Historically there were families descended from David that were amongst kingly ruling tribes throughout Western Europe. We don’t discount the possibility of them being descended from David how it could’ve happened in other ways outside of the legend of Tea Tephi.
There is no proof that Jeremiah is the prince and Tea Tephi the princess that the Irish legends wrote about. There is no proof that Jeremiah went to Ireland.
Also the lineage of David should come down through the father and it wouldn’t matter if the daughter of a king was the ancestor of Irish or British monarchs.
Wesley Sutton, CUNY Queens University
Q. Opinion of the practice of private genetic testing to identify the Jewish Diaspora
A.There is nothing wrong in principle with private genetic testing for this purpose, but problems arise when the information produced is misunderstood or misapplied by those without the requisite background.
A thorough knowledge of genetics and population genetics is necessary to correctly interpret genetic data, although even experts can disagree about the interpretation of genetic data.
Q. Thoughts on DNA testing to identify Lost Tribes?
A. There are a lot of questions about DNA. Sometimes you look at DNA maps and they are too nice. They are too consistent with the geographical provenance of the people. For instance all the people of Ireland have the same genetic characteristics of Ireland, but we know that people all over the world migrated to Ireland. It is hard to believe that all the people in Ireland have the same DNA.
You get exceptions which are also interesting. At least to a good degree of certainty they can say that this person is the son of this person and so on and so forth and is related to someone according to DNA. These DNA results prove themselves every day in court cases, people win money because of them, or go to jail because of them. There also could be an environmental factor for people that live in different regions impacted by different environmental conditions.
Q. Differences between you and Herbert Armstrong?
A. We agree mostly of what he asserts. The areas where we differ are tracing the British throne to Tea Tephi the princess traveling with Jeremiah. We do not accept this theory neither do we teach it. A lot of people, not only Herbert Armstrong but a lot of British Israelite people emphasize this theory.