Tribal Roots Point To Hebrew Origins
It is our essential nature to question and seek information concerning our ancestral lines. If one subscribes to the theory, as did UIWU founder and president, David Horowitz, and an increasing number of proponents, that there are many of us who could be descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes or Israelites, then the questioning and seeking becomes compelling.
Armed with very limited information, my husband, Ralph, and I traveled to Wales, the land of my maternal forefathers and England, my paternal forefathers in September, 1996 to trace my genealogy. We knew the name of the village in Wales which was the birthplace of my Great Grandfather and Great Grandmother, but little else.
Our arrival in Llandudno, Wales was on Friday, September 13 and we attended the Llandudno Hebrew Congregation for Rosh Hashanah and Shabbat services. This is the oldest Orthodox synagogue in Wales, dating to the 16th century. We were greeted with surprise and curiosity by the congregants. It seems they are unaccustomed to visitors-especially from “across the pond”.
One of the nights spent in Wales was at a resort high in the mountains with a view of the Irish Sea. The bucolic setting was breathtaking!
Equipped with maps and the meager information we brought with us we located the township of Corris, Wales and began exploring the valley of so many of my ancestors. The cemetery was situated on the grounds of the Carmell Corris, Talyllin, Wesleyan Methodist Church erected in 1810. The Welch inscriptions on the gravestones were startlingly close to Hebrew and as David Horowitz often told us, the Welch and Hebrew languages are strikingly similar. I was not prepared for the impact that discovering the tombstones of my Great, Great, Great Grandparents and relatives, whom I was unaware even had existed, would have on me. It was a strange, unnatural and unnerving experience and one which would subsequently take me months to reconcile and resolve.
The process of researching information which we acquired during the trip has revealed astonishing points of history for me. I’d like to summarize some conclusions by quoting a few excerpts from Seventh Day Adventist Leslie Hardinge’s work, The Celtic Church in Britain. “Before the coming of Augustine to England in A.D.597, the Christian church in the British Isles was profoundly Celtic, rather than Roman. The beliefs and practices of the Celtic Christian Church were much closer to the first century church than the Church of Rome. Foremost in the Celtic belief was an insistence on a literal interpretation of the Bible, with a tendency to reject the writings of the ‘Church Fathers’, and a disdain for the authority of Church Councils (Council of Elders). The Celtic theologian was keenly interested in the whole of the scriptures, but his preoccupation with the Ten Commandments was even deeper.”
“Many Celtic believers were Arians (anti-trinitarian). They kept the Sabbath, believing that the day begins at sundown. They were known to be Quartodecimans, observers of the Christian Passover, on the fourteenth day of the first month in Spring. They eschewed unclean meats.”
“The legendary Patrick (ca. 387-463) was born a Briton, and evangelized Ireland. He was said to have founded over 300 churches and baptized more than 120,000 converts, earning him the title of patron saint of Ireland. However, Christianity existed in Ireland long before his time.”
Wherever Patrick went and established a church, he left an old Celtic law book, Liber ex Lege Moisi (Book of the Law of Moses), along with the books of the Gospel. The Liber begins with the Decalogue and continues with selections from Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, totaling 35 in all.
“It is most significant that the Liber should commence with the Decalogue, which certainly points to the interest of the Celtic Christian in keeping the Ten Commandments. This passage also includes prohibitions against the forming of idols of silver or gold, and directions for making an altar of earth without steps, underlying the early stress in the Celtic Church of ‘altars of stone’”
While ‘St. Patrick’ is revered as a Roman Catholic Saint, his writings appear to place him squarely in the “Sabbath-keeping Messianic tradition”.
Hardinge indicates that the Celtic British Isles had a long history of Sabbath-keeping. Professor James Moffatt, D.D. in his 1882 book, The Church in Scotland, p.140 states: “It seems to have been customary in Celtic Churches of early times, in Ireland as well as Scotland, to keep Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, as a day of rest from labour.” They obeyed the fourth commandment, literally, upon the seventh day of the week.
A surprising conclusion has much relevance for us today. To it’s detriment, the Celtic Church was not unified. Each group seems to have been dependent upon the founder and it’s tribe, but independent of all others. No church leader among the Celts was held to be the spokesman of all. There was little unity of purpose thus they were unable to present a unified front and were absorbed into Roman Christianity piece by piece and finally disappeared.
Assimilating this information intellectually and emotionally has given me much to ponder and has imparted a strong sense of pride in my Welch-Celtic-Hebrew influenced heritage.
Don Feder, a writer for the New York Post wrote recently, “Torah came into the world to change the world and not to reconcile itself to it”. This profound truth applies to Jews and non-Jews alike. It is, however, incumbent on both groups to seek those truths which apply to each in order to fulfill a destiny which was ordained at the Creation for those of us who are either practicing Jews or are members of the Ten Lost Tribes and are joined with those faithful Jews in a literal sense who are studying, searching, and beseeching HaShem to show His Face.
Rebecca Buntyn
Works cited: Hardinge, Leslie. The Celtic Church in Britain. Teach Services, Inc.,
Brushton, NY, 1973
Moffatt, James C., D.D. The Church in Scotland. 1882