Claim of the biblical descent of the Bagrationi dynasty

A legend that the Georgian royal Bagrationi dynasty were of a Hebrew origin and descended from the biblical King-Prophet David dates back to the family's appearance on the Georgian soil in the latter half of the eight century. As the Bagratid power grew, this claim morphed into an officially endorsed paradigm, enshrined in medieval historical literature such as the early 11th-century chronicle of Sumbat Davitis-dze, and formed the basis of the dynasty's political ideology for the duration of their millennium-long ascendancy in Georgia. The proposed Davidic descent allowed the Bagrationi to claim kinship with Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary and rest their legitimacy on a biblical archetype of the God-anointed royalty.

The legend of the Bagrationi's Hebrew or Davidic descent is given no credence by modern mainstream scholarship. The family's origin is disputed, but the view formulated by the historians such as Ekvtime Takaishvili and Cyril Toumanoff that the Georgian dynasty descended from a refuge prince of the Armenian house of Bagratuni prevails.

The legend originated in the Armenian–Georgian milieu in the latter half of the 8th century. A Hebrew provenance is first ascribed to the Armenian Bagratids (Bagratuni) by the early medieval Armenian historian Movses Khorenatsi, but he in no way suggests that the family descended from King David. Around 800, the early Georgian Bagratids creatively manipulated the claim so as to present themselves as the direct biological descendants of the biblical king. They did not explicitly apply a Davidic origin to their Armenian cousins, although the Armenians subsequently adopted the Georgians' innovation as their own.

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