Twelve Tribes

Submitted by Michael S. (United States), Oct 17, 2014 at 07:56

Hi, Tovey. You asked,

Really; does that mean to you then that those who claim Abraham's promise to the land are, as the 'Palestinians' assert, not part of the remnant, the diaspora that had made aliyah?

I really have to cut that up to chew on it.

"Those who claim Abraham's promise". Who would that be? I could cut that even further, and ask, "which promise to Abraham? I assume you are talking about various promises to Abraham, that his descendants will inherit the Land of Israel. I'd better post a couple of them here, so we're sure we're on the same page:

Genesis 12:
[1] Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee:
[2] And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:
[3] And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.

There, God promises Abram (to be later re-named Abraham) that he will become a great nation, etc. He doesn't specify here that he (i.e. his descendants) will live out that promise in Israel; but He conditions the promise on Abram's going to the land God sends him to (modern-day Israel).

Another promise:

Genesis 12:
[6] And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Sichem (modern Nablus), unto the plain of Moreh. And the Canaanite (not the Arab or "Palestinian") was then in the land.
[7] And the LORD appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the LORD, who appeared unto him.

There, Abram's seed was promised what the world calls the "West Bank". This promise came as a result of Abraham, in obedience to God, having done aliyah.

Another promise:

Gen. 13:
[14] And the LORD said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward:
[15] For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever.
[16] And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth: so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered.
[17] Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee.
[18] Then Abram removed his tent, and came and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and built there an altar unto the LORD.

Abram was previously granted land around Nablus. This time around, he was also promised the land around Hebron. Between those two promises, he was certainly promised what the world calls the "West Bank", and what many Jews call "Yesh", or "Judea & Samaria".

Those were promises concerning the modern State of Israel, specifically the "territories" annexed in 1967. Let us assume that it is the promise to these lands that you are referring.

I know that Paul spoke in the NT about other promises; or rather, those promises taken a referring to a metaphor of spiritual things to come:

Galatians 3:
[16] Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.

Which promise was Paul referring to here?

Gal. 3:
[8] And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed.
[9] So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham.

Paul is referring to the promise in Genesis 12:2, which did not specifically mention an inheritance in the Land of Israel. Elsewhere, he said:

Hebrews 11:
[8] By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.
[9] By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise:
[10] For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

In what I hope is a proper answer to your question,

1. Today's Jewish people, the priestly clan of which can even today trace its ancestry back to Aaron and thence to Abram through the Cohen Modal Haplotype, are the heirs to the promise of the Land of Israel, in the modern State of Israel (especially in the "occupied territories).
2. Today's Christians, who subscribe to the New Testament, are heirs (through having the same faith as Abram) to Abram's general promise,
   "And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed."

But you asked,

does that mean to you then that those who claim Abraham's promise to the land are, as the 'Palestinians' assert, not part of the remnant, the diaspora that had made aliyah?

The "promise to the land" belongs, as I said, to the Jewish people. Certainly the returning Jewish diaspora (the "remnant", if you will) is covered here.

As for what the "Palestinians" assert, specifically the Palestinian Muslims, they believe the promise to the land is given through Ibrahim (Abraham) via Ishmael (thence Muhammed and his "seed"), and not Isaac (thence the Jews). They are incorrect in this, being ignorant of the Bible.

There are others, including many Arabs and non-Arabs as well (particularly neo-Nazis) who insist that today's Jews are not descended from Abraham. This is an unfounded fiction, and several scientific genetic studies have traced Jewish origins, whether they be Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Mizrahi, Bukhari, etc., back to a Middle Eastern people. Most Jews are of yDNA haplogroup J2 (connected to the Turks, Iraqis and Lebanese), E1b1b (connected to the Egyptians and other N. Africans), and J1 (concentrated among the Arabs, particularly the Yemenites). The Cohen Modal Haplotype, leading back to Aaron the High Priest, is present in about half of the self-identified "Cohens" among the Jews, in the J1 haplogroup. This points to a very close connection between the Jews and the Arabs, who, of course, are both descended from Abraham.

A substantial number of Ashkenazi Jews carry a R1a yDNA haplogroup common to Russians and probably to the ancient Khazars -- a Turkic-speaking tribe whose leaders converted to Judaism. Many Ashkenazi Levites, in particular, carry this gene -- which demonstrates that the Levites were not so careful to preserve their line as were the Cohens. Of course this points to a great deal of non-Jewish male converts in Jewish history, as does the fairly large amount of R1b (a West European haplogroup) among both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews.

It should also be pointed out that Abraham's promise of the land was passed on through Jacob's twelve sons, not his daughter Dinah. It was through the sons that the land was divided into the "twelve tribes". The fact that among all the tribes, only that Levi (through the Cohens, not the modern Levites) has been preserved. The rest are lost, even the tribe of Judah. The female lines, however, point to a common ancestry; as does the autosomal DNA. With respect to the latter, the Jewish people from all over the world show a greater affinity to other people of the Levant than to the natives of the countries where they sojourned.

Finally, even though the land was divided by tribes according to the paternal line (and also by converts living in those tribal areas), the promises, all of them, were to the "bnei" Avraham, which should proberly be translated as "descendants" (male and female), not strictly sons. Torah gives an example of transmission of a family's inheritance to female lines when the male line has died out, so the tribes cannot be exclusively determined by DNA.

Have I covered all bases?

Shalom shalom :-)

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