Jewish Indian theory

Last updated

Jewish Indian theory (or Hebraic Indian theory, [1] or Jewish Amerindian theory [2] ) is the erroneous idea that some or all of the lost tribes of Israel had travelled to the Americas and that all or some of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas are of Israelite descent or were influenced by still-lost Jewish populations. The theory was popular in the late seventeenth century, [3] and had a lasting legacy through its influence on Mormon belief.

Contents

History

The belief that the Indigenous peoples of the Americas are of Israelite descent dates back to the fifteenth century. [2] The discovery of the populated New World seemed to challenge Europeans' theories of human origins, with the question of how the origins of Indigenous peoples in the Americas fitted into scriptural history. Various ideas arose, including possible relationships to Egyptians, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Vikings, Tartars, the Chinese people or Atlantis. [4] However, the most popular idea to emerge was that the Indigenous peoples of the Americas were the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. [4] This theory thus neatly answered both the question of the Indigenous peoples' origins and what had happened to the lost tribes. [1] The theory existed in a wider debate about whether peoples of the world had a monogenic origin in Adam or whether they had a polygenic origin, deriving from different creations. [5] [6]

Spanish writings

The theory was discussed by Spanish writers in the sixteenth century, including Diego de Landa in his Relación de las cosas de Yucatán (The Relation of the Things of the Yucatan), written around 1566, and Diego Durán's History of the Indies of New Spain (1581). The first work to address the theory systematically came in 1607: The Origin of the Indians of the New World by Dominican Gregorio García. García argued based on supposed similarities in appearance, custom (including idolatry) and language (including the frequency of glottals) that the lost tribes of Israel travelled to the Americas alongside other migrations, including of Carthaginians and Phoenicians and people from China, Tartary and Atlantis. The book also makes etymological arguments: for example, García asserted that "Mex-" in "Mexico" was based on the Hebrew term "Messiah". [4]

García argued that circumcision was common among Indigenous peoples of the Americas, particularly in the Yucatán. García suggested that the lost tribes must have reached the Americas from eastern Asia via what is now called the Bering Strait. In contrast, the French archbishop Gilbert Génébrard argued in 1587 that they travelled via Greenland. [4]

Diego Andres Rocha also argued for the idea in Tratado Unico y Singular del Origen de los Indios (1687), with claims including that a broken Hebrew is spoken in Cuba and Jamaica. He argued that the Spanish first populated the Americas shortly after the Flood, with the lost tribes coming much later, via the Bering Strait. [4]

In England and the Netherlands in the mid-seventeenth century

More generally, the theory came to prominence in England and northwestern Europe in the 1650s, during a period of messianic millenarianism. Notably, it came to prominence in England during the rule of Oliver Cromwell. [4] This occurred at a time when no Jews were officially living in England. [3] The English may have been predisposed to accept the theory because of early British Israelism, the theory that sought to prove the existence of a connection between the lost tribes and the English. [7] The theory was not just of historical concern: it carried concomitant eschatological implications as the return of the lost tribes and conversion of the entire Jewish nation would herald the Second Coming of Jesus. [3] [2]

A key early publication in England was Edward Winslow's The Glorious Progress of the Gospel Amongst the Indians in New England (1649), which claimed some elements of Native American life followed Mosaic laws. The publication urged further action to convert Native Americans to Christianity. [3]

Another important work was written by Thomas Thorowgood (or Thoroughgood [4] ): Iewes in America, published 1650, re-issued in 1652 as Digitus Dei: New Discoveryes. This presented a detailed defence of the theory, including a focus on supposed linguistic similarities with Hebrew and on the use of circumcision. He suggested the lost tribes had reached the Americas via the Bering Strait or thereabouts. [6] The suffering of the Native Americans was explained as part of a divine plan for the Jews. [6] Thorowgood believed that, as members of the Jewish community, the Native Americans would be converted to Christianity to produce the Second Coming, thus providing a theological justification for the English colonial project in North America. [6] Thorowgood and Winslow shared millenalist beliefs. [7]

Hamon L'Estrange published a rebuttal of the theory in 1651, titled Americans no Iewes, which Thorowgood also argued against in his 1660 work titled Jews in America (a new work despite the similarity in name to the 1650's work Iewes in America). [3]

Antonio de Montezinos, a Portuguese convert from Judaism to Christianity, claimed to have met an Indigenous tribe which spoke Hebrew and recited the shema during his travels in New Grenada. [3] [4]

