Tea Tephi

Tea Tephi is a legendary princess found described in British Israelite literature from the 19th century. Revd F. R. A. Glover, M.A., of London in 1861 published England, the Remnant of Judah, and the Israel of Ephraim in which he claimed Tea Tephi was one of Zedekiah's daughters. Since King Zedekiah of Judah had all his sons killed during the Babylonian Captivity no male successors could continue the throne of King David, but as Glover noted Zedekiah had daughters who escaped death (Jeremiah 43: 6). Glover believed that Tea Tephi was a surviving Judahite princess who had escaped and traveled to Ireland, and who married a local High King of Ireland in the 6th century BC who subsequently became blood linked to the British Monarchy. This theory was later expanded upon by Rev. A.B. Grimaldi who published in 1877 a successful chart entitled Pedigree of Queen Victoria from the Bible Kings and later by W.M.H. Milner in his booklet The Royal House of Britain an Enduring Dynasty' (1902, revised 1909). Charles Fox Parham also authored an article tracing Queen Victoria's linage back to King David (through Tea Tephi) entitled Queen Victoria: Heir to King David's Royal Throne.

The Tea Tephi British-monarchy link is also found in J. H. Allen's Judah's Sceptre and Joseph's Birthright (1902, p. 251). A central tenet of British Israelism is that the British monarchy is from the Davidic line and the legend of Tea Tephi from the 19th century attempted to legitimise this claim. Tea Tephi however has never been traced to an extant Irish source before the 19th century and critics assert she was purely a British Israelite invention. A collection of alleged bardic traditions and Irish manuscripts which detail Tea Tephi were published by J. A. Goodchild in 1897 as The Book of Tephi, the work is however considered pseudo-historical or a forgery. There is though a queen called Tea (singular) in Irish mythology who appears in the Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland. She is described as the wife of Érimón a Míl Espáine (Milesian) and dated to 1700 BC (Geoffrey Keating: 1287 BC). These dates are inconsistent with the British Israelite literature which date Tea Tephi to the 6th century BC, but later British Israelites such as Herman Hoeh (Compendium of World History, 1970) claimed that the Milesian Royal House (including Tea) was from an earlier blood descendant of the Davidic Line who entered Britain around 1000 BC (citing Ruaidhrí Ó Flaithbheartaigh's reduced chronology).
Linked to Glover's original claims of Tea Tephi, are Grimaldi and Milner's theory that Jeremiah himself in the company of his scribe Baruch ben Neriah traveled to Ireland with Tea Tephi and that they are found described in Irish folklore and old Irish manuscripts. Some British Israelites identify Baruch ben Neriah with a figure called Simon Berac or Berak in Irish myth, while Jeremiah with Ollom Fotla (or Ollam, Ollamh Fodhla). However like Tea Tephi there has long been controversy about these identifications, mainly because of conflicting or inconsistent dates. In 2001, the British-Israel-World Federation wrote an article claiming they no longer subscribed to these two identifications, but still strongly stick to the belief that the British monarchy is of Judahite origin. In an earlier publication Covenant Publishing Co. in 1982 admitted that Tea Tephi could not be traced in Irish literature or myth and may have been fabricated by Revd F. R. A. Glover, however they clarified they still believed in the Milesian Royal House Davidic Line bloodline connection (popularised by Hoeh).Herbert Armstrong (1986) also took up this legendary connection. Nonetheless there are still proponents of the Tea-Tephi legend first tracable to Glover.