The Lost Tribes Aren't so Lost After All

It occurred to me that last night, in my discussion of my bizarre cousin who identifies the Lost tribes of Israel by praying while placing his hands on an inflatable globe that most people would simply use as a beach ball, I neglected to tell you where the tribes of Israel that have thus far been located can be found.  If I have access to such information, it is not right that I should hoard it and keep it to myself. the rest of you have a right to know where the progeny of Jacob ended up, at least as far as they have been identified to date.

The occupants of most of the islands of the Azores  are supposedly the descendants of Issachar.  One of the Islands of the Azores,  though  -- Pico, to be specific --- is populated mostly by the descendants of Simeon. Simeon's people may have wandered in small denominations to other Azorean islands.

Natives of  the Marshall Islands are the descendants of Simeon. Some of them wandered to and from other islands of Oceana, although much of the South Pacific was originally populated by descendants of Manasseh (son of Joseph), whose descendants also were the primary inhabitants of the Americas in the pre-Columbian era.

Joseph's other son, Ephraim,  populated much of northern Europe with his descendants. this isn't something we learned from my cousin's revelations, but is, rather, common lore among Mormons. My father has told me that it used to be thought that members of the tribe of Ephraim, of which most mormons are, were adopted into the tribe upon the declaration of their tribal membership  upon receipt of their patriarchal blessings. It should be explained that, according to Mormon tradition,  most non-Jewish people were adopted into  tribe upon declaration in their patriarchal blessings.  the "literal" membership in the tribes started with , in addition to the relatively few Mormons of jewish ethnicity,  those who were declared to belong to the Tribe of Manasseh.  When, according to book of Mormon lore, the ancient prophet Lehi left the mideast to sail to the Americas, it occurred to Lehi that it was of  great importance that he know of the lineage of his family. He then sent one (or two, perhaps; did Sam accompany Nephi on the voyage?) of his sons back to Jerusalem or somewhere in the general area to obtain the family history, for which they had to kill a supposedly bad guy named Laban in order to obtain the all-important records. The records that Nephi brought back to his father Lehi declared that Lehi's people were of the house of Israel through the loins of Joseph and had the blood of Manasseh running through their veins.  Because most Native Americans  are said to be descendants of Lehi through his son Laman  and to a lesser extent, his son Lemuel, (it used to be asserted that all native Americans descended from Lehi from Laman or his brother and were therefore, Lamanites, but DNA eventually proved that such could not be the case, so the LDS church had to back off on that particular teaching), people receiving patriarchal blessings assumed to be at least part native American were declared to be literal descendants of manasseh, and consequently also of Joseph, and of  Jacob [Israel].

The members of the tribe of Ephraim are said to be just a little bit superior to the rest of us. They are to be the leaders when the literal gathering of the tribes of Israel takes place, and they are the leaders of the LDS church at the highest level now.  They are the ones running the church at a world-wide level from their highrise offices in Salt Lake City, and who are paid for doing so. (The LDS church is fond of boasting of its unpaid clergy, but the men running the church at large from Salt Lake City are compensated handsomely in many ways for doing so,)  It didn't seem right to someone among them, or perhaps to all of them, that they, the church's elite, should be mere adopted members of the House of Israel, while the peons descending from Manasseh were literal descendants. Hence, someone among them received some sort of revelation that the church's leadership -- the members of the Tribe of Ephraim -- were literal descendants of Ephraim. Ephraim apparently took his peeps and settled in northwestern Europe.

Those who descend from the original inhabitants of the Basque regions of Spain and France are, according to my cousins, descendants of Gad and members of his tribe.

My Uncle Mahonri, who buys into his son's bullshit to some degree, has been trying to persuade his son to look into the possibility of the celtic peoples comprising one of Israel's tribes. Thus far my cousin has refused to consider it. He says that such debaucherous drunks could never be a part of God's chosen people. "Just pray about it!" my uncle has urged his son.  My cousin's response to his father thus far has been that praying about the Celtic population and any possible connection they may have to the House of Israel is akin to praying in vain, which is, according to the Torah, a sin.  A whole lot of things my cousin does, including eating roughly his weight in bacon and sausage anytime he has the opportunity to visit the infamous Chuck-a-Rama (the ghetto Utah version of Hometown Buffet, as though anyone knew there was a possibility of any buffet being more ghetto than the regular Hometown Buffet), would be considered sinful under the laws of the Torah, but nothing has thus far stopped him from eating pork or seafood or doing a host of things that would be considered in violation of Orthodox Jewish law. He's a Mormon, not a Jew. No one is sure where he got the idea that the Torah should govern any aspect of his beliefs or conduct. And it doesn't, really. He just doesn't like Scottish and irish people, for some reason, and refuses to consider the possibility of them being a part of God's chosen people.

The Metis -- the original settlers of Canada's northeast region, some of whom mixed and intermarried with the French who migrated to the area and became known as the Acadians -- including Louisiana and its surrounding region's Cajuns -- are said by my cousin to comprise the descendants of Dan. Incidentally, my kooky cousin who came up with the inflated-beach-ball method of locating the lost tribes is named Dan, and that side of the family came from the northeast region of Canada. On the other hand, no consensus exists as to whether or not anyone n the family was there before the French settlers came, and a least some of the French settlers who migrated across the Atlantic to Canada had Basque roots. For reasons I won't go into right here, Mormons are heavily into delving into their ancestry, so almost anyone with a Mormon relative has more knowledge of his or her roots than does the average person.

My cousin Dan's latest pursuit is related to determining if the branch of Swiss , Dutch, and Germans who followed Catholic priest Menno Simons across Germany and Prussia to  Russia and then to the New World to become what is now known as the Mennonites are a part of the house of Israel. The Spirit seems to be whispering to him that they may be descendants of Zebulon, though Dan is not yet certain that this information is not coming from the adversary.  He's still at the fasting phase of this one. Usually the entire family except for babies joins Dan in his fasts. It's odd, but Dan never seems to lose weight in these fasts. His wife and children, though, while normally thin anyway, tend to walk around looking like the ghosts of New Year's Eve during and following the obligatory fasts. My cousin Roger once came across Dan consuming an entire box of Little Debbie's pecan rolls during one of the supposed fasts. I have no problem with Dan eating pecan rolls or anything else while he purports to be fasting. My only grievance is that the other members of the family should be allowed the same privilege, and where the children are concerned, ideally they should be consuming foods more nutritious than anything found in Little Debbies' packaging.

My cousin Josh, who is being legally adopted by my parents even though though he's twenty-five years old, is a bright guy. He rather enjoys playing games with Dan's head.  He's working to try to convince Dan that at least par of the Lost tribes really did make it to the North Pole, find the opening, and journey to a comfortable location somewhere in the center of the Earth. He's exploring with Dan possibilities of finding the hole or holes that leads to  the civilization in the earth's core. his idea is that on the extremely unlikely chance that Dan were actually to drill enough of a hole to fall through to the Earth's core, his poor children might stand a chance of having a normal life.

Meanwhile the children fast right along with Dan and his brain-dead wife, and haven't eaten all that well when they're not fasting.  My mom, though, has threatened Dan and his brain-dead wife with a child welfare referral if any evidence reaches her that the food she is having sent to their home goes anywhere other than into the mouths of the family, and particularly to the children. People have been known to sell charitable contributions provided for the benefit of their children.  If there is a God who interferes in any way in the daily lives of humans,  the present time would be a great time for Him or Her to micromanage.