Rehoboam refused to grant the northern ten tribes relief from Solomon's taxation and they subsequently formed their own autonomous nation in the north, making Jeroboam their king.
Cyrus the Great later granted the Judeans permission to return to their lands, which they did, but the Jewish–Roman wars took a significant toll which included the 70 CE destruction of the Second Temple and exile from Jerusalem (except for the day of Tisha B'Av) and the renaming of Roman Judaea to Syria Palaestina.
[citation needed] It is believed by proponents of Commonwealth Theology[1] that the ten tribes are not yet rejoined to the Kingdom of Judah in any large representation.
Hence, they argue that these tribes do not exist in the nations today save in the form of the Jews—those scattered in the wake of the Temple's 70 CE destruction and subsequent exiles by Christian and Muslim rulers in later periods.
[6] Other opponents claim that the lost tribes have been completely assimilated and unidentifiable in the nations of the world and hence could never have returned from their deportation by and into Assyria.
This difference in perspectives is notably observed in discussions surrounding the “Ephraimite Error.”[8] These attitudes may be a reaction to British Israelism, a pseudo-religious belief best epitomized by the Worldwide Church of God's founder, Herbert W. Armstrong.
The 1st century Jewish priest and historian, Josephus, writing near the turn of the 2nd century AD, affirmed that the Jews knew where the House of Israel had been taken captive a thousand years earlier: …the entire body of the people of Israel remained in that country [Media]; wherefore there are but two tribes [Judah and Benjamin] in Asia and Europe subject to the Romans, while the ten tribes are beyond Euphrates till now, and are an immense multitude, and not to be estimated by numbers.
Hosea was told (3:3–5) that the northern tribes would be scattered among the Gentiles, that they would be in seclusion for a long time and become too numerous to be counted; but that in the "latter days," they would return in repentance and come trembling to their God and his goodness.
According to advocates of Two House theology, the passages above present a problem to those who think that the Jews are representative of all which is left of the twelve tribes of Israel.
Also, someone sympathetic to the Two House ideals may say things like, "the problem is not: the Creator of the Universe lied about Ephraim becoming a multitude of nations/peoples, but simply: we have failed to unravel the mysteries of who is who in the nations today."
Still others will contend that seven-eighths of scripture is undiscernable without first understanding the two house reality, certainly making it into a core theology, and not simply a matter of eschatology.
For example, Prof. C. A. L. Totten [1851–1908], of Yale University, was quoted:[11] I can never be too thankful to the Almighty that in my youth he used the late Professor Wilson to show me the difference between the two houses.
The very understanding of this difference is the KEY by which almost the entire Bible becomes intelligible, and I cannot state too strongly that the man who has not yet seen that Israel of the Scripture is totally distinct from the Jewish people, is yet in the very infancy, the mere alphabet, of Biblical study, and that to this day the meaning of seven-eighths of the Bible is shut to his understanding.Two House advocates generally agree on the big picture, but disagree on numerous details, especially when view points converge amongst Judaism, Messianic Judaism, and Christianity.