Are Armenians and Jewish people similar?

Answer 1

History & Destiny of the Rivers of Eden

I remember studying the history of Elazig, the province in Turkey where the Tigris headwaters originate, and being surprised at how recently the area had been settled; it is surrounded by very ancient settlements. In fact, a prehistoric community called Çatalhöyük, just southwest of this area may be the oldest model of known urban civilization in the world. I soon learned that this was the scene of the first wholesale slaughter of Armenians in 1915. Just prior to this time, Armenian men within the Turkish military were disarmed and either worked to death in labor battalions or systematically rounded up and executed. Without the aid of a hearty male contingent within their ranks, the Armenian population was helpless.

The Armenians were soon ordered to vacate their homes and communities, supposedly to be deported to concentration camps across the border in the Syrian Desert. However, marauding bandits conscripted by the Turkish government to mercilessly butcher these convoys of Armenian women and children. Those who were not murdered as they were being deported died of dehydration, starvation, and disease in the Syrian concentration camps. In total, some two to three million Armenians were killed during several genocides between the 1880s and the 1920s. This systematic annihilation of the predominant people of what has since become eastern Turkey seems to have been conveniently forgotten by the western media and politicians.

Reflecting on this poignant episode in history, and knowing how closely this ethnic cleansing preceded the Jewish Holocaust in Europe, I mulled over the possibility of a connection between these two peoples. I discovered there was indeed a profound connection between these two people groups. When the Assyrians invaded Northern Israel around 750 B.C., they resettled Israel's ten northern tribes in another region of the empire called Media, just as they had also relocated the Samaritan people into Israel. One hundred years later, an official report to Sargon II of Assyria spoke of people called Gimira, just west of the upper Euphrates, and north of the Taurus Mountains.19 We know from the Behistun Inscription in Iran that these Gimira were the same people as the ISKUZA or SAKKA, names thought to be a derivative of Isaac (ISS-SAAK). Also, the Behistan Inscription states that the area in which these people had been resettled had by that point been named Armenia. Six hundred fifty years later, Josephus claimed the lost tribes of Israel still inhabited an area he described to be "beyond the Euphrates" 20-in Armenia or Media! It is true that remnants of the lost tribes can be found in other countries such as Afghanistan, and India, but it appears the largest remnant settled within this Armenian territory, as evidenced by the conversion of the Khazarian Empire to Judaism in the 700s AD. Today, the Kurdish and Armenian people in this area exhibit a high incidence of a genetic marker called the "Cohen Modal Haplotype" (CMH),21 a trait found prominently among the Cohen or priestly descendents in the Jewish community.

So the Armenian Genocide that started in Elazig was actually part of a global atrocity that would eventually be carried out against all the children of Israel in the 20th century. Yet, this wasn't the first time Jewish blood had been shed beside the headwaters of a Genesis 2 river. Most know about the harsh treatment of the Hebrew people in Egypt beside the Nile (Gihon) River before the Exodus account, but few realize that the Muslims first massacre of Jews was carried out beside the ancient Pishon River, in Medina. Here, Mohamed himself had the occupants of all three Jewish settlements-the Banu Qainuqa, the Bani Nadir, and the Banu Quraiza-either killed, deported, or distributed as slaves. Even less known are the Beta Israelies or Falasha tribe in Ethiopia (close to the headwaters of the Blue Nile), and their near extermination at the hands of the Portuguese and Ethiopian military.

Can you see a theme emerging here? Every one of the rivers listed in the second chapter of Genesis would become a place where the Hebrew people would be exiled and punished for their idolatry and unbelief. They were slaves beside the Gihon before the Exodus; they would walk beside the waters of Pishon as they wandered in the wilderness and as captives of the Islamic invasions; the ten northern tribes were taken captive to the banks of the Tigris River during the Assyrian invasion; and southern Israel was carried away to the shores of the Euphrates during the Babylonian captivity. These rivers had enormous spiritual implication, as though God was reaching out to them through His Spirit, nourishing and sustaining His people during their times of greatest tribulation. These waters of encouragement emanated from their land of promise, and would return a remnant of the people back to their homeland.