Scattered among all nations

In my Judaism & the Gospel class today, we talked about how the Assyrians deported both the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah (between 725 and 700 B.C. or thereabouts). The interesting thing, however, is that migration dynamics predict (and it seems to be a reasonable prediction) that by now, Israelite blood would have spread throughout the entire world. All of it. How? Through intermarriage with the Gentiles, and then it continues to spread. Sure, it’s quite diluted, but it’s nonetheless there. Nephi wrote about this shortly after 600 B.C., a hundred years after it had begun:

Wherefore, the things of which I have read are things pertaining to things both temporal and spiritual; for it appears that the house of Israel, sooner or later, will be scattered upon all the face of the earth, and also among all nations.

And behold, there are many who are already lost from the knowledge of those who are at Jerusalem. Yea, the more part of all the tribes have been led away; and they are scattered to and fro upon the isles of the sea; and whither they are none of us knoweth, save that we know that they have been led away. (1 Nephi 22:3-4)

And it wasn’t just the line of Judah that spread — there had been enough intertribal marriages that even by 700 B.C. there were parts of all the tribes in every area of the land. All of this makes the lineage declared in patriarchal blessings more understandable, especially in the cases where a child’s lineage isn’t the same as their parents’.

But more than that, it’s fascinating that over time this sort of spread can happen. In my Music 201 class last week we were talking about the claim that Charlemagne is the direct ancestor of everyone alive today. Apparently you only have to go as far back as 1000 A.D. (and Charlemagne was two hundred years before that) to find a single common ancestor for all six billion plus people on earth right now. That blows my mind. It seems to defy logic, but exponential non-linear math can accomplish seeming miracles. Like making compounded interest on invested money. Mmm. :) (Actually, the “mmm” is a joke. I don’t really care much about making lots of money. It’s kind of ironic, since my dad’s a tax accountant, but that’s how I’ve been ever since I can remember.)

Anyway, I guess this makes us all family. Literally. Not just spiritually, but temporally. Interesting…