DNA & the Lost Tribes of Israel
By Mikkel S. Kragh
There is a lot of circumstantial evidence which all points to the Lost Tribes of Israel making up a sizeable portion of the ancestry of the nations of north-western Europe.
Genetic studies, however, neither support nor disprove our conclusion.
Before discussing why DNA studies do not support our conclusion, it must be pointed out that DNA studies also do not support the Bible's narrative that all people are descended from Adam and Eve. According to the Bible, Adam and Eve were created approx. 6000 years ago and all living men and women are descended from them. But according to geneticists, all men and women descend from what they call the “genetic Adam”, who lived approx. 100,000 years ago in Africa, and “genetic Eve”, who lived approx. 200,000 years ago in Africa.
Christians who believe that the Bible is the Word of God should therefore not reject the truth about the Lost Tribes simply because of the lack of DNA evidence, because there is also a lack of solid evidence for the Bible's Creation account. The Bible IS the Word of God and most geneticists are probably honest people. But geneticists do not know everything and there is, no doubt, plenty that they have not yet discovered, and when they do it will change their conclusions.
Remember that Paul admonished young Timothy: “O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called:” (1 Tim 6:20)
Y-DNA Haplogroups
The Y chromosome is a male chromosome. A father passes on his Y chromosome to his sons, but not to his daughters (you can detect it in the daughter, but the daughter herself does not pass it on to her offspring). A man's particular version of the Y chromosome is called a Y-DNA haplogroup (hpg). Since most families have both sons and daughters, it is statistically probable that even though most fathers will have many descendants, their unique Y-DNA will vanish. Because the Y-DNA hpg is only inherited through the male-to-male line. It is not an average of a man's forefathers' Y-DNA haplogroups. An article in the magazine Nature explains:
“When the overall population size does not change (as is likely to have happened for long periods of human history), men have, on average, just one son. In this case, evolutionary theory predicts that for any given man there is a high probability that his paternal line will eventually come to an end. All of his male descendants will then have inherited Y chromosomes from other men. In fact, it is highly probable that at some point in the past, all men except one possessed Y chromosomes that by now are extinct. All men living now, then, would have a Y chromosome descended from that one man — identified as Y-chromosome Adam. (The biblical reference is a bit of a misnomer because this Adam was by no means the only man alive at his time.)” (Ewen Callaway: Genetic Adam and Eve did not live too far apart in time, https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2013.13478)
This means that a white skinned man who has 63 white male skinned ancestors with an Israelite Y-DNA hpg and one black skinned male ancestor who has a black African Y-DNA hpg will have a black African Y-DNA hpg if the black African ancestor is the direct male ancestor.
This means that Y-DNA haplogroups are good for detecting close relationships but that they cannot tell where most of a person's ancestors came from, and much less from where the ancestors of an entire population came from. This was essentially what the British geneticist Adam Rutherford wrote in Scientific American in 2018:
“Genetics is a probabilistic science, and there are no genes 'for' anything in particular. … When it comes to ancestry, DNA is very good at determining close family relations such as siblings or parents, and dozens of stories are emerging that reunite or identify lost close family members (or indeed criminals). For deeper family roots, these tests do not really tell you where your ancestors came from.” (Adam Rutherford: “How Accurate Are Online DNA Tests?”, Oct. 15, 2018: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-accurate-are-online-dna-tests/)
Adam Rutherford's article was entitled “How accurate are online DNA tests?” and he concluded that the popular DNA tests that claim to show where a person's ancestry is from are basically useless:
“They say where DNA like yours can be found on Earth today. By inference, we are to assume that significant proportions of our deep family came from those places. But to say that you are 20 percent Irish, 4 percent Native American or 12 percent Scandinavian is fun, trivial and has very little scientific meaning. We all have thousands of ancestors, and our family trees become matted webs as we go back in time, which means that before long, our ancestors become everyone’s ancestors. Humankind is fascinatingly closely related, and DNA will tell you little about your culture, history and identity.” (ibid., my underlining)
Jewish and Arab Y-DNA Haplogroups
The patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had a particular Y-DNA hpg, but we do not know which. An educated guess would be hpg J, because approx. 40% of Jewish men belong to hpg J.
Abraham was the father of Isaac and Ishmael, who is believed to be the ancestor of the Arabs. Ishmael and his direct male descendants would therefore have the same hpg as Isaac and Jacob and their direct male ancestors. Hpg J is even more common among Arabs on the Arabian Peninsula, which is the Arab homeland from where the Arabs spread out over the Middle East and North Africa during the advent of Islam in the 7th and 8th centuries. Saudi Arabia is 57% hpg J, Qatar 67%, UAE 45% and Yemen 82%. (Wikipedia article “Haplogroup J (Y-DNA”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_J_(Y-DNA))
Arab genetics therefore confirm the assumption that hpg J could be the original Israelite hpg.
