of David. (The Rechabites ultimately became the model for the Independent
Order of Rechabites, an anti-alcohol organization founded in England in 1835 .)
They too ended up in Sambatyon.^67
If early rabbinical treatment turned the river into a barrier enclosing the
ten tribes, later rabbinical sources spoke of it explicitly as a “container,” God’s
preferred location for all sorts of protected and concealed superior peoples.
Thus, the River Euphrates undergoes a major transformation from a trivial and
known geographical location to a river that defines the break in earthly space
beyond which certain peoples exist in a concealed and protected state.
The origins of Sambatyon’s name lie in its connection to the Sabbath.
The Sambatyon is famous for its mysterious nature: it flows in different
directions, changing in cycles, and legends about its wondrous qualities are
very old and widespread. Pliny the Elder mentions in hisNaturalis Historia,
“In Judea is a stream that dries up every Sabbath” (in Iudaea rivus sabbatis
omnibus siccatur).^68 Here Pliny unintentionally gave the river its name, “Rivus
Sabbatis” because of the order of the words in the sentence—his phrase
“rivus sabbatis omnibus siccatur” refers to the nature of the river and not
to its actual name. But the notion of a river with mysterious powers and
changing attributes, somehow attached to the Jews, was also probably before
Pliny wrote hisHistoria.In hisWars of the Jews, Josephus reverses Pliny’s
order of things and describes a river that rests for six days and gushes on the
seventh. He locates this “Sabbatic River” not in Judea but in Antiochia, saying
that, as Titus Flavius was passing through Syria on his way to suppress the
great Jewish rebellion:
[He] saw a river as he went along, of such a nature as deserves to be
recorded in history; it runs in the middle between Arcea, belonging to
Agrippa’s kingdom, and Raphanea. It hath somewhat very peculiar in
it; for when it runs, its current is strong, and has plenty of water; after
which its springs fail for six days together, and leave its channel dry, as
any one may see; after which days it runs on the seventh day as it did
before, and as though it had undergone no change at all; it hath also
been observed to keep this order perpetually and exactly; whence it is
that they call it the Sabbatic River [Rivus Sabbatis] that name being
taken from the sacred seventh day among the Jews.^69
Whether in Judea or Antiochia, this incarnation of the Sabbatic River was
not attached to the ten lost tribes; neither Pliny nor Josephus mentions them in
this context, and neither places the river at the edges of the earth. Just as the
Euphrates in Esdras was transformed into the Sambatyon, Rivus Sabbatis
underwent a transformation and became attached to the ten tribes.