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Scott Wolter, British Israelism, and the Ark of the Covenant

11/19/2013

34 Comments

 
We are less than two weeks away from the premiere of the new season of America Unearthed, bowing at 9 PM ET on November 30, and H2 has made available a description of the first episode. Remember how producers and Scott Wolter indicated that the new series would focus less on religious conspiracies and pre-Columbian white conquest of America? Well, the first episode essentially announces: "No! We want religious conspiracies and pre-Columbian white conquest!" Yes, Scott Wolter is going in search of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel and the Ark of the Covenant in the desert southwest.

Oh, and we go back to the Hill of Tara, where Ancient Aliens told us a flock of UFOs landed. Fun!

Here’s how H2 describes the first episode:

Scott Wolter gets a call from a man who has a mysterious stone on his property. He's convinced that it's the "Stone of Destiny"–the stone that Jacob from the Bible rested his head on when he dreamed of a stairway to Heaven. As Scott investigates, he discovers the stone was once kept with something even more valuable. It was once kept with the Ark of the Covenant and both are rumored to have been brought to America. Scott's quest for the truth leads him to a sacred site in Ireland called the Hill of Tara and to a mysterious site in Arizona where a petroglyph depicting what could be the Ark could suggest its final resting place is right here in the United States. And, as for who brought it here, a tablet inscribed with the Ten Commandments found with a series of other artifacts could suggest a likely group of candidates–the Lost Tribes of Israel.

How does one even begin? The trouble starts right at the beginning. The stone on which Jacob rested his head is not conventionally known as the Stone of Destiny when referring to the actual object from Genesis, where it is mentioned only once and is known typically as the “stone of Jacob.” The reference in Genesis 28:10-22 bookends the dream in which Jacob has a vision of a ladder reaching to heaven on which the angels moved up and down. Specifically, of the stone it is said:

… he took one of the stones of that place and put it at his head, and he lay down in that place to sleep. […] Then Jacob rose early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put at his head, set it up as a pillar, and poured oil on top of it. And he called the name of that place Bethel; but the name of that city had been Luz previously. Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me, and keep me in this way that I am going, and give me bread to eat and clothing to put on, so that I come back to my father’s house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God. And this stone which I have set as a pillar shall be God’s house, and of all that You give me I will surely give a tenth to You.”

Here is where things get weird, and a little racist. This pillar became known colloquially as “Jacob’s Pillow,” and this name became applied to the Stone of Scone, the coronation stone of the kings of Scotland, which legend holds was brought from Ireland sometime in the early Dark Ages. This, in turn, connects the Stone of Scone to the Lia Fáil at Tara, the coronation stone of the kings of Ireland. By the transitive property, Lia Fáil’s title of “Stone of Destiny” in turn became applied to the Stone of Scone, and, by back-formation, to Jacob’s stone. According to modern “Westminster stone theories” like the 2008 claims by Alex Salmond, based largely on speculation, the Stone of Scone is a fake set up by Scottish monks to fool the English, while the real stone of Jacob was secreted away sometime before 1296. This is supported, in turn, by a claim from 1819 that a large meteoric stone was that year found at Dunsinane beside two round bronze tablets with inscriptions relating it to Bethel, suggesting it was the original stone.

So how is this racist?

The legend, which most would rightly conclude is a medieval myth Christianizing a pagan stone, became one of the focal points of British Israelism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and through that to various branches of Aryan supremacy theories. British Israelism is the belief, originating in the 1600s, that the British are the true descendants of the Lost Tribes, with the British monarch the lineal heir of David. British Israelism has traditionally been used to justify the racial superiority of white Anglo-Saxons over non-white peoples through an appeal to special status in the eyes of God, and it is still very much active online today, especially among racial theorists with religious inclinations. In turn, the substitution theory of the Stone of Scone leads to weird British-Israelist claims that Elizabeth II is an illegitimate queen.

In British Israelist ideology, the Lost Tribes became the Scythians (Saka or Cimmerians) of the Beishtun Inscription (column 1, line 6 and column 5, lines 74-75) carved by Darius of Persia c. 500 BCE because Darius says that “Ahuramazda was not worshipped by them,” so therefore they must be Jews. These Scythians, or Cimmerians, called themselves Kumri, which British Israelists like John Rhys argued was cognate with Kymri or Cymru, the names used by Celtic groups such as the Welsh for themselves. Since Hibernia and Iberia also sounded like “Hebrew,” ipso facto the Celts were the Jews, and the British therefore Israelites. It’s a little more complicated than that, but this is the main thread.

We have already seen how Glenn Beck recently used these exact same claims to argue that “Caucasians” are God’s Chosen People, and that America was founded by God’s Chosen.

But Scott Wolter goes farther still down the British Isles religious rabbit hole.

