Chapter Five<\/b><\/p>\n
The Captivity and Deportation of Israel<\/b><\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Both the Bible and history record that the ten tribes of Israel\u2014descendants of the Patriarch Jacob\u2014were deported from their land by a series of invasions.\u00a0 Long before this period, however, the tribe of Dan had already disappeared, and Asher and Gad had abandoned their brethren in large numbers.\u00a0 Both Dan and Asher were linked in sea trade and in the establishment of settlements with their coastal neighbors.\u00a0 As early as the twelfth century\u00a0BC, Irish historians trace part of the tribe of Dan to Ireland\u2014200 years after the Exodus (Capt, 64).\u00a0 The Irish historian Keating related that the Danaan, who had been in Greece, settled in Ireland and Denmark because they did not want to fall into the hands of the Assyrians.\u00a0 The ancient name for the Danes was\u00a0Dansk\u00a0<\/em>ou alors\u00a0Donsk\u00a0<\/em>(Rutherford, 38).\u00a0 During Trojan times Danites lived in the vicinity of Troy but crossed the Dardenelles after the fall of Troy.\u00a0They migrated in a northwesterly direction giving their name to such rivers as the\u00a0Danube, Donetz, Daniester<\/em>,\u00a0Daniepr, Don,\u00a0<\/em>et\u00a0Eridanus<\/em>.\u00a0 They eventually settled in Norway, but were driven out by Odin and the Asir.\u00a0 Settling in Scania, they became known as the Danes (Hannay, 58).\u00a0 Bible students are aware of the Danite practice of migrating and naming locations after their forefather Dan (Judges 18:29).<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Danites were criticized for failing to come to the aid of their brethren when Jabin attacked Israel.\u00a0 They remained in their ships instead (Judges 5:17).\u00a0 They were closely allied with the Ph\u0153nicians in maritime ventures, and after the time of Baasha, king of Israel, do not appear to have remained in the land in large numbers.\u00a0 The account of the captivity in 2 Kings 15:29 does not mention the Danites, or their towns or territories.\u00a0 The indication is they had already left.\u00a0 At an early date Ph\u0153nician trade was occurring between Palestine and the British Isles.\u00a0 We can assume the Danites were familiar with the western Mediterranean and beyond, including the British Isles.\u00a0 In the ninth century\u00a0AD, the Jewish writer Eldud wrote that in the days of Jeroboam the tribe of Dan was unwilling to shed the blood of their brothers and left the country.\u00a0 It has never been disputed that a tribe by the name of Tuatha De Danaan settled in Ireland.\u00a0 Tuatha De Danaan means “tribeship of Dan” (Hannay, 34\u201335, 105, 47\u201348).<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Excerpts from ancient Assyrian and Babylonian records describe how Tiglath-Pileser, king of Assyria, subjugated Menahem, king of Israel, and took the territories of Naphtali, Galilee, and Gilead.\u00a0 In the process he carried away many of the people.\u00a0 Tiglath-Pileser was a military usurper, known as Pul in the Bible.\u00a0 According to these excerpts, Tiglath-Pileser also deposed Pekah and put Hoshea in his place (Bible Research Handbook,\u00a0<\/em>serials 10 and 27).\u00a0 However, the Bible states that Pekah was assassinated by Hoshea (2 Kings. 15:30).\u00a0 So, if the excerpts are correct, after the assassination, the Assyrian king allowed Hoshea to be tributary to him.\u00a0 The Assyrians had an interest in deporting captured peoples.\u00a0They wanted to protect their northern frontier from the kingdom of Ararat, so the deported Israelites were placed in these areas (Capt, 49).\u00a0 One Assyrian inscription states that Tiglath-Pileser captured the Bit-Humria (house of Omri) and the land of Naphtali (Olson, 65).\u00a0 The Bible relates that Shalmaneser, who ruled after Tiglath-Pileser, besieged Samaria and took it captive after three years (2 Kings 17).\u00a0 The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser lists the tribute paid by Jehu, the son of Khumir (Omri), along with the tribute paid by a number of other subjected rulers (Bible Research Handbook,\u00a0<\/em>serial 22b).