C-Day at the Pyramid

What happened to the lost Ten Tribes of Israel? In the reign of Solomon's son Rehoboam, the nation of Israel divided; ten tribes broke away under the leadership of Jeroboam,* and two (Juda and Benjamin) remained to provide the subsequent history of the Jews. But the fate of the Ten Tribes is one of the persistent mysteries of history and a tempting lure for eager souls always waiting to rush into any vacuum of knowledge, armed with a ready-made theory and infinite capacity for inductive reasoning. In the past 100-odd years, a cult called British Israel, which estimates its membership in "hundreds of thousands," most of them in Britain, the U.S. and the Commonwealth, has developed a rather startling theory about the missing tribes.

Jacob's Stone of Scone. The lost tribes, say they, were captured and exiled by Sargon, King of Assyria, about 721 B.C. Assyrian records tell of a race called the "Khumri." These, according to the theory, were the Ten Tribes, who became the Greeks' Cimmerioi and the Romans' Cimbri, gave their name to such places as the Crimea, Cumberland and Cambria, and were also the Cymry (pronounced Kum-ree), who originally settled in Wales. Other branches are supposed to have become the Scythians, or Scuthae, who populated Scotland, and the Sacae, or Saxons (i.e., Isaac's sons).

Some members of the tribe of Dan (the seafarers of Israel) supposedly reached Ireland, where a certain Princess Tephi married one of their chieftains and founded the present royal family of Britain--making Queen Elizabeth II a lineal descendant of David. This Irish Israelite line is also thought to have preserved the stone Jacob used as a pillow. The stone, so goes the legend, was saved from the Jerusalem temple when it was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, and taken to Ireland, thence to Scotland. Now it is the Stone of

Scone in Westminster Abbey, upon which all British monarchs are crowned.

British Israelites are partial to an unorthodox philological theory that holds the English language to be derived from Hebrew. Thus bar (son) reappears in the British "bairn"; peri (fruit) in "berry"; katon (little) in "kitten." The word "British" is simply a rendering of Berit-ish (covenant man).

No Thunderclaps. Another "proof" of the British Israelites' theory has been drawn from the Great Pyramid of Cheops. For centuries busy minds have marked off the passages inside the pyramid in a scale corresponding roughly to the calendar (about one inch representing a year). Certain markings, turns and corners along the passages have been found to correspond with historical events, and were thus used for prophecies. World War I, the Depression and World War II have been recognized on this scale and passed; dead ahead has loomed the most portentous date of all--the date upon which the pyramid's main passage runs smack into a blank wall. On that date, the British Israelites predicted, would come "the final collapse of aggressive military systems" and the begining of the "cleansing of the earth and humanity as God's sanctuary." C (for cleansing) Day: Aug. 20, 1953.

Last week the world reached the pyramid's blank wall without thunderclaps or writings in the sky. But the British Israelites were unshaken. It was suggested that the great change might have happened imperceptibly, might not become apparent for years. In London, the U.S.-born secretary of the British Israel World Federation, owlish, amiable Harold Stough (rhymes with how), offered, in addition to the pyramid prophecies, more far-reaching proofs from the Bible. Says Stough: "God made covenants with Abraham that 'I will make of thee a great nation ... In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.' " The inheritors of these covenants today, thinks Stough, are not the Jews; "we believe Britain and America represent Israel in the modern world." They will bring "faith and the principles of righteousness to the world in preparation for the return of Christ."

* And it came to pass at that time when Jeroboam went out of Jerusalem, that the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite found him in the way . . . And Ahijah caught the new garment that was on him, and rent it in twelve pieces: And he said to Jeroboam, Take thee ten pieces: for thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel, Behold, I will rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to thee, Kings 11: 29-31.

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