The Armenians are another people group DNA analysis has shown to be closely related to The Jews.
During much of the divided Kingdom Period the city of Lachish was the second largest city in Judah, and in fact the largest within Judah's proper Tribal allotment since Jerusalem was originally a city of Benjamin. Assyria failed to conquer Jerusalem, but in it's war with Judah during the reign of Hezekiah it did capture and carry away into captivity the population of Lachish. Micah 1 is a Biblical reference to the Assyrian Captivity of Lachish, and it uses Eagle Imagery of Lachish which also became a symbol of Armenia.
There are no Biblical clues to where the Judeans of Lachish were taken like there are for the Northern Kingdom's Captivity. However where Assyria settled the northern captives made sense in the context of what their other recent conquests were, Assyria liked to move populations from one conquered region to another to weaken local national identities. So it's notable that between the Northern Kingdom's captivity in the 8th century BC and when Lachish was taken in the 7th century BC the Assyrian Empire had conquered Urartu extending it's borders further north. And the Armenians first began to emerge in the former Urartu lands after Assyria conquered it. It took awhile however, the Orontid Kings don't show up till 570 BC, and nothing is known to have been written down in the Armenian language till their translation of The Bible in the 5th Century AD.
Armenia's traditional claim to descent from sons of Gomer (chiefly Togarmah but Ashkenaz is also mentioned) I think refers to some of the ancestors of the Urartu who lived in the region before them and who they intermingled with. Or maybe the Armenian Language being Indo-European is their influence.
Both the Six Pointed Star and a Red Lion are among Armenia's National Symbols. Many insist the Six Pointed Start didn't become a Jewish Symbol till fairly recently, but archeological evidence does exist of it being used in Ancient Israel, and I have a hypothesis that the Hebrew Bible's Lily Imagery is partly where it comes from.
Plato's Myth of Er son of Armenios is probably an adaptation of Armenian legends about their local hero Ara The Beautiful. That draws attention to the possibility that the Armenian name Ara could be related to the Hebrew Er. In Genesis 38:3-7, 46:12, Numbers 26:19 and 1 Chronicles 2:3 the name of Er is given to Judah's firstborn son who died childless. I believe Er's widow Tamar did eventually marry Shelah after the events of Genesis 38 end and that she's the mother Shelah's children (in addition to Zerah and Pharez) called Shelanites in Numbers 26:20. In 1 Chronicles 4:21 the name of Er is given to the firstborn son of Shelah.
It could be the real story behind the myth was this second Er being thought of as a symbolic rebirth of the first Er. I don't think Semiramis was ever part of the Ara mythology prior to Hellenistic influence in the region, and Plato we also know would change the myths he talked about to suit his rhetorical purposes. However if a literal belief in Reincarnation was part of the Pre-Christian Paganism of Armenia, my current theories about the origins of that belief suggests it would have came not from the Jewish element of their ancestry but from the same people responsible for their language being Indo-European.
Contextually I think the use of Zimri in Jeremiah 25:25 could be to a Proto-Armenian tribe since it's in the same verse as other east of the Euphrates nations. Zimri was also a son of Zerah son of Judah in 1 Chronicles 2:6.
Or the dynastic name Zariadres could identify descent from Judah's son Zerah. There is an Aramaic Inscription of Artaxias I proclaiming himself a "Son of Zerah" so the Artaxiad Dynasty is Zerahite as well. Artaxias's claimed continuity with the prior Orontids is what's questionable, if true at all I suspect it's indirect.
There is also an Armenian folk hero named David of Sassoun who's father was called Lion Mher meaning "lion like".
Maybe Lachish was a frequent home to Cadet branches of the House of David, like Orleans was for France and York for England? David himself, Rehoboam and Abijah are all known to have had a lot more children then just the Son who followed them on the Throne. And Lachish is referred to as a city Rehoboam fortified. in 2 Chronicles 11:9. Maybe established local leaders of Lachish married daughters of Rehoboam, and maybe they were of the Zimri and/of Shelanite clans?