\u00a0 It is generally believed that the Jehu, mentioned on the obelisk, was Jehu the son of Jehoshaphat, the son of Nimshi (2 Kings 9:2).\u00a0 The Jehu mentioned in 2 Kings 9:2 was born about 150 years earlier than the one who paid tribute to Shalmaneser.\u00a0 More than likely the Jehu who paid the tribute had been appointed governor by the Assyrians after Israel had been subjugated.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Assyrian policy of deportation continued in the reign of Sargon.\u00a0 Inscriptions of Sargon give the number of people deported from the city of Samaria as 27,280 (Bible Research Handbook,\u00a0<\/em>serial 24).\u00a0 This is quite a small figure when compared with the total number of Israelites deported by Tiglath-Pileser and Shalmaneser.\u00a0 The Bible tells us they were placed by the River Gozan and in the cities that the Assyrians had recently taken from the Medes (2 Kings 17:6).<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The ten tribes in the northern kingdom were not the only ones deported.\u00a0 About 15 years later, Sennacherib, the son of Sargon, came against the southern kingdom of Judah.\u00a0 He took all the fenced cities of Judah (2 Kings 18:13), but at that time was not able to take Jerusalem.\u00a0 God intervened and delivered Jerusalem and king Hezekiah by a great miracle (2 Kings 19:35\u201336).\u00a0 The attack by Sennacherib against Judah is recorded on the Taylor Prism, now in the British Museum.\u00a0 It states:\u00a0 “. . .\u00a0I came up against him, and by force of arms and by the might of my power I took forty-six of his strong fenced cities; and of the smaller towns which were scattered about I took and plundered a countless number.\u00a0 And from these places I captured and carried off as spoil 200,150 people, old and young, male and female, together with horses and mares, asses and camels, oxen ands sheep, a countless multitude.\u00a0.. . ”\u00a0(Rawlinson, 1887a, 2:161).\u00a0 The Babylonians took Judah captive about 120 years later, but large numbers of Jews had already been deported long before that time.\u00a0 Jews and Benjamites taken captive at various times were placed in three different areas: (1) Some taken by the Syrians during the reign of Ahaz (2 Chron. 28:5) were placed in Kir, a region near the Caucasus; (2) the number carried by Sennacherib into Assyria was 200,150; (3) the remainder taken to Babylon during the reign of Zedekiah.\u00a0 A relatively small number were taken to Babylon, most of these earlier captives placed in the same regions as the people of the northern kingdom (Bible Research Handbook,\u00a0<\/em>serial 32c).<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In 1861, a column excavated at Kurkh on the Tigris recorded the victories of Shalmaneser III over ten kings.\u00a0 Among the names was Ahab, the Israelite.\u00a0 The Bible does not list an Ahab during this time period, but what is significant is that this column is the last record of the Assyrians using the name Israel in any form when referring to the northern kingdom.\u00a0 Subsequently, all references to the northern kingdom use the name\u00a0Ghomri\u00a0<\/em>ou alors\u00a0Khumri<\/em>\u2014the Assyrian pronunciation for Omri.\u00a0 The name\u00a0Khumri\u00a0<\/em>is found in the annals of Tiglath-Pileser III, which indicates it was in usage before the time of Shalmaneser.\u00a0Shalmaneser\u2019s column records: “The cities of Gilead and Abel-beth-maachah on the borders of the land of Khumri, and the widespread land of Hazael to its whole extent, I brought within the territory of Assyria.” Upon Shalmaneser\u2019s death, Sargon II assumed the throne of Assyria.\u00a0 He was the king who conquered Israel.\u00a0 He mentions the\u00a0Khumri\u00a0<\/em>and calls himself the conquerer of Bit-Khumri\u2014the house of Omri (Capt, 99).<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In 1847, Sir Henry Layard discovered over 23,000 cuneiform tablets in the ruins of the great royal library of the Assyrian kings.