Everyone is speculating about EVERYTHING, for all history is just HIS-STORY. Much of what we call truth and fact in the church is arrived at by deduction. Some of it good, much of it just plain awful, the result of centuries of "force-fitting" special-interest explanations to uncertain situations. Mindless repetition then becomes established "truth".
It's good to see modern archeology confirming so much of the Bible, while repudiating some really bad theories, like "official" explanations of what happened to The Lost Tribes of Israel.
> In any case, they are not "Jews" as John uses the word in his Gospel.
Agreed.