The Portuguese-Dutch rabbi Menasseh ben Israel wrote a pamphlet, Spes Israelis (Hope of Israel) in 1650, [4] which was translated into English by Moses Wall and published as Spes Israelis, The Hope of Israel in the same year. His work was cited by both Winslow and Thorowgood. [7] Ben Israel, believing Montezinos' account, asserted that there were Jews hidden in South America, as well as in other places across Asia and Africa. [4] He argued that the supposed cultural similarities resulted from the Indigenous peoples' ancestors borrowing them from Jews who were living among them, rather than the Indigenous populations encountered being of Jewish descent. [3] [4] Ben Israel also argued that the lost tribes had travelled to the Americas via the Bering Strait, which must have once been dry land, and that they were responsible for the monumental buildings found in central and south America. [4] Unlike the Christian Thorowgood, Ben Israel couched the theory in terms of Jewish messianism. [6]

While the theory gathered support in England in the middle of the seventeenth century, it was less popular in New England, reflecting the New Englanders' greater familiarity with Native Americans, whereas the likes of Thorowgood and Ben Israel had never been to the continent. Some accepted the idea that the Native Americans were of Semitic descent, i.e. descended from Shem, but not that they are Jewish. [3]

Later views

James Adair's 1775 History of the American Indians was a seminal later text. It again drew linguistic comparisons and on cultural comparisons, including the seclusion of women during menstruation. [4] Notably, Adair had spent 40 years living in North America, unlike earlier authors who had not visited the continent. [5]

In 1803, Benjamin Rush, a doctor and medical advisor to the Lewis and Clark Expedition, asked Lewis to record any similarities between Native American religious practices and those of the Jews. [1]

The Jewish Indian theory remained significant in some millennialist Christian circles well into the nineteenth century; [5] otherwise, it largely fell out of favor after the mid-nineteenth century. [4] Elias Boudinot's A Star in the West, or, a Humble Attempt to Discover the Long Lost Ten Tribes of Israel (1816) [4] and Ethan Smith's View of the Hebrews (1825) drew on Adair's work. Both of them argue for a central role for the US within a Christian millennial belief system. Boudinot argued that Native American languages could be seen to have been descended from Hebrew. [5]

The Book of Mormon (1830) revised the theory, rejecting the lost tribes as an origin, but claiming a Biblical origin for Native Americans. [5] The Book states that Jewish people emigrated to the Americas after the destruction of the first Temple and it also states that Jesus Christ appeared in the Americas and preached to Native Americans after his resurrection. [4]

The American diplomat and journalist Mordecai Manuel Noah argued in support of the idea in The American Indians Being the Descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel (1837). [8]

Chief Beverly Baker Northup self-published a book, We Are Not Yet Conquered (2001), in which she espoused the view that a group of Middle Eastern people (possibly Sicarii and surviving defenders of Masada) crossed the Atlantic and intermarried with Native Americans making up the Cherokee. [9] [ non-primary source needed ]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Israelites</span> Iron Age Hebrew tribal people in Canaan

The Israelites were a Hebrew-speaking ethnoreligious group consisting of tribes that inhabited much of Canaan during the Iron Age.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">British Israelism</span> Pseudoreligious belief

British Israelism is a pseudo-historical belief that the people of Great Britain are "genetically, racially, and linguistically the direct descendants" of the Ten Lost Tribes of ancient Israel. With roots in the 16th century, British Israelism was inspired by several 19th century English writings such as John Wilson's 1840 Our Israelitish Origin. From the 1870s onward, numerous independent British Israelite organizations were set up throughout the British Empire as well as in the United States; as of the early 21st century, a number of these organizations are still active. In the United States, the idea gave rise to the Christian Identity movement.

Gentile is a word that today usually means someone who is not Jewish. Other groups that claim Israelite heritage, notably Mormons, have historically used the term gentile to describe outsiders. More rarely, the term is used as a synonym for heathen, pagan. As a term used to describe non-members of a religious/ethnic group, gentile is sometimes compared to other words used to describe the "outgroup" in other cultures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the Jews in Africa</span>

African Jewish communities include:

Jewish ethnic divisions refer to many distinctive communities within the world's Jewish population. Although "Jewish" is considered an ethnicity itself, there are distinct ethnic subdivisions among Jews, most of which are primarily the result of geographic branching from an originating Israelite population, mixing with local communities, and subsequent independent evolutions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mound Builders</span> Pre-Columbian cultures of North America

Many pre-Columbian cultures in North America were collectively termed "Mound Builders", but the term has no formal meaning. It does not refer to specific people or archaeological culture but refers to the characteristic mound earthworks that indigenous peoples erected for an extended period of more than 5,000 years. The "Mound Builder" cultures span the period of roughly 3500 BCE to the 16th century CE, including the Archaic period, Woodland period, and Mississippian period. Geographically, the cultures were present in the region of the Great Lakes, the Ohio River Valley, Florida, and the Mississippi River Valley and its tributary waters.

