The Bohemians and the Lost Tribes of Israel
Question:
Dear Sirs: I have been wondering for many years about my ethnicity
in relation to the descendants of the 12 Tribes of Israel. Originally,
a great-grandfather of mine came from Bohemia. Are these western-most
Slavs in any way related to the Celts whose land they acquired after
the Boii left?
Are the Slavs the descendants of Japeth and not Shem? I’d like to know
for my own curiosity. Who are we? If you can help explain and it wouldn’t
be too much time, I would appreciate it. -Thank you, Joe P.
Answer:
Although I have not found any evidence that the Slavic peoples descended originally from Semitic roots, Bohemia was actually settled by a mixture of Celtic, Gothic, and Slavic (Czech) tribes. Although I have not written on this specifically, the ethnic makeup is similar to the region just to the east, known anciently as Galicia (covering parts of Austria, Poland, and western Ukraine), which was also composed of Goths and another Slavic tribe.
It would be instructive for you to read “The Story of Celto-Saxon Israel” by W.H. Bennett, especially the chapter on the Gauls (pp 83-86) and Appendix 8, “The Hebrew Connection With Gaul” (pp. 179-184). Scholars say that the name Galicia itself indicates a Gothic/Gaulic people. It is also connected with the ancient “Golan” area of Israel (territory of Manasseh), as Mr. Bennett’s book points out (and see the map on page 42). The tribe of Judah is also represented in Eastern Europe, and the historic heraldic emblem of Galicia was the rampant lion of Judah on a blue field. (And in fact, Ephraim-Manasseh is associated with the color blue!) So there is Israel ancestry well mixed into these Slavic regions of Eastern Europe.
This was also Mr. Bennett’s view after years of study, and he famously stated that, “There is hardly a country in Europe or Western Asia in which we do not find a remnant of the Celto-Saxon race.” (ibid., p.106)
It would be good if I found time to pull together more of my notes on this and wrote something more extensive on this topic, since there are many people of Eastern European descent that we could reach in the cities across the U.S. and Canada. We already have families of Polish descent here in our local Anglo-Israel church. Hope that this brief information helps in the meantime.