It's also possible the Armenians aren't connected to Israelites only through Lachish. At it's greatest extent Armenia overlapped quite a bit with Kurdistan so some deported Northern Israelites could have came there too.
Perhaps I should give some more thought to Armenia's close relationship to Georgia however. The oldest civilization in what is today called Georgia was Colchis. Certain classical Greek writers like Diodorus Siculus (in Section 28) said that the Colchi descended from the same "foreigners exiled from Egypt" that the Jews descended from, and that they also practiced circumcision. "The nation of the Colchi in Pontus and that of the Jews, which lies between Arabia and Syria, were founded as colonies by certain emigrants from their country; and this is the reason why it is a long-established institution among these two peoples to circumcise their male children." The Georgians were called Iberians during Greco-Roman times, a name which could derive from Eber/Hebrew. So maybe the Colchi were the lost clan of Calchol son of Zerah son of Judah?
The Colchi definitely existed on the shores of the Black Sea before the captivity of Lachish however, so we'd need an additional route for how they got there. They could have just been a colony founded by Judean sea faring merchants. However Joel 3 speaks of Tyre & Sidon and the Philistines selling children of Judah and Jerusalem to Ionians(Javan) as slaves. Ezekiel 27:13 speaks of Javan, Meshach and Tubal trading in commodities including Slaves that they got from Tyre. Meshach and Tubal are the names of two ancient cities in Georgia.
Herodotus also claimed the Colchi practiced Circumcision though his theory on why was that they were an Egyptian colony. Modern scholars tend to dismiss these Greek references to Circumcision in Colchis because none of the Karvelian tribes seem to have ever practiced it. However the Georgian Jews were already present in the region by the time of Nebuchadnezzar, so it could be they were who these Greek authors were thinking of.
It's possible additional Jewish migrations to these regions happened later, like during the Babylonian Captivity or when it ended. Two patrilineal descendants of Herod The Great were Roman Client Kings of Armenia as Tigranes V and Tigranes VI. And then Jewish Christians of the first couple centuries eventually brought The Gospel to Armenia, Armenia even claims to have beaten Rome to making Christianity their State Religion in 301 AD. I think it actually happened a little later probably at the same time as Iberia in the 330s and like them perhaps partly because of diplomatic relations with Constantine.
It is sometimes claimed that only the Georgian Bagratuni claimed Davidic descent, but their heraldry was a Lion in Armenia. Indeed our first recorded reference to this from Pseudo Juansher says it was Adamase himself who was of Davidic stock not his father in law.
The Sumbat Chronicle genealogy of the Georgian branch connects them to David in a way that seemingly excludes the Armenian branch, but that link alone may not be the whole story. I think the Isaac who is generation 87 of the Sumbat Chronicle genealogy is Isaac/Sakah II of the Armenian Bagratuni and Dhan is Vahn I Mamikonian.
I think this Isaac is Sakah I and Sakah II being combined and the generations in-between skipped of the Armenian Bagratuni and it's the generations after him that are mistaken in connecting this line to Iberian royalty too early.
Genealogy of Armenian Bagartuni starts on page 338 (or 168 of 304).
(I'm thinking of making a post arguing that Cleopas was married to a Sister of Jesus)
The name of the Bagartuni comes from a Persian word meaning "Gift of God", so it could be a name a clan of Davidic Ancestry chose to honor claiming descent from David's son Nathan (since Nathan in Hebrew means Gift), who's also the Son Luke 3's Genealogy of Jesus goes back to, meaning Jewish Christians claiming descent from the Half-Siblings of Jesus could have also found it attractive.
And the reference to this in the De Adrministrando Imperio by Constantine VII Porphryogentius says they traces their ancestry through Mary's Genealogy (which Christians tend to view as Luke's) rather then Joseph's form Matthew. And Constantine's claim of there being a David ruling as a vassal of Heralcius is also him saying something of Iberia that was actually the case with Armenian. David Saharuni wasn't a Bagratuni but he could have had kids who become intermarried into the Dynasty that the other histories failed to record.
