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ISRAEL, GOD'S ORACLE PEOPLE

Brother John G. Gassaway

More than a century before Darius the Great commissioned the Behistun rock, the Assyrians were watching their borders. Their enemies, the Urartians and the Medes were gathering an army. The Assyrians wanted to know everything that was going on with their foes. The border guards, and spies, would send back to the King, reports on the movements and activities occurring in the neighboring countries. Many of the clues to the identity of the "lost tribes" are found in those messages. Assurbanipal did not accomplish much as a warrior king but he left behind a much more important legacy, a huge library of clay tablets that we are just starting to decipher and translate as a whole. Many have been completed and the ones listed here obviously have been.

As the Rosetta revealed the hieroglyphics of Egypt, the Behistun rock broke the code to cuneiform that goes all the way back to Akkadia, and pre flood times. While Rawlinson was busy deciphering the Behistun writings, Paul Emile Botta first discovered Nineveh in 1843, at least one of the earlier capitols of Sargon. The work of the next man, Henry Layard, uncovered an entire library at Nineveh in 1847 AD, placed there by Assurbanipal of Biblical importance as the son of the last of the successful Assyrian kings, Esarhadon (Isaiah 37:38, 2nd Kings 19:37).

The Royal Palace at Nineveh contained over 23,000 clay tablets with everything from business deals to spy reports from the borders. These letters have become the transition point in prophecy fulfillment in regard to the lost tribes. Like the Behistun Rock, these reports reveal the names used by the Assyrians for the different groups of Israelites. They had been placed there as a buffer state between them and their enemies, the Medes and Urartians. With these names in hand we can trace these people and check the prophecies about them.

Assurbanipal was a very weak king and Nabopolassar of the Chaldeans tolerated his position in Nineveh, but could have, at any time taken him out of power and did defeat his successor and destroy Nineveh. What Assurbanipal did, however was to collect and reprint if necessary everything he and his learned men could find, clay tablets, with cuneiform script. That with Rawlinson's work gave the history of the world outside of the Biblical record back to pre-flood. There were two forms of cuneiform, Linear A and Linear B. One belonged to the Mycenaean culture of Crete (Noah?) and has never been fully deciphered. It is probably the most ancient, maybe the first writings of man. The other belonged to the Akkadian culture (Sumerians), and has been fully deciphered. Rawlinson had discovered them in 1835 and he spent the better part of 16 years deciphering them! It was this kind of dedication that we owe our knowledge of the Lost Tribes of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. These were just some of the fantastic finds of the 18th and 19th centuries. Additional cuneiform writings published by Allan Millard give us insight into the last days of Jerusalem, the Babylonian and Persian Empires.

The "Royal Letters" from the libraries of Assurbanipal are dated about 707 BC, only fourteen years after the fall of Samaria, the capitol city of the Kingdom of Israel. Maps show the deportation and the subsequent migrations of the tribes to various geographical locations.

Letters number 1079 and 197 were written by Sennacherib to his father, King Sargon. (Note that most of the kings of Assyria would take on the throne name, Tiglath-pileser or Tiglath-pileser or Tilgath-pilneser. The additional I or II or III would be added. Letter 1079 tells of a resounding defeat of the army of the Urartians. The troops were slain, and were fleeing. In the follow-up report of Letter 197 we find that this all happened in the land of Gamir. There is one more step to go before we confirm that the Israelites are the ones who lived in that land and eventually turned to be mercenaries for the Medes and Urartians against their captors, the Assyrians. It would be a confederacy of these three that would actually bring down the city of Nineveh and destroy it and the last king whilst Nebuchadnezzar, sent there by his father Nabopolassar, under the name of Hatisullis would lead them. Velikovsky chronicles the diaries of Hatisullis during this time and later when the intrigues and deceptions occurred that lead to Nebuchadnezzar's rise to power by killing his older brother Nergil and sending Nergil's son off to a distant land never to return (probably murdered). Nebuchadnezzar then proceeded to rewrite history destroying the evidence that Nergil or his son ever had claim to the throne!

