>>102603537You are correct vis-a-vis there being no evidence of the united dual monarchy, however:
>The "Lost Ten Tribes" that apparently nobody can find even with genetic testing but everyone believes are real are the people of Israel.The term "lost tribes" has this eternal mystique, and so people want to make it to be something bigger than it is. The historical reality of the "lost" tribes is that they weren't lost. Not all of the people in the northern kingdom were marched off to Assyria. Almost all of the elites were exiled: the leaders, scholars, and priests, along with as many surrounding families as they could manage to force to resettle.
Some people fled south to Judah. Others managed to remain in the countryside around the Samaria, Israel's capital, eventually becoming known as the Samaritans. Their culture evolving separately for a while led them to have a similar-but-different-enough theology that they eventually were seen as separate from the people who became the Jews. Both genetically and culturally, they are the descendants of the people of the northern kingdom of Israel that people like to claim were "lost".