The Bible says nothing about the stone of Jacob being stored alongside the Ark of the Covenant. This might be based on claims that the Ark of the Covenant had been secreted to Scotland by the Knights Templar and entrusted to the Sinclair family. Or it could be derived from some truly nutty religious ranting by a group or person called JAH, who asserts that he, she, or they have “discovered” a text written by the Queen of Ireland in the 500s BCE describing how the Ark of the Covenant and Jacob’s Pillow were taken to Ireland where the pillow became the Lia Fáil and the Ark secreted in Queen Tephi’s tomb at Tara. This, in turn again, is no real discovery but the allegedly ancient words are instead taken verbatim from an 1897 poem called The Book of Tephi by John A. Goodchild, in which the author specifically disclaimed any real connection to truth but instead said it was a fantasy concocted from the Bible and fragments of Irish poetry, of which he admitted much ignorance. Others who advocate the same theory instead base their views on verbatim quotations from an 1880 novel on a similar subject.

But I won’t leave it there. There has to be a historical basis for these British Israelist claims. It certainly does not come from the obvious sources, like the Lebor Gabála Érenn (c. 1150), which in standard form relate that the Lia Fáil originated when the Tuath De Danann brought it in their UFOs (just kidding—it was boats) from Falia, or that Simon Brec brought it from Spain, or that Pharaoh’s daughter Scota brought it from Egypt in the days of Moses. (Goodchild ran all these together to make a multi-stage journey.)

Instead, the story originates in a truly bizarre mixture of materials assembled in 1861 by the Rev. F. R. A. Glover, a British Israelist, and advocated by the American C. A. L. Totten, author of the appropriately named Our Race describing how God favored white Anglo-Saxons as the Chosen People. Obviously, such claims could only emerge after the English had full control of Ireland and Scotland and felt comfortable tracing their lineage to a Celtic group, something that came about only after the Act of Union. Prior to that, the Celts were often demonized as subhuman, rather than heralded as the pure embodiment of Aryan greatness.

Glover’s ideas start with the Apocrypha, where the prophet Jeremiah is said to have hid the Ark of the Covenant in Mt. Nebo, where it would stay hidden and safe from the invading armies during the destruction of Babylon in 587 BCE (2 Maccabees 2:4–7). Because Jeremiah’s followers could not find it, later writers began to claim that Jeremiah fled with the Ark. In 1024, in the poetry of Cuan O’Cochlain (attributed; many think the source text is older), we read that Tephi, daughter Cino Bactir, a king in Spain, died and her fantastic tomb became Tara. He was repeating a claim made by Amergin in the sixth century. Somehow, and I do not know how, British Israelists made Tephi into a daughter of Zedekiah, the last Jewish king before the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BCE, and had her marry a Milesian (Scot) and bring the Stone of Destiny to Ireland and call it the Pillow of Jacob. This is very much a purposeful misinterpretation of Cuan O’Cochlain’s discussion of how Tephi married Canthon of Britain, and the Britons’ most important idol, the Etherun or Taran, was left in Spain until her body was restored to that country. Tephi’s tomb in Spain then became the model for another tomb in Ireland, called Tara, after the return of the stone idol.

In the Lebor Gabála Érenn, we read that Milesians invaded Ireland, and someone had the brilliant inspiration to decide that Jeremiah was one of them, when in fact  the Irish annals specify that their leader, Ollam Fodlah, was a native king, not one from the Middle East. British Israelists purposely conflated Tephi, known only from the works cited above, with Tea, a native-born queen married to Heremon, son of Miletus, in Spain just before the Milesian invasion. Since the annals preserve her genealogy in Ireland back at least three generations, she was therefore not the daughter of Zedekiah.

The warrant for this is Jeremiah 41:10 and 43:5-7, where a king’s daughters (either Zedekiah’s or Josiah’s; the text is unclear) escape the destruction of Jerusalem. There is no indication they went to Ireland or anywhere else, or that any of them was Tea or Telphi.

All of this is mixed up with the similar legend of Scota, the supposed ancestress of the Scots, whom Irish legends dating back to the 1100s claim was a daughter of Pharaoh from the time of Moses who was exiled, married a prince, and spawned the Scots. Various arguments have been put forward to work Scota and Tea-Tephi into the same myth, or to move Scota from the time of Moses to that of Jeremiah, etc. The Lebor Gabála Érenn however is fairly clear on the point, though some variant manuscripts offers another Scota, daughter of an imaginary pharaoh. It also claims she was married to a Scythian, which pulls us back into the Celts = Scythians = Lost Tribes claim.

