I thought this was interesting - Cleon was quite the scholar!
Enjoy:
HOW THE LORD DISCLOSED THE IDENTITY OF "EPHRAIM" AFTER 2,600 YEARS
Treasures from the Book of Mormon, Volume One, by W. Cleon Skousen, PAGES 232- 234
When the Gospel was restored in modern times, we gained an additional insight into one of the most perplexing riddles of Bible history: "Whatever happened to the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel?" We are far from having the whole answer, but at least we have located two important segments of the Lost Tribes -- the Ephraimites in America and Europe and the people of Manasseh among the aborigines of America and the Pacific Islands. Since Isaiah 11:13-14 speaks of Ephraim and Judah combining together in the performing of a special work, it is particularly significant to have the Lord bring Ephraim out of hiding.
In America and Europe the restored Gospel acted as a magnet to draw out of the Gentile nations a remnant of Ephraim which had been scattered among them during a period of many centuries. These Ephraimites constituted the vast majority of the Church membership during the first 100 years of its existence. But what of the other tribes? That remains as deep a secret as ever. All the Lord has told us is that, wherever they are, the Lost Tribes have prophets among them who are preparing them to come down from the "north countries" and that he will raise up a mighty highway in the "midst of the great deep" which will permit them to come to Zion when the time is right so they can receive the Endowment and other blessings under the hands of Ephraim.1 But as to their present whereabouts, we know nothing for certain. Our research is therefore limited to the task of tracing the history of that remnant of Ephraimites who somehow made their way to Europe and then to America or other parts of the world. To do this, let us go back to the 8th century B.C., when the Ephraimites and the rest of the Ten Tribes first disappeared.
As we have noted in the 9th and 10th chapters of Isaiah (2 Nephi 11 and 20), the Assyrians began their final attack on the Northern Ten Tribes in 727 B.C. and by 721 B.C. they had destroyed or carried off practically the entire population. The Bible says the Israelites were taken to "Halah, and Habor, and Hara, and to the river Gozan."2 This means that they were scattered along the upper Tigris and its tributaries. It was just a little over a century later that the Assyrians suddenly found themselves being conquered by the Babylonians so this presented an opportunity for the Israelites to band together and slip away to the north. Thereafter, they became "lost" to the knowledge of mankind.
The logical route for the fleeing Israelites as they went "northward," would have been through the passes of the Caucasus Mountains which stretch from east to west between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Then they would have spilled over onto the steppes of what we know today as southern Russia. However, that territory was already occupied, so they may have proceeded on. Some of the earliest inhabitants of that region had been the Cimmerian people, but around 700 B.C. the Scythians suddenly appeared on the scene and captured most of this territory. The Scythians spoke an Iranean or Persian dialect but the Greek historians said they came from elsewhere, possibly upper Asia, beyond the Volga River. Other students have suggested that the Scythians might have been the Ten Tribes of Israel. Certainly this was the time when the Israelites are believed to have fled into this very region. In either event, the Scythians disappeared around 200 A.D., so they also became a "lost" people whether they were Israelites or not. What remains significant, however, is the fact that we now know that a remnant of Ephraimites who later showed up in Europe were, for many centuries, established in this very region. They called themselves the "Ynglings" from which the modern word, "English" has its derivation. But of course these Ephraimites were scattered over a far broader section of Europe than just England.
It was early in the expansion of the Roman Empire (probably the second century B.C.) that the ancestors of what turned out to be the Ephraimite nations of Europe say they left southern Russia. Their historical traditions were fixed in memorized ballads and poems and were finally written down in the eleventh and twelfth centuries A.D. These may be found in Volume 1, Second Edition, of Samuel Laing's The Sagas of the Norse Kings, 2nd edition, Vol. 1, published in New York by Scribner and Welford in 1889. A copy of this work is in the library of the Brigham Young University.
The original home of the Ynglings is described in sufficient detail so that scholars had little difficulty locating it in the region east of the Don River and just north of the territory lying between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. In fact, down through the centuries the Ynglings referred to the Black Sea by that name so this provided a point of reference from which rivers, mountains, and other geographical points could be identified even though they carried different names. As one would expect, the traditions of the Ynglings contain the typical factual flaws which centuries of re-telling are bound to accumulate, but the essential thread of historical narration remains readily apparent and therefore tentatively credible.
