Talk:Tribe of Asher

Sea peoples section
Interesting speculations, but they don't belong in a Wikipedia article as written. Try cleaning up the summary, and adding "Some scholars have speculated . . . " or some such. 144.81.62.177 20:35, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Asher
Arent people of Colombia the peoples of the Asher tribe. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.202.85.225 (talk) 02:12, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Akhaioi ?
= Achaeans(Akhaioi) = the Greeks! "kh" > "sh" sound change! Böri (talk) 09:34, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

When was the trive of Asher last seen participating with the other tribes?
This tribe is the poorest documented of all tribes. Together with the tribe of Dan it was in Jozua supposed to have inhabited the coastal plain (which was in reality never controlled by the Israelites). But the area of Dan was overlapping with the Philistine territory and over time, apparently under to much pressure, they decided to moved to the very north, to the town that was according to the story in Judges 18 named Laïs and was connected to Sidon, but to far to get help from there (being on the other side of the Lebanon mountains. It might have been a reminder of the upset caused by the settling of the Philistines there in the 12th century, pushing out other people.

The area of Asher however was described as overlapping with territory of the Phoenicians (who lived from Dor up to the north, see the map in the article on the history of Phoenicia), who were certainly always there and just about to rise to the apex of their might. That is a rather strange place to find this tribe. It could very well be that the proto-Israëlites, who were essentially nomads living in the mountain areas and forced to become farmers because of the late bronze catastrophe, were also roaming in the Lebanon (Asher) and anti-Lebanon mountains (Dan and Gilead) mountains and if so, the tribe of Asher would have been the group living in the Lebanon mountains. But as the transition from Bronze age to Iron age was far less destructive in this area with normal live continuing much as it was, they might not have forced to make the move to a mainly settled society. The designation of an area to this tribe might then be a memory of the time they were a part of the proto-Israëlites. Another clue is the song of Deborah (supposedly one of the earliest writing in the Bible), where they are blamed for not participating, interestingly just like Dan and Gilead (apparently being considered a separate tribe here), all being somewhat detached from Israël. But Gilead and Dan are frequently mentioned thereafter, but as far as I know there is not a single reference to tribe of Asher, participating in war or to a person of this tribe doing something worth mentioning after this point in time in the old testament. There is only the weird reference in Lucas 2 to a woman being of this tribe (more than a 1000 years after the last reference to this tribe!), but really all of Lucas's stories about the youth of Jezus can only be assumed to be either late 1th century circulating myths or the products of his own imagination, and this reference can be considered as historical plausible as the claims of certain tribes in India an South-Africa to be one of the 10 lost tribes.

So the song of Deborah could very well mark be the point in time they got detached from the other tribes and lost in history.

Together with the tribes of Simeon and Benjamin being overtaken by Juda and Reuben being lost to Moab around 840 BCE, there would really be only be some 8 territorial tribes left by the end of the 9th century with the northern kingdom being very much the kingdom of the Jozephite tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim, with Naftali, Zebulun, Issachar, Gad and Dan as minor supporters, so it would be better to think of the 7 lost tribes (or even 5 with the territories of Dan and Gad also very insecure well before the Assyrian occupation). Also the supposed ancestry of Asher together with Gad to Zilpah (a handmaid of Leah), might be a sign that Asher and Gad were always considered as being not of entirely Israelite origin (hence descendants of handmaids rather than of full wives). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Codiv (talk • contribs) 14:31, 10 March 2021 (UTC)


 * I’m unsure of where you gained your assumptions about the Tribe of Asher. Your statements aren’t scholarly or historically accurate. They seem more like trying to create a theory opposed to studying and providing evidence that is available.
 * How unfortunate. Your assumptions are in error for a multiple reasons. All of which can be dispelled by facts not opinions. SageScrolls (talk) 07:21, 26 March 2023 (UTC)