1. Varieties of Interpretation

Like most Hellenistic letters, the Epistle of James begins by identifying its author and addressees. The former is ‘James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ’, and the latter are ‘the twelve tribes in the Diaspora’ (ταῖς δώδεκα ϕυλαῖς ταῖς ἐν τῇ διασποϱᾷ). It is pretty clear who the author is claiming to be (though far from clear that he is this person): Jesus' brother James, who led the earliest group of Jesus-believers in Jerusalem after Easter, and was famed for his pious Torah-observance (‘James the Just’).Footnote ¹ This identification with Jesus' brother is supported not only by the strong emphasis throughout the letter on Law-observance, which accords with the reputation of this James for Torah-piety, but also by the association of the addressees with the Diaspora: James is ensconced in the Land of Israel, in accordance with his reputation as ‘James of Jerusalem’, and from there he writes a letter to addressees outside Palestine.Footnote ² But why are the latter referred to as ‘the twelve tribes’?

The critical consensus is that the reference is to the Christian church as the new Israel. Only two of the original twelve tribes, Judah and Benjamin, remained after the Assyrian assault of 722 bce destroyed the northern kingdom of the Israelite confederation. But members of the remaining tribes, who came to be called Jews after the name of their southern kingdom, often looked forward to an eschatological restoration of the twelve-tribe structure. Jesus himself apparently shared this hope for an eschatological reconstitution of the Twelve Tribes and viewed the movement he founded as its inauguration, deliberately choosing twelve disciples (Mark 3.13–19) and promising them that, in the coming dominion of God, they would sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes (Matt 19.28 // Luke 22.30).Footnote ³

In accordance with this association of the Jesus movement with the hope for twelve-tribe restoration and with the implication of 2.1 that James is writing to believers in Jesus, most scholars take the addressees of the letter as Christians and either understand ‘Diaspora’ metaphorically (Christians are in exile from their heavenly home)Footnote ⁴ or, as argued above, think the phrase refers to followers of Jesus living outside of Palestine.Footnote ⁵ In favour of the Christian interpretation is 1 Pet 1.1, where the pseudonymous author speaks of his addressees in terms similar to those in James 1.1 as ‘the elect strangers of the Diaspora’ (ἐκλεκτοῖς παϱεπιδήμοις διασποϱᾶς); the same author later appropriates for his Christian audience classic OT texts referring to the people of Israel (e.g. 2.9–10). First Peter, to be sure, does not speak explicitly of the twelve tribes, but the book of Revelation does, in a passage in which 12,000 members of each tribe are ‘sealed’ on their foreheads (Rev 7.1–8). This group of 144,000 is then either identified or linked with a multitude from every nation that praises God and the Lamb, i.e. Jesus, in heaven (7.9–12). Later in the Apocalypse, moreover, we learn that the new Jerusalem has twelve gates, each inscribed with the name of one of the tribes, and twelve foundations, each inscribed with the name of one of the ‘apostles of the Lamb’ (Rev 21.12–14) – thus again either identifying or linking the church with the twelve tribes of Israel.Footnote ⁶

Recently, however, Dale Allison has challenged the consensus that ‘the twelve tribes in the Diaspora’ refers to the church as the new Israel. In a forceful article, he argues to the contrary that there is nothing in this designation that would suggest a Christian identity for the implied addressees, and instead revives the theory, which goes back at least to the Venerable Bede, that they are meant to be understood as Jews (including both Christian and non-Christian Jews).Footnote ⁷ Exhibit A is the letter's lack of Christological content, aside from 1.1 and 2.1; the latter Allison judges to be textually corrupt, and the former marks the author but not his implied addressees as Christian. As for the parallel to 1 Pet 1, Allison argues that it masks the important difference that 1 Peter does not mention the twelve tribes.Footnote ⁸ The fact that James does mention them points prima facie to the Jewish people and its widespread hopes for reunification with the Ten (or Nine, or Nine-and-a-Half) Lost Tribes.Footnote ⁹ Indeed, we know that at least one ancient Jewish author composed a fictional letter to the Lost Tribes (2 Baruch 78.1) – a variation on the common Jewish genre of the Diaspora letter.Footnote ¹⁰ Allison's conclusion that the implied addressees of James are Jews (or more properly speaking Israelites), including the Ten Lost Tribes, is similar to that in his study of Jesus' prophecy about those coming from east and west to sit down in the dominion of God with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Matt 8.11–12 // Luke 13.28–9). This he sees, against the critical consensus, as a reference to the return of the Ten Lost Tribes rather than to an eschatological conversion of Gentiles.Footnote ¹¹