In 1301 Baldred Bisset rewrote Scottish history to downplay Irish involvement when he prepared the Scottish submission to the papal curia complaining about English aggression during the Wars of Independence. He rewrote the Scota myth to make her take the Stone of Scone from Egypt with her during the Exodus, and Robert the Bruce made use of this as anti-English propaganda in 1323. This is the only slim line of actual historical detail (though still a myth) connecting either of the coronation stones back to the Middle East—a detail that British Israelists retroactively applied back to the Stone of Destiny in Ireland.

Putting it all together with no mind for chronology or truth, the British Israelists made Jeremiah and Tephi come with the Ark of the Covenant and Jacob’s stone from Egypt to Spain to Ireland, and there hid the Ark at Tara, where it serves to bless the white race with divine protection from the non-white peoples of the world. And not a word of this is actually found in any of the ancient texts from which the story originates.

As various parts of this confabulation were challenged, new claims were invented to support it. None is convincing, and to this very day various racist and anti-Semitic theories use these claims, including one that the Jews, specifically the Rothschilds, are hiding the Ark from good, believing Christians.

Scott Wolter, of course, will simply accept all of this as true legendry and not a nineteenth century concoction. He will further look into whether the Lost Tribes brought the Ark to the desert southwest, and he’s going to use the almost certainly fake Los Lunas Decalogue Stone—which I discussed in great detail back in March—to “prove” it.

So, season two is off to a great start: Racist British Israelist fantasies rehabilitated for your amusement, all while making America the home of God’s own Ark and shining the blessings of Yahweh on the (white) people of America. Perfect.

34 Comments
The Other J.
11/19/2013 07:55:48 am

I'm... just going to keep my mouth shut on this one -- I think you covered the problems well enough.

It is interesting to see how readily Wolter and others he turns to will accept the scantest bit of legend as truth and use that to displace an entire culture's history, mythology, archaeology and folklore, as if it never mattered in the first place. I know Wolter may believe he's somehow exalting the Celts here, but he's doing it by making them something they're not -- Anglo-Saxons, and a particular kind of Anglo-Saxon dreamed up 200 years ago as supernaturally chosen people, not even real Anglo-Saxons. And that's just a bit offensive and weirdly colonialist -- "all your base are belong to us."

I wonder if that's what Native Americans think when they're told they're actually a lost tribe from Israel.

Reply
Thane
11/19/2013 11:05:07 am

What I don't get is the lack of critical thinking.

It's one thing to say, "Hey, there's this theory/Myth/bit o'folklore" that sounds interesting. Let's investigate it!" and then fail to investigate and swallow it hook, line, and sinker........and worse, combine wild claims to create new nonsense.

I will be surprised if they don't introduce Joseph of Arimaththea and the Holy Grail into the mix as yet another example of Biblical artifacts brought to England. It is yet another way to tie it all into the Knights Templar and the holy bloodline.

Reply
Sacqueboutier
11/19/2013 02:35:49 pm

When do we get to meet Tim The Enchanter?

Geo. Haines
8/30/2014 11:49:16 am

The American indians, etal., are NOT of the house of Israel. Denmark, pronounced DANmark are of the house of Israel.

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Salverda
11/19/2013 08:05:26 am

How does it advance "Aryan supremacy" to claim that one is not Aryan at all, but rather Jewish? If claiming to be "God's chosen people" constitutes racism, then are the Jews, by this definition, the original racists? Don't Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and any national or even tribal religion all claim to be God's chosen people? Why do you insist that such a claim is based upon race? If one belongs to a different race, and then marries into, say for instance the Jews, and becomes a proselyte, then you become one of God's chosen people, right? Your race has nothing to do with it, I think that cries of racism in these cases, may be unfounded. Being one of God's chosen people, need not rely on your race. Imagine an Aryan identifying himself as a Jew, and that makes him a racist! I don't follow the "logic." I realize that there are racists among the British-Israelites, but there are racists among the Italians as well, and then there are the Sicilians who are very proud that they are not Italians. Is pride in your national origin, or race, what constitutes racism in your mind?

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Jason Colavito link
11/19/2013 08:42:28 am

British Israelism imagined that what we call "Jews" are really the degenerate remnants of Babylonians who interbred with the Jews, while white British people were "pure" tribes of Israel and bathed in the light of Christ. In their mind, to be a Tribe of Israel is not to be a Jew, but a Chosen One.

The racist claims come from the British Israelists' efforts to appropriate other people's cultures and remake them to fit their narratives. They, for example, appropriate early Jewish culture for Britain, assign the Celts to an Aryan scheme, and make the Germans into Assyrians. They deny other peoples' histories in order to create a fictional narrative that places them at the top of the hierarchy.

British Israelism as practiced in the 1800s and early 1900s was explicitly racist and tied belief to the idea of the biological supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon race. They came up with that, not me.