\u00a0 Cuneiform is an arrow-headed type of writing.\u00a0 About a dozen of these tablets came from the seventh-century\u00a0BC\u00a0and referred to the captive Israelites.\u00a0 At the time translators failed to recognize these references to be the Israelites because they were called\u00a0Gamera,\u00a0<\/em>ou alors\u00a0Gimera.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>The Assyrians used this appellation for Israel, which was derived from\u00a0Khumri.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Jewish historian Josephus tells us that the Israelites were placed in Media-Persia (Ant.,\u00a0<\/em>IX, xiii\u2013xiv).\u00a0 This area we know today as northwest Persia.\u00a0 The book of Ezra records that Ezra sent messengers to Iddo, the chief of the place called Casiphia “that they should bring unto us ministers for the house of our God” (Ezra 8:17).\u00a0 Henderson\u2019s “Russian Researches” names Casiphia as a country bordering the Caspian Sea (Gawler, 6).\u00a0 The prevailing view today is that the “Lost Ten Tribes of Israel” were mixed with the peoples in the land of their captivity and are, therefore, “cast away.”\u00a0 One thing is certain:\u00a0 They did not return to their homeland in Palestine, and even the majority of Jews never returned from the Babylonian captivity.\u00a0 Fewer than 50,000 Jews returned under Ezra and Nehemiah.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The book of 2 Kings states that Israel was carried away to Halah, and in Habor, by the river Gozan in the cities of the Medes (2 Kings 17:6).\u00a0 Where are these places called Halah, and Habor by the river Gozan? Authorities generally agree as to the location of Habor (Khabor, Hara), but argue over whether or not Gozan is a river or a country.\u00a0 The accepted view regarding Halah is that it is identified with the modern Khabour on the river Aborrhas, which empties into the Euphrates south of Carchemish.\u00a0 However, some Bible reference sources tell us that Halah was the Hallahuh, an Assyrian city and district northeast of Nineveh, and that other proposed locations are far less likely.\u00a0 The work entitled\u00a0Russia in Central Asia in 1889,\u00a0<\/em>by G. N. Curzon, has a map that lists a river named Kizil Uzen for part of its course and Safid Rud for the remainder of its course.\u00a0 Both these names stand for “White River.”\u00a0\u00a0Spuner’s Historical Atlas\u00a0<\/em>names this river as Gozan.\u00a0 This ancient Gozan is identical with the Kizil Uzen.\u00a0 Since the Gozan river is mentioned in conjunction with the Medes, the Scripture must be referring to the Kizil Uzen.\u00a0 Another river in the vicinity is known as the Abhar Chai, which is Turkish for Abhar River, as well as a town nearby named Abhar.\u00a0 The Septuagint calls this river Abor.\u00a0 Other versions of the Bible refer to it as Habor and Khavor.\u00a0 Near the upper courses of a small tributary that empties into the Kizil Uzen is a town by the name of Haran.\u00a0 Some maps list it as Hour.\u00a0\u00a0Stieler\u2019s Hand Atlas\u00a0<\/em>calls it Haru, and it corresponds to the ancient Hara or Ara.\u00a0 It was in these locations of the Elburz Mountains, not in Mesopotamia, that the Assyrians placed the Israelites.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It was mentioned above that the district where Ezra sought help for the Temple at Jerusalem was Casiphia.\u00a0 It was in the region of the Caucasus (Hannay, 112\u2013115).\u00a0 When Israel was taken captive, the Medes did not possess Mesopotamia.\u00a0 The Israelites were placed in the cities of the Medes, as the Assyrians had also conquered these.\u00a0 This area was close to the southwest edge of the Caspian Sea and northeast of Mesopotamia.\u00a0 Heinrich Ewald wrote that these places were north of Nineveh and south of Lake Van.\u00a0 He said that the Gozan is still known by the name of Ozen, that it rises south of the lake of Ourmia and forms approximately the northern boundary of Media.