The (Scattered) Hebrews: Tribe of Reuben

Let the tribe of Reuben live and not die out, though they are few in number.

-Deuteronomy 33:6

Note: It is recommended to read the House of Israel before reading this.

Reuben is the first son of Jacob and the name Reuben literally means “behold, a son.” The tribe of Reuben is a very interesting tribe, those that read the House of Israel may have noticed that this tribe was split in location in a very extreme way. Some of Reuben having migrated into the Americas, no surprise here as we have already covered this with them being part of the House of Israel; the rest of the tribe being in Australia and neighboring Islands, more than 8700 miles away from each other! But how can this be accurate? Recent genetics has made an incredible discovery that there is a genetic relation to some Amazon tribes of South America; they have a genetic relation to Aboriginal Australians as well as indigenous Papua New Guinea and Andaman Islanders. Menasseh ben Israel wrote of an explorer that encountered the tribe in the Americas:

Shema: Hebrew fundamental credo of Judaism -Menasseh ben Israel, Mission To Cromwell (written circa mid 1600s)

And here Ronald Sanders also states about Montezinos:

They told him that they were themselves of the tribe of Reuben, and that the tribe of Joseph lived on an island nearby. The day when they were at last to issue forth into the world was coming soon, they explained, but in the meantime they could not allow visitors to cross over to them. They were willing to make an exception in the near future, however, on account of their need for education: for, though they spoke Hebrew, they could not read or write it.
-Ronald Sanders: Lost Tribes and Promised Lands (p364, 1978)

South Americans and Aboriginal Australians Linked

Here we have Montezinos running into Natives of the tribe of Reuben, he was in Quito at the time which is in Ecuador on the tip of the South American Cordilleras (the ‘backbone’ mountain region in the Americas). Ecuador is a Northern coastal country in South America, not far from the Amazon in Brazil where the Amazon tribes were found linked to the Aboriginals of Australia. So Menasseh ben Israel wrote about Montezinos running into Reubenites in the 1600s and we have recent dna (within the 2000s) linking Natives in the same vicinity of where those Reubenites were found in South America to Aboriginal Australians. This makes more sense of the skeletal remains of Native Americans found in Brazil that have skulls with Australasia features.

Dignity of Reuben

It is also worth noting that the Reubenites that Montezinos ran into informed him of the half tribes of Joseph (Ephraim and Manasseh and their locations on nearby islands but I will talk more about that in an article that focuses on them). This is a rare reference of recent Hebrews that actually were aware of their lineage in the 1600s (in South America at least)! Jacob said of Reuben:

3 Reuben, you are my firstborn,
My might and the beginning of my strength,
The excellency of dignity and the excellency of power.

-Genesis 49:3

Dignity signifies a noble character which Reuben showed by holding true to their God even when many of the rest of the scattered tribes by that time had long forgotten or lost their identity by the 1600s.

Seminoles with headdress, similar to a diadem (turban), this was worn by the priests of Israel and was a sign of nobility and official business.

The aboriginals in Australia also showed these attributes of honor by keeping extremely accurate oral histories in the world over some 300 generations. They were accurate enough to be used by researchers who used these oral histories to map out the ancient continent of Australia. Jacob continues in verse 4:

Unstable as water, you shall not excel,
Because you went up to your father's bed.

-Genesis 49:4

It is interesting that Jacob still considers Reuben dignified even after revealing in verse 4 that his son Reuben slept with his concubine. This is also why Reuben ends up losing the birthright as the firstborn and dealing with Jacob’s curse (you shall not excel). It should also be noted that Reuben is the same brother that went back to get Joseph after they left him stranded in a ditch (he intended to save his brother once he was alone), he also was the one who talked the brothers out of killing Joseph initially and when they stood before Joseph in Egypt before they knew who he was, he accepted the accountability of his brothers as the firstborn so we have quite a few instances in which we see a dignified Reuben. Here we have biblical proof that dignity is not synonymous with perfection and yet can still be realized.

Reubenite Nomads

He calls Reuben unstable as water or unruly and this is shown in their nomadic character with them literally stretching across the globe. Above we talked about them in South America but the Seminole Natives (what the tribe of Reuben is called once they migrated into North America) were actually known to live in the Southeastern region of North America where Florida is today. Even the term we know them as: Seminoles means “runaway” or “wild one” which was also very fitting since (Spanish) Florida would become a safe haven for slaves after 1693 (during Spanish and Britain tensions in the United States). The Seminole Natives were openly embracing the enslaved Hebrew Negroes (considered African slaves) and inviting them to live in Florida free and even giving their daughters to marry. Virginia passed 2 acts in 1682 that combined Native Americans and “Africans” (that we now know were Hebrews, see my article the House of Judah) into one category thereby punishing the Hebrew Natives for encouraging unity with Hebrew Negroes in America and attempting to discourage them from uniting.

