Lost: Israel as a Diaspora’s Diaspora
The reframing of the deportations as divine punishment is one central build-
ing block in the development of the story of the ten lost tribes. Another is the
reframing of the locus of exile. It too shifts in the lenses of the later biblical
material. The book of 2 Kings, as we have seen, makes reference to specific
locales and asserts confidently that the tribes are still “there, to this day.” Again,
these were known places, touchstones in the quest for the tribes, with “Gozan”
read as “Ganges,” for instance. Ultimately, though, it was precisely the fact that
they were lost that opened the door to infinite interpretation and speculation,
across oceans and continents.
How, with a few named, remote Assyrian provinces as a starting place, did
they become so very lost^76 that subsequent seekers could plausibly suspect
them to be found in the Americas or in East Asia, on the Hebridean islands or
in the South Pacific? The answer again lies in the ways in which the biblical
authors came to terms with, and transformed, the framework of the story. As
opposed to the ordinary locations specified in 2 Kings, the later prophetic texts
that processed the story worked to present the location of exile in more abstract
and value-laden terms. It was the prophets’ job to lose the tribes, just as it had
been their job to render their exile so numerically complete. Just as the exile
itself was exceptional in the prophetic presentation, so too was the place of
exile. The extent of the exile (as presented by the prophets) was so complete,
and its means so otherworldly, that the site of exile itself had to take on a
greater mystery. At the same time, the increasing consolidation of Jerusalem as
the site par excellence around which all Israelite religious activity was to revolve
rendered all other locations blurry and insignificant. As the place(s) to which
the tribes had gone became blurred, the place to which they must someday
return stood out clearly: Jerusalem, the touchstone by which Israelite (and,
later, Jewish, Christian, and to a lesser extent Muslim) tradition was to emerge
as the definitively locative theological world view. As the centuries wore on,
with the tribes disappearing over each newly discovered horizon, Jerusalem
remained fixed as the pole star by which they took their bearings, the magnet
by which they would one day be drawn home. The lost tribes were turned into a
diaspora, and Jerusalem into a home.
Positioning is a crucial factor in the constitution of a diaspora.^77 The
locations to which the Israelites were exiled do not simply stand for them-
selves. They are reconfigured, in effect repositioned, in relation to home and to
the Judahites. Having first been cast as Judah’s diaspora, the Israelites were