2. Problems with Allison's Interpretation

In my opinion, Allison is convincing when he situates James 1.1 against the backdrop of Jewish traditions about the return of the Ten Tribes. His case that non-Christian Jews are included in the addressees, however, is weakened by the need to take the reference to Jesus in 2.1 (‘as you hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ [the Lord] of glory’) as a textual corruption. He is right to claim that the verse is grammatically awkward, but this is far from being the only example of grammatical awkwardness, to the point of obscurity, in James; other examples include 1.7–8, 12; 2.13b, 18a; 3.1, 6a; 4.5b–6a; 14a; and 5.3, 6. Several of these passages, moreover, have further similarities to 2.1b. James 1.7–8 and 3.6a, like 2.1b, cause confusion by piling up appositives, and 4.14 seems to have a misplaced phrase (τὸ τῆς αὔϱιον). All four can be easily rewritten in a way that reduces the awkwardness and obscurity, though also perhaps the poetry:

1. 1.7–8: ὁ ἄνθϱωπος ἐκεῖνος, δίψυχος καὶ ἀκατάστατος ἐν πάσαις ταῖς ὁδοῖς αὐτοῦ, μὴ οἰέσθω ὅτι λήμψεταί τι παϱὰ τοῦ κυϱίου

2. 2.1b: αδελϕοί μου, μὴ ἐν πϱοσωπολημψίαις ἔχετε τὴν πίστιν τοῦ κυϱίου τῆς δόξης ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χϱιστοῦ

3. 3.6a: καὶ ἡ γλῶσσά ἐστιν πῦϱ καὶ καθίσταται ὁ κόσμος τῆς ἀδικίας ἐν τοῖς μέλεσιν ἡμῶν

4. 4.14: οἵτινες οὐκ ἐπίστασθε τὸ τῆς αὔϱιον, ἢ ποία ἡ ζωὴ ὑμῶν.

Furthermore, the parallels that Allison cites for Jewish ‘Diaspora letters’ to exiles show some significant variations from James 1.1. James is ostensibly addressed to the exiles of both the first and second ‘dispersions’, the Ten Tribes and the Two. The first of these scatterings occurred when the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom in 722 bce and, in Jewish memory, destroyed its Israelite character.Footnote ¹² Most of the Jewish ‘Diaspora letters’, however, are clearly addressed to the exiles of the second dispersion, which resulted from the Babylonian conquest in 587 bce and did not lead to a loss of Jewish ethnic identity.Footnote ¹³ The one exception is 2 Bar. 78.1, a letter directed to the Nine-and-a-Half Tribes of the first dispersion. This epistle, however, was ostensibly written in the time of Baruch in the early sixth century bce, though it is actually a second-century ce pseudepigraphon. Second Baruch, in other words, purports to be written much closer to the time of the first dispersion than James does, and thus the writer can more plausibly claim to know the exact whereabouts of the Nine-and-a-Half tribes and consequently (in the world of the text) trust that his letter will reach them.

Most other pre-rabbinic Jewish writers are vague about the location of the Ten Tribes,Footnote ¹⁴ and, as Michael Stone points out, the later idea that they are far off in some mythical land, from which they will return at the eschaton, is attested only after the destruction of the Second Temple. The first examples are in late first-century ce writers, Josephus (Ant. 11.133) and ‘Ezra’ (4 Ezra 13.39–47), both of whom claim that these tribes are somewhere beyond the Euphrates, but neither of whom seems to believe that they are reachable.Footnote ¹⁵ To be sure, 4 Ezra 13.45, taken in isolation, might seem to suggest that the Ten Tribes are accessible but that it takes a long time to get to them (a year and a half). The larger context, however, refutes this; the Ten Tribes' migration to the area beyond the Euphrates was only made possible by God's miraculous stoppage of the springs of the river (v. 43), and their return will only become feasible when he repeats the miracle (v. 47). For both Josephus and the author of Fourth Ezra, as well as the later rabbis, the Ten Tribes are far away, beyond the ken of the rest of humanity, and therefore, we may infer, it would make no sense to try to send them a letter. It is only in the Middle Ages that far-ranging travellers (or those who claim to be such) begin to report encounters with the Ten Tribes.Footnote ¹⁶

