Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/189

Rh of Israel. Maimonides, a writer of the highest authority among the Jews, distinctly states that "from the time of Sennacherib the distinction of tribes and families no longer existed" (quoted by the Rev. J. Samuel in 'The Remnant Found,' page 23), and this is strictly in accordance with probability in the case of people taken away captives and dispersed among their conquerors. On the same ground we may suppose that the classifying of those who came back, not by their tribes, but apparently by the places from which they or their fathers came in the Holy Land, as Parosh, Arah, Panath Moab, Elam, Senaah and others, would imply that with them also the original distinction of tribes had fallen into disuse.

One of the most remarkable circumstances to be noted in the book of Ezra is, that notwithstanding the total separation of the people before the Assyrian captivity into two distinct kingdoms, during the existence of which two distinct kingdoms the revolted tribes alone were designated as Israelites, and the other two tribes as the people of Judah, yet immediately afterwards the people collectively are called by the former name of Israelites only. If those who returned from the captivity were peculiarly of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin with the Levites, this designation could scarcely have been applied to them contrary to the former practice, without at least some passing remark. But if it pleased the Almighty, as declared by the prophet Micah, who lived in the reign of Hezekiah, 150 years before the Babylonian captivity, to bring all together to their ancient habitations, then the phrase became justly applicable to the people as representatives of all the tribes. "I will surely assemble, O Jacob, all of thee; I will surely gather the remnant of Israel; I will put them together as the sheep of Bozrah, as the flock in the midst of the fold." (Micah, ii. ver. 12.) Many years afterwards the people became known as Jews, as being inhabitants of Judæa, collectively, from this name of the principal tribe among them, though the name was also sometimes applied to the people of Judah before the captivity. But on this very account it becomes the more remarkable, that immediately afterwards they should have lost this name, and should be always designated by the peculiar appellation of those who had revolted from them. Unless therefore a large portion of the Israelites of the revolted tribes had joined themselves anew to their brethren of Judah, and so rendered it peculiarly just for the general name to be resumed, we can scarcely expect that it would have been done; we might rather have expected that the exclusive ap-