Lost Tribes of Israel

The ten lost tribes were the ten of the twelve tribes of ancient Israel that were said to have been deported from the Kingdom of Israel after its conquest by the Neo-Assyrian Empire circa 722 BCE and subsequent exile in 587 BCE. Claims of descent from the "lost" tribes have been proposed in relation to many groups, and some religions espouse a messianic view that the tribes will return.

The motif of "the lost tribes" first appeared in the post-biblical era, and a number of apocryphal texts subsequently elaborated upon the theme. In the 7th and 8th centuries CE, the return of the lost tribes was associated with the concept of the coming of the messiah.

Recorded history is at variance with the legends elaborated in apocryphal texts. Historian Tudor Parfitt has declared that "the Lost Tribes are indeed nothing but a myth", and he writes that "this myth is a vital feature of colonial discourse throughout the long period of European overseas empires, from the beginning of the fifteenth century, until the later half of the twentieth". Zvi Ben-Dor Benite states: "The fascination with the tribes has generated, alongside ostensibly nonfictional scholarly studies, a massive body of fictional literature and folktale." Anthropologist Shalva Weil has documented differing tribes and peoples claiming affiliation to the Lost Tribes throughout the world.

Some DNA studies have refuted any connection between modern-day ethnic Jews and most of the ethnic groups proposed as possible Lost Tribe candidates. For example, a recently published study into the genetic origins of Japanese people does not support a genealogical link.

The Scriptural basis for the idea of "10 Lost Tribes" is 2 Kings 17:6: "In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and deported the Israelites to Assyria. He settled them in Halah, in Gozan on the Habor River and in the towns of the Medes." According to the Hebrew Bible, Jacob (who was later named Israel; Gen 35:10) had 12 sons and at least one daughter (Dinah) by two wives and two concubines. The twelve sons fathered the twelve Tribes of Israel.

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