Ironies of History: the "Lost Tribes"

When the "Davidic" kingdom of Judah was overthrown by the Babylonians (587 BCE), the people who called themselves "Israel" reinvented themselves: no longer the subjects of a sovereign earthly realm, they were now the dispersed subjects of a sovereign heavenly King. In their Mesopotamian exile, the Judahist moral imagination took flight and the stage was set for the "people Israel" to embody a new role: the conscience of the world.

Then, in 539 BCE, the Messiah came (see Isaiah 45:1): he was Cyrus, king of Persia, conqueror of Babylon and liberator of the Judahists (later Jews).

Those Judahists who were willing to return to Judea did so and, with the financial assistance of the Persian court, attempted to restore it to its former glories.

Over the next two centuries, a new temple was constructed in the capital city of Jerusalem and the cult of sacrifice was reinstated. With the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BCE, however, the relative political independence of Judah came to an end.




Some Judahists embraced Greek cultural imperialism ("Hellenization") in Alexander's wake, while others resisted it. In 146 BCE, the Greek peninsula itself came under Roman rule; the provinces would eventually follow. Rebellion and unrest ensued in Judea (now Roman Palestine) and, in 70 CE, the Jerusalem temple was leveled by the Roman legions.

Once again, the people Israel were left with the choice to reinvent themselves or abandon their communal identity. By this time, however, new ideological currents were stirring the moral imaginations of the people-who-call-themselves-"Israel." One current, the so-called "Jesus Movement," embraced the teachings of a Palestinian apocalypticist. This movement was expansionist, fissiparous, and able to adapt to diasporic exigencies. Moreover, among its influential leaders were individuals who imagined that the ancestral cult of sacrifice had culminated in the human sacrifice of their executed teacher. The era of sacrifice was now over, in their view, and history was also at its culmination and end.

Another current, that of the "sages," attempted to continue the sacrificial cult without a central temple complex as a pilgrimage destination. They reinterpreted the cult of sacrifice by internalizing it and domesticating it. The home was now God's temple; the dinner table, the altar. These sages would later be known simply as "teachers" (Rabbis).

In this way, the Judahist moral imagination continued to develop; eventually, three world religions would emerge from creative re-imaginings of the Judahist heritage.

In the 4th century of the Common Era, the Roman empire itself fell under the sway of the apocalyptic and expansionist branch of the Judahists (now known as "Christianity"). Once again, Judahists were in possession of a kingdom. In the 7th century of the Common Era, many Near Eastern provinces of the (now "Holy") Roman empire shifted allegiance from the emperor in "Rome" (now Constantinople) to Damascus, where they combined their civilizational energies with the former subjects of an Iranian empire (their longtime rivals, the Sassanids) under the aegis of an interpretation of the Judahist heritage that had emerged with the teachings of an Arabian prophet, Muhammad ibn 'Abdallah.

In the 20th century of the Common Era, members of the apocalyptic and expansionist branch of Judahism assisted members of the Rabbinic branch in the creation of a modern nation-state in Palestine (largely populated for over a thousand years by members of the Muhammadan branch). They called this nation-state "Israel."

Some may view this latest episode in what is a continuing saga as an example of "history repeating itself." I prefer a different metaphor. When people have wandered for a long time in a dark wood, only to discover themselves in a place that appears to be the one from which they had originally departed, they have little choice but to conclude that they are lost.