Posted by:
ificouldhietokolob
(
)
Date: January 08, 2018 01:01PM
kathleen Wrote:
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> I’m wondering if Ephraim even existed.
> Lost tribes? I’m sure they’re somewhere!
According to the bible, Jacob elevated the descendants of Ephraim and Manasseh (the two sons of Joseph and his Egyptian wife Asenath) to the status of full tribes in their own right, replacing the tribe of Joseph.
In the Bible's version of events, the period from the conquest of Canaan under the leadership of Joshua until the formation of the first Kingdom of Israel, passed with the tribes forming a loose confederation, described in the Book of Judges. Modern scholarship has called into question the beginning, middle, and end of this picture and the account of the conquest under Joshua has largely been abandoned. The Bible's depiction of the 'period of the Judges' is widely considered doubtful. The extent to which a united Kingdom of Israel ever existed is also a matter of ongoing dispute.
(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Tribes_of_Israel )
At any rate, the peoples of Europe didn't descend from any ancestors in bronze-age Palestine. Neither did any of the Native Americans mormons call "Lamanites." So even if the tribes and their namesakes existed, the vast majority of people claimed by mormons to be in their "tribes" didn't descend from them.