The ruler who brought the Ynglings from southern Russia to Europe was Odin (whom all Scandinavians later worshipped as a god). The Bible student will recognize a number of interesting qualities and practices attributed to Odin: "It was the belief of his people that victory belonged to him in every battle. It was his custom when he sent his men into battle, or on any expedition, that he first laid his hand upon their heads, and called down a blessing upon them; and then they believed their undertaking would be successful."3 The Sagas say that the Ynglings felt compelled to move when "the Roman chiefs went wide around the world." It says that Odin, "having foreknowledge, and magic-sight, knew that his posterity would come to settle and dwell in the northern half of the world." Therefore, he "with all the Gods (other leaders who later became deified) and a great many other people, wandered out, first westward to Gardarike (Russia) and then south to Saxland (Germany)."4 Actually, they would have traveled more north than west to reach western Russia and more west than south to reach Germany. The directions are therefore general rather than specific.
Upon arrival in their new home, the Sagas explain that Odin "... had many sons; and after having subdued an extensive kingdom in Saxland, he set his sons to defend the country. He himself went northward to the sea, and took up his abode in an island which is called Odinse, in Frey (Odense in Denmark)." Apparently Odin remained on the island which still bears his name for several years. During this time he dispatched expeditions to settle the island to the east, Zealand, where Copenhagen is located; to the peninsula of northern Germany called Jutland which is part of Denmark today; to Norway; and to Sweden. Southern Sweden was already occupied by the Goths, but these were eventually overcome and the Ynglings established their ancient capital at Uppsula which still exists and is located just a few miles north of modern Stockholm. Odin was living at Uppsula when he died. It was the custom to send the spirit of the departed to Valhala either by burning the body or burying it in a pit and building a huge mound over it. In Uppsula today there are over 200 huge cairns or burial mounds which mark the graves of the ancient, heroic dead of the Ynglings.
So the Sagas say this is how it all began. From the original mass migration of the Ynglings there developed several well-known branches; the Engels, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, Norwegians and Swedes. So far as we can tell, it was from these sources that the Ephraimite blood was sprinkled among the Gentile nations of Europe. How this happened is an interesting story in and of itself.
As soon as the Roman empire collapsed in the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., the Norsemen moved in on England. For the next five hundred years there was one wave of conquest after another until England was virtually saturated with a Scandinavian population. The Engels came first with the Saxons and Jutes right behind them. Then the whole east side of England was conquered by the Danes and for a while bore the name of Danelaw or Daneland. In the eighth century a new wave of conquests began as the vikings from Denmark and Norway conquered their English cousins and for awhile a single king ruled all three of them. Meanwhile, a whole province of Norsemen had settled in northern France (Normandy) and in 1066 these came across the channel under William I to conquer England for the last time and set up a royal house which still prevails.
But England was not the only territory to be innoculated with a Yngling strain. We sometimes forget that from the eighth to the eleventh centuries A.D., the most volatile seapower and military force in Europe was the Scandinavian vikings. They had the only ships which could sail the open seas. They often attacked with highly organized armies of several thousand, and used assault tactics similar to those developed by the Romans. Their fleets ran into the hundreds of ships (in 885 A.D., over 700 ships came up the Seine to conquer Burgundy!). They could navigate in heavy weather with the sun behind a cloud-cover because they had discovered a transparent crystal called a "sun stone" (cordierite) which turned from yellow to dark blue when its natural molecular alignment was held at right angles to the plane of polarized light from the sun. Thus the sun could be located by rotating a chunk of cordierite until it turned dark blue.5
The Ephraimite vikings were pagans but not barbarians. They were extremely rough and sometimes crude, but had established systems of law and a stable, well-defined culture. They had a system of functioning government with community elections and a parliament which fostered a sense of freedom and democracy that was virtually non-existent in the rest of Europe. Wherever they settled there was a definite pattern of civilization which nearly always flourished into a strong kingdom. They displayed a virility which could survive against tremendous odds. They built a tradition of survival where others failed and prided themselves in displaying a persistent fighting spirit when it came to tilling the ground, building up their flocks and establishing a rugged type of frontier security where others were afraid to live.
