Book Review…
In Ephraim: The Gentile Children of Israel, Orthodox Jewish scholar, Yair Davidi, locates the lost Israelite tribes in Britain and Western Europe. Mr. Davidi constructs his thesis based on an impressive array of Biblical, historical, and archeological evidence.
Some of the evidence Davidi marshals in the 300-page book is from “Arab sources of Jewish inspiration,” who located the lost tribes in the “Happy Isles of the West.” Davidi also relies on prophecies in Isaiah and Jeremiah, placing the lost tribes of Jacob north and west of Israel, in the isles of the sea, and at the “ends of the earth,” or the geographical extremities of the continents, when the land of Israel is taken as the center of the earth. For instance, Davidi identifies the “land of Sinim” in Isaiah 49:12 with the continent of Australia, relying in part upon the Latin Vulgate which translates “Sinim” as “Australis” or “land of the South.”
Mr. Davidi also traces Israelite migrations through the path of “dolmens” or stone-monuments, which extend from Israel to Western Europe. He finds Biblical support for this proposition from Jeremiah 31, where the prophet “exhorted Israel to establish stone monuments to indicate their path of movement away from the Holy Land and the way they are destined to return.”
Other information is produced from Jewish Rabbinical commentators, who in their commentary on the Book of Obadiah, identify the exiled children of Israel in France, England, and Western Europe. These commentators include Rashi (1040-1105 A.D.), Abraham iben Ezra (1092-1167 A.D.), and Abarbanel (1437-1508 A.D.).
Yair Davidi, relying upon numerous prophecies in the Old Testament, believes that the lost ten tribes, who are legally considered to be Gentiles, will eventually reunite with Judah in the last days.
This book can be purchased for $30 from Yair Davidi, “Brit-Am,” PO Box 595, Jerusalem, Israel 91004. Information in this book review was compiled from Ephraim, and from information found on his website: www.geocities.com/hiberi.
— by David Miller