But regardless of the Bagratid's origins they were by the 8th Century both in Armenia and Georgia of Atraxiad Ancestry.
Zariadres
Artaxias I of Armenia
Artavasdes I of Armenia
Artaxias I of Iberia
Artoces of Iberia
Pharnavaz II of Iberia
[Female Name Unkown wife of Kartam of Cholchis]
Pharasmanes I of Iberia
Mihrdat I of Iberia
Amazasp I of Iberia
Pharasmanes II of Iberia
Ghadam of Iberia
Pharasmanes III of Iberia
[Female Name Unkown wife of Vologases II]
Khosrov I of Armenia
Tiridates II of Armenia
Khosrov II of Armenia
Tiridates III of Armenia
Salome of Ujarma
Trdat of Iberia
[Female Name Unkown-Wife of Varaz-Bakur II]
Pharasmanes IV of Iberia
Mihrdat IV of Iberia
Archil of Iberia
Mihrdat V of Iberia
Vakhtang I Gorgasali
Dachi of Iberia
Bacurius II of Iberia
[Name Unkown]
Pharasmanes VI of Iberia
Bacurius III of Iberia
Adarnase I of Iberia
Stephen II of Iberia
Adarnase II of Iberia
Stephen of Kakheti
Mirian of Kakheti
[Female Name Unknown-Wife of Prince Nerse I Nersiani]
Adarnase III of Iberia
Nerse of Iberia
[Female Name Unkown-Wife of Adarnase I of Tao-Klarjeti]
Ashot I the Great
Zariadres
Artaxias I of Armenia
Tigranes I
Tigranes the Great
Artavasdes II of Armenia
Tigranes III
Tigranes IV and Erato
[Female Name Unknown wife of Pharasmanes I of Iberia]
Mihrdat I of Iberia
Amazasp I of Iberia
Pharasmanes II of Iberia
Ghadam of Iberia
Pharasmanes III of Iberia
[Female Name Unkown wife of Vologases II]
Khosrov I of Armenia
Tiridates II of Armenia
Khosrov II of Armenia
Tiridates III of Armenia
Salome of Ujarma
Trdat of Iberia
[Female Name Unkown-Wife of Varaz-Bakur II]
Pharasmanes IV of Iberia
Mihrdat IV of Iberia
Archil of Iberia
Mihrdat V of Iberia
Vakhtang I Gorgasali
Dachi of Iberia
Bacurius II of Iberia
[Name Unkown]
Pharasmanes VI of Iberia
Bacurius III of Iberia
Adarnase I of Iberia
Stephen II of Iberia
Adarnase II of Iberia
Stephen of Kakheti
Mirian of Kakheti
[Female Name Unknown-Wife of Prince Nerse I Nersiani]
Adarnase III of Iberia
Nerse of Iberia
[Female Name Unkown-Wife of Adarnase I of Tao-Klarjeti]
Ashot I the Great
Zariadres
Artaxias I of Armenia
Tigranes I
Tigranes the Great
Artavasdes II of Armenia
Tigranes III
Tigranes IV and Erato
[Female Name Unknown wife of Pharasmanes I of Iberia]
Mihrdat I of Iberia
Amazasp I of Iberia
Pharasmanes II of Iberia
Ghadam of Iberia
Pharasmanes III of Iberia
[Female Name Unkown wife of Vologases II]
Khosrov I of Armenia
Tiridates II of Armenia
Khosrov II of Armenia
Tiridates III of Armenia
Khosrov III the Small
Bambishn
Nerses I the Great
Isaac of Armenia
Sahakanoush
Hmayeak
Vasak
[Female Name Unkown]
Mushegh II
Kahan Gail
Mushegh III
Hrahat
Dawith
Samuel II of Armenia
Dzoyk
Ashot Msaker
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