Century. Of course there are also theories about the Tribe of Dan that suggest some of them wound up in the Adana region as the Denyen.
But I am also skeptical about traditional narrative of Maronite origins. I think the actual origin of their name is probably connected to Mount Maron in Nothern Israel, a village between that Mountain the Lebanon border was one of the oldest Marontie communities in Israel.
I also theorize that the liturgically Greek Christians of Tyre, Sidon and Ptolemais/Acre/Acco/Akka clerically at least descend from the Hellenistic Jewish Deacons of Acts 6 who Acts 11 implies some of fled to Phoenicia, and later on Acts mentions all three of those cities specifically. My broader theory is that the Greek Rite Christian communities of Northern Israel and Southern Lebanon to some extent descend from Hellenized Jews who converted to Christianity in the First Century, there are references to the Galileans being more open to Hellenization then the Judeans. And related to that I think the Aramaic Rite Christians of the same region distinct from the Maronites likewise descent from Aramaic speaking Jews who converted to Christianity in the First Century. In this region they were probably usually remnants of Asher, Zebulun and Issachar, and maybe also those Manesseites in Asher and Issachar referred to in Joshua 17:11, Judges 1:27, 1 Kings 4:11-12 and 1 Chronicles 7:29.
The non Maronite Christians of Eastern Lebanon could be those left behind remnants of Naphtali like the Melkite Catholics of Zahle. There are also Maronites in the East, Dan and Naphtali as brothers of the same handmaiden often got along.
How does Armenia fit in?
During much of the divided Kingdom Period the city of Lachish was the second largest city in Judah, and in fact the largest within Judah's proper Tribal allotment since Jerusalem was originally a city of Benjamin. Assyria failed to conquer Jerusalem, but in it's war with Judah during the reign of Hezekiah it did capture and carry away into captivity the population of Lachish.
There are no Biblical clues to where the Judeans of Lachish were taken like there are for the Northern Kingdom's Captivity. However where Assyria settled the northern captives made sense in the context of what their other recent conquests were, Assyria liked to move populations from one conquered region to another to weaken local national identities. So it's notable that between the Northern Kingdom's captivity in the 8th century BC and when Lachish was taken in the 7th century BC the Assyrian Empire had conquered Urartu extending it's borders further north. And the Armenians first began to emerge in the former Urartu lands after Assyria conquered it. It took awhile however, the Orontid Kings don't show up till 570 BC, and nothing is known to have been written down in the Armenian language till their translation of The Bible in the 5th Century AD.
Armenia's traditional claim to descent from sons of Gomer (chiefly Togarmah but Ashkenaz is also mentioned) I think refers to some of the ancestors of the Urartu who lived in the region before them and who they intermingled with. Or maybe the Armenian Language being Indo-European is their influence.
It's possible additional Jewish migrations to this region happened later, like during the Babylonian Captivity or when it ended. Two patrilineal descendants of Herod The Great were Roman Client Kings of Armenia as Tigranes V and Tigranes VI. And then Jewish Christians of the first couple centuries eventually brought The Gospel to Armenia, Armenia even claims to have beaten Rome to making Christianity their State Religion in 301 AD. I think it actually happened a little later probably at the same time as Iberia in the 330s and like them perhaps partly because of diplomatic relations with Constantine.
Both the Six Pointed Star and a Red Lion are among Armenia's National Symbols. Many insist the Six Pointed Start didn't become a Jewish Symbol till fairly recently, but archeological evidence does exist of it being used in Ancient Israel, and I have a hypothesis that the Hebrew Bible's Lily Imagery is partly where it comes from.
It is sometimes claimed that only the Georgian Bagratuni claimed Davidic descent, but their heraldry was a Lion already in Armenia. There is also an Armenian folk hero named David of Sassoun who's father was called Lion Mher meaning "lion like". The current official genealogy of the Georgian branch connects them to David in a way that excludes the Armenian branch, but that link alone may not be the whole story.
The Eagle was also an ancient symbol for Armenia. I've often pointed out how there is no Biblical support for an Eagle being a symbol of Dan, that came from later Targums. I had in the past mistakenly thought the Eagle imagery of the last verse of Micah 1 was in reference to Samaria, but the proper context is actually Lachish named in verse 13 and nearby towns of Judah. Micah 1 is a Biblical reference to the Assyrian Captivity of Lachish which I had trouble finding when looking for it strictly in the historical books.
One theory on the claimed Davidic origins of the Bagratid Dynasty I've already discussed on this blog is that they descend from one of the Maternal Half Siblings of Jesus (I'm thinking of making a post arguing that Cleopas was married to a Sister of Jesus). However other theories on their origins connect them to the Babylonian Exilarchs. I also am controversially willing to agree with Nicolas of Damascus over Josephus that Herod was of Davidic ancestry not Idumean.
But maybe Lachish itself was simply a frequent home to Cadet branches of the House of David, like Orleans was for France and York for England? David himself, Rehoboam and Abijah are all known to have had a lot more children then just the Son who followed them on the Throne.