In letter 112 it's reported that a people "went forth" from the midst of the Mannai, and into the "land of Urartu." Another Letter clearly separates the Urartians, the Mannai and the Gemara or Ga-me-ra-a-a as distinct from each other. The people named in Letter 112 are those Gemarians (Cimmerians, in English). In captivity, the Israelites were renamed Gimirru and Gemara and finally became known as Kimrie by Herodotus and Cimmerians now.

Those are just a smaller part of the total number of Israelites that were deported by the Assyrians. There were many thousands of others placed farther east. As the Persian writings on Behistun Rock show, these peoe were called by a different name. Among the prayer texts of Esarhadon to the sun god Shamash are several that name a people never heard of before in history, the "Iskuza" who evidently lived among the Mannai.

The name Iskuza can be easily reduced to the name "Isaac." The Israelites referred to themselves as House of Isaac before their exile - Amos 7:9, 16. This name Isaac is in part the foundation for the name Saka. They also were known as Scythian. That word is akin to the Hebrew word succuth or the tents used during the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles. The name also came to be identified with nomadic people who carried their very households on their wagons as they moved from place to place. (Not unlike the pioneers of America and their great Conestoga wagons). So, the Assyrians gave the Israelites a name based back in the name of the Israelite King Omri (Ghimri, Kimmrie, or Cimmerian); in contrast, the Persians used the Israelites own name. History also records the Iskuza as "Skuthae" by the Greeks, and "Sacae" [also Saka and Sakka] by the Persians. Herodotus use of the word Scythian only means nomad or wanderer, or one who lives in "booths." The word booth in Hebrew is Succoth, or scooth. I believe these connections are obvious.

With the Assyrian tablets we are confronted with yet more hard evidence that the Israelites are not lost to history. Their names were changed. One of the most common Japanese names is Sakai. The Japanese warriors have a name, Samurai, which is so close to the name of the Israelite capitol, Samaria, that the connection between Israel and Japan is virtually cemented. Where did that come from? These people, the Scythians regularly invaded China and very probably settled at some time in Japan in some numbers. They were very restless and warlike people. The Great China Wall was built to keep them out! In fact, the prophecy in Deuteronomy 33:17 that Israel would "push the people to the ends of the earth," is fulfilled by this alone. When one makes the connection between the Israelites and the Phoenicians, and, the Israelites and the Celts/Scythians, it becomes evident that the Israelites were the greatest explorers/colonizers of all history.

We must deal with both the Northern Kingdom and Judah. The northern kingdom is populated by descendants of Joseph, Ephraim and two half-tribes of Manasseh, one on the east bank of the Jordan with Ruben and Gad and the other half to the west of the Jordan. They go into bondage in two phases and we have begun to follow their movements and identify them by new names in their land of captivity in Media. The first stage carried away the Ruben, Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh in 737 BC. The second stage carried away the other tribes west of the Jordan as the Northern Kingdom came under attack by Sargon and Sennacherib. With the fall of Samaria in 722 and the exportation by 721 BC of those tribes of the north, there were few if any descendants of those tribes left behind. A small few escaped into Judea and to far corners of the world.

It is important to distinguish the northern tribes as Gentiles. Anyone who is not a "Jew" is a Gentile, even though they are descendants of Israel. The Bible uses in 365 ¬ days when dealing with completely Gentile history. If Jerusalem is the subject, it is 360-day years. These people were Gentiles. If you want to be made to look foolish, call Abraham a "Jew" or Moses or Joshua or David or Solomon for that matter. The first use of the word Jew is found when the kingdom divided after Solomon, during the wars and is used by the northern kingdom to refer to the southern, the Judahites, shortened to Jews. (II Kings: 16). Now count from the general time of Rawlinson's adventure with the Behistun rock in 1846 and Layard and Botta at Nineveh in 1845, [Gods, Graves and Scholars] back to the time of the Assyrian captivity from 739 to 721 BC and you are getting close to that number 2520, the time of God's hiding of His people. That is 2565 years-45 too many but then the events in history which fulfilled these years occurred long before the archaeologists' finds of the proof. But at this point we only know that the "lost tribes were in fact the Saki, Scythians, and Cimmerians" at that time of their captivity. We have not presented yet, the evidence as to where they disappeared.