\u00a0 One town in the area was called Rages (afterward shortened to Rai).\u00a0 It is mentioned in the book of Tobit, and its ruins are not far from the Persian city of Teheran.\u00a0 Another city north of Nineveh was Elkosh which is believed to have been the home of the prophet Nahum.\u00a0 Ewald tells us that we can easily understand the locations where the deportations were mostly directed, but other Israelites may have been sent elsewhere.\u00a0 It seems probable, Ewald says, that one assigned place was Hamath (Ewald, 42). (The interested reader may wish to consult the\u00a0Bible Research Handbook,\u00a0<\/em>serials 29b and 29c, for a number of authoritative maps and sources that place Halah, Hara, and Gozan in the vicinity of the Caspian Sea.)<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 At this point, let us compare a few names.\u00a0 Large numbers of Israelites had been placed in the area south of Lake Urmia, which was adjacent to Media.\u00a0 It was called the land of Gamir.\u00a0 Sargon had previously depopulated this area by removing the people of Mannai who lived there to the west.\u00a0 Letter 112 in the Assyrian archives identifies the people of Gamir as\u00a0Gamera\u00a0<\/em>and further recognizes them as\u00a0Cimmerians.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>The Israelites occupied portions of the land of the Medes and Mannai, but remained distinct from them (Capt, 115\u2013116).\u00a0 These names\u2014Gamera and\u00a0Cimmerians<\/em>\u2014should be kept in mind.\u00a0 About 707\u00a0BC, a people going by the name of Gimera or Gamera are recorded living among the Mannai in a territory close to Media.\u00a0 This is where the Israelites had been placed about 15 years earlier.\u00a0 Another people to suddenly appear in the land of Mannai were the\u00a0Iskuza.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Modern historians tell us that the Iskuza were called\u00a0Skuthai\u00a0<\/em>by the Greeks and\u00a0Sac\u00e6\u00a0<\/em>by the Persians.\u00a0 The Greek historian Herodotus tells us the Persians called the Sac\u00e6 “Scythians.” A trilingual inscription found in the tomb of Darius lists three separate groups of\u00a0Sakkas\u00a0<\/em>(Sac\u00e6).\u00a0 In each case the Babylonian text in this inscription has the name\u00a0Gimiri\u00a0<\/em>for the Persian Sakka.\u00a0 Since the Persians called the Iskuza by the name of Sakkas, the inescapable conclusion is that the Iskuza, Sakka, and Gimiri are the same people (ibid, 122\u2013123, 140).<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The ancient capital of Media was Ecbatana.\u00a0 Located on a caravan road between Babylon and Ecbatana is an impressive escarpment.\u00a0 Carved on it is a memorial 100 feet in height and 150 feet in length.\u00a0 It is known as the Behistun Rock and was engraved by the order of Darius the Great about 515\u00a0BC.\u00a0 The writing on this stone is trilingual\u2014Babylonian, Elamite, and Persian.\u00a0 Sir Henry Rawlinson successfully deciphered the Persian script.\u00a0 The rock listed 23 nations over which Darius ruled.\u00a0 Among those were the Sakka.\u00a0\u00a0The Babylonian script on the rock lists them as Gimiri.\u00a0 What this demonstrates is that the people the Babylonians called the Gimiri were called Sakkas by both the Persians and Elamites.\u00a0 Another inscription written on a gold tablet placed the Sakkas beyond Sogdiana (in central Asia just north of Afghanistan and now known as the Uzbek Republic of Russia).\u00a0 This demonstrates that migrations of some of the Sakka had already taken place before the time of Darius, and that these people had gone to the eastern edge of the Persian Empire (Capt, 139\u2013140).\u00a0 Sir Henry Rawlinson regarded the Gimiri or Cimmerians and the Sac\u00e6 as the same people and said they were Israelites.\u00a0Rawlinson\u2019s statement is as follows: “We have reasonable grounds for regarding the Girniri, or Cimmerians, who first appeared on the confines of Assyria and Media in the seventh century (BC),\u00a0<\/strong>and the Sac\u00e6 of the Behistun Rock, nearly two centuries later, as identical with Israel” (quoted in Hannay, 286).