The Tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh: A Simple Test Case for British-Israelism
By Neotherm
Jan. 5, 2007
As a sophomore at Ambassador College, Greg Doudna demonstrated how easy it is to challenge the integrity of British-Israelism. This was inadvertent. Though his goal was to perfect the understanding of British-Israelism within Armstrongism, he effectively challenged the established identity of the British Commonwealth as Ephraim and the United States as Manasseh. Doudna had found a crack in the supposed monolith.
This shift in identities, however, was based on a dubious assumption, one of the many such assumptions that formed the dogma of British-Israelism among Armstrongites. The assumption is that the British Commonwealth exists as a tribal entity and that the United States exists as a tribal entity. The concept of separate tribes, ethnically and genetically differentiated, runs throughout the writings of Herbert W. Armstrong on British-Israelism. Ephraim is not described as a political entity only, for instance, in his writing, but as a political and ethnic entity. For the tribe of Ephraim to be an ethnic grouping, it would have to consist of a collection of families that trace their genetic history to the descendants of Ephraim in the Old Testament. The same is true of Manasseh. And that somehow, this separation along tribal lines was preserved throughout millennia. As migrations and geopolitical upheavals occurred, these people, who had lost knowledge of their supposed true identity, remained somehow separated into two tribes and are so separated today.
This means that in the successive invasions of the British Isles by Celts, Picts, Danes, Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Romans there were families in the waves of these new arrivals that were supposedly Ephraimite and others that were Manassite. But such a definitive and hard-wired segregation should certainly have made some kind of mark on history. These ancient people would have had a sense of this separation, even if they had no explanation for it. Yet we find nothing in history that alludes to a separation of this sort.
But there is another part of this argument. Even if we could prove that these ancient inhabitants of Britain existed in a neatly segregated state in a kind reservoir of peoples in the British Isles, we would have to prove that North America, for instance, was populated only by certain groups, with genetic integrity, from this reservoir. Manassite families would have to migrate to the New World in cohesive units and leaving nobody behind. But if the immigration into British North America commingled people from all these sources, then the tribal identity of Ephraim and Manasseh is lost.
In historical records, we do not find any dynamic that would result in Ephraimite/Manassite tribal preservation either among the many invaders of Britain or among the peoples who ultimately populated North America. Further, it is easily demonstrable that this is true without resort to sometimes inaccessible historical records. A few years ago, for example, I looked at a genealogy of a family with my surname. Someone had done a lot research and established that one branch of this family migrated to Australia, another to the United States and another branch remained resident in Britain. Are these people then Ephraimites or Manassites? Where is the neat sorting algorithm that makes this comply with the Armstrongite Ephraimite/Manassite tribal model? Yet this is how migrations of British people happened.
Think of the Scottish Clans. I belong to at least one of these Clans, probably several. But my Clan name is to be found in Canada, Australia, the United States and Britain. Actually, it is a common name wherever in the world that you find people who originated in the British Isles. Yet we are all one Clan with genetic and family connection. But we do not fit the Ephraimite/Manassite tribal model presumed in Armstrongite British-Israelism. According to this model, my Clan should be represented only in Scotland or in the United States, perhaps. Not broadly in the English-speaking sphere. In general, surnames that are based on family connection, such as the Scottish and Irish Clan names, should not straddle the Ephraimite/Manassite boundary. But they always do.
The burden of proof is on the adherents of British-Israelism to demonstrate that there is ethnic separation between the people of the British Commonwealth and the people of the United States. The entire belief in British Israelism rests with its full weight on this simple and singular pillar. One may delve into arcane issues such as the precise nature and identity of Tea Tephi, and it is worthwhile to close out all arguments, but the simpler and more immediate questions raised in this essay must be hurdled first.
And one cannot make this simply a matter of faith when a simple secular excursion into recent history should either support or invalidate the idea of Ephraimite and Manassite tribal cohesiveness. This inquiry into dogma is not a matter of going to Europe to spend time with incunabula written in extinct languages. Nor does one have to rely on the teleological and specious interpretations of the Compendium of World History, long ago renounced by its author and withdrawn from circulation by Armstrongite leaders themselves. It might only require sitting in ones armchair with a cup of tea and reflecting on historical and family knowledge that we all have.
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