The Bnei Menashe is a community of Indian Jews from various Tibeto-Burmese ethnic groups from the border of India and Burma who claim descent from one of the Lost Tribes of Israel, allegedly based on the Hmar belief in an ancestor named Manmasi. Some of them have adopted Judaism. The community has around 10,000 members.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black Hebrew Israelites</span> African Americans who claim descent from the ancient Israelites

Black Hebrew Israelites are a new religious movement claiming that African Americans are descendants of the ancient Israelites. Some sub-groups believe that Native and Latin Americans are descendants of the Israelites as well. Black Hebrew Israelites combine elements to their teaching from a wide range of sources to varying degrees. Black Hebrew Israelites incorporate certain aspects of the religious beliefs and practices of both Christianity and Judaism, though they have created their own interpretation of the Bible, and other influences include Freemasonry and New Thought, for example. Many choose to identify as Hebrew Israelites or Black Hebrews rather than Jews in order to indicate their claimed historic connections.

Several groups of people have claimed lineal descent from the Israelites, an ancient Semitic-speaking people who inhabited Canaan during the Iron Age. The phenomenon has become especially prevalent since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. The country's Law of Return, which defines Jewishness for the purpose of aliyah, prompted many individuals to claim Israelite ancestry with the expectation that it would make them eligible for Israeli citizenship through their perceived Jewish ethnicity. The abundance of these claims has led to the rise of the question of "who is a Jew?" in order to determine the legitimacy of one's Jewish identity. Some of these claims have been recognized, while other claims are still under review, and others have been outright rejected.

<i>View of the Hebrews</i> Book by Ethan Smith

View of the Hebrews is an 1823 book written by Ethan Smith, a Congregationalist minister in Vermont, who argued that Native Americans were descended from the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, a relatively common view during the early nineteenth century. Numerous commentators on Mormon history, from LDS Church general authority B. H. Roberts to Fawn M. Brodie, biographer of Joseph Smith, have noted similarities in the content of View of the Hebrews and the Book of Mormon, which was first published in 1830, seven years after Ethan Smith's book.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ten Lost Tribes</span> Israelites exiled from ancient Israel by the Assyrians

The Ten Lost Tribes were those from the Twelve Tribes of Israel that were said to have been exiled from the Kingdom of Israel after it was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire around 720 BCE. They were the following: Reuben, Simeon, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Manasseh, and Ephraim—all but Judah and Benjamin, both of which were based in the neighbouring Kingdom of Judah and therefore survived until the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem in 587 BCE. Alongside Judah and Benjamin was part of the Tribe of Levi, which was not allowed land tenure, but received dedicated cities. The exile of Israel's population, known as the Assyrian captivity, occurred in line with long-standing Assyrian deportation policy, which was practiced in many subjugated territories.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Origin of the Book of Mormon</span> Theories about the provenance of the Book of Mormon

Adherents to the Latter Day Saint movement view the Book of Mormon as a work of divinely inspired scripture, which was written by ancient prophets in the ancient Americas. Most adherents believe Joseph Smith's account of translating ancient golden plates inscribed by prophets. Smith preached that the angel Moroni, a prophet in the Book of Mormon, directed him in the 1820s to a hill near his home in Palmyra, New York, where the plates were buried. An often repeated and upheld as convincing claim by adherents that the story is true is that besides Smith himself, there were at least 11 witnesses who said they saw the plates in 1829, three that claimed to also have been visited by an angel, and other witnesses who observed Smith dictating parts of the text that eventually became the Book of Mormon.

Antonio de Montezinos, also known as Aharon Levi or Aharon HaLevi, was a Portuguese traveler and a Marrano Sephardic Jew who in 1644 persuaded Menasseh Ben Israel, a rabbi of Amsterdam, that he had found one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel living in the jungles of the "Quito Province" of Ecuador. This supposed discovery gave a new impulse to Menasseh's Messianic hopes. Menasseh wrote a book about this narrative, The Hope of Israel. In it Menasseh argued, and tried to give learned support to the theory that the native inhabitants of America at the time of the European discovery were actually descendants of the [lost] Ten Tribes of Israel. The book was originally published in Latin and Spanish in 1650, but its publication in English in 1652 in London caused great controversy and polemics in England.

Tudor Parfitt is a British historian, writer, broadcaster, traveller and adventurer. He specialises in the study of Jewish communities and Judaising communities around the world, particularly in Africa, Asia and the Americas and the development of issues about the construction of race.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tsvi Misinai</span> Israeli researcher and writer

Tsvi Jekhorin Misinai is an Israeli researcher, writer, historian, computer scientist and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the Israeli software industry, he now spends most of his time researching and documenting the common Hebrew roots he believes shared by world Jewry and the Palestinians.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jews</span> Ethnoreligious group and nation

The Jews or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites of the historical kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and whose traditional religion is Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, religion, and community are highly interrelated, as Judaism is an ethnic religion, but not all ethnic Jews practice Judaism. Despite this, religious Jews regard individuals who have formally converted to Judaism as Jews.