The Seminoles showed their excellency of power or strength in battle, there were the fierce Seminole wars but they also participated in some slave revolts fighting alongside their enslaved Hebrew brethren. They were absolutely unrelenting and could not be bought, they are considered by some to be the only Native tribe that never signed a peace treaty with the United States.

Aboriginal Australians

Aborigine Holocaust

Aboriginal Australians also upheld a dignified code of honor amongst themselves, for both of these groups of Reubenites, it proved to be costly and their numbers diminished considerably throughout history. The Aborigine Holocaust of Australia was catastrophic to the indigenous of the land. Between disease, war, starvation and conscious policies of kidnapping and re-education of Native children, the Australian region’s indigenous population declined from well over a million in 1788 to just a few thousand by the early 20th century. Charles Darwin recognized this pattern of atrocity and had this to say about what he saw there in Australia while visiting:

Wherever the European has trod, death seems to pursue the aboriginal. We may look to the wide extent of the Americas, Polynesia, the Cape of Good Hope, and Australia, and we find the same result…

-Charles Darwin (while visiting Australia in 1836)

Note the relation between the places he mentioned, these places where the Gentiles colonized are where large sections of Hebrews live today and that I spoke about in previous articles. Many (if not all) are still living in oppression in these areas. This is also consistent with what Moses prophesied of Reuben before he died:

"Let the tribe of Reuben live and not die out,
though they are few in number."

-Deuteronomy 33:6

Sinim

In 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologized in parliament to Aborigines and specifically for the “stolen generations,” the indigenous children that were ripped from their families for forced assimilation. Thousands of aboriginal children were taken from their parents in similar fashion that happened with the Native Americans (in America the slogan was “kill the Indian, save the man”) and this lasted from the 19th century into the late 1960s. All these tactics of the Gentiles are familiar among the rest of the dispersed Hebrews as I have gone into and these atrocities match the curses of the Hebrews written in ancient Jewish writings. Isaiah also mentions that Hebrews would be dispersed in Southern regions of the world:

12 Behold, these shall come from far: and, lo, these from the north and from the west; and these from the land of Sinim.

-Isaiah 49:12

So where is Sinim? This land could not be North or West as those are singled out already in the statement. That leaves East or South, the Latin Vulgate translation renders this passage as such:

ecce isti de longe venient et ecce illi ab aquilone et mari et isti de terra australi.

-Isaiah 49:12

Aboriginal (Australian) man pre 18th Century

Sinim here is translated as “terra australi” which is latin for “Land of the South,” notice the word australi is similar to the word Australia and Australia is also associated with South via its nickname: Land Down Under. Ancient Egyptians had a term for this land also, they called it Sin-wur (notice the relation to Sinim). It was expressed that the Hebrews would be dispersed even to the ends of the Earth.

6 I will say to the north and south,
Bring my sons and daughters back to Israel
from the distant corners of the earth.

-Isaiah 43:6

And here in Jeremiah, it states:

'Save your people, O Lord,
the remnant of Israel!'
8 For I will bring them from the north
and from the distant corners of the earth.

-Jeremiah 31:7, 8

Australasia (Australia, New Zealand and neighboring Islands) is about as ends of the Earth as you can get.

Sources:

https://archive.org/stream/cu31924028590028/cu31924028590028_djvu.txt

http://dos.myflorida.com/florida-facts/florida-history/seminole-history/

http://www.understandingrace.org/history/gov/colonial_authority.html

https://books.google.com/books?id=vGMNAAAAIAAJ&pg=RA1-PA64&lpg=RA1-PA64&dq=aborigines+and+seminole+indians&source=bl&ots=AZyHZxw1Es&sig=JbQv9iNa_5GYEfXGLSN5P3UcdiE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-koHHhpvcAhUKLnwKHSJ-Bts4ChDoAQhbMAk#v=onepage&q=aborigines%20and%20seminole%20indians&f=false

http://sonsofjacob.com/site-content/the-foundation/item/278-reuben