“Jesus never claims as judahite” Jesus is known throughout the gospels to be a “Son of David”, and the Bible CLEARLY shows the lineage of Jesus and David being traced back to Judah. “They largely do not have blood lines to the Israelites. Jesus directly rebukes them for this false claim.” Jesus is not rebuking them for their lineage claim. The Pharisees are also descendants of the tribes, as well. He’s rebuking them for being legalistic, hypocritical, “religious” assholes, which they were. He didn’t flip the money changers’s tables over and chase them with a whip because of a false lineage claim. He flipped the tables and chased them out of the temple with a whip because they were selling animals for sacrifice to the average Israelite, perverting the ritual and the covenant and doing so in God’s house. When a person came to make a sacrifice, those charlatans would inspect it first to determine if it passed muster. Often, they’d tell the person “this animal has a blemish and is not suitable”, turning them away. Then they’d go and sell that same animal to another person in the line. They were ripping people off and stealing from them. As so-called “religious leaders”, Jesus found this behavior to be unacceptable, as he should have. That’s one example, but the larger point is that he called them out for abusing their positions (sound familiar?) of authority and not giving any real deference to the creator of the universe. Now, in revelation, he makes the “synagogue of satan” statement.. the thing that no one is really certain of is whether he’s criticizing them for claiming a false lineage OR criticizing them for using their true lineage as a “shield” to do evil, IE to operate in a way (through their actions) that is not befitting of people in covenant with Jehovah. While it could be either, or even both, I tend to subscribe to the latter. There are many times in the Old Testament where God warns the Israelites not to mate with the various other peoples in the land, lest their children will take up different belief systems and worship other gods. And time after time, they disobey and participate in child sacrifice, Moloch worship, etc. I’m sure you know about the “golden calf” incident in Exodus, which to my knowledge was the first manifestation of such offenses and God was ready to kill them all because of this (they were only saved because Moses apparently talked God down out of his wrath). All that to say, I’m not negating the idea that there are people who claim to be of the tribes and actually aren’t. This is likely true. But Jesus *was* a direct descendant of David, at least if you want to bring the Bible into it. It’s so clearly spelled out in various ways that I really don’t know how anyone could dispute it.