THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL AND THE HOUSE OF JUDAH

The following an excerpt from a review of a blogger on the book "The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity"  by James D. Tabor.


"....Tabor, the chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, asserts that Jesus was not establishing a new religion. Instead, Jesus was a Jew whose Messianic Movement was an apocalyptic one in which the kingdom of God would be realized on earth if Israel repented and fully embraced the Torah and the prophets. This kingdom would be one in which the earth would be filled with the knowledge of God. Thus, Jesus’ message was attempting to teach the moral, spiritual and ethical principles that would enable the realization of that kingdom."


The confusion surrounding the history of the House of Judah and the House of Israel can only be dispelled by comprehending and understanding the history of the two houses as the separate kingdoms they were. That history presented in the Old Testament clearly shows the evolution of both the religion of Judah and subsequently the religion of Christianity. Only in understanding that the House of Israel consisted of all the twelve sons of Jacob and each son's collective descendants, who, before they came to live in Eygpt, resided at Hebron in the area south of Jerusalem. It had earlier been settled by Abraham, the grandfather of Jacob, who found his way into this area after leaving Ur in the Chaldees located in the great Euphrates River Valley in present day Iraq.

It is in the understanding of the history of why Abraham left the Chaldees, where he resided throughout all the periods of his history, who his children were and their history, in as much as can be presently determined, can the current history, of not only the Middle East, but the history of man as we have come to know him be understood.  That history is presented in the Old Testament and by reading the Old Testament as history in all its contexts as has evolved, both religious and secular, can the present state of world affairs be more fully conprehended.

The Kingdom of Israel in the Old Testament consisted of the descendants of the twelve sons of Jacob, formed into tribes, one of which was called Judah. Collectively called Israelites, the kingdom was set up to be ruled by judges, however, the Israelites came to dislike governance by judges and began to lobby for a king to rule them. Eventually their wish was granted when Saul was crowned the first king of Israel, and upon his death the kingdom devolved upon his protege, David, a descendent of Judah.

Saul had been a Benjaminite, named for Benjamin, the youngest son of Jacob, and younger full brother of Joseph, sons of Jacob's wife, Rachel.  Please note that most of Jacob's children were half siblings to each other, children of Jacob's different plural wives. David was born of the tribe of Judah and Judah's mother Leah, Jacob's first wife. It was through Judah was it prophesied that the Messiah would come, thus Jesus, as the Messiah, was of the House of Judah, a Jew.

David had originally been given the right to build the temple promised to the Israelites. But, because of transgressions of violence and upon Uriah, particularly, that right was taken away. At David's death, his son, Solomon, came to reign in his stead, and the promised temple was finally erected. Upon Solomon's death, his son, Rehoboam, became king of Israel.  And, it was during Rehoboam's reign that the incipient jealousy between the tribes of Ephraim  and Judah reached its apex, and ten of the twelve Israelite tribes seceeded, forming the Northern Kingdom, also known as the Kingdom of Ephraim, it being  the dominant group among them, with its council of government centered at Shechem.

The Northern Kingdom held the lands that had been distributed to them at the conquest of Canaan centuries before. Lands south of Shechem had been distributed to the tribes of Judah and of Benjamin and became the Kingdom of Judah at the separation of the Israelite kingdom, with its council of government centered at Jerusalem. Because of proximity to the lands of Ephraim, much of the tribe of Benjamin migrated into and became part of the Northern Kingdom, with remnants of Benjamin remaining in the Kingdom of Judah. The Apostle Paul in the New Testament was of the tribe of Benjamin.

Long before Jacob's family came to live in Eygpt, in a fit of sibling rivalry, Jacob's older sons had sold their younger brother, Joseph, into slavery where he eventually found himself in Eygpt where he came to rise up to become the chief advisor to the Pharoah. Famine came in the land of Hebron where Jacob and his family lived and learning that grain and food were available in Eygpt, Jacob sent his elder sons there to seek relief.