For various reasons archaeologists have almost no skeletons of ancient Israelites they can test for DNA. But in 2023 a family tomb was discovered in Kiryat Yearim, 15 km west of Jerusalem. The tomb is believed to be from 750-650 BC. Geneticists were able to take a DNA sample from ONE man who belonged to hpg J2. Just one sample is, of course, not enough to prove anything. But it does indicate that hpg J was a dominant hpg among the ancient Israelites. (Haaretz: In First, Archaeologists Extract DNA from Ancient Israelites, Oct. 9, 2023: https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2023-10-09/ty-article/in-first-archaeologists-extract-dna-of-ancient-israelites/0000018b-138a-d2fc-a59f-d39b21fd0000)
If we assume that most of the ancient Israelite men belonged to Y-DNA hpg J, most males of the Lost 10 Tribes would probably also have been of Y-DNA hpg J. But the peoples of north-western Europe have only a small amount of hpg J. They belong primarily to Y-DNA hpg R (which is connected with the spread of the Indo-European languages) and to a smaller extent to hpg I (which is rather closely related to hpg J). How can this be explained?
Hypothesis about missing DNA link
Throughout world history it has been very common that two ethnic groups mix, and when they mix the dominant group contributes most of the male Y-DNA and the subordinate group contributes most of the female mtDNA. Two examples of this are Iceland which on the surface is a Nordic. Most of its male Y-DNA is from Norway, but most of its female mtDNA is from the British Isles. The ancestry of Colombians is made up primarily of Spanish and West African male Y-DNA and Native American female mtDNA.
Iceland is therefore also a Celtic nation, but you would not know it if it was not for DNA studies, because they speak a Nordic language and have a Nordic culture. It is more obvious that Colombia is a Spanish-Native American-African nation because it is easy to see the physical difference between the three ethnic groups.
Something similar might have happened to the Lost 10 Tribes. When the 10 Tribes of Israel were deported by the Assyrians and settled in northern areas of the Assyrian Empire, the 10 Tribes had NOTHING. They were a defeated enemy which had been forced to walk on foot hundreds of kilometers. When they settled down in northern Assyria they must have been at the bottom of the social ladder. They must have been far poorer than their new neighbors which had lived there for centuries or millennia.
It is a part of human nature that men do not mind marrying women of a lower social standing as long as they are physically attractive and can bear them children. Women, on the other hand, are more selective in their choice of a male partner, because they want their children to be better off than themselves. This is true today, and it was even more true in the past.
When the 10 Tribes settled in northern Assyria, and in the first couple of generations after the deportation, many Israelite families must be assumed to have married their daughters to their non-Israelite neighbor’s sons. The sons of the Israelite families must, on the other hand, have had a hard time finding a partner, because many of the Israelite daughters were given in marriage to non-Israelite men. This would have meant that the descendants of the 10 Tribes of Israelites continued to multiply, although many of them were of mixed ancestry and belonged to other ethnic groups. This would also have meant that the Israelite male Y-DNA hpg J became more and more rare.
When Israel entered a Covenant with the God of Israel, they chose to stay separate from the other nations. But the 10 Tribes had continued to worship pagan gods, and that was the very reason they were deported. When the 10 Tribes settled in northern Assyria most of them were therefore just as pagan as their new neighbors, and would have had no objections intermarrying with their new fellow pagans.
The fact that the 10 Tribes were poor and in a state of submission compared to their neighbors could explain why the presumed Israelite Y-DNA hpg J died out among the descendants of the 10 Tribes. That, and the fact that the 10 Tribes were pagans just like their new neighbors, could also explain why the Hebrew language died out among them. They intermarried with other ethnic groups, and these ethnic groups became partly Israelite.
The deported 10 Tribes were placed in a number of different areas in Assyria. They were therefore few and far between, and they were all very poor and without means. This meant that in order to survive they had to learn the language of their neighbors. In the first couple of generations the Hebrew language probably survived. But after a couple of generations the Hebrew language must have become optional and unnecessary, because the descendants of the 10 Tribes had to know at least one other language in order to survive and thrive. So why speak Hebrew? A language which would not bring you any material profit.
The poor and downtrodden state of the 10 Tribes in the beginning of their exile could explain both why the presumed Israelite male Y-DNA hpg J vanished among the descendants of the 10 Tribes. It could also explain why the Hebrew language and the knowledge of their Israelite ancestry was lost.
The 10 Tribes of Israel did survive their exile, but probably more through the descendants of the Israelite women than through the descendants of the Israelite men.
