Aizawl, April 17: The news that the rabbinical court has accepted Mizos as descendants of Manashe, the father of one of the 10 lost tribes of Biblical Israel, has triggered a controversy in Mizoram.
Orthodox Christians fear that the news will tempt the Mizos to embrace Judaism.
The chief rabbi of the Sephardic Rabbinical Court, Schlomo Aram, declared the Mizos descendants of Manashe, the younger son of Joseph, Abraham?s descendent, on March 30.
A Church elder, P.C. Biaksiama, who resigned from his post of a Union finance department officer to carry out research on Christianity, has termed the acceptance of Mizos as Israelites as ?the work of Satan, whose main aim is to convert Christian Mizos to Judaism.
?We need to deal with this seriously, with earnest prayers to God. This is an instrument of our greatest enemy, Satan, to burst asunder Mizo society and its religion. Christianity is at stake here and we should never take what is happening now lightly,? Biaksiama was quoted as saying in a vernacular paper.
Biaksiama also criticised the Chhinlung Israel People?s Convention, an organisation, which believes the Mizos to be descendants of one of the 10 lost tribes of Biblical Israel.
Zaithanchhungi, a resident of Aizawl who has researched the history of the Mizos for 10 years, contradicted Biaksiama and said the origin of the Mizos is difficult to trace as they had no written form of language before the missionaries arrived.
However, oral traditions handed down generation mention many rituals, which are similar to those practised by the Jews, she said.
Between 732 and 722 BC, the king of Assyria invaded Palestine, which was then occupied by the Israelites, and took 10 of the 12 tribes to his country as slaves.
Only the tribes of Benjamin and Judah remained in the Holy Land. The history of the 10 tribes was lost to modern man and it was only after Israel gained independence in 1948 that a search began for the descendants of the 10 tribes.
With the identification of the Mizos as the Bne?i Manashe (sons of Manashe), all 10 tribes have been identified.