Here we must go to apocryphal material that was in Jesus' Bible, the Septuagint and also The Works of Josephus. Josephus stated that in his times, only two tribes, Benjamin and Judah, were under Roman rule but the other tribes were beyond the Euphrates and an immense number. The Septuagint included Esdras as a separate, but apocryphal historical book of the Old Testament. There we found 2nd Esdras, included in the 1611 King James Bible and it states that the numbers of Israelites in Media were so large that when they decided to move through the Caucuses Mountains between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, it took 18 months for them to complete the migration!

In regard to the 2520 years punishment we have at this point two starting dates to deal with, 738 BC and 721 BC. We now turn to the Jews and their punishment. Everyone knows that a literal seventy years were proclaimed as punishment on Jerusalem or the Jews for the sins of Manasseh as well as the general idolatry of the people throughout their existence. They would return from that. Various kings would try reforms including Hezekiah and Josiah but on the whole the peoples' hearts turned to worshipping the gods of the adjacent nations. Even Solomon failed in this way and lost his control of the northern tribes to Jeroboam.

What is commonly overlooked is that God brought the Babylonian judgment upon the Jews for the sins of Manasseh but delayed the sentence until Josiah died as Josiah reformed the nation to the correct paths more than any before him. Shortly after Josiah's death the sentence was carried out. Again in this punishment, just like the northern kingdom, the punishment came in two stages. God decreed a punishment of servitude of Jerusalem and the Jew and sentence upon desolations upon Jerusalem. They began a two different times the result is that we see the end of the sentence occurring at separate times.

Jeremiah 25:7 Yet ye have not hearkened unto me, saith the LORD; that ye might provoke me to anger with the works of your hands to your own hurt. 8 Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts; because ye have not heard my words, 11 and this whole land shall be a desolation, [and] an astonishment; and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years.

Notice that they will SERVE the king of Babylon for seventy years. That is what is known as the period of servitude. Yet we notice the word "desolations" and it will turn out to be a different period starting after the servitude and ending after the end of servitude. The desolations pertains to the land itself but eventually the land is reduced to the city of Jerusalem with only two small outposts near the city, Lachish and Azekah to the north a few miles. These outposts fell early in the last siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 587 BC. [DISCOVERIES FROMM BIBLE TIMES, Alan Millard].

Let us look at the scripture, which supports the claims here:
Jeremiah 29:4 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, unto all that are carried away captives, whom I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem unto Babylon; 10 For thus saith the LORD, that after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place. 14 And I will be found of you, saith the LORD: and I will turn away your captivity,

God is speaking through Jeremiah of a period of Babylonian captivity and if we stopped reading at the point above, then we would miss an important point. The release of the captives from Babylon would only be a first action with another to occur at obviously another time. Let us look at the last of that verse.
Jeremiah 29:14 …and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places whither I have driven you, saith the LORD; and I will bring you again into the place whence I caused you to be carried away captive.

That prophecy has double fulfillment in the 70 years AND the 2520 years as many prophecies do. Gathering the Jews from "all nations" actually occurred with the second fulfillment. We know of the first release from captivity and it occurred with the advent of Cyrus, the Persian Emperor. At that time the Babylonian captives were returned to the land as Ezra 1:1 describes as being the "first year of Cyrus" commonly given as 539 BC. Yet, Daniel speaks again in chapter 9 of the first year of Darius and he now speaks of the "seventy years of desolations" of Jerusalem. This is in 522 BC, the first year of Darius the Great. We clearly see that the period of servitude and the period of desolations are quite separate entities. The question that must be answered is, "when did each period begin?" and how does that affect the overall predictions regarding a 360 X 7 punishment years of Deuteronomy. Clearly, 70 years in Babylon did not satisfy that punishment if it indeed occurred. That second period will be the subject of later articles and will also have a look at how that affects modern Jewish history.

I can tell you now that the figuring of dates using Jeremiah, Ezra and Haggai will not get you to any exact known important dates in modern Jewish history but they will get you to the years of interest. Why is this the case? I will be addressing this in a future installment before I present the "Julian calendar" and Jewish Old Testament history.

[To be continued: FIGURING THE YEARS].