The Japanese-Jewish common ancestry theory is a fringe theory that appeared in the 17th century as a hypothesis which claimed the Japanese people were the main part of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. A later version portrayed them as descendants of a tribe of Central Asian Jewish converts to Nestorian Christianity. Some versions of the theory applied to the whole population, but others only claimed that a specific group within the Japanese people had descended from Jews.

Black Judaism is Judaism that is practiced by communities of African descent, both within Africa and within the African diaspora, including North America, Europe, Israel, and elsewhere. Significant examples of Black Judaism include Judaism as it is practiced by Ethiopian Jews and African-American Jews. Jews who may be considered Black have existed for millennia, with Zipporah sometimes considered to be one of the first Black Jews who was mentioned within Jewish history.

Thomas Thorowgood, B.D., was a Puritan minister and preacher in King's Lynn, Norfolk, England. He was the first English author to argue in 1650 that American Indians were descended from the Lost Ten Tribes of the biblical ancient Israelites. This theory was an early 16th century Christian theory that was revived in popularity during the beginning of the English colonisation of North America in the 17th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Eidelberg</span> Israeli historian of ancient Jewish history

Joseph Eidelberg was an Israeli military commander and a plant manager of large Israeli corporations. During his career he developed a hobby of exploring religions’ roots and languages. He became a linguistics researcher, a scholar speaking seven languages, an Historian explorer, and an author of three books. His research work focused on the two most puzzling mysteries in Jewish history: The Exodus, a 40-year desert travel of the Israelites from Egypt to Canaan, and the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, which were never found. A summary in his memory was written by his friend Colonel (ret.) Meir Pa'il. A professional opinion on Eidelberg's work was detailed by Harold Goldmeier, a former Research and Teaching Fellow at Harvard University. His research claimed to show evidence that the Exodus journey took place in North Africa including Nigeria, the land of Igbo Jews, and to have found evidence supporting the Japanese-Jewish common ancestry theory. Publications of work by Eidelberg, from 1972 to 2015, amount to "15 works, in 35 publications, in 3 languages and 153 library holdings".

References

  1. 1 2 3 Old Canaan in a New World: Native Americans and the Lost Tribes of Israel by Elizabeth Fenton, 2020, ISBN   9781479827534
  2. 1 2 3 Cohen, J. (2012). "Members of the Tribe: Jewish-Amerindian Theory and the Making of a Modern American Consciousness." Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies, Vol 7 (2006). doi : 10.5283/COPAS.92
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Crome, A. (2015). "Politics and Eschatology: Reassessing the Appeal of the 'Jewish Indian' Theory in England and New England in the 1650s." In Journal of Religious History (Vol. 40, Issue 3, pp. 326–346). Wiley. doi : 10.1111/1467-9809.12301
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 "The 'Jewish Indian Theory': The problem of the origin of the American populations" by Nathan Wachtel, in Chaos in the Contact Zone, edited by Stephanie Wodianka & Christoph Behrens, 2018, ISBN   9783837633894
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Fenton, Elizabeth. "Nephites and Israelites: The Book of Mormon and the Hebraic Indian Theory", in Elizabeth Fenton, and Jared Hickman (eds), Americanist Approaches to The Book of Mormon (New York, 2019; online edn, Oxford Academic, 22 Aug. 2019) doi : 10.1093/oso/9780190221928.003.0012
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 Barth, D. (2023). Between Two Worlds: The “Israelite-AmeriIndian” Theory In 17th Century Abrahamic Thought. In Iggrot Ha’Ari (Vol. 3). Columbia University Libraries. https://doi.org/10.52214/iha.v3i1.11611
  7. 1 2 3 Amy H Sturgis (1999) "Prophesies and Politics: Millenarians, Rabbis, and the Jewish Indian Theory", The Seventeenth Century, 14:1, 15-23, doi : 10.1080/0268117X.1999.10555453
  8. ↑ Noah, M. M. (Mordecai Manuel) (1837). Discourse on the evidences of the American Indians being the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel [microform] : delivered before the Mercantile Library Association, Clinton Hall. Canadiana.org. New York : J. Van Norden. ISBN   9780665454530.
  9. ↑ Northup, Beverly Baker (2001-07-26). We Are Not Yet Conquered. Paducah, Kentucky: Turner Publishing Company. p. 11. ISBN   978-1-56311-673-5.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.