Europe, during the period of 800 to 1100 A.D., was extremely unstable and the Scandinavians took advantage of this to impose marriages and alliances on the leading families of nearly every existing kingdom. This gave a viking ancestry to practically all of Europe's nobility. By the end of the eleventh century here is what the Ephraimite Scandinavians had done:
1. Conquered and reconquered England until the blood-lines of the population were predominantly Anglo-Saxon or of closely related Scandinavian descent.
2. Conquered all of Ireland.
3. Conquered Northern France.
4. Discovered Greenland.
5. Settled Iceland.
6. Discovered Vinland in North America (the ruins of which were discovered in 1963 by Dr. Helge Ingstad near L'anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland).
7. Settled Novgorod in Russia and set up the first royal house of Russia. (The Swedish vikings were known as Rhos or Rus which gave the slavic kingdom its new name.)
8. Sent out expeditions which succeeded in raiding Spain, Italy and Constantinople.
9. Viking troops were hired as mercenaries and became the elite guard of the Byzantine Empire at Constantinople.
10. At one point the famous viking king, Canute, was the king of England, Denmark, and Norway.
11. By intermingling with the Teutonic tribes, the Scandinavian blood had penetrated the Lowlands, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland, in addition to those already mentioned.
12. In 300 years the Ephraimite Scandinavians had gone from pagans to devout Christians and were recognized as loyal "defenders of the faith."
After that, the Lord was about ready to reveal to the world who the Ephraimites really were.
The discovery of the western hemisphere in 1492 brought the Spanish to America during the 1500's, the French in the 1600's, and the English in the 1700's. It is interesting that the Ephraimite nations of northern Europe were used almost exclusively to settle the United States and Canada where the restored Gospel was to be exposed to modern men for the first time.
The next nation to get the impact of the Restoration was England, followed closely by the Scandinavian countries together with Germany, Holland, Switzerland and France. It is interesting that during the first 100 years of the Church's existence these few countries with relatively small populations provided the overwhelming majority of the Church members. Here was the "Ephraim" Isaiah was talking about. To the amazement of the new converts to the Church they learned from their patriarchal blessings that almost without exception they were all descendants of Joseph through Ephraim. These were gathered together to form a hard core in Zion and when this was accomplished the word was sent forth that the converts should no longer "gather" but remain in their native lands to build up the kingdom there.
Once Ephraim began to be "recovered" the prophecy of Isaiah made it clear that Judah also had to be restored to her former inheritance and purged of the many centuries of persecution and darkness so that she could be called a "delightsome" people.6 Church history tells us that almost immediately after the Gospel was sent forth among the Gentiles (with their sprinkling of Ephraimites) the Lord began laying the foundation for the "return" of the Jews. What has happened since then is turning out to be an astonishing miracle which this generation of Ephraimites is getting a chance to see fulfilled right before their eyes.
1. D&C 133:26-30.
2. 1 Chronicles 5:26; 2 Kings 15:29.
3. Samuel Laing, The Sagas of the Norse Kings, 2nd edition, Vol. 1, p. 271.
4. Samuel Laing, The Sagas of the Norse Kings, 2nd edition, Vol. 1, p. 274.
5. Time magazine, July 14, 1967.
6. 2 Nephi 30:7.
Treasures from the Book of Mormon, Volume One, by W. Cleon Skousen, PAGES 232- 234
When the Gospel was restored in modern times, we gained an additional insight into one of the most perplexing riddles of Bible history: "Whatever happened to the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel?" We are far from having the whole answer, but at least we have located two important segments of the Lost Tribes -- the Ephraimites in America and Europe and the people of Manasseh among the aborigines of America and the Pacific Islands. Since Isaiah 11:13-14 speaks of Ephraim and Judah combining together in the performing of a special work, it is particularly significant to have the Lord bring Ephraim out of hiding.
