A part of the tribe of Gad in Spain and Portugal
By Mikkel Stjernholm Kragh
A part of the Israelite tribe of Gad is found in the Spanish and Portuguese nations, which have their origin in the Goths, which were of the tribe of Gad.
Israelites in the Iberian Peninsula BC
It is generally acknowledged by students of the tribes of Israel that the Iberian Peninsula possibly has its name from the Hebrews. The patriarch Eber (Gen. 10:21, 24; 11:14-16) gave name to the Hebrews and thus possibly also to the Iberian Peninsula.
When the tribes of Israel lived in Egypt, groups of Israelites, in particular Danites, migrated from Egypt to the Iberian Peninsula and from there to Ireland, whose Latin name Hibernia is believed to mean the Hebrews’ Island.
The Annals of Ireland by the Four Masters writes of the tribe the Danaans which came to Ireland from Greece in the 12th century BC. The Danaans, or Tuatha de Danaan, were of the tribe of Dan.[i]
The American historian E. Raymond Capt writes:
“According to the ‘Harmsworth Encyclopaedia’, Cecrops (‘Calcol’ of I Chron. 2:6 and ‘Chalcol’ of I Kings 4:31 – and brother of Darda) was the mythical founder of Athens and its first king. He was thought to have been the leader of a band of Hebrew colonists from Egypt. Historical records tell of the westward migration of the descendants of Calcol along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, establishing ‘Iberian’ (Hebrew) trading settlements. One settlement now called ‘Saragossa,’ in Ebro Valley in Spain, was originally known as ‘Zarah-gassa,’ meaning, ‘The stronghold of Zarah.’ From Spain they continued westward as far as Ireland.” (E. Raymond Capt: Missing Links Discovered in Assyrian Tablets (1985), p. 65)
King Solomon and King Hiram of Tyre sent out large number of “ships of Tharshish” (1 Kings 10:22) which sailed to many places, including southern Spain, which was the largest Phoenician colony along with Carthage.[ii] One theory is that Tharshish is identical to Tartessos in south-western Spain. The city of Cadiz in south-western Spain was founded by the Phoenicians under the name Gadir, or in Punic Gdr, meaning “wall” or “fortified citadel”.[iii] Robert Alan Balaicius suggests that the city was founded by Israelites of the tribe of Gad.[iv]
The Goths of the tribe of Gad
More than 1500 years later, the Goths conquered most of the Iberian Peninsula. The Goths were a group of Germanic tribes which were of the tribe of Gad.
The Goths were divided into two main groups, the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths. In 376 AD the Visigoths, seeking refuge from the Huns, settled on Roman territory on the Balkans. When a famine broke out, the Visigoths elected Alarik as king and fought several wars with Rome. In 410 AD the Visigoths sacked Rome, and in 418 the Romans let them settle in Gallia Aquitania (south-west Gaul) as “confederates”. In 475 the Visigoths formed an independent kingdom and gradually expanded into the Iberian Peninsula.
The Gothic heritage of Spain and Portugal
By 500 AD the Visigothic kingdom comprised all of Aquitania, Gallia Narbonensis (south Gaul), and most of the Iberian Peninsula, but after the battle of Vouillé in 507 against the Franks, the Visigothic kingdom was reduced to the Iberian Peninsula.[v]
The Visigoths made up app. one tenth of the population of their kingdom. They were Arian Christians in contrast to their Romance subjects which were Catholics. Around 600 AD King Rakared of the Visigoths converted to Catholicism and forced the Visigoths to do so as well. At the same time, the ban against mixed marriages between Goths and the Romance peoples was lifted.[vi]
The Visigothic kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula continued until 713 when King Roderic (Rodrigo) was killed in battle against the Muslims, which had invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 711. In 718 the Visigothic nobleman Pelagius is credited for beginning the Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula when he defeated the Muslims in a battle and founded the Kingdom of the Asturians in north Spain.[vii]
This was a fulfillment of Israel’s words of Gad:
”Gad, a troop shall overcome him: but he shall overcome at the last.” (Genesis 49:19)
Besides the Visigoths, two other Germanic tribes, the Vandals and the Suebi, also settled on the Iberian Peninsula. They were also Israelite tribes.
A DNA analysis of the Spaniards and Portuguese gives a good idea how large part of them descends from the Goths and through them the Israelite tribe of Gad. The Swiss DNA analysis institute iGENEA specializes in comparing the DNA of modern European peoples with the DNA of antique peoples. The iGENEA statistics shows that the indigenous Spaniards are 15% Germanic[viii], 7% Viking, 40% Celtic, 30% Iberian, and 8% Arab and Berber, and that the indigenous Portuguese are 5% Viking, 70% Celtic, and 25% Iberian.[ix]
In medieval and modern Spain, the nobility were thought to be descended from the Goths. The following anecdote is found in the wikipedia article Goths:
”Somebody acting with arrogance would be said to be ’haciéndose los godos’ (‘making himself to act like the Goths’). Because of this, in Chile, Argentina and the Canary Islands, godo was used as an ethnic slur against European Spaniards…”[x]
Richard Kelly Hoskins, E.Raymond Capt, and Robert Alan Balaicius all write that hidalgo, the Spanish word signifying “nobleman”, actually means “son of a Goth”.[xi]
Gad in Latin America
Following Columbus’ discovery of the Americas in 1492, the tribe of Gad enlarged its territory from the Iberian Peninsula to the Americas.
Prior to the coming of the Spanish, the Aztecs ruled over 371 other Indian tribes in Central Mexico. Each year the Aztecs sacrificed 15,000 people alive to their pagan gods and goddesses of war and fertility. Their culture also included ritual cannibalism. When Hernando Cortez landed in Mexico in 1519, he learned that the Aztecs were feared and hated by their neighbouring Indian tribes. Cortez made an alliance with some of the Indian tribes, and in 1521 he conquered the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, razed it to the ground, and founded a new Christian culture on the ruins.[xii]
The Danish historian Knud Helles writes:
“The many cruelties of the Spaniards and their almost complete annihilation of the Aztec culture was in particular caused by the fact that they were extremely offended by the human sacrifices and the cannibalism which accompanied them.” (Knud Helles, Bente Thomsen & Torben P. Andersen: Store linjer I verdenshistorien (1996), p. 101)
The nature of the Spanish conquests in the Americas was a fulfillment of Moses’ words of Gad:
”And of Gad he said, Blessed be he that enlargeth Gad: he dwelleth as a lion, and teareth the arm with the crown of the head. And he provided the first part for himself, because there, in a portion of the lawgiver, was he seated; and he came with the heads of the people, he executed the justice of the LORD, and his judgments with Israel.” (Deuteronomy 33:20-21)
Today, from Mexico and Cuba in the north to Argentina and Chile in the south, there are an estimated 190 mio. White Latin Americans (or app. 33% of Latin America’s population). They are mainly of Spanish and Portuguese descent, but there are also very large numbers of descendants of immigrants from other European countries, especially from Italy.[xiii]