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Salverda
11/19/2013 10:47:30 am

OK Jason, "They, for example, appropriate early Jewish culture for Britain, assign the Celts to an Aryan scheme, and make the Germans into Assyrians." It just seems very surprising to me to learn that adopting Jewish culture as your own, accepting the Celts as your racial equivalents, and denying that the Germans are Aryans but are instead Semitic Assyrians, and in fact denying your own Aryan origins in favor of claiming that you are an Israelite (who are not Japhetic but Semitic), could ever be considered as features of "Aryan supremacy." By the way, who is "white" in your mind? Are not the Jews (and/or the Israelites) and Babylonians white?

Furthermore, whether an Israelite is a Jew or not, they certainly are not Aryans, they are Semites, like the Babylonians. Real Aryan supremacists like the Skinheads, the Aryan Nations, and the Neo-Nazis, (and Hitler himself), would never would never agree to the ideas of British Israelism.

British Israelism in the 1800's was a lot like the Democratic South during the 1800's, the Republicans were the Abolitionists and virtually every Black man was a Republican; However some of these things just don't translate well into modern concepts perhaps there have been some changes since then, perhaps not.

As for the other J, sorry to have pushed your button, no need to be long winded, I'll go along with your definitions of racism as far as it goes. And I'll stand corrected on the Buddhists (I only meant to say that we all think our religion is the correct one, sometimes we even change to one that we think might be better). God's "chosen people" is not a race. And now I shall try to correct you, perhaps. You are aware, are you not, that the British people (as are the Welch) are Celtic (true the English are not, but as far as the British Empire is concerned, it would surprise me to find them to be seriously anti-Celtic). Are there any English people left in this world who have no Celtic blood in them?

I am an American I have some Irish blood in me, here we have paddy wagons to take care of any hooligans and their shenanigans, we don't put up with their malarkey, we have sports teams called the fighting Irish, and the Celtics (we have the Red Skins and the Vikings as well, but no Watusi) so I am never sure as to what kind of racism will be acceptable, it seems to change all the time, and I find European soccer racism to be quite ridiculous.

Jason Colavito link
11/19/2013 11:06:21 am

I think you're trying to impose a unified idea of racism when there were many different racisms in earlier days. Before the idea of genetics, terms like "Aryan," "Semitic," etc. were more fungible. Don't expect Victorians to conform to Nazi-era distinctions of biological racism. The Victorians took seriously the concept of the Jews as the Chosen People and sought to appropriate that for themselves by simply making the "true" Jews into Aryans.

Our current black-white dichotomy wasn't the standard globally back in the day, and in the late 1800s each ethnic group thought of itself as a "race" on a finely-grained hierarchy of races. In the late 1800s, British race theorists divided white peoples into many categories, with the Anglo-Saxons (of course) at the top, followed by the Teutonic peoples, and then (lower down) the Latin peoples, and so on. It was perfectly possible to be an Anglo-Saxon who was racist against Latins, etc. Thomas Sinclair, for example, was a Victorian-era American racist who advocated Anglo-Scottish supremacy over Italians, even though historically the Anglo-Saxons and Scots had been at each others' throats for centuries!

The Other J.
11/19/2013 11:08:31 am

Salverda,

There aren't a lot of people in Britain who aren't a mix of a variety of ethnicities, that's not in question. It's also relatively new knowledge; they didn't have something like DNA evidence back in the 19th century, and it's highly dependent on location. But that doesn't stop the BNP today, or and it didn't stop Combat 18 in 1995.

I would say if you have to ask yourself whether a certain level of racism is acceptable or not, best to avoid it. But if someone has to ask that question in the first place, I don't think not offending someone is really at the top of their priority list. For mine, I just try to avoid any level of racism, whether it's acceptable or not. Makes for an easier day.

I'm going to assume you do actually get that British Israelism isn't trying to claim to be Jewish or Semitic, just that they're the actual chosen people of god. They're not celebrating Passover with bitter herbs and salt water. However, they are claiming that those who do celebrate Passover and claim to be god's chosen people are either fooled at best, or duplicitous at worst. They're also claiming that this chosen people birthright upholds both their monarchy and their pretensions to empire. It was all god's will.

David HP
11/24/2013 01:07:32 am

The British Israelists were the source and inspiration for the current American racist religion Christian Identity which is a hate religion followed by many American neo-Nazi, extreme right wing and white supremacists today. They believe that semitic Jews are not the Israeli chosen people but the British are a lost tribe of Israel.

