How the Ten Tribes of Israel Were Lost

Biblical Archaeology Review ^ | Winter 2024 | William G. Dever

[SunkenCiv]

The final demise of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, at the hands of the powerful Assyrian Empire in 720 BCE, receives only a few terse passages in the Book of 2 Kings:

Then the king of Assyria invaded all the land and came to Samaria; for three years he besieged it. In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria; he carried the Israelites away to Assyria. He placed them in Halah, on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes...

From at least the ninth century BCE, the Northern Kingdom of Israel had been more powerful and dominant than the small and relatively isolated Southern Kingdom of Judah. It was larger, more prosperous, and more international in character... Already at the Battle of Qarqar, in 853 BCE, King Ahab, the son and successor to Omri, the eponymous founder of the Northern Kingdom's leading dynasty, had collaborated with the kings of several nearby kingdoms to fight off the Assyrian advance. In fact, the Assyrian sources credit Ahab with bringing 2,000 chariots and 10,000 soldiers to the fight, well more than any other king could muster...

The Hebrew Bible describes captives taken away to Assyria, but it does not give any numbers. The Assyrian annals, however, specify that 27,290 captives were deported from Samaria. This refers to the region of Samaria and not just the capital, which could scarcely have had a population of more than a thousand...

At Hazor, archaeologist Yigael Yadin, who excavated much of the site in the 1950s and 1960s, described how the site's eighth-century levels ended in "final, complete" conflagration, which he identified with a layer of rubble and ash nearly 3 feet thick.

[Cronos]

from the article “ The Assyrian annals, however, specify that 27,290 captives were deported from Samaria. This refers to the region of Samaria and not just the capital, which could scarcely have had a population of more than a thousand”

The northern tribes were not moved out en-masse.

[Cronos]

I would recommend reading

Heirs to forgotten kingdoms - by Gerard Russell

The Samaritans actually had a series of Samaritan revolts against Roman rule from 484 to 573 AD -- and as an aside note that Jews were STILL living in Judea in 573 AD and were quite numerous. They were living there into 640 AD and when

1. the Persians conquered Jerusalem they were aided by Jews and set up a vassal Jewish state (very short lived)

2. the Arabs conquered Jerusalem, they were aided by Jews who took violent actions against the Christians in Jerusalem later and that was stopped by the Arabs (I specifically say "Arabs" as I am of the historical opinion (as shared by Tom Holland and Robert Spencer) that Islam as a distinct religion arose only in the 750s and the Arabs who conquered initially were a version of Christian heresy until the "Muhammed" in the quran was made into a real character (like Robin Hood)

Anyway, so genetic studies show that the Samaritans have the "Cohen gene" i.e. descended from Levites

And Many of the Arabs, Samaritans, Druze and Jews all share common ancestry - the ancient Israelite descendants have different identities today

[Red Badger]

No GPS.......

[SunkenCiv]

lol

[SunkenCiv]

It’s probably the oldest documented one, the Elamites didn’t seem inclined to that, satisfied themselves with pulverizing rival city-states and carrying off their idols, back to their own capital.

Probably anything older than the Assyrian forced migration took the form of enslavement.

The Assyrians also imposed tribute, which typically amounted to the cost of having kicked the asses of the vanquished in the first place. The harder they resisted, the longer it took, the more it cost, the higher the tribute. And after the Assyrians left town, if the cost was high and their economy in a shambles, they’d refuse to pay, leading to another Assyrian force the next year.

[SunkenCiv]

:^)

[SunkenCiv]

• Forced Migration: Biographies of the Soviet Koreans Who Helped to Establish the North Korean State | Anchi Hoh | January 22, 2021

[SunkenCiv]

Samaria isn't one of the tribes, it was the capital of the northern kingdom, and its population was largely rounded up and marched off into exile. Assyrians moved in, possibly on their own, to the vacant land.

Most of Judah and Benjamin (the southern kingdom) remained; small numbers of the other ten tribes laid low or were otherwise missed, or were out of town when the whole thing went down.

[snip] One other consequence of the Assyrian invasion of Israel involved the settling of Israel by Assyrians. This group settled in the capital of Israel, Samaria, and they took with them Assyrian gods and cultic practices. But the people of the Middle East were above everything else highly superstitious. Even the Hebrews didn't necessarily deny the existence or power of other peoples' gods—just in case. Conquering peoples constantly feared that the local gods would wreak vengeance on them. Therefore, they would adopt the local god or gods into their religion and cultic practices.

Within a short time, the Assyrians in Samaria were worshipping Yahweh as well as their own gods; within a couple centuries, they would be worshipping Yahweh exclusively. Thus was formed the only major schism in the Yahweh religion: the schism between the Jews and the Samaritans. The Samaritans, who were Assyrian and therefore non-Hebrew, adopted almost all of the Hebrew Torah and cultic practices; unlike the Jews, however, they believed that they could sacrifice to God outside of the temple in Jerusalem. [/snip]

The Two Kingdoms | Jewish Virtual Library

[Uncle Miltie]

Thanks for the referral!

[Carry_Okie]

It’s probably the oldest documented one, the Elamites didn’t seem inclined to that, satisfied themselves with pulverizing rival city-states and carrying off their idols, back to their own capital.

There were several principles at work in the Torah which were never truly adopted, the lack of which induced the predicted failures we should be able to see today were we not so preoccupied. Among those were what I call programmable interrupts, the operation of which induced a form of feed-forward stability.

[Cronos]

It's the Judean point of view that the tribes in the north were lost and the Samaritans are outsiders.

The Samaritans have always said this was false and that they, the Samaritans, were the descendants of the northern tribes.

Genetic studies have shown that the Samaritans and Judeans have the same genes and this pdf gives more information

Note that The book of Chronicles compounds the difference in interpretation of Samaritan history. Recalling that Hezekiah ruled the southern kingdom of Judea from 715 BCE, after the Assyrian victory, the following passage seems to contradict the above statement from II Kings: And Hezekiah sent to all Israel and Judah and wrote letters also to Ephraim and Manasseh that they should come to the home of the Lord at Jerusalem to keep the Passover.” (II Chronicles 30: 1)

[Cronos]

No worries - the religious beliefs of the Mandaens are always hilarious to me - let me explain: The Mandaens as far as anyone can tell (they are pretty secretive, and for reason) is that their highest prophet is John the Baptist. They were mostly based in southern Iraq and they believe that Moses, Jesus AND Mohammed were all false prophets :)

talk of ticking off ALL your neighbors!! :)

[SunkenCiv]

Some of them probably are. Since the Assyrian idolatry after the depopulation event eventually lost out, it’s not surprising. That doesn’t mean they weren’t carried off, and the Assyrian records show that it was true. In addition, the ancestors of the Ashkenazi resettled north of the Black Sea didn’t memorialize Jerusalem, they memorialized Samaria.

[Verginius Rufus]

I would have thought that the inhabitants of Gezer would have been all old men, but William Dever thinks there were women and children there at the time of the Assyrian siege.

2 Kings 17 tells of the Assyrian king sending settlers to Samaria (but arranging for them to learn the religion of the God of that land) but the descendants of the ten tribes may have outnumbered the newcomers. At any rate the Samaritans have the Pentateuch and believe in the God of Abraham.