\u00a0 It is Hannay\u2019s view that the mass of the so-called Hebrew race consisted of Israelites, or house of Isaac, sometimes the house of Omri (Beth Omri).\u00a0 The Assyrian equivalent was Bit-Khumri, or Ghumri, or Humri.\u00a0 The Babylonian equivalent was Gimera (Hannay, 19).<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The transformation of the name Gimiri into Kimmerioi\/Cimmerii is well- known (Hannay, 288).\u00a0Another name that has been connected with the Cimmerii is the\u00a0Umman-Manda,\u00a0<\/em>a name the Babylonians and Assyrians gave the Cimmerii.\u00a0 It was Sayce\u2019s opinion that the Manda of Ecbatana were the Scythians of classical history (Fasken, 58\u201359).\u00a0 Kephart tells us that the name Manda was applied to the Cimmerian nation of Scythia (Kephart, 274, 342).\u00a0 (The reader may recall that the Persians called the Sacae “Scythians.”)<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The first instance of Scythian tribes appearing in Europe can be placed in the seventh century\u00a0BC, when they crossed the Araxes River and passed out of Asia.\u00a0 The Araxes is the ancient name of the Aras River in Armenia.\u00a0 The area around the Araxes River is where the Israelites were last known before departing for Europe (Rutherford, 21).\u00a0 They had abandoned their settlements near the Gozan and moved just north of the Araxes due to a series of uprisings around 710\u00a0BC\u00a0<\/strong>in the general area of Urartu (Van)\u2014the name of the ancient kingdom of Ararat.\u00a0 They were known as the\u00a0Sak-Geloths,\u00a0<\/em>the name meaning the captives of Beth-Sak (Beth-Omri, Bit-Khumri) and referred to themselves as Sak-Geloths\u2014the captives of Sak (Hannay, 269\u2013271, 307\u2013308).\u00a0 A later form of the word Sak was\u00a0Sagh.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Diodorus Siculus wrote that the Scythians originally came from the region of the Araxes, had multiplied into a great people and had extended their territory.\u00a0 In the fifth century\u00a0BC\u00a0Herodotus placed the Scythians in southern Russia, stating that their territory extended for 500 miles (Rutherford, 9).\u00a0 Around 600\u00a0BC\u00a0<\/strong>the Khumri migrated farther west from their location north of the Araxes.\u00a0 It is believed that an attack upon Sakland by the Assyrians, who had made an alliance with the kings of Urartu (Van), precipitated their exodus.\u00a0 This was about the time the Assyrian Empire was crumbling before the Babylonians.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Go to Chapter 6<\/a> ou alors go to Chapter 1<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chapter Five The Captivity and Deportation of Israel \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Both the Bible and history record that the ten tribes of Israel\u2014descendants of the Patriarch Jacob\u2014were deported from their land by a series of invasions.\u00a0 Long before this period, however, the tribe of Dan had already disappeared, and Asher and Gad had abandoned their brethren in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"seo_booster_metabox":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3135,3137,2843,3133,3140,3110,1537,3141,3139,3132,3138,3268,3269,3121,3262,3136,3134,3263],"class_list":["post-10553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ancient-celtic-history","tag-ancient-hebrew-tribes","tag-anglo-israelism","tag-bible-study-on-covenants-israel","tag-book-origin-of-our-western-heritage","tag-british-israel-book","tag-british-israelism","tag-captivity-and-deportation-of-israel","tag-celtic-israel-book","tag-celtic-true-israel","tag-christian-anglo-saxon-israel","tag-correct-replacement-theology","tag-israel-is-the-church","tag-read-book-origin-of-western-heritage","tag-replacement-theology","tag-research-ancient-tribes-caucasian","tag-research-celtic-covenants","tag-scriptures-replacement-theology"],"yoast_head":"\n