Thus the first great mass tragedy in Jewish history took place. It was, too, a tragedy unrelieved by ultimate rebirth. The holocaust-dispersion of the northern people of Israel was final: In taking their last, forced journey into Assyria, the ten tribes of the north moved out of history and into myth. They lived in later Jewish legend, but in reality they were simply assimilated into the surrounding Aramaean population, losing their faith and their language; and the spread of Aramaic westwards, as the common language of the Assyrian empire, helped to conceal their evanescence. In Samaria,
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