Did Jeremiah Visit Ireland?
It has long been held by various of the Churches of God that the prophet
Jeremiah traveled to Ireland with the daughters of King Zedekiah of Judah.
Crucial to this theory is the belief that an unbroken line of Davidic
descent continued to rule over Israelites after being transferred to the
British Isles in the person of one "Tea-Tephi" -- who was reputed to be
one of Zedekiah's daughters.
But where is the evidence that all this happened? None of the hundreds
of books on this topic give any clue; they give no footnotes or cite source
documents. They simply assert without any real proof! These books invariably
repeat the same Tea-Tephi story, each in slightly different words, each
claiming that the story is found in the Irish annals.
Strangely, not a single book actually gives a reference where in the annals
their theory finds support. The annals simply don't say what the British-Israel
literature -- or the Churches of God -- say they say. It is a MYTH that
someone somewhere within British-Israel or church circles initiated, stated
it as fact, and it has been repeated as fact in these circles ever since.
It may make an interesting story -- but it is completely fabricated!
It would be as if I were to to take any random writing of primeval origins,
from anywhere in the world and which had a few names in it, and in total
disregard for what that document said about those names, I were to arbitrarily
say, "This one was Abraham. That one was Isaac. That one was Rebekah. They
sailed halfway around the world and showed up in this legend." The Jeremiah/Tea-Tephi
legend of the Irish annals has no more basis or credibility to it than this.
I was not aware of how baseless these assertions were until I researched
the Irish (and Scottish) annals for myself. What the originators of the
Tea-Tephi and Jeremiah legend did was to combine known figures in the annals
-- many centuries apart -- and splice them together in a totally imaginary
reconstruction. -- JDK.