Plato's Myth of Er son of Armenios is probably an adaptation of Armenian legends about their local hero Ara The Beautiful. That draws attention to the possibility that the Armenian name Ara could be related to the Hebrew Er. In Genesis 38:3-7, 46:12, Numbers 26:19 and 1 Chronicles 2:3 the name of Er is given to Judah's firstborn son who died childless. I believe Er's widow Tamar did eventually marry Shelah after the events of Genesis 38 end and that she's the mother Shelah's children (in addition to Zerah and Pharez). In 1 Chronicles 4:21 the name of Er is given to the firstborn son of Shelah.
It could be the real story behind the myth was this second Er being thought of as a symbolic rebirth of the first Er. I don't think Semiramis was ever part of the Ara mythology prior to Hellenistic influence in the region, and Plato we also know would change the myths he talked about to suit his rhetorical purposes. However if a literal belief in Reincarnation was part of the Pre-Christian Paganism of Armenia, my current theories about the origins of that belief suggests it would have came not from the Jewish element of their ancestry but from the same people responsible for their language being Indo-European.
Perhaps I should give some more thought to Armenia's close relationship to Georgia however. The oldest civilization in what is today called Georgia was Colchis. Certain classical Greek writers like Diodorus Siculus (in Section 28) said that the Colchi descended from the same "foreigners exiled from Egypt" that the Jews descended from, and that they also practiced circumcision. "The nation of the Colchi in Pontus and that of the Jews, which lies between Arabia and Syria, were founded as colonies by certain emigrants from their country; and this is the reason why it is a long-established institution among these two peoples to circumcise their male children." The Georgians were called Iberians during Greco-Roman times, a name which could derive from Eber/Hebrew. So maybe the Colchi were the lost clan of Calchol son of Zerah son of Judah?
The Colchi definitely existed on the shores of the Black Sea before the captivity of Lachish however, so we'd need an additional route for how they got there. They could have just been a colony founded by Judean sea faring merchants. However Joel 3 speaks of Tyre & Sidon and the Philistines selling children of Judah and Jerusalem to Ionians(Javan) as slaves. Ezekiel 27:13 speaks of Javan, Meshach and Tubal trading in commodities including Slaves that they got from Tyre. Meshach and Tubal are the names of two ancient cities in Georgia.
Herodotus also claimed the Colchi practiced Circumcision though his theory on why was that they were an Egyptian colony. Modern scholars tend to dismiss these Greek references to Circumcision in Colchis because none of the Karvelian tribes seem to have ever practiced it. However the Georgian Jews were already present in the region by the time of Nebuchadnezzar, so it could be they were who these Greek authors were thinking of.
Be Flexible.
There is a lot of overlap between Armenia at it's greatest extent and Kurdistan, before the Armenian Genocide there were over 2 Million Armenians in Turkey many of them essentially right next to the Kurdish communities. The Armenian offshoot Kingdom of Sophene was entirely within modern Kurdistan. The Armenian Historian Moses of Chorene for some reason considers the history of King Abgar of Edessa to be relevant to the History of Armenia, he talks about him far more then the actual Armenian Client Kings of that time.
So being super rigid about which part of Ancient Israel each is descended from is of course a bit silly. But I found it fun to talk about the often overlooked subject of Lachish in the context of Armenia.
Gad in Deuteronomy 33 has Lion symbolism parallel to that of Judah in Genesis 49.
The traditions the Armenians have that they descend from sons of Gomer son of Japheth could have it's roots in there being an ancient major city called Gyumri. However in Scripture the name of Gomer isn't limited to that genealogy, in Hosea it's also the name of a Woman who's story is supposed to typologically represent the Northern Kingdom.
Update 2022: Anatolian Turks
I kind of dismissed them as one of the DNA results at the start as mostly insignificant. I didn't really realize that Anatolian Turks are in fact the majority ethnic group in modern Turkey.
In addition to how they might be related through various intermingling they've done with Armenians and Kurds, there is Joel 3's reference to Philista, Tyre and Sidon selling people of Judah and Jerusalem as slaves to the Ionians (commonly translated Greeks or Grecians) Ionia was in Anatolia. 1 Chronicles 9:3 says Jerusalem's population has people of Judah, Benjamin, Ephraim and Manasseh. I connected Joel 3 to Ezekiel 27's Meshech and Tubal reference in the Georgia section above, but many argue Meshech and Tubal actually point to locations in Anatolia, chiefly Cappadocia and Tyana.
Then there is how some "Sea Peoples" are connected to both Anatolia and Israel, like the Denyen to both Dan and Adana, and the Sherden to both the Sardite clan of Zebulun and Sardis. To mainstream historians who see a connection it is usually seen as them starting in Anatolia then migrating to Palestine, but I of course think the other way is more likely. However I still think most of those tribes mostly stayed in Israel and Lebanon as laid out above, it'd be small groups who left little seeds in Anatolia that eventually grew to great significance.
And then there is my theory that the Gog son of Joel a Cheif of The Tribe of Reuben in 1 Chronicles 5 was a child when Reuben was deported in the late 700s BC and is the same person as Gyges of Lydia.