Female mtDNA Haplogroups
MtDNA is traced through the female line only, from mother to daughter, just like Y-DNA is traced through the male line only.
Looking for the female mtDNA of the ancient Israelite women would be much more difficult than looking for the male Y-DNA of the Israelite men, because the 12 patriarchs were born of 4 different mothers, and the 12 patriarchs married women of various ethnic groups who most likely had different mtDNA haplogroups.
Alternative hypothesis no. 1 about missing DNA link
The British-Israel-World Federation set up a group led by Martin Lightfoot to investigate the genetic connection between the ancient Israelites and the Lost Tribes. They did not come to a definitive conclusion, but Martin Lightfoot wrote that Y-DNA hpg R1b likely is the Israelite male haplogroup. (Martin Lightfoot: “The Israel Identity Haplogroup Issue”; http://www.britishisrael.co.uk/showart.php?id=46)
The Y-DNA hpg R is by most mainstream geneticists associated with the spread of the Indo-European languages. Hpg R is also the dominant hpg in almost all of Europe, Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, which all are areas where Indo-European languages are spoken today. The proto-Indo-Europeans were not Israelites. But the 10 Tribes did intermarry with Indo-European peoples. Hpg R can therefore be associated both with the non-Israelite Indo-Europeans and with the ethnic groups which spoke an Indo-European language but were of mixed Israelite and Indo-European ancestry.
The specific haplogroup R1b came from the Middle East to Europe. R1b is by far the most common hpg in Western Europe. It is also the most common among Armenians, whose variant is earlier than the one in Western Europeans, which means that the Western European carriers of R1b must have left Armenia in the distant past.
Hpg R1b also shows how much coincidence plays a role in the spread of haplogroups and why the study of haplogroups should not be relied on too much when studying the migrations of peoples. The places where R1b are common are 1) Western Europe, especially among Irish and Basques, 2) among Armenians and other places in the Middle East, 3) among a large number of Black African people in Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria and Sudan, and 4) among the Turkic-speaking Bashkir people on the eastern slopes of the Ural Mountains in Russia. What is the link between these very diverse ethnic groups, besides R1b? None, besides coincidence. These very diverse people are obviously not all of one people or of one origin. What must have happened is that men with R1b hpg must have migrated and gotten into positions of power, and thereby have been able to beget many sons who also had the R1b hpg.
Alternative hypothesis no. 2 about the missing DNA link
Yair Davidiy writes that DNA studies do not support our view of the Lost Tribes. He suggests that it could be because of environmental influences on the DNA which are not generally acknowledged or have yet to be discovered. (Yair Davidiy: “The Lost Ten Tribes and DNA”: https://www.britam.org/DNAtentribes.html)
This could also be true. Things that are missing are either not yet discovered or they do not exist. For a long time, atheists and Bible critics ridiculed Christians by claiming that the stories about King David were fictional fairytales, because he was only mentioned in the Bible and no archaeological finds mentioned him. But in 1993 a stone slab (a stela) was found in Tel Dan in northern Israel which mentioned “the House of David”. Suddenly there was archaeological proof of King David's existence.
Something similar could be true when it comes to the genetic links between the ancient Israelites and the Lost Tribes.
DNA conclusions
The patriarch Joseph, who was sold to slavery in Egypt, is a type of the House of Joseph, which was deported out into the nations of the world.
When Joseph came to Egypt, he married an Egyptian woman. When his brothers met him, they thought he was an Egyptian. When his bones were buried in the land of Canaan, the Canaanites thought it was Egyptians who buried his bones. In other words, after Joseph came to Egypt and achieved greatness, he seemed more like an Egyptian than a Hebrew.
This is probably also true when it comes to DNA haplogroups. After the Lost Tribes were deported, they probably lost not only the Hebrew language and their Israelite identity, but also most of their Israelite Y-DNA haplogroups. When people millennia afterwards would look for them, they would still be lost. If they had kept the Hebrew language, the religion of the God of Israel, their Israelite identity and their Israelite Y-DNA haplogroup, they would have been recognized by the people of the world as the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel.
But they are not going to be generally recognized as the Lost 10 Tribes until the 2nd Coming of the Messiah. We are uncovering a mystery which God has intentionally hid from the peoples of the world.
Conclusions from history, archaeology, linguistics and DNA
We can therefore conclude that the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel migrated into areas where non-Israelite peoples speaking Germanic, Celtic and Finnish languages lived and picked up the language of those non-Israelite peoples, but also added Hebrew words into the vocabularies of those languages. In other words, the proto-Germanic, proto-Celtic and proto-Finnish peoples were not Israelites, but some of them assimilated with the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel and became the nations of north-western Europe.