Josephus, Lost Tribes: Is it true that the historian Josephus makes a mention of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel in his works?
The First Century Jewish historian Josephus, who was a contemporary of Yeshua the Messiah, does make an allusion to the scattered tribes of the Northern Kingdom of Israel/Ephraim in his writings. In his book The Antiquities of the Jews, Book 11, Chapter 5, he writes about Ezra (Esdras) the high priest and the Persian King Xerxes writings to him. This letter details Xerxes support for the Jews return to their homeland and how Ezra should set up the civil authorities and administration. Josephus, writing several centuries later, interjects material from his time period, no different than how historians today might make mention of modern events in their writings. In his writing about the Ten Tribes, Josephus first makes mention that the entire body of the people of Israel remained in that country [Babylon]; wherefore there are but two tribes in Asia and Europe subject to the Romans (Antiquities 11.133). Here he comments how there were those identifiable Israel, the Jews, as [being] very d
