Posted on 08/15/2002 2:39:11 PM PDT by LostTribe
Edited on 04/22/2004 11:46:54 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Sometime around the year 1165, a Spanish Jew named Benjamin ben Jonah set out from his hometown of Tudela and made for the East. After reaching Constantinople, he headed south for Cyprus and the Holy Land, cut eastward through Damascus to Baghdad and Persia, then circled around the Arabian peninsula to Egypt. Six years later he returned to Europe and published an account of his adventures, known to posterity succinctly as "The Travels of Benjamin of Tudela."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
The faulty premise in this case is that the Lost Tribes of Israel must exhibit Jewish characteristics such as following customs, language, etc. Therefore, if some obscure group is found which exhibits those characteristics the members are probably from the Lost Tribes.
This premise conveniently ignores the reason the Northern Kingdom (Lost Tribes) were sent into Assyrian exile. It was because they had abandoned their Hebrew (they were not Jewish) customs, traditions, and religion and had become heathens. (If these characteristics had been abandoned, why then go around looking for them?) Their exile and subsequent diaspora, plus "not knowing who they were" for a time were key elements of Gods punishment.
Books like this one, and TV shows appear often in an attempt to "find" or to "dilute" or to "prove" something about the Lost Tribes, especially that they do not exist as a "great nation", as promised. To find out the real story of the Lost Tribes of Israel please click on my LostTribe profile below and read the 3-MINUTE HISTORY.
{ggg} No, but I had the gonads to print that as published, including the line that followed it,
>Yet in 1998 Mr. Halkin, an American-born translator and essayist who has lived in Israel for many years, decided to join the hunt for the lost tribes.
Now, do you have the intellectual cajones to make an intelligent comment on the subject?
I have cojones, and I'd like to think I have an intellect. But the two are not at all related. Needless to say, I find your obsession with the so-called "lost tribes" to be bizarre in the extreme.
>Mr. Halkin, who has lived in Israel for many years, decided to join the hunt for the lost tribes.
I'll bet when you posted that line in the article you knew it would draw flies, skunks, hyenas and other bottom feeders who quote out of the context.
But you certainly do demonstrate that you have the gonads to discuss (and prevail) in a subject which until now has been untouchable. For that, I would like to award you the
May the force of TRUTH continue to be with you!
Now, can someone tell me who were the Argippari people?
(bump)
Aw c'mon Blam, everyone knows you are the unchallenged worlds expert on such things. --ggg--.
Just the Jews? What about all us other Israelites?
You hit it right on the head.
These folks were mentioned once by a wandering Greek. He said that they were a race of bald headed people that lived at the base of the Altai Mountains, but, they apparently were not ever mentioned again. (Wouldn't that be something if all baldness could be traced to a mixing with a bald race, huh?)...and who the heck were the Issedenes?
All proto-Celts?
Beats me, my friend. You are way ahead of me on this one.
But anything which involves an Israelite Exodus from Egypt by sea prior to the Exodus by land pretty well qualifies as proto-Celt activity. I think those Israelites who left the tribe(s) after the overland Exodus should also be considered proto-Celts. We know these "defections" occured, but those people have been pretty well ignored by history. They are as Israelite as the rest, and are from both the Northern and Southern Kingdoms.
That should be easy. Eliminate the blacks of africa, the orientals of asia, the indians of south america and you pretty much end up with the celts (Israelites) of europe/america, including the jewish Israelites. Narrows it down quite a bit. --ggg--.
I may have made it sound to exclusive but, you get the drift. That's why I'm interested in the Caucasian mummies found in China. Two-three thousand years later, the descendents of these folks will very likely 'become' members of your Lost Tribes.
Suspect you are right, and as I recall the details they fit the "proto-Celt" timing. A lot of early European (and ???) history fits the proto-Celts.
It could be that the Phonenicians meaning "red-haried" was mistranslated and actually means bald heads red from the sun? 
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