This post will ultimately have a connection to the ancient “Silk Road,” and the ancient huge Israelite empires of Parthia and Scythia, but first I must introduce the topic with a piece of most interesting contemporary news.
Here in the USA, matters great and small involving the beginnings of the Trump administration in Washington, DC are so dominating our media reports that many global events worthy of coverage receive scant attention. One such event is the completion and opening of what is called the new “Silk Road,” a continuous railway connection from a Chinese city on the Pacific ocean to a railway station in London in the United Kingdom. Obviously it will service many nations between those two terminus points. What is key is that this greatly reduces the time needed to deliver goods between Asia and Europe from weeks to days, and this will greatly facilitate new trade by dramatically shortening delivery times. Air cargo will still transport the most time-sensitive shipments but air cargo rates are very high compared to surface transportation. Merchant ships that took weeks to transport cargoes between European ports and Asian locations now have serious competition. The first link mentions some of the nations that will benefit from this new “Silk Road” railway connection, and notes that the rail shipments on the route are just getting started. Undoubtedly this traffic will grow as it becomes more reliable a means of transportation.
The second link includes a map of the entire length of the completed railway route, showing that Moscow is a major city on the route and that a major junction point in Duisburg, Germany will re-direct cargoes traveling on this new railway to destination points all over Europe. The entire length of this new “Silk Road” is 7,500 miles or 12,000 kilometers. The third link reports that this new “Silk Road” is “part of the old Silk Road, which commenced in 200 BC.”
The date of 200 BC is very significant in the history of the ancient Silk Road. At that time, the Parthian Empire was growing into a very large Asian Empire as it was conquering the Seleucid Greek Empire and ruling over the ancient Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian peoples. The Parthian Empire lasted from approximately 250 BC-227 AD, and it controlled the ancient Silk Road connecting China and India with the Roman Empire. A map of the ancient Silk Road’s main routes is found in the fourth link. That map shows the Silk Road going through Persia, which was governed and controlled by the Parthians for centuries. Sitting as the middleman controlling trade routes between East and West made the Parthians very rich. A short history of the Parthian Empire is included as the fifth link. It provides many secular facts about the Parthians and their empire that few modern history texts ever cover, but it does not address the fact that the Parthians were the descendants of the ten tribes of Israel which were taken originally into Asia as Assyrian captives (II Kings 16:27-29, 17:5-6). Centuries passed after their initial captivity and the descendants of the Israelites finally became so numerous that they conquered their former captors–an event that was prophesied by God to occur (Isaiah 14:2). God had also prophesied that the Israelites would grow much more numerous after they went into captivity (Hosea 1:10), which did happen and finally resulted in their ruling over their former captor nations. The fifth link does not connect the Parthians with the displaced Israelite tribes, but my book, Parthia–The Forgotten Ancient Superpower, contains extensive evidence documenting that connection beyond any shadow of a doubt. My E-book, The “Lost” Ten Tribes of Israel…Found! does as well. The fifth link has one fact that should be noted. It shows the heads of Parthian kings as depicted on their coins, and they are shown to be bearded, Caucasian Semites. This confirms that their origin was in the Semitic region of the Mideast–not from the oriental tribes deep in the interior regions of East Asia. One would expect the descendants of the ten tribes to be bearded Caucasians in appearance, and that is exactly how they are depicted. When the Persians overthrew the Parthians circa 227 AD and drove them northwestward toward Europe, the masses of Parthia’s refugees became known to the Romans as Goths, Germans, Anglo-Saxons, Franks, Vandals, etc. as they poured out of Asia into Europe to invade and conquer the Roman Empire.
The Bible mentions the Parthians sent delegations of religiously-observant people to Jerusalem for biblical Holy Days (Acts 2:9-10). In the listing of peoples in Acts 2:9, it should be mentioned that the “Medes, Elamites and dwellers in Mesopotamia” were all from the Parthian Empire as well as the Parthians. It should not be surprising that “Medes” from Parthia were among the observant peoples making pilgrimages to Jerusalem in the fist century AD. Some of the ten tribes of Israel were relocated into the region of the Medes (II Kings 17:5-6) so one would expect people from that area to be part of the ten tribes of Israel that still acknowledged their religious and cultural ties to the region of Jerusalem and ancient Israel. It should also be pointed out that the Wise Men/Magi who came to visit the Christ-child in Matthew 2:1-12 were from the nobility of the Parthian Empire. King Herod treated them with utmost deference as he knew Parthia’s empire was the equal of Rome’s and he did not want to provoke them. Indeed, the Parthians had administered crushing defeats on separate Roman armies led by Crassus and Mark Antony prior to the arrival of the Wise Men, and the Parthians had actually conquered and ruled the Holy Land for a few years just decades before the arrival of the Wise Men. Matthew 2:3 records Herod and all of Jerusalem were “troubled” by the arrival of the Wise Men. Why would the entire city notice and be frightened by the arrival of a delegation from Parthia bearing gifts? The surprising answer is given in my aforementioned books, and that answer reveals that the Matthew 2 account of the Wise Men’s arrival in Jerusalem tells only a tiny sliver of the dramatic events that accompanied their arrival.
The new “Silk Road” railway passes through the territory of another ancient Israelite superpower–the Scythians who inhabited and governed the modern regions of South Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkestan, etc. The Scythians were a brother empire to the Parthians, as secular historians note that they were fellow tribesmen to the Parthians. The Scythians were more of a confederation of related tribes than one central empire. Some of their basic history is given in the sixth link, and it includes a map showing that they controlled a larger section of Asia than the Parthians. Since they were related tribes to the Parthian tribes, they were often allies in wars against other empires, particularly against Rome. The sixth link also offers only basic information about the Scythians, but it does mention one fact that I cite in my books. It states the Scythians arrived in their Asian region in the 8th century BC. That is exactly the century that the ten tribes of Israel were driven from their old homeland in the Holy Land by a series of Assyrian invasions, and these new Scythian arrivals were a different mass of the ten tribes of Israel that began as a large group that migrated voluntarily to the Black Sea region and, thereby, preserved their independence from the Assyrians. The Scythians were called the “Sacae” by the Greeks, who wrote a great deal about them. The term “Sacae” includes the root word of the name “Isaac,” the Israelite patriarch whose name was prophesied to be perpetually stamped on the Israelites in later times (Genesis 21:12). This name was also placed on the Parthians. One of the early cities of the Parthians was called “Asaak.” The Persians called the Sacae the “Saka” and the Romans later called them the “Saxons.” A detailed history of the Scythian Empire and the documentation about their Israelite origins is included in my books, Israel’s Lost Empires, and The “Lost” Ten Tribes of Israel…Found!.
I suggest that you obtain and read the aforementioned books. They can be obtained by clicking on the appropriate links at my homepage, and they will give you an eye-opening view of world history that is not found in secular textbooks. You can read about the ancient Israelite empires that controlled the ancient Silk Road for many centuries before they migrated en masse into Europe and formed the population bases for many modern European and Anglo-Saxon nations. The ancient empires of the world were trading along that Asian-European Silk Route long before a modern railway reopened the overland route.
- http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4122506/Reopening-Silk-Road-Train-travel-mammoth-7-500mile-journey-China-London-ancient-trading-route-revived-new-era.html
- http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38654176
- http://www.forbes.com/sites/jwebb/2017/01/03/the-new-silk-road-china-launches-beijing-london-freight-train-route/#262481e52057
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthian_Empire
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scythians