Salverda
11/24/2013 04:07:48 am

Well, thanks for that David, better late than never, I will stand corrected (with apologies to Jason and the other J, I was doubting your objectiveness). It was the phrase "Christian Identity" that got to me. I guess that there are some, decidedly few (2,000 to 50,000) but vocal, who claim, to my utter amazement, to be both Semitic and Aryan! I was not familiar with these groups. They are not affiliated with Herbert Armstrong's (the Worldwide Church of God) or Yair Davidy's (Brit-am) groups (with whom I am very familiar, and have actually published some of my writings) who condemn and are condemned by them. The Christian Identity "hate groups" would have a tough time explaining, not only the Aryan/Semite conflict of identity, but many Scriptural passages that seem to predict a joining of the "Lost Tribes" with the tribe of Judah at the "end times" (such as Eze. 37) to protect Jerusalem from the "Philistines." Anyway, thanks for your contribution, I will submit and quietly slink away, I just didn't know.

The Other J.
11/19/2013 09:20:22 am

*deep breath -- this is going to be long*

The way I understand it, British Israelism and the claim that (certain) Anglo-Saxons are the real chosen people brings with it the claim that Jews as we generally understand them -- Semitic people originating from Judea -- were never really the chosen people in the first place and are imposters. Sometimes that's cast as sinister imposters (which makes them look evil). So it's not just typical Antisemitism, it also works to displace Jewish history, culture and identity, and claim that it was always meant to be Aryan. Ergo, the history we know is a lie.

As far as other religions choosing to be god's chosen people, first, Buddhists claim no such thing, so that's just off. Second, there's a rich history of slaughter, conquest and genocide because Jews, Christians, and Muslims all claim to be the REAL chosen people. And that doesn't make the Jews the original racists; there were plenty of tribes before them that claimed an exalted place in this universe over all other tribes (if you're reading the Torah, that starts with Egypt). If I understand it correctly, the term "Hebrew" wasn't originally a cultural identity at all, but referred to people that lived on the hinterland of established civilization. So it more or less meant "those people who live out there," as opposed to Jews as we know them today, and those hinterland Hebrews were comprised of people from a variety of tribes and cultures. It's only over time that those hinterland people began to form a more unified culture in the face of being regularly ostracized from other established civilization.

Final point: Pride in an ethnic origin doesn't necessarily constitute racism in itself, but it gets into racist territory when that ethnic identity cannot exist without denigrating, displacing, violating, or otherwise imposing itself onto another culture or ethnic group. It basically comes down to a kind of "we" that doesn't exist unless that "we" is challenging a "them." British Israelism falls squarely into that category -- by displacing and removing both Jewish identity from Jews and Celtic identity from Celts.

There's a documented history of this sort of thing. The English poet Matthew Arnold held the first chair of Celtic Studies at Oxford. This was at the same time that the British Empire was nearing its height, and there was a movement to try to define what it actually meant to be "English." (That also goes hand-in-hand with 19th century Romanticism.) The way Arnold participated in this construction of English identity was to imagine what the ideal English qualities would be, then describe the Celts has having the OPPOSITE of those qualities, and THEN posit the English as possessing the opposing and therefore good qualities. So for instance, it wasn't enough to just describe the English as "masculine"; first he had to describe the Celts as "feminine," and THEN he could move to saying the English, who weren't Celts, were actually the opposite therefore "masculine" and "good." It''s a weird little psychological game to create an ethnic identity, but it's not based on what that ethnic group actually is, does, or says; instead, it's based against what the initial group perceives the nearby ethnic Other to be. That's where the racism comes into play.

It's fine to be a proud Sicilian (I grew up with some), or Russian, or Xhosa, or whatever, and generally that kind of pride manifests itself through participating in the cultural traits. I'm from Wisconsin, and the city of Milwaukee boasts more ethnic festivals than any other city in the nation -- they even celebrate Bastille Days. Ethnic foods will be sold on the street and parades held, and everyone in the city can participate no matter what their background. But it becomes problematic when an ethnic identity is predicated on challenging the ethnic identity of another people. "Aryan" and "white" has historically fallen directly into that category in the past few hundred years, and doesn't even really work as an identity.

I don't know if you're from the U.S. or not, but when some people here say they want to celebrate white or European identity, it's never clear what that even means -- which white identity? English? Scandinavian? French? Irish? All of it? As Jason pointed out, the Celts weren't even considered fully human by the English until some time after the Act of Union, and in the U.S., it took until the 20th century when a Cathlic Irish American became governor of New York (Al Smith). So if you're going by history, apparently "white" or "European" identity entailed treating the Irish as subhuman (and this isn't even all that old; it was made into a joke in the 1974 film Blazing Saddles).

