Shalom, Steven:
I was watching the Hal Lindsey Report one evening as he began giving a commentary on end time prophesy and how world events is laid-out in Ezekiel 38 (and as usual mistakenly applied this particular prophesy to Judah and the Israelis like he always dose) then he went on to say that (and I m paraphrasing) Josephus stated in his book, that the Scythians were the Russians I looked in the index of the works of Josephus and couldn t even find the word Scythian. I did manage to find a few places were Josephus did make a few reference to them, but I couldn t find the quote that Hal Lindsey was talking about are you familiar with this Josephus quote? If you are, please tell me what section of the book it can be found, I would like to read it for myself.
I think Hal refuses to understand that the word Scythian is of Hebrew/Semitic origin; and that the original Scythians were in fact part of the Ten Northern Tribes of Israel. But as you well stated in your book/s, this name would be eventually applied to other nomadic people in that region between the Black and Caspian Sea as well Oh, and I found it quite interesting how Josephus totally neglected to included any kind of commentary or reference of the Scythians invasion into Samaria and Judah during the reign of King Josiah, or any reference to the remnant Ephraim and Manasseh for that matter.
In Yashua s Name:
Danny Walden
MYREPLY
Shalom Danny,
Hal Lindsey accurately sees the new Russian-led alliance as fulfilling the Gog-Magog prophecy in the modern world, but he still does not (as you correctly noted) see the difference between the prophetic terms “Israel” (which means the ten tribes of Israel) and “Judah” (which means the Jews/Israelis). The Greeks correctly identified the Scythians as living throughout southern Russia, but their descendants later migrated into Europe and were called Goths, Saxons, Germans, etc. by the Romans. It was the fall of the Parthian Empire which triggered the massive migration of the Caucasians from Scythia and Parthia out of Asia into Europe. One can look at the self-depictions of the Scythians on their artwork and see that they looked like the tribes called Goths, Germans and Saxons by the Romans.
I’ll offer you a possible explanation for Josephus’ thoughts about the Scythians. Josephus wrote a considerable amount of information about the Parthians and added that “the ten tribes” were exceedingly numerous in his time and lived beyond the Euphrates River (Antiquities, XI, V, 2). Notice he mentioned all ten tribes. The Euphrates River flows roughly diagonally in a southwestward direction from eastern Turkey to the Persian Gulf. When looking at a map, the term “beyond Euphrates” from the perspective of Jerusalem includes the Black Sea-Caspian Sea region of the Scythians as well as the region of the Parthian Empire. It is well-known that the Scythians and Parthians were related tribes, so Josephus’ statement would geographically include both Scythia and Parthia in the region inhabited by the very numerous ten tribes of Israel.
Josephus had many readers in the Roman Empire. Rome had much to do with Parthia and little or nothing to do with “Scythians.” Josephus may simply have had his contemporary audience in mind when he wrote about the Parthians but not the Scythians. Rome did have wars against Scythian people living in the Balkan region, but it called them “Dacians” or “Thracians.” Spartacus, the leader of the famous slave-revolt against Rome, was a Thracian.
Steve