Allison, in a private communication, points to a possible counter-example, but I do not think it actually is one. In Tosefta Sanhedrin 2.6, which Allison cites elsewhere as a parallel to James 1.1,Footnote ¹⁷ Rabban Gamaliel writes a letter about calendrical matters to Jews in Upper Galilee and Lower Galilee, to those in the Upper South and the Lower South,Footnote ¹⁸ to the exiles in Babylon and in Media, and ‘to all the other exiles of Israel’. Allison suggests that the latter expression may include the exiles living beyond Babylon and Media, i.e. the Lost Tribes. I think it more likely, however, that the reference is to the Jewish ‘exiles’ situated in known and accessible regions such as Egypt, Greece, Rome and Asia Minor. It would be odd if Gamaliel were pictured as addressing the Ten Lost Tribes but excluding the Hellenistic Diaspora in an encyclical ostensibly directed to all Israel. This passage, moreover, is a baraita, and the parallels in y. Sanh. 1:2 (18d) and y. Ma ʿaś Š. 5:8 (56c) explicitly mention ‘the exiles of Greece’ right before the reference to ‘all the other exiles of Israel’.

All of which raises the question: does the author of James, in contrast to all other Jewish thinkers that we know of from the Second Temple and rabbinic periods, conceive of the Lost Tribes as reachable? If not, why does he bother to write (or pretend to write) to them? If he does think of them as reachable, where does he think they are?

3. The Ten Tribes as Gentile Christians

I believe that I can suggest a plausible answer to this last question, one that appropriates Allison's insight that Jewish conceptions about the Ten Tribes lie behind James 1.1 but shifts it in a different direction. What I want to suggest is that the author of James, who himself is probably a Jewish Christian of the Diaspora, thinks that the Ten Lost Tribes are not somewhere far away and out of reach, but very near, in the person of some of the Gentiles among whom he himself lives – specifically those who have been drawn into the Christian movement. Though the ancestors of these Gentiles lost their Israelite identity after the Assyrian conquest, some spark of it remained alive in their collective unconscious. And now, in the latter days, this hidden spark of Israelite identity has been blown into flame by the quickening wind of the gospel. Gentile proselytes to Christianity, in other words, are the Ten Lost Tribes, who reveal that they are such precisely by responding to the good news about the Messiah of Israel. One advantage of this interpretation lies in its ability to provide a better explanation for James' confidence that he can address all the Israelite exiles without resorting to a magic carpet: the Ten Tribes are not destroyed, nor far away in some Never Never Land beyond the Euphrates or the Sambatyon River,Footnote ¹⁹ but very close, indeed as close as the nearest Gentile Christian.Footnote ²⁰

That the Ten Tribes are hidden in plain sight is actually a more compelling reading of many of the relevant biblical and Second Temple Jewish texts about them than one that situates them far away in some mythical realm. Isa 27.12.13 and Zech 10.6–12, for example, locate the exiles in the known lands of Egypt and Assyria, and Ps 106.47 calls on God to ‘gather us from among the nations’ – language that recurs in later texts (e.g. 1 Chron 16.35; Jub. 1.15) and seems to imply that the exiles are in known Diaspora lands. As Jason Staples points out, similarly, Hosea in two passages (7.8; 8.8) says that ‘Ephraim’, which here, as frequently in the OT and later Jewish literature, functions as a metonymy for the northern tribes,Footnote ²¹ is rotting away, swallowed up among the nations, and the LXX version of 7.8 sharpens this to an expression of anxiety about sexual mixing with Gentiles and consequent loss of ethnic identity.Footnote ²² Overall, however, Hosea expresses not only anxiety about the Ten Tribes' loss of Israelite identity but also hope for its recovery. And at least one subsequent Jewish reader, the author of Joseph and Aseneth, seems to interpret this Hosean hope as a reference to the phenomenon of Gentile conversion to Judaism. As Jill Hicks-Keeton points out, in that work the title character Aseneth, the prototypical proselyte to Judaism,

Thus, for Joseph and Aseneth, the lost northern tribes are the ‘many nations’ who follow Aseneth's lead and convert to Judaism.