In America and Europe the restored Gospel acted as a magnet to draw out of the Gentile nations a remnant of Ephraim which had been scattered among them during a period of many centuries. These Ephraimites constituted the vast majority of the Church membership during the first 100 years of its existence. But what of the other tribes? That remains as deep a secret as ever. All the Lord has told us is that, wherever they are, the Lost Tribes have prophets among them who are preparing them to come down from the "north countries" and that he will raise up a mighty highway in the "midst of the great deep" which will permit them to come to Zion when the time is right so they can receive the Endowment and other blessings under the hands of Ephraim.1 But as to their present whereabouts, we know nothing for certain. Our research is therefore limited to the task of tracing the history of that remnant of Ephraimites who somehow made their way to Europe and then to America or other parts of the world. To do this, let us go back to the 8th century B.C., when the Ephraimites and the rest of the Ten Tribes first disappeared.
As we have noted in the 9th and 10th chapters of Isaiah (2 Nephi 11 and 20), the Assyrians began their final attack on the Northern Ten Tribes in 727 B.C. and by 721 B.C. they had destroyed or carried off practically the entire population. The Bible says the Israelites were taken to "Halah, and Habor, and Hara, and to the river Gozan."2 This means that they were scattered along the upper Tigris and its tributaries. It was just a little over a century later that the Assyrians suddenly found themselves being conquered by the Babylonians so this presented an opportunity for the Israelites to band together and slip away to the north. Thereafter, they became "lost" to the knowledge of mankind.
The logical route for the fleeing Israelites as they went "northward," would have been through the passes of the Caucasus Mountains which stretch from east to west between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Then they would have spilled over onto the steppes of what we know today as southern Russia. However, that territory was already occupied, so they may have proceeded on. Some of the earliest inhabitants of that region had been the Cimmerian people, but around 700 B.C. the Scythians suddenly appeared on the scene and captured most of this territory. The Scythians spoke an Iranean or Persian dialect but the Greek historians said they came from elsewhere, possibly upper Asia, beyond the Volga River. Other students have suggested that the Scythians might have been the Ten Tribes of Israel. Certainly this was the time when the Israelites are believed to have fled into this very region. In either event, the Scythians disappeared around 200 A.D., so they also became a "lost" people whether they were Israelites or not. What remains significant, however, is the fact that we now know that a remnant of Ephraimites who later showed up in Europe were, for many centuries, established in this very region. They called themselves the "Ynglings" from which the modern word, "English" has its derivation. But of course these Ephraimites were scattered over a far broader section of Europe than just England.
It was early in the expansion of the Roman Empire (probably the second century B.C.) that the ancestors of what turned out to be the Ephraimite nations of Europe say they left southern Russia. Their historical traditions were fixed in memorized ballads and poems and were finally written down in the eleventh and twelfth centuries A.D. These may be found in Volume 1, Second Edition, of Samuel Laing's The Sagas of the Norse Kings, 2nd edition, Vol. 1, published in New York by Scribner and Welford in 1889. A copy of this work is in the library of the Brigham Young University.
The original home of the Ynglings is described in sufficient detail so that scholars had little difficulty locating it in the region east of the Don River and just north of the territory lying between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. In fact, down through the centuries the Ynglings referred to the Black Sea by that name so this provided a point of reference from which rivers, mountains, and other geographical points could be identified even though they carried different names. As one would expect, the traditions of the Ynglings contain the typical factual flaws which centuries of re-telling are bound to accumulate, but the essential thread of historical narration remains readily apparent and therefore tentatively credible.
The ruler who brought the Ynglings from southern Russia to Europe was Odin (whom all Scandinavians later worshipped as a god). The Bible student will recognize a number of interesting qualities and practices attributed to Odin: "It was the belief of his people that victory belonged to him in every battle. It was his custom when he sent his men into battle, or on any expedition, that he first laid his hand upon their heads, and called down a blessing upon them; and then they believed their undertaking would be successful."3 The Sagas say that the Ynglings felt compelled to move when "the Roman chiefs went wide around the world." It says that Odin, "having foreknowledge, and magic-sight, knew that his posterity would come to settle and dwell in the northern half of the world." Therefore, he "with all the Gods (other leaders who later became deified) and a great many other people, wandered out, first westward to Gardarike (Russia) and then south to Saxland (Germany)."4 Actually, they would have traveled more north than west to reach western Russia and more west than south to reach Germany. The directions are therefore general rather than specific.