Or just go back to 1995 and the football riot between the English and the Irish at Landsdowne Road in Dublin. That was started by a British white nationalist group called Combat 18, who expressed their white identity by going to Ireland, tearing up the benches, and th

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The Other J.
11/19/2013 09:22:22 am

*got cut off -- told ya it was going to be long*

Or just go back to 1995 and the football riot between the English and the Irish at Landsdowne Road in Dublin. That was started by a British white nationalist group called Combat 18, who expressed their white identity by going to Ireland, tearing up the benches, and throwing the debris at Irish fans around them while yelling "God Save the Queen," "Sieg Heil" and "no surrender to the IRA." Twenty people were injured, the game had to be called off, and England never played Ireland again until this past year. When celebrating white identity entails that sort of thing, I don't know how you can't tag it as racist.

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Thane
11/19/2013 10:57:58 am

TheOtherJ,

The English/Irish conflict has many roots and while the "race" thing may play a part, isn't religion a larger part of the current animosity as well as the long, long, long conflict over Home Rule/Independence. The animosity is on both sides.

I know Irish and English alike and some have a very strong feeling about the issue but I've never heard it portrayed in any racial light....i.e. Celtic vs. Anglo-Saxon. I'm not saying it doesn't or didn't exist but based on your example above, to say it's currently racial seems to be a stretch. The English group Combat 18 may be racist (I've never heard of them) but cries of "God Save the Queen" and "Down with the IRA" are political cries, not racist.

Salverda
11/19/2013 01:44:52 pm

The Other J,

In British Israelism the people do think that they are actually the physical descendants of the Israelites, not merely "spiritual" Israelites like other Christians, nor do they simply claim the birthright without believing that they can trace their ancestors back through history back to Israel.

They report, in a nut shell, that in 722 BC. the Assyrians deported the Northern Ten Tribes of Israel (NTTI) and the Syrians of Damascus into the "cities of the Medes" (the Scriptures and the Assyrian chronicles of Tiglathapiliezer report this). The Assyrians called the NTTI, "Bit Omri" (house of "Omri," a famous king of the NTTI). The capital city of the Medes, Ecbatana, was built around 710 BC. (Herodotus says this). The Assyrian "Gimirri" (a later Assyrian transliteration of the name "Omri?") have been associated with the Cimmerians. The Cimmerians arose from within those same "cities of the Medes" about 700 BC. (Sargon's chronicles report this). The Scythians (called Asguza in the chronicles of Esar-haddon, the grandson of Sargon) were chased out of the cities of the Medes followed by the Cimmerians. The Greeks trace the Cimmerians and the Scythians through Asia minor into Thrace (Europe) and therefore some believe that many Europeans are the actual descendants of these Semitic Israelites.

The Medes are thought to be Aryans but the NTTI are not. To claim that you are of this race (Semitic Israelites) is to deny that you are Aryan or even any kind of Indo-European. This same alternate history is claimed by many modern church movements, not all of which can be considered as racist. Google "Herbert W. Armstrong" for an American version of this theme, even the Jews themselves have Brit-am check out their web site, they all embrace the same alternate history but that doesn't make them racist necessarily.

The Other J.
11/19/2013 03:03:28 pm

Thane, you're right that it's religious-based and about home rule, but those things get wrapped up in each other in a big way. The religious thing is almost entirely a political thing, and easier for the Irish to parse than Americans. I've had Catholic American friends who went to a Protestant service in Dublin and not realized they'd not been to a Catholic service until they were told afterward.

The race thing has always been there; back when University College - Dublin was established, it was partly because Catholics weren't allowed to go to Trinity, and the crown decided the "aboriginal people" of the island needed their own university. And there was a time when Irish men were featured in zoos alongside sub-Saharan African men and Native American men. Like Jason pointed out above, there were fine distinctions among the different ethnic groups that they saw as different races, and different hierarchies were applied.

But in the contemporary period probably reached its height during the Troubles. There isn't so much a race issue between the English and the Irish today (BNP and Combat 18 notwithstanding). But during the Troubles many British soldiers in Northern Ireland were basically conditioned into thinking of the Catholic Irish as subhuman. That helped them torture more effectively, and scarred as many soldiers as Irish. That's something you'll see any any war situation. The ricochet effects were Irish militancy that eventually splintered into various paramilitary groups, who responded with terrorist tactics in both Ireland and England, which in turn seemed to justify the belief some held that Irish Catholics were subhuman and deserved to be treated in the way they were by the British military, etc. That's not that long ago, and you'll see remnants of it in fringe groups like the British Nationalist Party and Combat 18 yelling "no surrender to the IRA." Or even in pop culture that harkens back to that period (I saw an episode of Life On Mars last year that addressed the whole thing, with British skinheads looking to kick three kinds of shite out of Irish laborers). Plus you still have some strong divisions along the Falls and Shankhill Roads in Belfast, and the murals don't exactly engender a lot of good will between sectarian groups there. Seriously, if you haven't ever seen them, just google Belfast murals.