Other Second Temple Jewish works express similar hopes for the recovery of the Lost Tribes from their exile among the pagans. Second Maccabees 1.27, for example, calls on God to free ‘our scattered people [lit. ‘our diaspora’], ... those who are enslaved among the Gentiles' (τὴν διασποϱὰν ἡμῶν ... τοὺς δουλεύοντας ἐν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν), and T. Moses 4.8–9 speaks of the Ten Tribes that have multiplied among the nations (apud nationes) in the time of their dispersion.Footnote ²⁴ The overall impression created by such passages is that the exiles are living in known places among the heathen, and in danger of being swallowed up by them, i.e. losing their Israelite identity permanently, but that at this late date they can still be rescued, if God will but act at once.Footnote ²⁵ As Pss. Sol. 8.28–30 puts it, apparently echoing the anxieties of Hos 8.8: ‘Gather together the dispersed of Israel ... lest the nations swallow us up’ (OTP trans. alt.).Footnote ²⁶ Indeed, even so late a work as the Shepherd of Hermas (early second century ce) seems to imply that the Twelve Tribes, including the supposedly lost ones, are in the known world (Parables 94 [ix.17.]1–2). But if the Ten Tribes are in the known world, and if they are not conspicuous there as Jews, they must have become so assimilated that they are now indistinguishable from Gentiles.

This seems to be a plausible way of reading the many biblical and ancient Jewish passages that conjoin references to the return of the exiles with references to the conversion of Gentiles. In some instances the connection between these two hopes is so close as to suggest that they may have been conflated, at least by some readers.Footnote ²⁷ It is particularly interesting to observe the way in which the meaning of one important passage, Isa 49.6, changes in the transition from the MT to the LXX:

In the MT version the ‘light thing’ that God will do in restoring the exiles is clearly separate from the weighty thing he will do in making her a light to the nations. In the LXX, however, this distinction is replaced by a synthetic parallelism: the ‘great thing’ God has done in reversing Israel's dispersion is parallel to, perhaps even identical with, his miraculous feat of transforming her into a light to the nations.Footnote ²⁸

In fact, it seems to me to be possible that this is the way in which some Jewish and Christian exegetes were interpreting Isa 49.6 by the middle of the second century ce. Justin Martyr, for example, after quoting the Isaian passage in its LXX form, reminds his Jewish dialogue partner that ‘in your view the passage just quoted refers to the ger and the proselyte’, but then goes on to correct this impression by informing him that ‘in reality it refers to us Christians, who have been enlightened by Jesus’ (Dialogue 121.4–122.1). Justin seems to refer here to the whole Isaian passage he has just quoted – not only its ending about the Lord's servant becoming a light to the nations, but also its beginning about him restoring the tribes of Jacob and returning the diaspora of Israel.Footnote ²⁹ Both of these sections, he seems to imply, refer to the proselyte, and he expects Trypho to agree;Footnote ³⁰ their dispute is only about the question of whether Isaiah is talking about proselytes to Judaism or Christianity.Footnote ³¹

Justin's linkage of the lost tribes with Gentile converts comports with evidence from the Jewish side, specifically a passage from the Jerusalem Talmud (y. Sanh. 10.3 [29c]):

The sugya begins with the opinion, supported by a quotation of Deut 29.28, that the Ten Tribes will never return. R. Simeon b. Judah, however, disagrees, pointing out that the deuteronomic phrase ‘as on this day’ can be interpreted conditionally, and concluding that, if the Ten Tribes repent and thus are no longer sinful ‘as on this day’, they will return. The discussion then proceeds seamlessly to R. Abbahu's assertion that, if the righteous proselytes (גירי צדק) return, Antolinus (usually spelled Antoninus), the model convert to Judaism in rabbinic literature, will lead them. It is at least possible, then, that the editor of the sugya is suggesting that the Ten Tribes are synonymous with righteous proselytes to Judaism, and if this is true the editor's attitude dovetails with the Jewish opinion opposed by Justin. Furthermore, the continuation of the sugya supplies a plausible explanation for the way in which the proselytes' putative Israelite ancestors started on the downward path towards losing their Israelite identity: ‘They did not go into exile until they had become uncircumcised’ (לא גלו עד שנעשו ערלים).