Upon arrival in their new home, the Sagas explain that Odin "... had many sons; and after having subdued an extensive kingdom in Saxland, he set his sons to defend the country. He himself went northward to the sea, and took up his abode in an island which is called Odinse, in Frey (Odense in Denmark)." Apparently Odin remained on the island which still bears his name for several years. During this time he dispatched expeditions to settle the island to the east, Zealand, where Copenhagen is located; to the peninsula of northern Germany called Jutland which is part of Denmark today; to Norway; and to Sweden. Southern Sweden was already occupied by the Goths, but these were eventually overcome and the Ynglings established their ancient capital at Uppsula which still exists and is located just a few miles north of modern Stockholm. Odin was living at Uppsula when he died. It was the custom to send the spirit of the departed to Valhala either by burning the body or burying it in a pit and building a huge mound over it. In Uppsula today there are over 200 huge cairns or burial mounds which mark the graves of the ancient, heroic dead of the Ynglings.
So the Sagas say this is how it all began. From the original mass migration of the Ynglings there developed several well-known branches; the Engels, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, Norwegians and Swedes. So far as we can tell, it was from these sources that the Ephraimite blood was sprinkled among the Gentile nations of Europe. How this happened is an interesting story in and of itself.
As soon as the Roman empire collapsed in the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., the Norsemen moved in on England. For the next five hundred years there was one wave of conquest after another until England was virtually saturated with a Scandinavian population. The Engels came first with the Saxons and Jutes right behind them. Then the whole east side of England was conquered by the Danes and for a while bore the name of Danelaw or Daneland. In the eighth century a new wave of conquests began as the vikings from Denmark and Norway conquered their English cousins and for awhile a single king ruled all three of them. Meanwhile, a whole province of Norsemen had settled in northern France (Normandy) and in 1066 these came across the channel under William I to conquer England for the last time and set up a royal house which still prevails.
But England was not the only territory to be innoculated with a Yngling strain. We sometimes forget that from the eighth to the eleventh centuries A.D., the most volatile seapower and military force in Europe was the Scandinavian vikings. They had the only ships which could sail the open seas. They often attacked with highly organized armies of several thousand, and used assault tactics similar to those developed by the Romans. Their fleets ran into the hundreds of ships (in 885 A.D., over 700 ships came up the Seine to conquer Burgundy!). They could navigate in heavy weather with the sun behind a cloud-cover because they had discovered a transparent crystal called a "sun stone" (cordierite) which turned from yellow to dark blue when its natural molecular alignment was held at right angles to the plane of polarized light from the sun. Thus the sun could be located by rotating a chunk of cordierite until it turned dark blue.5
The Ephraimite vikings were pagans but not barbarians. They were extremely rough and sometimes crude, but had established systems of law and a stable, well-defined culture. They had a system of functioning government with community elections and a parliament which fostered a sense of freedom and democracy that was virtually non-existent in the rest of Europe. Wherever they settled there was a definite pattern of civilization which nearly always flourished into a strong kingdom. They displayed a virility which could survive against tremendous odds. They built a tradition of survival where others failed and prided themselves in displaying a persistent fighting spirit when it came to tilling the ground, building up their flocks and establishing a rugged type of frontier security where others were afraid to live.
Europe, during the period of 800 to 1100 A.D., was extremely unstable and the Scandinavians took advantage of this to impose marriages and alliances on the leading families of nearly every existing kingdom. This gave a viking ancestry to practically all of Europe's nobility. By the end of the eleventh century here is what the Ephraimite Scandinavians had done:
1. Conquered and reconquered England until the blood-lines of the population were predominantly Anglo-Saxon or of closely related Scandinavian descent.
2. Conquered all of Ireland.
3. Conquered Northern France.
4. Discovered Greenland.
5. Settled Iceland.
6. Discovered Vinland in North America (the ruins of which were discovered in 1963 by Dr. Helge Ingstad near L'anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland).
7. Settled Novgorod in Russia and set up the first royal house of Russia. (The Swedish vikings were known as Rhos or Rus which gave the slavic kingdom its new name.)
