The Lost Tribes of Israel as a Problem in History and Sociology

Abstract

In what follows I present a sociological interpretation of the mythohistorical legend of the Lost Tribes of Israel. Ten of the original 12 tribes that comprised the ancient Hebrew people disappeared from conventional history and other secular annals sometime immediately before and shortly thereafter 721 B.C.E., when the Northern Kingdom of Israel was overrun by the Assyrians and its people sent into exile. Sacred histories and biblical prophecies hold that the 10 Lost Tribes will be reunited with their tribal brethren descended from the Southern Kingdom of Judea just before, or as a signal of, the coming messianic age. A quest for the descendants of the lost tribes has been begun many times, usually associated with the resolution of immediate, local, secular, or sacred issues that emerged in a particular era and at a particular place. Various peoples (e.g., the Falasha of Ethiopia, the Lemba of Zimbabwe, the Pachucans of Mexico, various tribes of the American Indians, the imperial family of Japan, and the British Israelites) have proclaimed themselves to be, or have been designated as, the saving remnants of the lost tribes. I have carried out this investigation of an allegedly scattered peoplehood within aspects of the emerging but still inchoate tradition of postmodernist social science.1 Every aspect of the history—and the very existence—of the ten tribes of Israel is fraught with existential controversy and epistemological conundrums. The fatefulness of the original tribal monarchical confederation—the society of ancient Hebrews inhabiting the Northern Kingdom of Israel—is largely dependent on religious sources and a few other ancient documents whose accuracy is disputed and whose usefulness for social scientific research remains a topic of intense debate.2 As J. Maxwell Miller observes, “Given the uncertainties that arise from the biblical story, the paucity of references to Israel or Israelites in extrabiblical docu