But it's not such a big deal in the 21st century, and is certainly no big deal to Americans, Irish or otherwise.

Thane
11/19/2013 03:23:16 pm

Thanks, The Other J, for the explanation.

I've seen the anti-immigrate "Paddy" cartoons et al. but always chalked up at more "spur of the moment" and for current politcal reason propaganda.....much like the "Hun" WWI British anti-war propaganda.

And though I knew that the British thought the Irish savages (mostly because they have never accepted English rule and dominion over the Island), I didn't realize there was a racial component.

The Other J.
11/19/2013 03:38:48 pm

Salverda,

So I'm not really sure what you're saying. As far as I know, their claims to be descended from Israel aren't born out. Do they not hold that they themselves are the chosen people of god, and not the Jews of Israel? Are they not appropriating another culture's history for their own and attempting to displace that entire other people from their own history? Because that's where I see the problem.

I don't think the whole "But they can't be racist if they're claiming to be Jewish" argument holds much weight, and I'm not even sure if that's what you're saying. As I understand it, the British Israelites are still claiming supernatural favor and political power over others based on a presumed blood tie that has no evidence. Let's see if that extends: If I have no Native American heritage, but claim to be Native American and then use that assertion to appropriate land and funding that would otherwise go to an actual tribe member, and I do that for my own benefit, is it okay as long as I say I'm Native American, even though I'm not? Ward Churchill did something like that at the University of Colorado - Boulder. Would it be okay to fake being a minority in order to get scholarships or grants that would otherwise go to someone that funding was intended for? Or take the man who just won election on the Houston Community College Board of Trustees after pretending to be black; the district is heavily African-American, but he's not and he holds many political views that are antagonistic to those constituents. He knew he wouldn't win presenting himself as he is, so he ran a campaign pretending to be black and not being straight about what he really stands for. (It was a small local election -- mostly radio and print ads.) In effect he appropriated someone else's ethnic identity as a subterfuge to gain political power over them, and that seems like what the British Israelite movement is attempting to do -- appropriate someone else's ethnic identity as a subterfuge to justify power.

Most racism is seen as directly confronting another race or ethnic group in order to subdue or negate them, but appropriating someone else's race or ethnicity as a subterfuge does the same thing -- it works to displace or negate the other's actual identity. Similar result, different means.

Salverda
11/19/2013 04:31:59 pm

The Other J,

With all due respect. Now you are describing greed (claiming to belong to some group in order to get handouts or other advantages granted to them on a racial basis) as racism. I don't think that one pretends to belong to a group that one thinks is inferior to oneself, because of racism, greed is why that is done, in fact if you are a racist you would have to overcome that, to some degree, in order to employ such a subterfuge. Whether you believe it, or history bares it out or not, is not at issue; the British Israelites consider themselves to be Israelites; nobody in their group is intentionally appropriating some other group's race and pretending it to be their own. They honestly deny your claim, and the claim of conventional historians, that they are Aryans. They believe that they are God's chosen people because they are actual Israelites, Christians believe they are God's chosen people because they are spiritual Israelites, Jews believe that they ... etc. Superiority based on this, is not what I would term "racism" perhaps we can agree on the term "intolerant dogmatism."

Cathleen Anderson
11/19/2013 08:14:30 am

I see one error:

"Instead, the story originates in a truly bizarre mixture of materials assembled in the 1861 by the Rev. F. R. A. Grover, a British Israelist, and advocated by the American C. A. L. Totten, author of the appropriately named Our Race describing how God favored white Anglo-Saxons as the Chosen Peo"

Delete the word the before 1861.

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Jason Colavito link
11/19/2013 08:34:47 am

Fixed.

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Thane
11/19/2013 10:46:08 am

Jason,

Do the British Israelists still use terms like "white race" etc...?

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Jason Colavito link
11/19/2013 11:08:26 am

I don't think modern churches that follow the idea do, but I'm sure that the white supremacists who use it do.

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Dave Lewis
11/19/2013 12:55:49 pm

Herbert W. Armstrong, founder of the Worldwide Church of God, preached British Israelism.

Dave Lewis

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CFC
11/19/2013 03:25:23 pm

The description of this first episode is beyond ridiculous. Do you think he'll find a hooked X on the "Stone of Destiny"? More of Wolter trying to create an Indiana Jones type character and misinforming the viewers. Anyone with some sign of intelligence will figure out that this program is a waste of time.

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Paul Smith link
11/19/2013 10:23:33 pm

The discoveries of Helge Ingstad show that America was discovered by the Vikings before Columbus and this is almost universally accepted by mainstream scholarship (The Viking Discovery of America: The Excavation of A Norse Settlement In L'Anse Aux Meadows, Newfoundland (2001)

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Jason Colavito link
11/19/2013 10:37:38 pm

We all know that. I use the word "Pre-Columbian" because that's how archaeology classifies periods in American history. This is because the Vikings did not represent disruptive change to Native civilizations.