8. Sent out expeditions which succeeded in raiding Spain, Italy and Constantinople.
9. Viking troops were hired as mercenaries and became the elite guard of the Byzantine Empire at Constantinople.
10. At one point the famous viking king, Canute, was the king of England, Denmark, and Norway.
11. By intermingling with the Teutonic tribes, the Scandinavian blood had penetrated the Lowlands, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland, in addition to those already mentioned.
12. In 300 years the Ephraimite Scandinavians had gone from pagans to devout Christians and were recognized as loyal "defenders of the faith."
After that, the Lord was about ready to reveal to the world who the Ephraimites really were.
The discovery of the western hemisphere in 1492 brought the Spanish to America during the 1500's, the French in the 1600's, and the English in the 1700's. It is interesting that the Ephraimite nations of northern Europe were used almost exclusively to settle the United States and Canada where the restored Gospel was to be exposed to modern men for the first time.
The next nation to get the impact of the Restoration was England, followed closely by the Scandinavian countries together with Germany, Holland, Switzerland and France. It is interesting that during the first 100 years of the Church's existence these few countries with relatively small populations provided the overwhelming majority of the Church members. Here was the "Ephraim" Isaiah was talking about. To the amazement of the new converts to the Church they learned from their patriarchal blessings that almost without exception they were all descendants of Joseph through Ephraim. These were gathered together to form a hard core in Zion and when this was accomplished the word was sent forth that the converts should no longer "gather" but remain in their native lands to build up the kingdom there.
Once Ephraim began to be "recovered" the prophecy of Isaiah made it clear that Judah also had to be restored to her former inheritance and purged of the many centuries of persecution and darkness so that she could be called a "delightsome" people.6 Church history tells us that almost immediately after the Gospel was sent forth among the Gentiles (with their sprinkling of Ephraimites) the Lord began laying the foundation for the "return" of the Jews. What has happened since then is turning out to be an astonishing miracle which this generation of Ephraimites is getting a chance to see fulfilled right before their eyes.
1. D&C 133:26-30.
2. 1 Chronicles 5:26; 2 Kings 15:29.
3. Samuel Laing, The Sagas of the Norse Kings, 2nd edition, Vol. 1, p. 271.
4. Samuel Laing, The Sagas of the Norse Kings, 2nd edition, Vol. 1, p. 274.
5. Time magazine, July 14, 1967.
6. 2 Nephi 30:7.
An Ancient Chinese Curse "May you live in interesting times!"
- Oldemandalton
captain of 1,000
Glad to see a post regarding Cleon Skousen on here, as I think he's great. Have you had a chance to look at his end times sequencing, as found in his posthumous publication The Cleansing of America? If so, I'm wondering what you think, compared to your own current understanding of things?
ReplyDeleteI have had the book for about two years - and, as usual, I bought it and my wife has read it. I am too busy with the blog to read stuff that is not online - other than my physical scriptures...... Its really bad.
ReplyDeleteGreat read! Thanks for posting, Eric. I remember some allusions to European blood being heavily "Ephraimized" but not with this much detail and study backing it up! I have always wondered about the significance of Russia in the lost tribes; often feel that there was some quiet reason for my affinity towards the Russian people. I will soon be brushing up on my Russian language skills in an attempt to share the marvels of essential oils with a people that is already used to using natural medicine as a result of never having had a great or sophisticated healthcare system even close to being comparable to ours! I must note that even though the Russian people have been subject to one totalitarian group of thugs after another for over a thousand years, they are very religious by nature and very many clung to their Christian faith throughout the years of communism.
ReplyDelete"The Vikings had democracy superior to anything in Europe?" This is nonsense. The Republic of Venice was far superior to any society at the time. There was no electioneering or campaigning; everything was decided by creating an electoral committee from a complex sortition process known as 'Scrutiny and Brevia.' This is what led Venice to last for 1,000 years because of an emphasis on supermajorities and an absence of gerrymandering and rent-seeking behavior. On top of that, when the European Religious War began, there was no wave of religious persecutions or Christian sectarian violence. Skousen only told half-truths. His books are joke. The Founding Fathers wanted a Republic, not a Democracy. Read between the lines, people.
ReplyDeleteThis is very interesting! I have read some parts of this other reading but I appreciate the research into this read! Thanks for sharing!!
ReplyDelete