removed Israelite group. From a theological point of view, their findings raised
a set of problems of major importance that they wished to clarify both with
Eldad and with the Gaon.
The ten tribes were exiled many centuries before the Jews. They did not
partake in major events of the biblical and postbiblical period, including the
reign of Josiah and the finding of Deuteronomy, the great prophets, the
Babylonian captivity, the return to Zion, the completion and canonization of
the Bible, the Second Temple and its fate, the emergence of rabbinic Judaism,
and the rabbinic monopoly on the interpretation and development of the law.
But if the tribes were not part of biblical history, the covenant between God and
Israel still bound them. Indeed, the Talmudic position implied that the ten
tribes were enclosed in exile so they could continue to worship the Lord. From a
rabbinic point of view, just as Mosaic law developed “here,” in the Jewish exile,
so too it must have developed “there,” beyond the Sambatyon. Even if the ten
tribes were removed from the rest of the children of Israel, they should have
naturally or spontaneously developed the religious institutions and legal sys-
tem of the Jews.
Some Christian theologies would develop the same expectation for “natu-
ral religious development,” except that, in the Christian version, the ten tribes
were to possess the New Testament as well as the Old. In its most radical
version, this theology is also the basis for Mormonism. Recall, for instance, the
story of the boy who found the ten tribes in the North Pole’s Arctic Ocean,
recounted by the explorer Lindelof. His encounter with the (good Christian)
lost tribes reaffirmed his faith in the Bible.^41 That is, preciselybecausethe ten
tribes are outside human history, they hold the special power of affirming it,
offering a link to an intact past. (Nineteenth-century Jewish historians read
Eldad’s story against this backdrop—and produced an array of bizarre explana-
tions for his actions.)^42
The question of the ten tribes’ scripture, law, and religiosity was an
important part of the Eldad episode. As we have seen, the Qayrawanis made
a point of reporting that the ten tribes “possess [i.e., have access to] the whole of
the Bible.” This explains the seemingly bizarre note concerning the “four
methods of death penalty.” The Torah, the biblical basis for Talmudic law,
specifies only three methods—stoning, burning, and decapitation by sword.
Rabbinic sages introduced a fourth—strangulation.^43 The fact that the ten
tribes had the fourth method was proof that Mosaic law in both exiles was
similar, as was theologically expected. This had crucial implications relating to
the authority of the rabbinic interpretation of Mosaic law—what is known as
oral law, as opposed to the Torah, or written law. The fact that Mosaic law had
naturally developed in the secluded land of the ten tribes validated its rabbinic
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