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Gunn link
11/26/2013 04:33:22 am

The Vikings did not represent disruptive change to Native civilizations? That's a foul summation, in my opinion. The Vikings were disruptive to Old Russia as they ventured into those watery worlds, and we can be sure the Vikings were disruptive to Natives along the East Coast and into the interior "some distance," yet to be determined.

I think it is foolish for skeptics to assume that the Vikings ventured no further than the Meadow Cove, Newfoundland, just because the "official" evidence stops there. There was a blacksmith shop there, to help keep ships sailing, for one thing. Nothing the Vikings were doing was disruptive to Natives? Ha! Was the blacksmithing done for Mandans by the Lewis & Clark expedition disruptive? Certainly. Did the presence of Vikings in America affect the psychology of Natives they encountered? How could it be otherwise?

Vikings DID disrupt Natives here in America, just not in the same ways as they disrupted the Russian culture through the fur trade. The far reaches of Russia witnessed the Vikings' superior technology. Their world-view was changed dramatically. And the same thing happened in America...to what degree, we do not know.

We simply do not know the degree of change the Vikings represented to Native civilizations, but the impact was significant, as they saw that their world was vastly different than they had thought it was, because of these Scandinavian strangers. Again, the Viking exploration and influence did not stop at a mythical (skeptical) Newfoundland border. Vinland was a real location, and Vikings ventured out from this location to visit other nearby areas. It is dumb to assume they did not venture into the St. Lawrence Seaway, for instance, shocking Natives along the way. What did the Vikings bring to the Natives? What did the Natives bring to the Vikings?

Was there no disruptive Viking contact with Natives here? Well, there was plenty of Viking contact, and it was in some ways disruptive...which is only common sense. Let's not purposely minimize the impact the Vikings had here in America, just because we don't know the details. Obviously, Columbus was a latecomer.

Rex Nemorensis
11/19/2013 10:42:40 pm

Jacob's stone, the Stone of Destiny (ditto Ark of Covenant, etc) as physical objects is not the important thing but the religious beliefs that those objects represent. The existence of religious belief always precedes physical objects

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Indiana
11/21/2013 02:43:14 am

"Top. Men."

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Fr. Jack Ashcraft link
11/26/2013 02:56:04 pm

Mr. Colavito,
As you mentioned British Israelism you may also be familiar with the "Two Seed" or "Dual Bloodline" theology to come out of similar racist "churches". These so-called Christian Identity groups are disgusting beyond words.

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/ideology/christian-identity

I was surprised to find that Scotty Roberts, whom I'm certain you already know of, is now a proponent of this very same theology, though with his own personal attempt to cleanse it of its racist associations. His article advancing it as a viable and legitimate theory/theology is here:

http://intrepidmag.com/cain-and-the-other-people/

Disturbing is just the beginning of my reactions to this being offered as a potential truth.

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ALAN LEWIS
12/21/2013 11:15:10 pm

The Tephi myth is beloved of Mormons trying to trace their family tree back to Adam. They use a list of mythological kings of Ireland down to Tephi and use her to make the leap to the biblical genealogies. Genius. Had a picnic at Tara during the summer, lovely spot. If I'd known that the ark of the covenant was buried there I'd have brought a shovel.

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Geo. Haines
8/30/2014 11:58:24 am

IN 1Thes. 5:21 GOD commands Christians to PROVE all things, hold fast that which is good. Modern professing Christianity is NOT Biblically Christian. I can prove that, but so must you. Read Jer. 3: 16 and 17 very carefully and you might just get a real surprise and shock. The ark IS at Tara Hill and TEA_TEPHI was the daughter of King Zedikia last king of Judah. read about him, if you dare!

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Ronan Coghlan link
2/25/2019 11:20:01 am

The term Cymru for Wales (pronounced Kumree) comes from an early combrogi (companions). It dates from the early Middle Ages.

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          • Volume 1: Cosmogenesis
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        • Phoenicians in America
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        • Chronology and the "Riddle of the Sphinx"
        • The Faith of Ancient Egypt
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    • Classic Fiction >
      • Lucian's True History
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      • H. P. Lovecraft >
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        • Lovecraft's Library in 1932
      • The Skeptical Poltergeist
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    • Miscellaneous Documents >
      • The Balloon-Hoax
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      • De Profundis
      • The Life and Death of Crown Prince Rudolf
      • The Bathtub Hoax
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      • Position of Viking Women
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      • James Dean's Scrapbook
      • James Dean's Love Letters
      • The Amazing James Dean Hoax!
    • Free Classic Pseudohistory eBooks
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