From the Christian side, we see a similar idea about Gentile converts as the Ten Lost Tribes in the hard-to-date 5 Ezra. Fifth Ezra berates the Jews for their disobedience to the divine will and their murder of the prophets but praises ‘the people coming from the east’, who will fulfil the law of the Lord and therefore end up inheriting the Jews' patrimony (see especially 5 Ezra 1.24–38). According to Thomas Bergren, this contrast takes up Jewish traditions about the moral superiority of the Ten Tribes (e.g. CD 7.10–8.3; 4 Ezra 13.42; Commodian, Instr. 1.42.28) but reinterprets them with reference to Christians.Footnote ³²

4. How Early is the Idea?

But how far back can we trace this linkage of the Ten Tribes with Gentile proselytes to Judaism or Christianity? Justin Martyr is fairly early – the middle of the second century ce – and Fifth Ezra may be from around the same era. For our purposes, however, it would be better if we could track the idea back even further, at least to the end of the first century, around the time when James was probably written. And I believe that we may be able to do so on the basis of two NT passages.

The first definitely antedates James: Paul's treatment of the eschatological fate of ‘all Israel’ in Rom 11.25–7. In a recent article, Jason Staples has argued that this passage should be seen in the light of what he calls Paul's ‘messianic new covenant Israelitism’Footnote ³³ – i.e. exactly the sort of conception of Gentile Christians as the Lost Tribes that this article has been discussing. Staples thinks that Paul here interprets the Gentile Christians as the Lost Tribes, who are ‘coming into’, being reintegrated with, the Israelite heritage from which they have been separated since the Assyrian deportations; they, together with the faithful remnant of the Two Tribes (i.e. Jewish Christians), constitute ‘all Israel’. In support of this hypothesis, he points out that ‘the fullness of the Gentiles’ (τὸ πλήϱωμα τῶν ἐθνῶν) in Rom 11.25 can be seen as an allusion to Gen 48.19. In the latter verse, the seed of Ephraim, the patriarch whose name, as we have seen, frequently functions as a metonymy for the northern tribes in general, will become ‘the fullness of the nations’ (מלא־הגוים).Footnote ³⁴ In other words, when the full number of these Lost Tribe Gentiles returns to the Israelite fold by coming to faith in Jesus, ‘all Israel will be saved’.

It is too early to say whether Staples's interpretation of Rom 11.25–7 will ultimately persuade other Pauline scholars. It does, however, have the advantage of making sense of the otherwise troubling καὶ οὕτως in 11.26. As Pieter W. van der Horst notes, ‘the meaning and translation of καὶ οὕτως in Rom 11.26 has been a matter of debate ever since the beginning of modern scholarship’.Footnote ³⁵ The phrase is usually taken in its most common sense, the modal one (‘and so’ or ‘and thus’), but then the question arises as to why the statement in 11.25 about a ‘coming in’ of the full number of Gentiles should be seen as providing the basis for the assertion that all Israel will be saved. Van der Horst, by contrast, argues for a temporal sense of καὶ οὕτως here, though he acknowledges that this sense is rarer than the modal one (several major lexica do not even acknowledge it), and many of his examples actually contain adverbs that tip the balance in favour of a temporal meaning, rather than οὕτως itself performing that function.Footnote ³⁶ Staples' reading of the passage provides an elegant solution to the problem, whereby οὕτως, understood modally, makes great sense: the Gentiles who ‘come in’ to the church are the Lost Tribes of Israel, and they, together with the Jewish Christians, who are the righteous remnant of the Two Tribes, ‘thus’ constitute the ‘all Israel’ that wins salvation.

