RELS 32, Blog post #4 "The Lost Tribes of Israel"

The Lost Tribes of Israel

In the late 15^th century the voyages of Columbus brought news of humans not accounted for in the Bible. Europeans were puzzled where they had come from. The solution was that they were tribes of Israel, which had disappeared with the fall of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah in the middle of the 1^st millennium BCE.

A Spanish priest, Bartolome de Las Casas, become a champion of the Native American cause protesting against the carnage carried out by the conquistadores in the West Indies, Peru and Guatemala. Las Casas believed that the Native Americans should be converted to Christianity, as he was convinced that they had originated in Ancient Israel.  He believed that the Bible contained the proof that they were members of the Lost Tribes of Israel. Eventually Pope Paul III declared that the Native Americans were ‘fully human’ in 1537.

A 1644 report (unfortunately fictional) by the Portuguese traveller, Antonio Montezinos, claimed that there was a Jewish tribe living beyond the mountain passes of the Andes, and that he saw them practicing Jews rituals. Thomas Thorowgood’s Jews in America of 1650 argued for the need to convert these lost tribes. Certain Christian traditions claimed that when the Ten Tribes of Israel were found and restored to the Holy Land, the return of Christ to reign suprime would be imminent. The ‘Ten Lost Tribes of Israel’ disappeared from the Biblical account after the kingdom of Israel was totally destroyed, its people enslaved and exiled by the Assyrians empire. There are various ethnic claimants to be these tribes, ex; The British/Welsh and the Pashtun. The Bene Ephriam (southern India) claim descent from the Tribe of Manasseh. Beta Israel is an ancient group of Ethiopian Jews who believe they are those who descended from the lost Tribe of Dan.  Persian Jews, especially the Bukharan Jews claim descent from the Tribe of Ephriam and Igbo Jews in Nigeria claim descent variously from the Tribes of Ephriam, Menasseh, Levi, Zebulun and Gad. The Lemba tribes (south Africa) claim to be descendants from a lost tribe of Jews, which fled from modern Yemen and journeyed south.