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Shalom Yair,
I enjoyed reading your note about how Ephraim seems to bend over backward to find a way to disagree with the rabbis. How true, but in the end, Ephraim will overcome this too.
I have a question regarding something that you said about being Jewish. You wrote, "It does not
affect which Tribe one belongs to or which Tribal Inheritance one is to receive or whether or not one can claim to be a direct descendant of King David through the male line since if there was female there this would be a bit difficult."
You state that it would be difficult (but not impossible?) to claim legal descent from David through a female. Under what conditions would it be possible? Does the precedent regarding the daughters of Zelophehad have anything to do with it, that for an inheritance to pass through a female to the next generation (when no male sons exist in that certain generation) that the female would have to marry within the tribe (in this case, Judah)?
Stephen
It appears that the places to which the Ten Tribes were removed by the Assyrian kings must have been far more remote than northeastern Syria.
Assyria, with its capital cities of Nimrud (Calah), Dur Sharrukin (Khorsabad), and Nineveh -all on the Tigris- expanded greatly in the days of its warrior kings Tiglath-Pileser, Sargon, and Sennacherib. Repeatedly, the Assyrian kings led their troops across the Caucasus northward. Not satisfied with the passage along the coastal road of the Caspian Sea, they also explored the mountainous passes. Sargon, the conqueror of Samaria, wrote in his annals:
I opened up mighty mountains, whose passes were difficult and countless, and I spied out their trails.
Over inaccessible paths in steep and terrifying places I crossed . . .(5)
The descriptions of Tiglath-pileser and Sargon of their campaigns in the north lead us to recognize that they passed the mountains of the Caucasus and reached the steppes between the Don and the Volga. When the barrier of the mountains was overcome, they could proceed northward in a scarcely populated area barren of natural defenses, where they would have met less resistance than in the foothills of the mountains. It is unknown how far they may have let their armies of conquest march across the steppes, but probably they did not give the order to return homeward until the army brought its insignia to some really remote point: it could be as far as the place of the confluence of the Kama with the Volga, or even of the Oka, still farther north. The middle flow of the Volga would be the furthermost region of the Assyrian realm.
The roads to the Russian steppes along the Caspian and Black seas were much more readily passable than the narrow path along the river Terek and the Daryal Canyon that cut the Caucasus and wind at the foot of Mount Kazbek, over sixteen thousand feet high.
The fact that the "confluence of the river Gozan" is considered a sufficient designation suggests that it must have been a great stream.
A large river in the plain behind the crest of the Caucasus is the Don, and a still larger river, the largest in Europe, is the Volga. If the Assyrians did not make a halt on the plain that stretches immediately behind the Caucasus and moved along the great rivers without crossing them to conquer the great plain that lies open behind the narrow span where the rivers Don and Volga converge, then the most probable place of exile might be reckoned to be at the middle Volga. The distance from Dur Sharrukin to this region on the Russian (Scythian) plain is in fact much less than the distance from Nineveh to Thebes in Egypt, a path taken by Assurbanipal several decades later.
But Assyrian occupation of Scythia is not a mere conjecture: it is confirmed by archaeological evidence. "The earliest objects from Scythia that we can date," writes a student of the region's antiquities, "referred to the VIIth and VIth centuries B.C., are under overwhelming Assyrian influence. . ." (6)
(6). Ellis H. Minns, Scythians and Greeks (Cambridge, 1913), p. 263.
The real Scythians, however lived first in Anatolia before the 7th century BC, then moved in large numbers to the Kuban Region in early 6th century BC, then to the Pontic Steppes and later to eastern Europe and to Turkestan. Before this time they must have conducted long term trade with the region also. They greatly influenced the culture of the peoples they interacted with including the so called Finnougrians in the north and also the Hunic-Turkic peoples in the east and probably also some Indo Europeans.
First of all a comparison of early Scythian customs, art forms, religious beliefs and even their first historic mention is all from Anatolia and Northern Messopotamia. First in Assyrian documents. The early Greek writers confirm this also. Therefore they were not a northern people at all ! Nor an eastern one from Central Asia. Plinius writes of their origins "Ultra sunt Scytharum populi, Persae illos Sacas in universum appellavere a proxima gente, antiqui Arameos." They came from an area in Northern Messopotamia often called Arameos, which is but a name of Urartu whose first king was called Aram. Later the term was also applied to Syria where another colony of Scythians & Hati-Hittites (2000BC to 714BC) settled after the collapse of their old empire in Anatolia. Indeed this was but one of the reasons for the spreading of Anatolian people to the north also. Both Assyrian and Mede attacks forced them to look for new lands to settle./Meszaros
Herodotus also tells of the origin of the Scythians from the area of eastern Anatolia watered by the Araxes River (modern Turkish Aras) and not the Amu Darya which the historians of Alexander invented to enlarge their own conquests. Herodotus writes: "The nomad Scythians living in Asia (once only the near east) were attacked by the Sarmatians and were forced to cross the Araxes and wander to the land of the Kimmerians."
Hesiod, 7th Century BC, writes: The inventors of bronze working were the Scythians. The early Messopotamian name of the metal Zubur, indicates that the northern Messopotamian Subartuan's or a people of the region were indeed the inventors of the process. The Scythians also of this region were therefore but a different designation of such people that the Greeks associated with them.
The Greeks also associated the invention of iron working with the Scythians. This again is a northern Messopotamian and Anatolian invention and being Anatolian in origin the Scythians also had some great iron working tribes like the Kalybs tribe which gave steel its name in many early European languages. In time they became absorbed by the Sarmatians and Yazig. They must have also been remembered by the Yazig cavalry taken by the Romans to early Britain and were the foundation of the King Arthur myths of Ex-Calibur, and the sword myths which are all early Anatolian traditions. These traditions were also found in Hun and Magyar traditions and mentioned by Herodotus amongst the early Scythians.
Besides bronze and iron they are credited by the early Greeks to have invented the bellows used for metal smelting. The invention of the pottery wheel and the boat anchor. Products of a very early civilization.
Therefore when Justinius II writes that the Scythians are one of the most ancient races in the world, older than the Egyptians, He cannot be talking of simply the late Scythian immigrants to the Pontic steppes but the early northern Messopotamian cultures. Similarly he cannot be talking of the Iranian tribesmen which spread into Central Asia. Nor is he talking of the later Hun tribes for sure, since they were hardly known for a such a long time in the west.
It is Deodorus Siculus who talks of the death and disappearance of the true Scythians at the hands of the Sarmatians, who could not have been their relatives, and therefore not real Scythians. The early Scythian art style is an extension of Messopotamian art, a fact which cannot be denied any longer.
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