In an ironic twist of destiny, the person with whom they had to negotiate to obtain relief was their brother, Joseph, who recognized them as his brothers. Not recognizing him, though, they were commanded by Joseph to return home and bring their youngest brother, Benjamin, and their father to Eygpt.  When his brothers returned with their father and all their other brothers and their families, Joseph then revealed to them that he was their brother whom they had sold into slavery so long before.

Joseph then invited them to stay in Eygpt, where some 400 years later, their descendants, now a large population under oppression by the Pharoah, came to be led by Moses of the tribe of Levi, another of the sons of Jacob, out of Eygpt to return to the land of their forebears, Jacob, Isaac and Abraham..

In the book of Genesis, the first book of The Bible, is clearly told the story of Jacob and Isaac and Abraham, and of their descendants. In books after Genesis is clearly told the history of the return of the descendants of Jacob from Eygpt and the partitioning of the land into geographical locations for each of the twelve tribes of the descendants of Jacob.. 

In the remaining books of the Old Testament is chronicled the rivalries and jealousies that led to the conflicts finally separating the tribes into two kingdoms, one called Israel located in the North and the other, Judah, in the South and their evermore departure from the teachings Moses had given them during the forty years they spent wandering in the wilderness after leaving Eygpt before arriving at the home of their forefathers in the land of Canaan. 

The Assyrians in 700 BC came down into the Northern Kingdom of Israel in Bryon's words, "like a wolf on the fold", conquered and carried away the Northern ten tribes of Israel, having so disenigrated into idolatry, they no longer had the protection afforded them by the God of their fathers and His laws. They were easily defeated and carried off as slaves, with some few remnants, especially of Ephraim, left behind. They were the first of Jacob's descendants to be captured by outside forces and were eventually dispersed into the "land of the North countries". Then, in the 6th century BC, the large remaining tribe of Judah, along with what remnants remained of tribes of the northern kingdom, the outside forces of Babylonia were able to destroy what remained of the ancient country and carried Judah off into the Babylon captivity.

Later, Judah was allowed to return to Jerusalem, but, many in the tribe of Judah remained in Babylon. When the tribes in the Northern Kingdom of Israel were captured and carried off into the North countries, remnants of the tribe of Manasseh, the eldest son of Joseph had evaded capture, and about 600 BC were led by a prophet named Lehi to the Western Hemisphere, chronicled in the Book of Mormon. 

During Judah's Babylonian exile, the priestly cast of the House of Judah began to rewrite the Law of Moses during which, over the next four centuries, became the "traditions of the fathers", teachings of which Jesus was clearly at variance.

In His ministry, Jesus tried to persuade the leaders in the House of Judah to return to the the teachings of the laws of the Torah and the prophets as chronicled in the first four books of the New Testament, to fulfill a new covenant prophesied by those prophets, that He was the One promised by those same prophets as the Messiah who was to come to bring them that new covenant, a covenant that enlarged the laws given to the all the House of Israel by Moses, and  to rid the House of Judah of the teachings of the "traditions of the fathers".  History attests that the leaders of the House of Judah insisted on keeping the teachings of the "traditions of the fathers" which has continued to the present time.

Did Jesus establish a new religion or did he seek to restore the teachings of the law of Moses to House of Israel as taught from the beginning to Adam and Eve and through time to Noah, then to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and to the remnants of Israel still remaining?

Those remnants exist even to this day as remnants of Joseph's son, Ephraim now, and soon, to be joined by his brother, Manasseh, preparing the earth's way out of the present chaos for the coming reign and peace of the Messiah. That chaos was not only prophesied in both the Old and New Testaments, but, also, it was prophesied in the Book of Mormon in even a fuller and more comprehensive degree than in the Bible. Thus, are the latter day prophesies being fulfilled in this the last dispensation, named the Dispensation Of The Fullness Of Times.