The second NT passage that may provide an analogy to my reading of James 1.1 is John 10.14–16, which in its turn seems to be based on Ezek 37.15–28, a classic oracle about the end of the exile and reunification of the tribes of Israel. This passage comes at the end of a long section (Ezek 34–37) in which God through the prophet pronounces judgement on the shepherds of Israel, i.e. its unworthy rulers, who destroy the flock, and promises to replace them with a new shepherd, the Davidic Messiah. In Ezek 37.15–28 the prophet is instructed to take two pieces of wood, one inscribed with words evoking the southern kingdom (‘for Judah, and the children of Israel associated with him’) and the other inscribed with words evoking the northern kingdom (‘for Joseph, the stick of Ephraim,Footnote ³⁷ and all the house of Israel associated with him'). Ezekiel is told to merge these two sticks as a symbol of God's imminent ingathering of the exiles and restoration of the united kingdom:

At least one patristic commentator, Eusebius of Caesarea, takes this as a prophecy of the church drawn from Jews and Gentiles, interpreting the ten Ephraimite tribes as the church of the Gentiles:

Here Eusebius seemingly identifies ‘the lost sheep of the house of Israel’, i.e. Jewish Christians, with the stick inscribed ‘for Judah’ – the symbol of the southern kingdom; and ‘the dispersion of the spiritual and true Israel’, i.e. Gentile Christians, with the stick inscribed ‘for Joseph’ – the symbol of the Ten Lost Tribes.Footnote ³⁸

Admittedly, this Eusebian interpretation does not get us back to the first century, but it does alert us to the possible existence of earlier Christian exegetes who interpret Ezek 34–37 as a prophecy of the church drawn from Jews and Gentiles. And indeed, we do find such an interpretation of these prophetic chapters in a first-century Christian document, namely the Gospel of John, in the famous ‘one flock, one shepherd’ passage:

As many commentators have noted, the language here, and indeed throughout John 10–11, evokes Ezekiel 34–37 (see esp. 34.23; 37.24).Footnote ³⁹ But beyond this specific vocabulary overlap, the overall theme is quite similar, and Schnackenburg concludes that John treats the ‘one shepherd’ passage in Ezek 37.24 as a prophecy of ‘the new covenant's universal level’. Jesus has some sheep who are of ‘this flock’ (= Jewish Christians), plus other sheep who are not of ‘this flock’ (= Gentile Christians); they will come together and form ‘one flock’ having a single ‘shepherd’ – the Davidic Messiah, Jesus. The theme is repeated in the next chapter of John in a way that echoes the themes of both John 10.14–16 and Ezek 34–37: the High Priest prophesies ‘that Jesus should die for the [Jewish] nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad’ (ἵνα καὶ τὰ τέκνα τοῦ θεοῦ τὰ διεσκοϱπισμένα συναγάγῃ εἰς ἕν; John 11.51–2, NRSV). Here again, since Ezek 34–37 seems to lie in the background, we see John forging a linkage between Jewish Christians and the Two Tribes of Judah, on the one hand, and between Gentile Christians and the scattered Ten Tribes, on the other.Footnote ⁴⁰

Although the observation has no probative value, I will note here that some contemporary Messianic Jewish exegetes interpret Ezek 37.15–28 and related passages in exactly the way I have been proposing: as a prophecy of the church's fusion of Jewish Christians, who are drawn from the two Judahite tribes, with Gentile Christians, who are drawn from the Ten Lost Tribes. This theological stream, which is controversial even within Messianic Judaism, goes by the name of Two-House or Ephraimite Theology – terms that derive from Ezek 37. And one of the passages used as a proof-text by writers in this stream of theological speculation is James 1.1.Footnote ⁴¹

This sort of ex post facto creation of an Israelite genealogy for favoured Gentiles is anything but implausible in an ancient setting. As numerous recent studies of the role of genealogies in traditional societies, including biblical ones, have shown, family trees are used not only to trace existing relationships but also to create new ones.Footnote ⁴² One thinks, for example, of the reported ‘discovery’ by the Spartans that they are brothers of the Jews and of the family of Abraham (1 Macc 12.21). And, more relevant for our purposes, Herod the Great appears to have invented for himself, or to have had invented for him, a genealogy that established his Jewish bona fides by depicting him as the descendant of a Jewish family taken into the Babylonian exile.Footnote ⁴³

My conclusion is that Allison is right to argue that the motif of the return of the Lost Tribes lies behind James' phrase ‘the twelve tribes that are in the Diaspora’. But in my view he is mistaken to see this as a reference to a Jewish entity composed of Jewish Christians and non-Christian Jews. Rather, the phrase is a reference to a Christian entity that includes both Jewish Christians (the Two Tribes of Judah) and Gentile Christians (the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel).