The history of the ten lost tribes; Anglo-Israelism examined

The History

OF THE

TEN "LOST" TRIBES.

ANGLO-ISRAELISM EXAMINED

BY

DAVID BARON

AUTHOR OF

" THE ANCIENT SCRIPTURES AND THE MODERN JEW '

" THE SHEPHERD OF ISRAEL," ETC.

Second Edition

MORGAN & SCOTT LD.

(Office of "&&,» Christian")
12, Paternoster Buildings
London, E.C. mcmxv

PREFACE

A FEW words of explanation are needed by way of
preface to this little book. More than twenty
years ago, being often appealed to by friends for my
judgment on Anglo-Israelism, or to answer questions
which were addressed to me on this subject, I finally,
after making myself acquainted with the positions
and arguments by which the theory is supported, drew
up a statement in the form of " A Letter to an Inquirer."
This " Letter," somewhat amplified, was printed in the
form of an appendix in my book, " The Ancient Scrip-
tures and the Modern Jew," whence by special request
it was subsequently reprinted in pamphlet form under
the title, " Anglo-Israelism, and the True History of
the Ten Lost Tribes " — a separate edition of it having
also been published in America. This pamphlet is now
out of print, and, being appealed to by prominent
Christian friends to bring out a new edition, I felt
constrained before doing so to re-examine the whole
question anew, and more thoroughly than before. To
this end I have read through, with much inward pain
I must confess, a number of the more recent Anglo- (or
" British ") -Israel publications, which for the most
part are mere repetitions of one another. The result
is the treatise now in the reader's hands, which will be
found to consist of three Parts.

In Part I. I have dealt with Anglo-Israel assertions
and claims, and the arguments by which they are sup-
ported ; in Part II., which is constructive in its
character, and in which the greater part of my original
" Letter to an Inquirer " will be found embodied, I have
tried briefly to trace the true history of the supposed
Lost Tribes ; and in Part III., which is altogether new,

iv PREFACE

I have further analysed some of the scriptural " proofs "
of a separate fate and destiny of the Ten Tribes from
that of " Judah," and have added notes and explana-
tions on some of the more plausible points brought up
by all Anglo- Israelite writers.

The epistolary form, which is retained in Parts I.
and II., is accounted for by the relation of this new
booklet to the original " Letter to an Inquirer," which
is embodied in it.

Let me ask the reader's Christian forbearance for any
expressions in this little work which may be regarded
as too severe. I would only say that if the unbiassed
reader had had to wade through the amount of Anglo-
Israel literature, with all its fearful perversions of
Scripture and history, which the writer has had to do
in the course of the preparation of this little work, he
would most probably have felt as he did — the difficulty
of putting a restraint upon his spirit so as not to use
much stronger language. Toward the persons of the
propagandists of this theory I have, I trust, no other
feelings than those of Christian charity ; but the theory
itself I cannot help regarding, after a close study of its
principles, as subversive of the truth, and as one of the
dangerous delusions of these latter days.

After this little book was finished, an honoured friend
in Brighton sent me the article by the late Dr. Horatius
Bonar, which appeared in The Sunday at Home in 1880.
I add it, with the permission of the proprietors of that
magazine, as an appendix in the assurance that the testi-
mony on the subject of so honoured and eminent a
servant of God will be welcomed and carry weight with
many.

October, 1915. David Baron.

CONTENTS

PART I.

PAGE

I. Anglo-Israel Assertions and Claims . . . . 7

II. The Way Anglo-Israel Writers Interpret

Scripture .. .. .. .. ..11

III. Fictitious Histories of the Tribes . . . . 15

PART II.

I. Are the Tribes Lost ? 22

II. The Condition of Things at the Time of

Christ . . . . . . . . • • • 33

III. The Testimony of the New Testament that

the " Jews " are Representative of

" All Israel " 39

IV. Early Misconceptions and Confusion on the

Question of the Ten Tribes . . • • 44
V. The Testimony of Prophecy in the Light of

History . . . . . . • • • • . . 48

VI. A Solemn Warning .. .. .. •• 51

PART III.

NOTES AND EXPLANATIONS.

I. Anglo-Israel " Proofs " of a Separate Fate

and Destiny of " Israel " and " Judah " 54

II. The Promises to the Fathers of a Multi-

tudinous Seed . . • . . • . . 65

III. The Perpetuity of the Davidic Throne . . 72

IV. The So-called Historic Proofs of Anglo-

Israelism . . . • • • • • . . 76

APPENDIX.

Are We the Ten Tribes? By the late Horatius

Bonar, D.D 80

PART I.
ANGLO-ISRAELISM EXAMINED.

ANGLO-ISRAEL ASSERTIONS AND CLAIMS.

DEAR FRIEND, — I shall endeavour to comply
with your request, and to give you in this Letter
a few reasons for my rejection of the Anglo-Israelite
theory. I can sincerely say that I am not a man
delighting in controversy, and I only consent to your
wish because I believe that you, like many other
simple-minded Christians, are perplexed and imposed
upon by the plausibilities of the supposed "Identifi-
cations," and are not able to detect the fallacies and
perversions of Scripture and history upon which they are
based.

The theory is that the English, or British, are the
descendants of the " lost " Israelites, who were carried
captives by the Assyrians, under Sargon, who, it is
presumed, are identical with the Saxae or Scythians,
who appear as a conquering host there about the same
time. Or, to quote a succinct summary of Anglo-Israel
assertions from a standard work : —

" The supposed historical connection of the ancestors
of the English with the Lost Ten Tribes is deduced as»
follows : The Ten Tribes were transferred to Babylon
about 720 b.c. ; and simultaneously, according to Hero-
dotus, the Scythians, including the tribe of the Saccae
(or Saxae), appeared in the same district. The progenitors

8 ANGLO-ISRAEL ASSERTIONS AND CLAIMS

of the Saxons afterward passed over into Denmark — the
' mark ' or country of the tribe of Dan — and thence to
England. Another branch of the tribe of Dan, which
remained ' in ships ' (Judges v. 17), made its appearance
in Ireland under the title of ' Tuatha-da-Danan.' Tephi,
a descendant of the royal house of David, arrived in Ireland,
according to the native legends, in 580 b.c. From her was
descended Feargus More, King of Argyll, an ancestor of
Queen Victoria, who thus fulfilled the prophecy that ' the
line of David shall rule for ever and ever ' (2 Chron. xiii. 5,
xxi. 7). The Irish branch of the Danites brought with
them Jacob's stone, which has always been used as the
Coronation-stone of the kings of Scotland and England,
and is now preserved in Westminster Abbey. Somewhat
inconsistently, the prophecy that the Canaanites should
trouble Israel (Numbers xxxiii. 55 ; Josh, xxiii. 13) is applied
to the Irish . ' The land of Arzareth, ' to which the Israelites
were transplanted (2 Esd. xiii. 45), is identified with Ireland
by dividing the former name into two parts — the former of
which is erez, or ' land ' ; the later, Ar, or ' Ire.' "*

As to the Jews, quite a different history and destiny
is marked out for them. They, as the descendants of
Judah, are still under the curse. In fact, the Anglo-
Israelite, by another and more mischievous method,
is doing exactly what the allegorising, or so-called
spiritualising, school of interpreters did. The method
was to apply all the promises in the Bible to the
" spiritual " Israel, or the Church, and all the curses to
the literal Israel, or the Jews ; but by this new system,
while the curses are still left to the Jew, all the blessings
are applied not even to those "in Christ," but indis-
criminately to a nation, which, as a nation, is like the
other nations of Christendom in a greater or lesser degree
in a state of apostasy from God, though I thankfully
recognise the fact that there are in proportion more of

* From the article " Anglo-Israelism " in the Jewish Encyclo-
pedia.

ANGLO-ISRAEL ASSERTIONS AND CLAIMS 9

God's true people in it than in any other professing
Christian land.

I shall endeavour later on to show you the baseless-
ness of the distinction which Anglo-Israelism makes
between the ultimate fates of Israel and Judah, but
let me first say that the supposed historical and philo-
logical " proofs " by which the theory is supported,
most of which have no more basis in fact than fairy
tales, are utterly discredited by competent authorities.

" Philology of a somewhat primitive kind," writes a
prominent and learned Jew, " is also brought in to support
the theory ; the many Biblical and quasi-Jewish names
borne by Englishmen are held to prove their Israelitish
origin. An attempt has been made to derive the English
language itself from Hebrew. Thus, ' bairn ' is derived
from bar (' son ') ; ' berry ' from pevi (' fruit ') ; ' garden '
from gedar ; ' kid ' from gedi ; ' scale ' from shekel ; and
'kitten' from quiton (haton—' little '). The termination
' ish ' is identified with the Hebrew ish (' man ') ; ' Spanish '
means ' Spain-man ' ; while ' British ' is identified with
Berit-ish (' man of the covenant '). Perhaps the most
curious of these philological identifications is that of ' jig '
with chag (hag=' festival ').

" Altogether, by the application of wild guess-work about
historical origins and philological analogies, and by a
slavishly literal interpretation (or misapplication) of
selected phrases of prophecy, a case is made out for the
identification of the British race with the Lost Ten Tribes
of Israel sufficient to satisfy uncritical persons desirous
of finding their pride of race confirmed by Holy Scripture.
The whole theory rests upon an identification of the word
' isles ' in the English version of the Bible unjustified by
modern philology, which identifies the original word with
' coasts ' or ' distant lands,' without any implication of
their being surrounded by the sea. Modern ethnography
does not confirm in any way the identification of the Irish
with a Semitic people ; while the English can be traced
back to the Scandinavians, of whom there is no trace in

10 ANGLO-ISRAEL ASSERTIONS AND CLAIMS

Mesopotamia at any period of history. The whole move-
ment is chiefly interesting as a redactio ad absurdum of too
literal an interpretation (or misapplication) of the pro-
phecies."*

To this let me add the verdict of a prominent Christian
scholar. Commenting on Edward Hine's " Identifica-
tions of the British Nation with Lost Israel," Professor
Rawlinson wrote that : " The pamphlet is not calculated
to produce the slightest effect on the opinion of those
competent to form one. Such effect as it may have
can only be on the ignorant and unlearned— on those
who are unaware of the absolute and entire diversity in
language, physical type, religious opinions, and manners
and customs, between the Israelites and the various
races from whom the English nation can be shown
historically to be descended."

The fact of the matter is that the so-called historical
proofs, by which the theory is supported, are derived
from heathen myths and fables, f and the philology
which traces " British " to " Berith-ish," and " Saxon "
to " Isaac's-son," etc., deserves no other characterisation
than child-ish.

It is in a misunderstanding of Scripture, and especially
of prophetic Scripture, to which the origin of Anglo-
Israelism can be traced. Coming across some of the
great and precious promises in the Bible in reference to
Israel, for instance, such as that they should be a great
and mighty nation, and rule over those who previously
had been their enemies and oppressors, and over-
looking the fact that these prophecies and promises
refer to a future time, when Israel as a nation shall be
restored and converted, and under the personal rule
of their Messiah become great and mighty for God on
the earth, evidence of their fulfilment has been sought

* Joseph Jacobs, B.A., in the Jewish Encyclopedia.
t See Note iv. in Part III.

ANGLO-ISRAEL ASSERTIONS AND CLAIMS II

in the present. Now certainly these prophecies of might
and prosperity are not now being fulfilled in the
" Jews " — on the other hand, see how great and in-
fluential the British nation is in the world — ergo, the
British must be the " lost " Israel of the " Ten Tribes " !
The " history " and philology is, so to say, an after-
thought of Anglo-Israelism, by which an effort is made
to support the false postulate with which it starts.
The Scriptural " Identifications " with which Anglo-
Israel literature abound turn out on examination to
be perversions and misapplications of isolated texts
taken from the English versions of the Bible without
anj' regard for true principles of exegesis.

THE WAY ANGLO-ISRAEL WRITERS
INTERPRET SCRIPTURE.

Some of their interpretations can only be characterised
as bordering on blasphemy. Let me quote a few
examples : —

I. The glorious Messianic prophecy of the stone cut
without hands which smote the image of Nebuchad-
nezzar (Daniel ii.) is applied to the British people ; and
the British Empire, which is one of the Gentile world-
kingdoms, is made to be identical with the Kingdom of
God.

" We will see what is to be the future of the British
Empire, or, in other words, the stone that smote the
image. It is to become a great mountain and fill the
whole earth. Our Colonial Empire, then, will continue
to grow till it covers the whole world. We have tried
to avoid extending our Empire many and many a time,
and yet God has caused it to grow larger and larger,

12 THE WAY ANGLO-ISRAEL WRITERS

and I believe will still do so. We are already by far
the greatest Empire there is, or ever has been, and we
shall yet be far greater.

" The British Empire, again, can never be conquered.
Daniel says, ' The God of Heaven shall set up a kingdom
which shall never be destroyed : it shall stand for ever.'
Consequently, we shall never be conquered ; we must
continue till the end of time — so that we are to con-
tinue to exist as the last kingdom or empire this world
is to see."*

II. Messiah's Throne of Righteousness and Peace is
made out to be identical with the throne of England,
and the English people are " the saints of the Most
High," to whom all the kingdoms of the world shall be
given.

" If the Saxons be the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel . . .
then the English throne is a continuation of David's
throne, and the seed on it must be the seed of David, f
and the inference is clear — namely, that all the blessings
attaching by holy promise to David's throne must
belong to England. ... To this end God is overturn-
ing, and will overturn, until the whole world shall be
federated around one throne, and that David's throne
(which, according to the writer, is identical with the
throne of England) — the only throne God ever directly
established, and the only one He has promised per-
petuity to. . . . This kingdom is the fifth kingdom
to be set up in the latter days of those kings, says
Daniel. The kingdom was never to be left to other
people. ... To her (that is, to England) was promised

* " Nebuchadnezzar's Dream " in " The British Empire of
Ephraim." A whole collection of similar perversions of Scrip-
ture may be found in an excellent pamphlet by the late Pastor
Frank H. White, called " Anglo-Israelism Examined " — unfor-
tunately now out of print.

t A beautiful specimen, this, of Anglo-Israel logic.

INTERPRET SCRIPTURE 13

the isles of the sea, the coasts of the earth, the waste
and desolate places — the heathen and the uttermost
parts of the earth as a possession. Already, out of the
51,000,000 square miles which compose the earth,
England, including the United States (Manasseh), now
owns about 14,000,000, say, one-fourth. She bears
rule over one-third of the people of the earth ; she adds
a colony every four years, on an average. At the present
rate it will not be long before the kingdoms of this
world will be given to the saints of the Most High [that
is, according to the writer, the English people]. It is
no marvel in the light of and instruction of prophecy
that this throne and people should be so stable and
prosperous."*

III. The smoke which ascends from the " blazing
furnaces and steam engines " of London is identified
with the Shechinah Glory, the visible symbol of God's
presence with His people.

" During their wanderings in the desert His presence
was manifested by the pillar of cloud by day and the
pillar of fire by night ; and during the captivity of the
Two Tribes of Judah in Babylon He was with them,
until, at the expiration of the seventy years, He stirred
up Cyrus to release them. The same Lord still watches
over the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel in England, and con-
tinues to bless them. The same miracles that were
wrought in Egypt were intended to foreshadow the
realisation of God's future dealings with the Israelites ;
and if a gigantic panoramic view of England could be
taken from an elevation above the centre of the island
at midnight, a temporal pillar of fire would be as remark-
able from the blazing furnaces, the gas, the steam-

* " The Lost Ten Tribes," by Rev. Joseph Wild, D.D. A
book containing twenty discourses which abounds in statements
and " interpretations " as wild and unscriptural as this sample
quoted from Discourse XVIII.

14 THE WAY ANGLO-ISRAEL WRITERS

engines, as the pillar of cloud and smoke arising from
the same sources in the daytime, marking the chief
position and prosperity of Israel."

IV. Edward Hine, author of the forty-seven " Identi-
fications," is the promised Deliverer who should come
out of Zion.*

The following is taken from an article on Romans xi.
25-27, which appeared in " Life from the Dead," which
was edited by Edward Hine himself : —

" Are the British people identical with the lost Ten
Tribes of Israel ? And is the nation, by the identity,
being led to glory ? If these things are so, then where
is the Deliverer ? He must have already come out of
Zion. He must be doing His great work ; He must be
amongst us. It is our impression that, by the glory of
the work of the identity, we have come to the time
of Israel's national salvation by the Deliverer out of
Zion, and that Edward Hine and that Deliverer are
identical."

I have said above that Anglo-Israelism applies the
promises given to converted Israel indiscriminately to
the English nation. It does not stop even here, as the
above extracts show, but goes on to rob Christ Himself
of His glory by applying to the British people pro-
phecies which belong, not even to Israel, but to Israel's
Saviour.

Thus, the address of the Father to the Son in Psalm ii. :

* When preparing to re-write this little book I was told by a
friend that I need not take much notice of the works of Edward
Hine, as Anglo-Israelites themselves no longer attach importance
to them. On inquiry, however, I found that this was not the
case. His writings are still largely advertised and circulated,
and many of the more modern Anglo-Israelite writers profess to
draw instruction and inspiration from them. Beside which,
even his most extravagant statements are more than paralleled
in some of their most recent publications.

INTERPRET SCRIPTURE

15

" Ask of Me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine
inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for
thy possession," will be found again and again in Anglo-
Israel literature applied to the British nation. It also
substitutes the British Empire for the Church. A
favourite Scripture on which almost every Anglo-Israel
writer fastens is Matt. xxi. 43 : " Therefore I say unto
you, The Kingdom of God shall be taken from you and
given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof,"
taking it for granted that England is that " nation " —
which,, as a nation, is bringing forth the fruits of God's
kingdom.

Now I need not explain to you that this is an utterly
unspiritual and baseless assumption, for it is the Church
— God's elect and converted people out of all nations —
which is that " nation," which during the period of
Israel's national unbelief bears fruit unto God ; as is
clear from 1 Peter ii. 9, where believers in Christ are
addressed as " a chosen generation, a royal priesthood,
a holy nation («W), that ye should show forth the
praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into
His marvellous light."

FICTITIOUS HISTORIES OF THE TRIBES.

Let me give you one or two more samples of Anglo-
Israel perversion of Scripture and history : —

" The tribe of Benjamin has a singular special place in
the history of Israel and Judah. Neither Old or New Testa-
ment can be well understood unless one understands the
place of this tribe in Providence. They were always
counted one of the Ten Tribes, and reckoned with them in
the prophetic visions. They were only loaned to Judah
about 800 years (read 1 Kings xi.). They were to be a

l6 FICTITIOUS HISTORIES OF THE TRIBES

light for David in Jerusalem. God, foreseeing that the
Jews would reject Christ, kept back this one Tribe to be
in readiness to receive Him ; and so they did. At the
destruction of Jerusalem they escaped, and after centuries
of wanderings turn up as the proud and haughty Normans.
Finally, they unite with the other Tribes under William
the Conqueror. A proper insight into the work and
amission of Benjamin will greatly aid one in interpreting
the New Testament. He was set apart as a missionary
Tribe, and at once set to work to spread the Gospel of
Jesus. Most of the disciples were Benjaminites. Then,
after 800 years of fellowship with Judah, they were cut
loose and sent after their brethren of the House of Israel.
It was needful that the Lion and the Unicorn should
unite."

Again : —

" God said to Abraham, ' In thee shall all the families
of the earth be blessed ' ; and more , ' and in thy seed
shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.' Israel,
being scattered and cast off, became a blessing to the world.
They gave to the surrounding nations the only true idea
of God, for in their lowest condition and idolatry they
preserved the name and knowledge of Jehovah, and Christ
sent His disciples after them through one of their own
tribe — namely, Benjamin — telling them not to go into the
way of the Gentiles, nor into the cities of the Samaritans,
' but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.'
To these sheep Christ declares He was sent. Where were
these sheep ? They were scattered about in Central Asia —
in Scriptural language, in Cappadocia, Galatia, Pamphylia,
Lydia, Bithynia, and round about Illyricum. From these
very regions came the Saxons ; from here they spread
abroad North and West, being the most Christian of any
people on the face of the earth then, as now."*

It is difficult to characterise statements like these
given out by Anglo-Israel writers in ex cathedra style

* Both these extracts are taken from " The Lost Ten Tribes "
— the book referred to in a previous note — by Joseph Wild.

FICTITIOUS HISTORIES OF THE TRIBES 17

for the consumption of the ignorant and credulous.
But—

I. This " history " of the tribe of Benjamin (which
may be taken also as a fair sample of their " histories "
of Dan, Manasseh, etc.) is entirely the product of the
perverted fancy of the writers, and is without a vestige
of historic basis for its support. The only reference
given in the first extract is 1 Kings xi. Now that
chapter gives the account of God's warning to Solomon,
and of the announcement that in the reign of his imme-
diate successor the kingdom would be rent from the
house of David. " Howbeit," we read, " I will not
rend away all the kingdom, but will give one tribe to thy
son {i.e., Rehoboam) for David My servant's sake, and
for Jerusalem's sake, . . . that David My servant may
have a lamp alway before Me in Jerusalem, the city
which I have chosen to put My Name there."*

The " one tribe " which during the time of the
schism would be left to the house of David is, of course,
not Benjamin, as the writer of the above extract sup-
poses, but Judah, " with which Benjamin was indis-
solubly united by the very position of the capital on
its frontier." This is seen from verses 31, 32 of the same
chapter, where the Ten Tribes " are given to Jeroboam,"
and the remaining two of the twelve are called " one
tribe."

It is, of course, a pure invention also, of the fairy-
tale type, that Benjamin as a tribe received Christ
while the Jews rejected Him, or that Benjamin became
" the missionary tribe," or that " most of the disciples
were Benjamites." Not one single tribe as a tribe, or
even one local community as a community, received
Christ; but the "as many" of His own "as received
Him " were " Jews," which, as we shall see farther on,

* 1 Kings xi. 13-36.

B

l8 FICTITIOUS HISTORIES OF THE TRIBES

were the representatives of the Israel of the whole
" Twelve Tribes scattered abroad," and the Twelve
Apostles (though Paul, indeed, was a Benjamite) were
in a way representative of all the Twelve Tribes of
Israel.

II. Then note the absurdities and contradictions of
Anglo-Israel assertions. " Israel," you are told — by
which is meant the Ten Tribes — while themselves idolaters
and sunk so low as not only to forget their origin, but,
as another exponent of the theory has it, lapsed " into
a state of semi-barbarism like the first pioneer settlers
in North America " ; and, being without records, in a
brief period lost all memory of their former name and
condition* — became, while in such a condition, " a
blessing to the world, and gave to the surrounding
nations the only true idea of God " !

And what shall be said of the terrible perversion of
such a plain and beautiful Scripture as Matt. x. 5, 6 ?
In the introduction to that chapter (Matt. ix. 36-38)
we read how our Lord Jesus, beholding the multitudes
which were pressing around Him, was moved with
compassion for them because they fainted (or rather,
according to the now accepted reading, " were harassed,"
" plagued "), " and were scattered abroad as sheep
having no shepherd." Then, after saying to His
disciples that the harvest truly is plenteous but the
labourers are few, and commanding them to pray the
Lord of the harvest that He may send, or thrust forth,
labourers into His harvest, He calls the twelve individual
Jewish disciples, and commissions and empowers them
to go forth on the definite mission of mercy to their
countrymen, warning them not to go beyond the bounds
of the land " into the way of the Gentiles," nor even
within the bounds of Palestine to visit " the cities of

* " Israel in Britain," by Colonel Gamier, page 6.

FICTITIOUS HISTORIES OF THE TRIBES 19

the Samaritans," but to confine themselves exclusively
" to the lost sheep of the House of Israel" — that is, to
their own Jewish people, who (as we shall see) are
throughout the New Testament called alternately
"Jews" and " Israel." This is all plain and obvious;
and we know, as a matter of fact and history, that the
ministry of John the Baptist, and of our Lord Jesus,
and of the Twelve Apostles, until after His ascension, was
confined to the " Jews " in Palestine. Anglo-Israelism,
however, is able by some fiction to transform the Twelve
Disciples into the tribe of Benjamin, and " the lost
sheep of the House of Israel " into a medley of Gentile
nations located " in Central Asia," and other specified
regions, who, though unknown to themselves to be
Israelites in origin, and mistaken by the Apostles in
their subsequent missionary journeys for ' Gentiles,"
were really the " lost Ten Tribes," alias " the Saxons,"
and progenitors of the English ! And these are only a
few typical samples of the so-called " historical proofs"
and Bible interpretations on which the whole theory
rests. I must now pass on to another part of the
subject, but let me, before doing so, earnestly commend
to you whenever you come across Anglo-Israel
literature to keep in mind the good advice, of a well-
known Bishop to his clergy — "Always verify your refer-
ences " — and I would add, " study the context " — and
you will find that the Scriptures quoted in them are
either misapplications or perversions of the true mean-
ing of the text. In fact, there is not a Scripture, how-
ever sublime and glorious its import, and however plain
and obvious its meaning, which does not become dis-
torted and perverted in Anglo-Israel hands.*

Here are one or two samples. Anglo-Israelism is
based for the most part on the false supposition of a

* See samples in Note i. of Part III.

20 FICTITIOUS HISTORIES OF THE TRIBES

separate calling and destiny of the Ten Tribes from that
of Judah : —

" The natural seed of Abraham," we are told, " is
divided in the Bible, the word Israel standing generally
for the Ten Tribes, and Judah for Two Tribes. These
divisions have separate paths appointed them to walk in
through the centuries. ' All the House of Israel wholly,'
' the whole House of Israel,' ' all the House of Israel,' have
a special work. The Ten Tribes are especially called in
the Scriptures the seed of Abraham. Sometimes ' My
chosen ' ; again, ' Mine inheritance,' and ' My servant.'
God, in referring to them in their scattered state, and of
His gathering them together, says (Isaiah xli. 8) : ' But
thou, Israel, art My servant, Jacob whom I have chosen ;
the seed of Abraham My friend — thou whom I have taken
from the ends of the earth, and called thee from the chief
men thereof, and said unto thee, Thou art My servant ; I
have chosen thee, and not cast thee away."*

I shall show later on that it is not true to say that the
word Israel stands " generally " for the Ten Tribes, and
Judah for the Two Tribes. " Generally," the name
Israel stands for all the descendants of Jacob, whose
name was changed by God Himself to " Israel," though
in the historical books, especially in i and 2 Kings,
and 2 Chronicles, and in a few passages in the Prophets,
it is used to describe the northern kingdom of the Ten
Tribes in contradistinction to the southern kingdom of
Judah. But its use in the more limited and temporary
sense as applied to the Ten Tribes can always be clearly
discerned from the context. But in order to support
the assertion that " these two divisions have separate
paths appointed them to walk through the centuries,"
it is affirmed that the designations " All the House of
Israel wholly," " the whole House of Israel," " My
chosen," " Mine inheritance," and " My servant,"

" The Ten Lost Tribes," page 12.

FICTITIOUS HISTORIES OF THE TRIBES 21

are especially applied in the Scriptures to the " Ten
Tribes " in contradistinction to Judah. Now this is
utterly baseless, as any intelligent Bible-reader will find
if he takes the trouble to look up all the passages where
these expressions are used.*

* " All the House of Israel wholly " is found in Ezek. xi. 27,
and is used of those of the southern kingdom who were already
in captivity, as contrasted with those who were still with Zedekiah
in Jerusalem and Palestine. The parallel to Ezek. xi. is Jeremiah
xxiv., where the two parts of the nation — those already in
captivity and those still in the land — are also contrasted under
the symbol of the two baskets of figs, one of which was " very
good " and the other " very evil." When Peter, for instance,
said, " Let all the House of Israel know assuredly that God hath
made this same Jesus both Lord and Christ," he addressed the
" Jews " in Palestine, as every one knows. " My chosen," or
" Whom I have chosen," apart from its use as applied to the
priests and Levites, is used sixteen times of Zion and Jerusalem,
and just as many times of the whole nation. Deut. vii. 6 ; xiv. 2 ;
Psalm xxxiii. 12 ; Isaiah xli. 8, 9— may be turned up as examples.
" My servant " is used seventeen or eighteen times in the second
half of Isaiah, and when not directly applied to the Messiah, as
in xlii. 1 ; xlix. 3-7 ; lii. 13 ; and liii. 11 — is a designation of the
whole people ; and it must be remembered that Isaiah pro-
phesied primarily " concerning Judah and Jerusalem." The
term as a designation of the people is also used five times by
Jeremiah in the same inclusive sense, i.e., of the whole nation.

PART II.

THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE TEN
"LOST" TRIBES.

ARE THE TRIBES LOST ?

BUT now discarding the whole heap of Anglo-Israel
fiction, let us glance at the question of the so-
called " lost " Ten Tribes in the light of Scripture history
and prophecy. Anglo-Israelism first of all loses the
Ten Tribes, for whom it claims a different destiny from
the "Jews," whom it supposes to be descendants of the
Two Tribes only, and then it identifies this 'lost"
Israel with the British race. But there is as little histo-
rical ground for the supposition that the Ten Tribes are
lost, in the sense in which Anglo-Israelism uses the term,
as there is Scriptural basis for a separate destiny for
" Israel " apart from " Judah."

The most superficial reader of the Old Testament
knows the origin and cause of the unfortunate schism
which took place in the history of the elect nation after
the death of Solomon. But this evil was to last only
for a limited time ; for at the very commencement of
this new and parenthetical chapter of the nation's
history it was announced by God that He would in this
way afflict the seed of David, but not for ever (i Kings
xi. 39).

A separate kingdom, comprising Ten of the Twelve
Tribes, was set up under Jeroboam in B.C. 975, and its
whole history, of about 250 years, is one long, dark tale
of usurpation, anarchy, and apostasy, unrelieved by

ARE THE TRIBES LOST ? 23

the occasional gracious visitations of national revival
which light up the annals of the Judean kingdom under
the House of David.

After many warnings and premonitory judgments
the kingdom of the Ten Tribes was finally overthrown
in the year B.C. 721, when its capital, Samaria, was
destroyed, and the bulk of the people carried captive
by the Assyrians, and made to settle in " Halah and
Habor, and by the river Gozan, and in the cities of the
Medes " (2 Kings xvii. 6 ; 1 Chron. v. 26).

Now I would beg you to notice two or three facts.

I. The kingdom of " Judah " after the schism con-
sisted not only of Judah and Benjamin, but also of the
Levites who remained faithful to the House of David
and the theocratic centre.* Even those who were in
the northern cities forsook all in order to come to
Jerusalem, as we read in 2 Chron. xi. 14 : " And Reho-
boam dwelt in Jerusalem, and built cities for defence in
Judah, . . . and the priests and Levites that were in
all Israel resorted to him out of all their coasts. For
the Levites left their suburbs and their possessions, and
came to Judah and Jerusalem ; for Jeroboam and his
sons had cast them off from executing the priest's office
unto the Lord."

II. Apart from Judah, Benjamin, and Levi, there
were in the southern kingdom of Judah after the schism
many out of the other Ten Tribes whose hearts clung to
Jehovah, and the only earthly centre of His worship
which He appointed. Immediately after the rebellion,
we read that " after them " (that is, following the
example of the Levites) " out of all the tribes of Israel,
such as set their hearts to seek Jehovah, the God of

* According to Gratz, " History of the Jews," vol. i., p. 186,
the tribe of Simeon, which was merely a subsidiary of that of
Judah, also remained faithful to the House of David ; but this
is doubtful.

24 ARE THE TRIBES LOST ?

Israel, came to Jerusalem to sacrifice to Jehovah, God
of their fathers. So they strengthened the kingdom
of Judah " (2 Chron. xi. 16).

In every reign of the kingdom of Israel numbers of
the religious and more spiritual of the Ten Tribes must
have seceded and joined " Judah." This we find to have
been more especially the case during the times of national
revival in the southern kingdom, and in the reigns of
those kings who feared and sought the Lord.

Thus, for instance, we read of Asa, that " he gathered
all Judah and Benjamin, with the strangers with them
out of Ephraim and Manasseh, and out of Simeon ; for
they fell to him out of all Israel in abundance, when they
saw that Jehovah his God was with him, so they
gathered themselves together at Jerusalem ; . . . and
they entered into a covenant to seek Jehovah God of
their fathers with all their heart, and with all their
soul " (2 Chron. xv. 9-15).

There are also several other mentions of " the children
of Israel that dwelt in the cities of Judah " and were
subjects and members of that kingdom.

III. The final overthrow of the northern kingdom
took place, as we have seen, in the year B.C. 721 ; but
when we read that the " King of Assyria took Samaria
and carried Israel away into Assyria," we are not to
understand that he cleared the whole land of all the
people, but that he took the strength of the nation with
him. There were, no doubt, many of the people left
in the land ; even as was the case after the overthrow
of the southern kingdom by the Bab3^1onians later on
(2 Kings xxv. 12). The historical proof for my assertion
is found in the fact that about a century after the fall
of Samaria, we find in the reign of Josiah some of
Manasseh and Ephraim, " and a remnant of all Israel,"
in the land, who contributed to the collection made by
the Levites for the repair of the house of the Lord in

ARE THE TRIBES LOST ? 25

Jerusalem, and joined in the celebration of the great
Passover in the eighteenth year of that zealous and
promising young king.

These were the component elements of which the
southern kingdom of " Judah " was made up, when it,
too, reached the stage, when, on account of its idolatries
and apostasy from the living God, " there was no more
remedy " (or " healing " — 2 Chron. xxxvi. 16). It
consisted, as we have seen, of Judah, Benjamin, Levi,
and many out of all the other Ten Tribes of Israel, " in
abundance."

Jerusalem was finally taken in B.C. 588, by Nebu-
chadnezzar— just 133 years after the capture of Samaria
by the Assyrians. Meanwhile the Babylonian Empire
succeeded the Assyrian. But although dynasties had
changed, and Babylon, which had sometimes, even under
the Assyrian regime, been one of the capitals of the
Empire, now took the place of Nineveh, the region over
which Nebuchadnezzar now bore rule, was the very
same over which Shalmaneser and Sargon reigned before
him, only somewhat extended.*

The exact location of the exiles of the southern
kingdom we are not told, beyond the Scripture state-
ments that all the three parties of captives carried off
by Nebuchadnezzar (that in the first invasion in the
reign of Jehoiakim, B.C. 606 ; and in the second, in the
reign of Jehoiachin, B.C. 599 ; and in the final overthrow
of Jerusalem, in the reign of Zedekiah, B.C. 588), were
taken " to Babylon " (2 Kings xxiv. and xxv. ;
Daniel i.).

Now Babylon stands not only for the city, but also
for the whole land, in which the territories of the Assyrian
Empire, and the colonies of exiles from the northern
kingdom of " Israel " were included. Thus, for instance,

* See 2 Kings xxiii. 29, where the King of Babylon is called
" King of Assyria."

26 ARE THE TRIBES LOST ?

we find Ezekiel, who was one of the 10,000 exiles carried
off by Nebuchadnezzar with Jehoiachin, by the river
Chebar in the district of Gozan — one of the very parts
where the exiles of the Ten Tribes were settled by the
Assyrians more than a century previously.

With the captivity the divisions and rivalry between
" Judah " and " Israel " were ended, and the members
of all the tribes who looked forward to a national future
were conscious not only of one common destiny, but
that that destiny was bound up with the promises to
the House of David, and with Zion or Jerusalem as its
centre, in accordance with the prophecies of Joel, Amos,
and Hosea, and of the other inspired messengers who
ministered and testified more especially among them
until the fall of Samaria. This conviction of a common
and united future, no doubt facilitated the merging
process, which cannot be said to have begun with the
captivity, for it commenced almost immediately after
the rebellion under Jeroboam, but which was certainly
strengthened by it.

Glimpses into the feeling of the members of the two
kingdoms for one another, and their hopes and aspira-
tions for unity, we get in the writings of Jeremiah,
Ezekiel, and Daniel, who prophesied during the period
of exile. The most striking prophecy in relation to
this subject is Ezek. xxxvii. 15-28 :

" The word of the Lord came again unto me, saying,
Moreover, thou son of man, take thee one stick, and write
upon it, For Judah, and for the children of Israel, his com-
panions (that is, those of Israel who before the captivity
fell away from the Ten Tribes and joined the southern
kingdom) : then take another stick, and write upon it,
For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and all the house of
Israel, his companions : and join them one to another
into one stick ; and they shall become one in thine hand."
Then follows the Divine interpretation of this symbol :
" Behold, I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand

ARE THE TRIBES LOST ? 27

of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel, his companions, and
I will put them with him (or literally, I will add them
upon, or to him), namely, with the stick of Judah, and make
them one stick, and they shall be one in My hand. And
the sticks whereon thou writest shall be in thy hand before
their eyes. And say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God,
Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the
nations, whither they be gone, and will gather them on
every side, and bring them into their own land ; and I
will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains
of Israel ; and one king shall be king to them all ; and
they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be
divided into two kingdoms any more at all : neither shall
they defile themselves any more with their idols, nor with
their detestable things, nor with any of their transgres-
sions : but I will save them out of all their dwelling-places
wherein they have sinned, and will cleanse them ; so
shall they be My people, and I will be their God. And
My servant David shall be king over them ; and they all
shall have one shepherd ; they shall also walk in My judg-
ments, and observe My statutes, and do them. And they
shall dwell in the land which I have given unto Jacob My
servant, wherein your fathers dwelt ; and they shall dwell
therein, they, and their children, and their children's
children for ever : and David My servant shall be their
prince for ever " (Ezek. xxxvii. 20-25, r.v.).

Now let it be remembered that the foreground and
commencement of the restoration and future of this great
prophecy, especially to all the exiles at that time, was
the restoration from Babylon, or " Assyria," as it was
sometimes called.

As a matter of fact, these prophecies, and particularly
Ezek. xxxvii. 15-28, set forth not one single act or event,
but a process which, commencing with the prophet's
own time, extends into the distant future, and ends in
the final goal of the blessed condition of Israel under
Messiah's reign in the millennial period. Thus, while the
full visible manifestation of that unity, symbolised by

28 ARE THE TRIBES LOST ?

the two sticks becoming one in the prophet's hand, will
only be realised after the final regathering of the whole
nation in their own land, and when the true " David,"
namely, Messiah, " David's greater Son," shall be both
King and Prince over them for ever — the merging and
uniting process commenced, as a matter of fact, before
the Babylonian captivity, was accelerated in the exile,
when in their like sorrows and troubles the hearts of
the people were doubtless drawn to one another in
mutual sympathy and love.

The point, however, to be noticed in this and other
prophecies is the clear announcement which they con-
tained that the purpose of God in the schism — as a
punishment on the House of David — was now at an
end, and that henceforth there was but one common
hope and one destiny for the whole Israel of the Twelve
Tribes — whether they previously belonged to the
northern kingdom of the Ten Tribes, or to the southern
kingdom of the Two Tribes — and that this common hope
and destiny was centred in Him Who is the Lion of the
Tribe of Judah, and the rightful Heir and descendant
of David.

In like manner Jeremiah, in his great prophecy of
the restoration and future blessing (chaps, xxx. and
xxxi.), links the destinies of "Judah" and "Israel," or
Israel and Judah together ; and speaks of one common
experience from that time on for the whole people.
" For lo, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will turn
again the captivity of My people Israel and Judah,
saith the Lord : and I will cause them to return to the
land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall possess
it. And these are the words that the Lord spake
concerning Israel and Judah " (Jer. xxx. 3, 4, r.v.).

Daniel also, towards the end of the seventy years'
captivity, includes not only the men of Judah and
inhabitants of Jerusalem in his intercessory prayer, but

ARE THE TRIBES LOST ? 29

" all Israel that are near, or far off, from all the countries
whither Thou hast driven them," who, he confesses,
were alike involved in sin and judgment, and equally
cast on the mercy of God on the ground of promises
made to the fathers.

Now let us go a step farther. Just seventy years had
elapsed since the first band of captives were carried
away to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar in the year
B.C. 606. " That the word of the Lord by the mouth
of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the
spirit of Cyrus, King of Persia, that he issued a pro-
clamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also
in writing, saying : Thus saith Cyrus, King of Persia, the
Lord God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of
the earth ; and He hath charged me to build Him a
house at Jerusalem that is in Judah. Who is there
among you of all His people ? His God be with him,
and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah."

This proclamation, which was in reference to all the
people " of the Lord God of heaven," was issued in the
year B.C. 536, two years after the conquest of Babylon
by Cyrus, and was, we are told, promulgated "throughout
all his kingdom," which was the same as that over which
Nebuchadnezzar and his successors reigned before
him, only again somewhat extended, even as the
kingdom of Babylon was identical with that of Assyria,
as already pointed out. Indeed, Cyrus and Darius I.
are called indifferently by the sacred historians by the
title of " King of Persia " (Ezra iv. 5), " King of Babylon "
(Ezra v. 13), and " King of Assyria " (Ezra vi. 22).

The first response to this proclamation was a caravan
of " forty-two thousand three hundred and sixty, beside
their servants and their maids, of whom there were
seven thousand three hundred and thirty-seven, and
two hundred singing men and singing women," who,
under the leadership of Zerubbabel, who was a lineal

30 ARE THE TRIBES LOST ?

descendant of the royal house of David, and of Joshua
the high priest, made their way from " Babylon to
Jerusalem."

Now the leading spirits of this returned party of
exiles were, no doubt, " the chief of the fathers of Judah
and Benjamin, and the priests and Levites " ; at the
same time they included " all those " from all the
other tribes without distinction, " whose spirit God had
raised to go up to build the house of the Lord, which is
in Jerusalem " (Ezra i. 5).

They are no longer counted after their tribal origin,
but in families, and after the cities to which they
originally belonged, which, for the most part, are not
easy to identify ; hence it is difficult to say how many
belonged to "Judah," and how many to " Israel "—but
that there were a good many in this company of those
who belonged to the northern kingdom of" the Ten
Tribes, is incidentally brought out by the mention of
two hundred and twenty-three men of Ai and Bethel
alone. Now, Bethel was the very centre of the ancient
rival idolatrous worship instituted by Jeroboam, and,
though on the boundary of Benjamin, belonged to
" Ephraim."

Betv/een the first organised large party of immigrants
under Zerubbabel and Joshua, and the second under
Ezra, a period of fifty-eight years elapsed ; but we are
not to suppose that in the interval there were no addi-
tions to the community, which now represented the
whole united nation in Jerusalem. We read, for instance,
incidentally, in Zech. vi. 9, 15, of a party of four pro-
minent men who arrived in Jerusalem in B.C. 519 as
representatives of the "captivity" (that is, of those who
still remained in those parts where they were exiles),
bringing with them a present of silver and gold for the
Temple, the building of which was resumed about five
months before, as a result of the stirring appeals of

ARE THE TRIBES LOST ? 31

Haggai. This shows ^hat there was continual inter-
course and communication between the community in
Palestine and the majority of the people who were still
" in Babylon " ; and we may be certain that little
parties and individuals, " whose spirit God had raised,"
continually found their way to the holy city.

In B.C. 458, Ezra, " the scribe of the law of the God of
heaven," in accordance with the decree of Artaxerxes
Longimanus, organised another large caravan of those
whose hearts were made willing to return to the land
of their fathers. Part of this most favourable royal
proclamation was as follows : "I make a decree that
all they of the people of Israel, and of his priests and
Levites in my realm, which are minded of their own free
will to go up to Jerusalem, go up with thee " ; and in
response to it " this Ezra went up from Babylon, . . .
and there went up (with him) of the children of Israel,
and of the priests and of the Levites, and the singers
and the porters, and the Nethinim, unto Jerusalem in
the seventh year of Artaxerxes the king " (Ezra vii. 7).

This party consisted of about one thousand eight
hundred families ; and apart from the priests, Levites,
and Nethinim, was made up of " the children of Israel,"
irrespective of tribal distinctions, from all parts of the
realm of " Babylon," or Assyria, now under the sway
of the Medo-Persians.

The narratives contained in the books of Ezra and
Nehemiah, under whose administration the position of
the restored remnant became consolidated, cover a
period of about 115 years, and bring us down to about
B.C. 420. Jewish history during the second period of
the Persian supremacy is wrapped somewhat in ob-
scurity ; but we know that nearly throughout the whole
period of its existence it was more or less friendly to
the Hebrews. There was certainly no revocation of the
edicts of Cyrus and of Artaxerxes permitting those

32 ARE THE TRIBES LOST ?

" which were minded of their own free will " to go and
join their brethren in Palestine ; and that there were
many other large and small parties of exiles who did so,
subsequent to those mentioned in Ezra and Nehemiah,
may be taken for granted.*

Anyhow, it is a fact that the remnant in the land
grew and grew until, about a century and a half later,
in the times of the Maccabees, and again about a century
and a half later still, in the time of our Lord, we find
" the Jews " in Palestine, a comparatively large nation,
numbering millions ; while from the time of the down-
fall of the Persian Empire we hear but very little more
of the Israelite exiles in ancient Assyria or Babylon.

By the conquest of Alexander, who to this day is a
great favourite among the scattered nation, the regions
of ancient Babylonia and Media were brought com-
paratively near, and a highway opened between East
and West. From about this time settlements of " Jews "
began to multiply in Asia Minor, Cyprus, Crete, on the
coasts and islands of the ^Egean ; in Macedonia and
other parts of Southern Europe ; in Egypt and the
whole northern coast of Africa ; whilst some made their
way further and further eastward as far as India and
China. There is not the least possibility of doubt that
many of the settlements of the Diaspora in the time of
our Lord — both north, south, and west, as well as east
of Palestine — were made up of those who had never
returned to the land of their fathers since the time of
the Assyrian and Babylonian exiles, and who were
not only descendants of Judah, as Anglo-Israelism
ignorantly presupposes, but of all the Twelve Tribes
scattered abroad (James i. i).

As a matter of fact, long before the destruction of

* " It is inconceivable," says Dr. Pusey, " that, as the material
prosperity of Palestine returned, even many of the Ten Tribes
should not have returned to their country."

ARE THE TRIBES LOST ? 33

the second Temple by Titus, we read of currents and
counter-currents in the dispersion of the " Jewish "
people. Thus Artaxerxes III., Ochus, on his way to
re-conquer Egypt, " having taken Apodasmus in Judea,
conveyed the Jewish population into Hyrcania near the
Caspian Sea." When he made himself master of Egypt
we read of his finding Jews there, and, being incensed
against them on account of a stubborn defence against
him of places entrusted to their keeping, " he sent part
of them into Hyrcania, in the neighbourhood of the
country which the tribes already inhabited, and left the
rest at Babylon " ; while soon after many thousands
were taken to Egypt by Alexander ; and Ptolemy Soter,
one of his chief generals, who had become King of
Egypt, and had invaded Syria and taken Jerusalem in
B.C. 301, carried off one hundred thousand of them,
and forced them to settle chiefly in Alexandria and
Cvrene.

THE CONDITION OF THINGS AT THE
TIME OF CHRIST.

To summarise the state of things in connection with
the Hebrew race at the time of Christ, it was briefly
this :—

I. For some six centuries before, ever since the partial
restoration in the days of Cyrus and his successors, the
descendants of Abraham were no longer known as
divided into tribes, but as one people, although up to
the time of the destruction of the second Temple, tribal
and family genealogies were for the most part pre-
served, especially among those who were settled in
the land.

c

34 THE CONDITION OF THINGS

II. Part of the nation was in Palestine, but by far
the larger number were scattered far and wide, and
formed innumerable communities in many different
lands, north and south, east and west.* But wherever
dispersed and to whatever tribe they may have belonged,
they all looked to Palestine and Jerusalem as their national
centre, and, with the exception of those (and they were
no doubt many) who had ceased to cherish " the hope
of Israel " and were gradually assimilating with their
Gentile neighbours, were all one in heart with their
brethren in the Holy Land. " They felt they were of
the same stock, stood on the same ground, cherished
the same memories, grew up under the same institutions,
and anticipated the same future. They had one common
centre of worship in Jerusalem, which they upheld by
their offerings ; and they made pilgrimages thither
annually in great numbers at the high festivals." Thus
Philo could represent to the Roman Emperor Caligula
that " Jerusalem ought not to be considered only as
the metropolis of Judea, but as the centre of a nation
dispersed in infinite places, who were able to supply
him with potent succours for his defence. He reckoned
among the places that were still stored with Jews, the
isles of Cyprus and Candia, Egypt, Macedonia, and
Bithynia, to which he added the empire of the Persians,
and all the cities of the East, except that of Babylon,
from whence they were then expelled."

There is ample confirmation on this point in the New
Testament. Thus, for instance, we are incidentally
told in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles,
that among the representatives from the Diaspora who
were found in Jerusalem at that memorable feast of

* Thus Strabo (quoted by Josephus in "Ant." xiv. 7, 2) could
already say in his day that " these Jews had already gotten into
all cities ; and it is hard to find a place in the habitable earth
that hath not admitted this race and is not mastered by it."

AT THE TIME OF CHRIST 35

Pentecost — who were doubtless there also during the
previous Passover, when the crucifixion took place —
were " Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and dwellers
in Mesopotamia, in Judea and Cappadocia, in Pontus
and Asia, in Phyrgia and Pamphylia, in Egypt and
parts of Libya and Cyrene, and sojourners from Rome,
Cretans and Arabians " : all of them either Jews or
proselytes miraculously hearing in their own tongues the
mighty works of God.

Here it is to be noted that, at the commencement 01
the Christian era, we find in this motley and cosmo-
politan Jewish crowd representatives from Israelitish
settlements in the very parts where they were carried
by the Assyrians and Babylonians some seven centuries
before, but who are all called "Jews," and all alike
regarded Jerusalem as their national metropolis*

III. The name of " Jew " and " Israelite " became
synonymous terms from about the time of the Captivity.
It is one of the absurd fallacies of Anglo-Israelism to
presuppose that the term " Jew " stands for a bodily
descendant of " Judah." It stands Joy all those from
among the sons of Jacob who acknowledged themselves, or
were considered, subjects of the theocratic kingdom of
Judah, which they expected to be established by the
promised " Son of David " — the Lion of the tribe of
Judah — whose reign is to extend not only over " all the

* " Everywhere we have distinct notices of these wanderers,"
says Dr. Edersheim, " and everywhere they appear as in closest
connection with the Rabbinical hierarchy of Palestine. Thus
the Mishnah, in an extremely curious section, tells how on
Sabbaths the Jewesses of Arabia might wear their long veils,
and those of India the kerchiefs round their head, customary in
those countries, without incurring the guilt of desecrating the
holy day by needlessly carrying what, in the eyes of the law,
would be a burden ; while in a rubric for the Day of Atonement
we have it noted that the dress which the High Priest wore
' between the evenings ' of the great feast — that is, as afternoon
darkened into evening — was of most costly Indian stuff."

36 THE CONDITION OF THINGS

tribes of the land," but also "from sea to sea, and from
the river unto the ends of the earth."

" That the name ' Jew,' " writes a Continental Bible
scholar, " became general for all Israelites who were
anxious to preserve their theocratic nationality, was
the more natural, since the political independence of
the Ten Tribes was destroyed." Yes, and without any
hope of a restoration to a separate national existence.
What hopes and promises they had were, as we have
seen, linked with the Kingdom of Judah and the House
of David.

Anglo-Israelism teaches that members of the Ten
Tribes are never called " Jews," and that " Jews " are
not " Israelites " ; but both assertions are false. Who
were they that came back to the land after the
" Babylonian " exile ? Anglo-Israelites say they were
only the exiles from the southern kingdom of Judah,
and call them " Jews." I have already shown this to
be a fallacy, but I might add the significant fact that
in the Book of Ezra this remnant is only called eight
times by the name " Jews," and no less than forty times
by the name " Israel." In the Book of Nehemiah they
are called " Jews " eleven times, and " Israel " twenty-
two times. As to those who remained behind in the
one hundred and twenty-seven provinces of the Persian
Empire, which included all the territories of ancient
Assyria, Anglo-Israelites would say they were of the
kingdom of " Israel " ; but in the Book of Esther,
where we get a vivid glimpse of them at a period subse-
quent to the partial restoration under Zerubbabel and
Joshua, they are called forty-five times by the name
" Jews," and not once by the name " Israel " !

In the New Testament the same people who are called
" Jews " one hundred and seventy-four times are also
called " Israel " no fewer than seventy-five times.
Anglo-Israelism asserts that a " Jew " is only a descen-

AT THE TIME OF CHRIST 37

dant of Judah, and is not an " Israelite " ; but Paul
says more than once : "I am a man which am a Jew."
Yet he says : " For I also am an Israelite." " Are they
Israelites ? so am I " (Acts xxi. 39 ; xxii. 3 ; Rom. xi.
1 ; 2 Cor. xi. 22 ; Phil. iii. 5).

Our Lord was of the House of David, and of the tribe
of Judah after the flesh — " a Jew " ; yet it says that it
is of "Israel" that He came, who is "over all, God
blessed for ever " (Rom. ix. 4, 5). Devout Anna was a
" Jewess " in Jerusalem, yet she was "of the tribe of
Aser." But enough on this point.

IV. From the time of the return of the first remnant
after the Babylonian exile, sacred historians, prophets,
apostles, and the Lord Himself, regarded the " Jews,"
whether in the land or in " Dispersion," as representa-
tatives of " all Israel," and the only people in the line
of the covenants and the promises which God made with
the fathers.

At the dedication of the Temple, which was at last
finished " on the third day of the month Adar, which
was in the sixth year in the reign of Darius the king,"
they offered "for a sin-offering for all Israel, twelve
he-goats according to the number of the tribes of Israel "
(Ezra vi. 17).

Similarly, on the arrival of Ezra with the new caravan
of immigrants, they " offered burnt-offerings unto the
God of Israel, twelve bullocks for all Israel, . . . and
twelve he-goats for sin-offering " (Ezra viii. 35), showing
that the returned exiles regarded themselves as the
nucleus and representatives of the whole nation. In
the post-Exilic prophets we have no longer two king-
doms, but one people — one in interests and destiny,
although they had formerly for a time been divided.

To show that the revived nation was made up of
members of the Northern as well as the Southern king-
doms, the prophet Zechariah calls them by the com-

38 THE CONDITION OF THINGS

prehensive name of " Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem "
(Zech. i. 19) ; or, " the house of Judah and the house
of Joseph " (Zech. x. 6). In the prophecy occasioned
by the question addressed by the deputation from Bethel,
in reference to the continuation of the observance of the
fasts, he says : " And it shall come to pass that as ye
were a curse among the nations, 0 house of Judah and
house of Israel, so will I save you, and ye shall be a bless-
ing ; fear not, and let your hands be strong " (Zech.
viii. 13).

Here the formerly two houses are included ; together
they are for a time among the nations " a curse," and
together they shall be saved, and be " a blessing."*

* Some have supposed that the 14th verse of Zechariah xi. —
"And I cut asunder mine other (or 'second') staff, even Bandz
{or ' Binders '), to destroy the brotherhood between Judah and
between Israel " — foreshadowed another division between the
Ten Tribes and the Two Tribes subsequent to the partial
restoration from Babylon, and after the coalescence of the
people before and in the Exile — as a punishment for their re-
jection of their true Shepherd the Messiah, which is symbolically
set forth in that chapter. But this is a mistake. The fnnK
(achavah), " Brotherhood," which was to be destroyed " between
Judah and between Israel," is not to be understood in the sense
" that the unity of the nation would be broken up again in a
manner similar to that in the days of Rehoboam, and that two
hostile nations would be formed out of one people," although
the disruption of national unity which took place in the days
of Jeroboam may be referred to as an illustration of that which
would occur again in a more serious form. " The schism of
Jeroboam had a weakening and disintegrating effect on the
nation of the Twelve Tribes, and the dissolution of the brother
hood here spoken of was to result in still greater evil and ruin ;
for Israel, deprived of the Good Shepherd, was to fall into the
power of the ' foolish,' or ' evil,' shepherd, who is depicted at
the close of the prophecy."

The preposition y% (bain), which is twice repeated, has the
meaning not only of " between," but also of " among," and the
formula, House of Judah and House of Israel, or simply, " Judah
and Israel," is, as we have had again and again to notice, this
prophet's inclusive designation of the whole ideally (and to a
large extent already actually) reunited one people. I think,
therefore, that we may rightly render the sentence " to destroy

AT THE TIME OF CHRIST 39

Malachi, nearly a century later, when the people in
the land had become a prosperous nation, and when,
in consequence.the majority was rapidly falling into a
state of religious formality and godlessness, addresses
them as " Israel " or " Jacob," which surely includes
all his descendants, in contrast to Esau and his descen-
dants (Mai. i. 1-3).

THE TESTIMONY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

THAT THE " JEWS " ARE REPRESENTATIVE OF

" ALL ISRAEL."

In the last words of the last of the post-Exilic pro-
phets we have the expression " all Israel " addressed to
the people in the land ; and then the long period of
silence sets in, lasting about four centuries, during parts
of which Jewish national history is lost somewhat in
obscurity. When the threads of that history are taken
up again in the New Testament, what do we find ? Is
there one hint or reference in the whole book to an Israel
apart from " that nation " of the " Jews," to whom, and
of whom, the Lord and His apostles speak ? There is,
indeed, reference and mention of the Diaspora, " the
dispersed among the Gentiles " (John vii. 35), forming,
as we have seen, the greater part of the nation, and

the brotherhood among Judah and among Israel " — that is to
say, among the entire nation. The consequence of it would be
the fulfilment of the threat in the 9th verse : " Let them which
are left eat every one the flesh of another " — solemn and awful
words, which had their first literal fulfilment in the party
feuds and mutualy destructive strife, and in the terrible
" dissolution of every bond of brotherhood and of our common
nature, which made the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans a
proverb for horror, and precipitated its destruction."

40 TESTIMONY OF the NEW TESTAMENT THAT

some of them still settled in the ancient regions of
Assyria and Babylon ; but wherever they were, they
are all interchangeably called " Jews," or " Israelites, '
who regarded Jerusalem, with which they were in con-
stant communication, as the centre, not only of their
religion, but of their national hopes and destiny.

The " Israelites " who in the time of Christ were dis-
persed among the Parthians, Medes, and Elamites (Acts
ii.), were as much one with the sojourners in Egypt,
Greece, and Rome, as the " Jews " in Bagdad, Persia,
or on the Caspian Sea to-day, are one with their wander-
ing brethren in London, Berlin, New York, or Australia,
although they then, as now (apart from the Hebrew,
which ever remains the sacred tongue, and thoroughly
understood only by the minority), spoke different
languages and dressed differently, and conformed to
different social and family customs.

But let me give you a few definite passages from the
New Testament in justification of my statement that
the Lord Jesus and the apostles, equally with the post-
Exilic prophets centuries before, regarded the " Jews "
as representatives of " all Israel," and as the only people-
in the line of the " covenant, and the promises which God
made unto the fathers."

(a) In Matthew x. we have the record of the choice,
and of the first commission given to the apostles.
" These twelve," we read, " Jesus sent forth, and com-
manded them, saying, Go not into the way of the
Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye
not ; but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
Of course, the merest child knows that this journey of
the twelve did not extend beyond the limits of Palestine,
but the " Jews " dwelling in it are regarded as the house
of Israel, although many members of that " house "
were also scattered in other lands.

In this charge of the Lord to the apostles, we see also,

"JEWS " are REPRESENTATIVE of "ALL ISRAEL" 41

by the way, in what sense Israel is regarded as " lost."
Now Anglo-Israelites are very fond of this word, but
they use it in an unbiblical and unspiritual sense. The
Ten Tribes, like the other Two, were, in the time of
Christ, even as they still are, " lost " ; but not because
they have forgotten their national or tribal identity,
but because they " all like sheep have gone astray, and
have turned every one to his own way." Or, as Jeremiah
pathetically puts it : " My people hath been lost sheep ;
their shepherds [their false teachers and leaders] have
caused them to go astray ; they have turned them away
on the mountains ; they have gone from mountain to
hill ; they have forgotten [not their national origin,
but] their resting place " — viz., Jehovah, who is the
true dwelling-place of His people in all generations. It
was this terrible fact of their spiritually lost condition
which again and again moved our Lord Jesus to com-
passion for those multitudes which followed Him,
because they were " distressed " or " plagued," and
were scattered abroad as sheep not having a shepherd.

(b) On the first day of Pentecost, Peter, with the
eleven, addressed the " men of Judaea," and the great
multitude from among the dispersed " Jews," as "Ye
men of Israel," and wound up his powerful speech with
the words : " Let all the house of Israel, therefore, know
assuredly that God hath made Him both Lord and
Christ — this Jesus whom ye crucified " (Acts ii. 14, 36).
In chapter hi. of Acts, as "all the people ran together
unto them in the porch that is called Solomon's, greatly
wondering," at the notable miracle in the name of Jesus
Christ of Nazareth, Peter said : " Ye men of Israel,
why marvel ye at this Man ? . . . The God of Abraham,
and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath
glorified His servant Jesus, whom ye delivered up and
denied before the face of Pilate when he had determined
to release Him. . . . Repent ye, therefore, and turn

42 TESTIMONY of the NEW TESTAMENT THAT

again, that your sins may be blotted out, that so there
may come seasons of refreshing from the presence of
the Lord. . . . Ye are the sons of the prophets and of the
covenant which God made with your fathers, saying unto
Abraham, ' And in thy seed shall the nations of the earth
be blessed.' "

From Acts xiii. onward we find Paul among the
" Jews " in the Dispersion ; and how does he address
them ? By the same name as Peter addressed their
brethren in Palestine : " Men of Israel, . . . the God
of this people Israel chose our fathers, and exhorted the
people when they sojourned in the land of Egypt "
(Acts xiii. 16, 17) ; and when he was at last brought to
Rome " and gathered the chief of the Jews " in that
city to him, he assured them that he had neither done
anything " against the people, or the customs of our
fathers," nor did he come to Rome " to accuse my
nation," but " because of the hope of Israel am I bound
by this chain " — namely, " the hope of the promise
made of God unto our fathers ; as he had previously
explained before Festus and Agrippa — unto which our
Twelve Tribes, earnestly serving God night and day,
hope to attain " (Acts xxviii. 17-20 ; xxvi. 6, 7).

Paul knew of no " lost Ten Tribes," but on his testi-
mony the " Jews " in Palestine and in the Dispersion
were the " Israel " of all the Twelve Tribes, to whom the
" hope of the promise made of God unto the fathers "
belonged.

(c) And, as it is in the Gospels, and in the Acts of the
Apostles, so also in the Epistles. It would be easy to
multiply passages, but one more must suffice.

The ix., x., and xi. of Romans form the prophetic, or
" dispensational," section of that great epistle, and was
written for the special instruction of Gentle believers
in the " mystery " of God with Israel. Now I cannot,
of course, stop here to give an analysis of that wonderful

"JEWS " are REPRESENTATIVE of "ALL ISRAEL" 43

and comprehensive scripture, which is also a vindication
of God's ways with man ; but there is not a hint or
suggestion in it of a " lost Israel," apart from the one
nation whose whole history he summarises from the
beginning to the end, and which is now, alas ! divided
into the small minority — the " remnant according to
the election of grace," who believe, and the majority
who believe not, until the day of grace for the whole
nation shall come, and " so all Israel shall be saved,
even as it is written, ' There shall come out of Zion the
Deliverer ; He shall turn away ungodliness from
Jacob.' "

But in the touching introduction to this section
(Rom. ix. 1-6), in which the apostle gives utterance to
his " great sorrow and unceasing pain of heart " because
of the unbelief of his own nation, " his brethren and his
kinsmen according to the flesh," for whose sake he had
been wishing, if it were possible, even to be himself
" anathema from Christ " — how does he call these
unbelieving " Jews " who had rejected their Messiah,
and were blindly persecuting His servants ? Here are
His words : " Who are Israelites ; whose is the adoption,
and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the
law, and the service of God, and the promises ; whose
are the fathers, and of whom is Christ as concerning the
flesh, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen."

Now I must try to draw this very long letter to an
end. I have not followed Anglo-Israelism in all its
crooked paths of misinterpretation of Scripture and
history ; I have only shown you the baselessness of its
foundations, and that the premises upon which the whole
theory rests are misleading and false. I have also given
you a summary of the true history of the tribes, which
I trust may prove helpful to you in the study of God's
Word ; and the conclusion at which you and every
unbiassed person must arrive on a careful examination

44 EARLY MISCONCEPTIONS AND CONFUSION

of the facts which I have adduced is, that the whole
supposition of " lost tribes," in the sense in which
Anglo-Israelism uses the term, is a fancy which originated
in ignorance ; and that " the Jews " are the whole,
and the only national Israel, representing not only the
' Two Tribes," but " all the Twelve Tribes " who were
" scattered abroad."

EARLY MISCONCEPTIONS AND CONFUSION ON
THE QUESTION OF THE TEN TRIBES.

I have thought it necessary to enter all the more fully
into this point, because even some otherwise sober-
minded teachers and writers, who are not Anglo-
Israelites, have fallen into some confusion in dealing
with this subject ; and no wonder, for already Josephus,
who vaguely locates a separate multitude belonging to
the Ten Tribes somewhere beyond the Euphrates
(" Antiq." xi. i, 2) — a Jewish tradition which locates a
mighty kingdom of the Ten Tribes beyond the fabled
miraculous river Sambation, which no one can cross
because it throws up stones all the week, and only
rests on the Sabbath ; and the Talmud (Jer. Sanhedrin,
29, a), which speaks of three localities whither they had
been banished, viz., the district around the above
wonderful Sambation, Daphne, near Antioch ; and the
third locality could neither be seen nor named because
it was continually hidden by a cloud — all these show

ON THE QUESTION OF THE TEN TRIBES 45

how early people's minds became muddled on this
subject.*

Coming to the legends about the Ten Tribes in more
modern times, Eldad Ben Mahli Ha Dani came forward
in the ninth century claiming to give specific details of
the contemporary existence of the Ten Tribes and of
their location at that time.

" Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher were," according to
him, " in Havilah ; Zebulun and Reuben in the mountains
of Paran ; Ephraim, and half of Manasseh, in South Arabia ;
Simeon, and the other half of Manasseh, in the land of
Chazars (?)." According to him, therefore, " the Ten Tribes
were settled in parts of Southern Arabia, or perhaps
Abyssinia, in conformity with the identification of Havilah.
The connection of this view with that of the Jewish origin
of Islam is obvious ; and David Reubeni revived the view
in stating that he was related to the king of the tribes of
Reuben situated in Khaibar in North Arabia.

" According to Abraham Farisol, the remaining tribes
were in the desert, on the way to Mecca, near the Red
Sea ; but he himself identifies the River Ganges with the
River Gozan, and assumes that the Beni-Israel of India
are the descendants of the Lost Ten Tribes. The Ganges,
thus identified by him with the River Sambation, divides
the Indians from the Jews. The confusion between
Ethiopia and Farther India, which existed in the minds of
the ancients and mediaeval geographers, caused some
writers to place the Lost Ten Tribes in Abyssinia. Abraham
Yagel, in the sixteenth century, did so, basing his con-

* It has also been supposed that the references by Agrippa in
lis remarkable oration (reported by Josephus, " Wars," ii.,
xvi. 4) — to those who dwelt " as far as beyond the Euphrates,"
and to " those of your nation who dwell in Adiabene," upon
whom the Jews might rely for help in their struggle against
Rome, but would not be permitted by the Parthians to render
them any assistance — were to some unknown settlements
belonging to the Ten Tribes. But this is a mistake. These
dwellers in Adiabene might or might not have belonged to the
Ten Tribes, but they formed part of the known Dispersion and
of " your nation " — the Jews.

46 EARLY MISCONCEPTIONS AND CONFUSION

elusions on the accounts of David Reubeni and Eldad
Ha Dani. It is probable that some of the reports of the
Falashas led to this identification. According to Yagel,
messengers were sent to these colonists in the time of
Pope Clement VII., some of whom died, while the rest
brought back tidings of the greatness of the tribes and
their very wide territories. Yagel quotes a Christian
traveller, Vincent of Milan, who was a prisoner in the
hands of the Turks for twenty-five years, and who went
as far as Fez, and thence to India, where he found the
River Sambation, and a number of Jews dressed in silk
and purple. They were ruled by seven kings, and upon
being asked to pay tribute to the Sultan Salim, they
declared that they had never paid tribute to any sultan
or king. It is just possible that this may have some
reference to the ' Sasanam ' or the Jews of Cochin.

" It is further stated that in 1630 a Jew of Salonica
travelled to Ethiopia, to the land of Sambation ; and that
in 1646 one Baruch, travelling in Persia, claimed to have
met a man named Malkiel, of the tribe of Naphtali, and
brought back a letter from the king of the children of
Moses : this letter was seen by Azulai. It was afterwards
reprinted in Jacob Saphir's book of travels (Eben Sappir,
1. 98).

" So much interest was taken in this account that in
1 83 1 a certain Baruch ben Samuel, of Pinsk, was sent to
search for the children of Moses in Yemen. He travelled
fifteen days in the wilderness, and declared he met Danites
feeding flocks of sheep. So, too, in 1854, a certain Amram
Ma'arabi set out from Safed in search of the Ten Tribes ;
and he was followed in 1857 by David Ashkenazi, who
crossed over through Suakin to make enquiries about the
Jews of Abyssinia." *

But all these are legends and fancies. " We in this
twentieth century," to quote the words of a Christian
writer, " to whom there is no longer any part of the
earth unknown, know that in no country whatever,

* Jewish Encyclopaedia.

ON THE QUESTION OF THE TEN TRIBES 47

however far from civilisation it may be, do the Ten
Tribes dwell. The 'travellers' tales' have been proved
to be false ; the Ten Tribes, as such, do not exist."
In this connection I may quote Professor A. Neubauer,
a prominent learned Jew, who sums up his studies in a
series of illuminating articles on the subject which will
be found in Vol. I. of The Jewish Quarterly Review, with
these words : —

' Where are the Ten Tribes ? We can only answer,
Nowhere. Neither in Africa, nor in India, China, Persia,
Kurdistan, the Caucasus, or Bokhara. We have said that
a great part of them remained in Palestine, partly mixing
with the Samaritans, and partly amalgamating with those
who returned from the captivity of Babylon. With them
many came also from the cities of the Medes, and many,
no doubt, adhered to the Jewish religion which was con-
tinued in Mesopotamia during the period of the Second
Temple."

Some Christian writers cling to the view that while
some of the " Ten Tribes " amalgamated with the
" Jews," there is nevertheless a distinct people some-
where, who are descendants of the Israel of the ancient
northern kingdom, which is to be brought to light in
the future, and, together with " Judah," will be restored
to Palestine, and enter into the enjoyment of the pro-
mises. Thus the Nestorians, who inhabit the inacces-
sible mountains of Kurdistan (which is part of ancient
Assyria), the Afghans, the North American Indians,
and even the Japanese have been variously identified
as that people ; but this view rests upon what I believe
to be a misconception of the meaning and scope of some
of the prophecies.

It may be true that the Nestorians, and the Afghans,
and some other Eastern tribes are descendants of the
original Israelitish exiles in Assyria, but having more
or less mixed themselves up by inter-marriage with the

48 THE TESTIMONY OF PROPHECY

surrounding nations, and having given up the dis-
tinctive national rites and ordinances, such as circum-
cision, the observance of the Sabbath, etc., they have,
like many " Jews " in modern times (who gradually
assimilate with Gentile nations), cut themselves off from
the hope of Israel, and are no longer in the line of the
purpose which God has in and through that " peculiar "
and separate people.

THE TESTIMONY OF PROPHECY IN THE
LIGHT OF HISTORY.

In conclusion let me very briefly call your attention
to the remarkable prophecy in Amos ix., which will
show you that the view which I have enunciated in my
letter is the only one in keeping with the sure word of
prophecy.

The prophet Amos, though himself a Judean, his
native village, Tekoa, being about twelve miles south
of Jerusalem, was commissioned by God to prophesy
more particularly to the northern or Ten - Tribed
kingdom ; and for that purpose he went and took up
his abode in Bethel, which was the centre of the idola-
trous worship set up by Jeroboam in opposition to the
worship and service of the divinely-appointed sanctuary
in Jerusalem. There his duty was to announce the
coming judgment of God on the Israel of the Ten Tribes,
on account of their apostasy. The last paragraph of
his book (chap. ix. 8-15), uttered not more than about
seventy years before the final overthrow of Samaria in
B.C. 721, is one of the most remarkable and compre-
hensive prophecies in the Old Testament, and this is
the inspired forecast of the history of the Ten-Tribed

IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY 49

kingdom which is given in it : " Behold, the eyes of the
Lord God are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy
it from off the face of the earth ; saving that I will not
utterly destroy the house of Jacob, saith the Lord. For
lo, I will command and I will sift {or ' toss ') the house
of Israel among all the nations, like as com is sifted {or
' tossed ' about) in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall
upon the earth. All the sinners of thy people shall die
by the sword, which say : The evil shall not overtake or
prevent us."

Here, then, we have the whole subject as to what
was to become of the Ten Tribes in a nutshell.

{a) First, as a kingdom, they were to be destroyed
from off the face of the earth, never to be restored ; for
its very existence as a separate kingdom was only per-
mitted of God for a definite period as a punishment on
the house of David : and when, after a period of about
two hundred and fifty years of unbroken apostasy, it
was finally broken up by the Assyrians, there was an
end of it, without any promise of a future independent
political existence.

{b) But when it was destroyed as a kingdom, what
became of them as a people ? This prophecy tells us :
" Saving that I will not utterly destroy the house of
Jacob, saith the Lord " — that is, they are to return to
the house of Jacob. They are to form part of the one
family made up of all the descendants of Jacob without
distinction of tribes. But as one house of Jacob, or
" of Israel " (as the next verse interchangeably calls
them), something terrible and unique is to befall them ;
and what is it ? To be " lost " some two thousand six
hundred years, and then to be identified with the Anglo-
Saxon race ? Oh no ! this is what was to happen :
" For lo, I will command and I will sift (or ' toss ') the
house of Israel among all nations, even as corn is tossed
about in a sieve " — or, in the words of Hosea, another

D

50 THE TESTIMONY OF PROPHECY

prophet, who spoke primarily to the Ten Tribes, " My
God will cast them away " (not for ever, as the whole
book shows, but for a time), " because they did not
hearken unto Him ; and they shall be wanderers among
the nations."

I draw your attention all the more to this point,
because a good deal has been made by some writers of
the expression in Isa. xi., where Israel is called " out-
cast," from which they infer that " Israel " is to be
found somewhere in one place, in contradistinction to
the " dispersed of Judah." But this is a fallacy. In
Jer. xxx. Judah and Israel are together called " an
outcast," but it by no means implies that they are
therefore to be sought for and found in one particular
region of the world.

It is clear from the prophecies of Amos and Hosea,
which, as we have seen, were primarily addressed to the
Ten Tribes, that if they were in the first instance " cast
out " by force from their own land, as the word in the
Hebrew means, it was with a view that they should be
" tossed about " and " wander " among " all nations."

Now note, Anglo-Israelism tells you to identify the
Ten Tribes with one nation ; but if you are on the line
of Scripture and true history, you will seek for them
" among all nations."

And which people is it that is known all over the
earth as " the tribe of the weary foot and wandering
breast " ? Anglo-Israelites call them " Jews " in the
limited sense of being descendants of "Judah"; but
God's Word tells us that it is " the house of Israel,"
or " the house of Jacob " ; and, as a matter of fact, since
" Judah " joined their brethren of the Ten Tribes on
the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans in B.C.
588, the two have kept on their weary march together,
" wandering among the nations." Eastward and
westward (only a remnant of all the tribes returning to

IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY 51

the land for a time), nowhere finding ease for any length
of time, nor do the soles of their feet have rest — even
as Moses, at the very beginning of their history, and long
before the division among the tribes, prophesied would
be their united experience in case they apostatised from
Jehovah their God. And thus they will continue ever
more mixed up and intermingled among themselves,
with all genealogies lost, and not one of them either
east or west being able any longer documentarily to
prove of what tribe or family he comes — until the day
when He that scattered Israel will gather him, and by
His own Divine power and omniscience separate them
again into their tribes and families.

A SOLEMN WARNING.

My last words on this subject must be those of warn-
ing and entreaty. Do not think, as so many do, that
Anglo-Israelism, even if not true, is only a harmless
speculation. I consider it nothing short of one of the
latter-day delusions by which the Evil One seeks to
divert the attention of men from things spiritual and
eternal. Here are a few of its dangers : —

I. It goes, sometimes to the length of blasphemy (as
shown in the extracts I have copied for you at the
beginning of this letter), in misinterpreting and mis-
applying Scripture. One of its foundation fallacies is
that it anticipates the Millennium, and interprets pro-
mises— which will only be fulfilled in that blessed
period, after Israel as a nation is converted — to the
British nation at the present time. But by this pro-
cess it distorts and confuses the whole prophetic
Scripture.

52 A SOLEMN WARNING

II. It fosters national pride, and nationalises God's
blessings in this dispensation, which is individual and
elective in its character.

Its proud boastful tone, its carnal confidence that
Britain, in virtue of its supposed identity with the
" lost " tribes, is to take possession of all the " gates "
of her " enemies " and become practically mistress of
the whole globe, is enough to provoke God's judgment
against the nation, and to make the spiritual believer
and every true lover of this much-favoured land
tremble. It diverts man's attention from the one
thing needful, and from the only means by which he
can find acceptance with God. This it does by teaching
that " a nation composed of millions of practical
unbelievers in Christ, and ripe for apostasy, in virtue
of a certain fanciful identity between the mixed race
composing that nation and a people carried into captivity
two thousand five hundred years ago, is in the enjoyment
of God's special blessing and will enjoy it on the same
grounds for ever, thus laying another foundation for
acceptance with God beside that which He has. laid,
even Christ Jesus."

After all, in this dispensation it is a question only as
to whether men are " in Christ " or not. If they are
Christians, whether Jews or Gentiles, their destiny is
not linked either with Palestine or with England, but
with that inheritance which is incorruptible and un-
defiled and which fadeth not away ; and if they are
not Christians, then, instead of occupying their thoughts
with vain speculations as to a supposed identity of the
British race with the " lost " Ten Tribes, it is their duty
to seek the one and only Saviour whom we must learn
to know, not after the flesh, but in the Spirit, and with-
out whom a man, whether an Israelite or not, is undone.

III. Then, finally, it not only robs the Jewish nation,
the true Israel, of many promises in relation to their

A SOLEMN WARNING 53

future by applying them to the British race in the
present time, but it diverts attention from them as the
people in whom is bound up the purpose of God in
relation to the nations, and whose " receiving again "
to the heart of God, after the long centuries of unbelief,
will be as " life from the dead to the whole world."

PART III.

NOTES AND EXPLANATIONS.

Note I.

ANGLO-ISRAEL " PROOFS " OF A SEPARATE

FATE AND DESTINY OF " ISRAEL "

AND "JUDAH."

The Anglo-Israel theory is based for the most part
on the supposition of a separate history during the
Dispersion, and a separate destiny of the Ten Tribes
from that of Judah. I have already shown that the
supposition is a false one, but it may be well to analyse
here a few more of the Scripture " proofs " by which
the contention is supported.

The following is from a truly amazing pamphlet,
entitled " Fifty Reasons why the Anglo-Saxons are
Israelites of the Lost Tribes of the House of Israel," a
publication full of misinterpretations, wild fancies, and
absurd fables, which are given out as facts of history.

But the reader may judge for himself of the method
of this writer, who is a " D.D.," in handling Scripture.

" The Jews," we are told with an air of authority —

" are one people, the Lost Tribes are another. . . . The
Word of God clearly intimates that Israel would lose their
identity, their land, their language, their religion, and their
name, that they would be lost to themselves, and to other
nations lost. ' I will scatter them into corners, I will make
the remembrance of them to cease from among men '
(Deut. xxxii. 26). ' The Lord hideth His face from the

DESTINY OF "ISRAEL" AND "JUDAH" 55

House of Jacob ' (Isa. viii. 17). He was not any more to
speak to them in the Hebrew tongue ; but ' by another
tongue will I speak unto this people' (Isa. xxviii. 11).
They shall no more be called Israel, He will call them by
another name. ' And thou shalt be called by a new name
which the mouth of the Lord shall name' (Isa. Ixii. 2).
' The Lord shall call His servants by another name ' (Isa.
lxv. 15). ' The name Israel shall be no more in remem-
brance ' (Psa Ixxxiii. 4). ' And ye shall lose, or leave,
your name, and the Lord shall call His servants by another
name.' ' Why sayest thou, O Jacob ! and speakest, O
Israel ! my way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is
passed over from my God ? ' (Isa. xl. 27).

" ' For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with
great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid
My face from thee for a moment ; but with everlasting
kindness will I have mercy upon thee ' (Isa. liv. 8).

" In Hos. i. 4, 7 the Lord says, ' I will cause to cease
the kingdom of the House of Israel. ... I will no more
have mercy upon the House of Israel, but I will utterly
take them away. . . . But I will have mercy upon the
House of Judah.' Israel is to be called Lo-Ammi, for
' ye are not My people, and I will not be your God ' (Hos.
i. 7)."

Now let us look for a moment at the references and
quotations here given. The first is Deut. xxxii. 26 :
" I will scatter them into corners," etc. This occurs
in the song which Moses was commanded to put into
the mouth of the whole nation at the very commence-
ment of their history, which, besides being a vindication
of God's character in His dealings with the nation from
the beginning hitherto, is also a prophetic forecast of
their whole future history. It is the whole people,
which according to Moses was to be scattered into all
corners as a special punishment for their apostasy,
until such time as the Lord shall turn their captivity
and have compassion upon them, and gather them
from all the nations (Deut. iv. 25-31 ; xxviii. 64, 65 ;

56 ANGLO-ISRAEL " PROOFS " of a SEPARATE FATE

xxx. 1-7 ; xxxi. 16-22). This reference then has
nothing whatever in it about a " lost identity."

These forecasts are fulfilling themselves, not in lost
tribes, but in the Jews. The second reference, Isa. viii.
17 : ' The Lord hideth His face from the House of
Jacob," is (as is often the case in Anglo-Israel quotations)
a sentence broken away from the context, and has net
the least shadow of connection with " lost " or founu
tribes. It is an exclamation of the prophet Isaiah
with reference to the condition of things then prevailing
in Judah. Because of the wickedness of the people and
its king, God's face seemed to be hid from the people.
But Israel's prophets always looked beyond the present
gloom and darkness, and exercised faith in God even
in the most adverse circumstances, so he exclaims :
" And I " — whatever the nation whom he sought to
bring back to God may do — " will wait upon Jehovah
that hideth His face from Jacob (which stands for the
whole nation) and will look to Him," i.e., "my hope
shall be set on Him alone."

A quotation is made in proof that God would not
any more speak to " lost " Israel in the Hebrew tongue.
The reference is Isa. xxviii. n : " By (or with) another
tongue will I speak to this people."

This is another instance of breaking away an isolated
text from its context, and giving it a meaning which
was never intended. In that chapter we read how the
leaders, not of the Ten Tribes, but of Judah, perverted
the Word of God, which He intended should bring
" rest " and " refreshing " to the weary (ver. 12), and
turned it into so many isolated " precepts " and com-
mandments. But because the words of grace and
salvation He \v£.s speaking to them through the pro-
phets were scorned and abused, God threatens that
He will speak to them in judgment — " with strange
lips and with another tongue " — in which there may

AND DESTINY OF " ISRAEL " AND '* JUDAH " 57

be included also a reference to their being carried into
captivity, " where they would have to listen to a strange
language," which they understood not (Psalm Ixxxi.
5 ; cxiv. 1).

The next references in proof that the " lost " tribes
were " no more to be called Israel," but by another
name, is a typical instance of the perversion of even
the most beautiful spiritual truths of the Bible for mere
outward, I was going to say, carnal, ends. The first
quotation in proof of this point is from Isa. lxii. 2 :
' Thou shalt be called by a new name which the mouth
of the Lord shall name." This short chapter is one of
the most precious and beautiful in the whole Old Testa-
ment, and it is like laying hold of an exquisitely delicate
and beautiful work of art with a rough and dirty hand
to treat it as Anglo-Israel " theologians " do. The
chapter begins : " For Zion's sake will I not hold My
peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest until her
righteousness go forth as brightness and her salvation
as a lamp that burneth." The speaker is either the
prophet, or very probably the servant of Jehovah, the
Messiah, who is the speaker in the preceding chapter.
The subject is " Zion " or " Jerusalem," which includes
the people. I believe that it includes the whole nation
of which Jerusalem is the God-appointed metropolis ;
but if it is to be limited to any part of the people, then
it is certainly Judak, of which Zion or Jerusalem is the
capital, and not the Ten Tribes who are here spoken of.

This Zion, for whom the Messiah makes unceasing
intercession, is now called n^w — " forsaken," and
her land ncct? — " desolate " ; but when God's light
shall again break upon her, and her righteousness
goes forth as a lamp that burneth, " Thou shalt be
called n} <*Bg (Hephzibah, i.e., My delight is in
her); and thy land rfys}" (Beulah, i.e., married).
But the new name by which the mouth of Jehovah

58 ANGLO-ISRAEL " PROOFS " of a SEPARATE FATE

shall then call her shall not only answer the outward
transformation which shall then come over the people
and the land, but will describe the inward transforma-
tion and the true character of the people. In fact, we
are told in this very chapter what the new name shall
be. They shall call them — Saxons ? Britons ? No,
"they shall call them the Holy People, The Redeemed
of the Lord." This is also the " other name " in Isa. lxv.
15, by which God shall call His true servants in contrast
to the ungodly in the nation, who shall be " slain,"
and leave their name {i.e., their remembrance) as a
proverbial " curse " unto His chosen.

The next reference given in proof that the Ten Tribes
were to lose their name is Psalm lxxxiii. 4: "The name
of Israel shall be no more in remembrance." This is a
typical and characteristic specimen of the manner in
which Anglo-Israel " theologians " deal with Scripture.
It reminds one of the grounds adduced by a certain
individual for paying no heed to the Old Testament
because it is written, " Hang the law and the prophets "
(Matt. xxii. 40). It is certainly most easy to prove
almost anything from the Bible by breaking away an
isolated sentence from its connection, and attaching to
it a meaning which was never intended.

Psalm lxxxiii. is an impassioned cry to God for His
interposition and deliverance of His people from a
confederacy of Gentile nations, who are gathered with
the determined object of utterly destroying them as a
people.

" O God, keep not Thou silence :
Hold not Thy peace and be not still, O God; for lo, Thine

enemies make a tumult :
And they that hate Thee have lifted up the head :
They take crafty counsel against Thy people, and consult

together against Thy hidden ones.
They have said : Come, and let us cut them off from being

a nation,
That the name of Israel be no more in remembrance."

AND DESTINY OF " ISRAEL " AND " JUDAH " 59

This historical occasion of this Psalm may perhaps
have been the great gathering of the Moabites, Ammo-
nites, and a great multitude of others against " Judah," *
who, in the Psalms belonging to that period, is invari-
ably called Israel. At the same time there is a pro-
phetic element in the Psalm, for all the past gatherings
of the nations against Jerusalem foreshadow the final
great gathering under Antichrist, when the battle-cry
of the confederated armies shall indeed be, " Come, let
us destroy them from being a nation, that the name of
Israel may be no more in remembrance." But note,
part of the furious cry of the Gentiles in their onslaught
against Jerusalem is broken away from its connection
and used by Anglo-Israel writers to prove that the
Ten Tribes would lose their identity and that the very
name " Israel " would be " lost."

Passing on to the next two references, Isa. xl. 27
and Isa. liv. 8, I would ask the intelligent Bible-reader
what relevancy or connection these precious Scriptures
have with the subject of the identification of any " lost "
tribes ? They are glorious words of consolation and
promise addressed to the Jewish nation, or rather to
the godly remnant in exile, assuring them that God's
eye is ever upon them, and though, on account of their
sins, His face has been turned away from them, as it
were, "for a moment," He will yet return to them
with " everlasting kindness and have mercy upon
them." It is like sacrilege to misapply such beau-
tiful Scriptures and great spiritual truths to prove a
theory which has no basis in fact, and with which
they have not the remotest connection.

The last reference is Hosea i. 4-7 ; the words are
plain enough, and if they prove anything in connection
with this subject it is the very opposite of what the

* See 2 Chron. xx. 1-13.

60 ANGLO-ISRAEL " PROOFS " of a SEPARATE FATE

Anglo-Israel writers assert. Hosea did speak primarily
to the Israel of the "Ten Tribes" shortly before its final
overthrow by Assyria, and what he announces is that
God would cause that kingdom, as a kingdom, " to
cease," and that He would no more have mercy upon
them. As a people they would be preserved, but, as
it were, disavowed of God, and therefore called " Lo-
Ammi" (i.e., "not My people"). But what is said
here by Hosea of the condition of the people of the

' Ten Tribes," after they shall have ceased to exist as
a kingdom, is true also, as we know from many other
Scriptures, of those who belonged to the southern
kingdom of Judah. It is now the Lo-Ammi period for
the whole nation of the Twelve Tribes, and they shall
continue to be disowned of God nationally (not as
individuals) until they as a nation acknowledge and
own their long-rejected Messiah. Then, in the final trial,
when the spirit of grace and of supplication is poured
upon them, and they shall look upon Him whom they
have pierced, and mourn, God will look down upon them
and say, " Ammi " — " It is My people " : and they
shall say, " Jehovah is my God " (Zech. xiv. 9).

And it is not only the prophetic Scriptures of the
Old Testament which are abused in this manner, the
plainest statements in the Gospels and Epistles are
also twisted and perverted to mean the very opposite
of what was intended. The following is from a booklet,

' The Lost Tribes of Israel," by Reader Harris, K.C.,
" founder of the Pentecostal League," in which all the
absurdities and misinterpretations found in all the
Anglo-Israel publications are embodied : —

" NEW TESTAMENT PROPHECIES.

" Let us now turn to the New Testament. It is perfectly-
clear that Israel, who had been dispersed for more than
700 years, was much in our Lord's mind during His three
years' ministry upon earth, for many were the references

AND DESTINY OF " ISRAEL " AND " JUDAH " 6l

to Israel made by Him. As an example, let us turn to
the commission He gave to the twelve apostles in Matt x.
5. 6:—

" ' These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded
them, saying, go not into the way of the gentiles,
and into any city of the samaritans enter ye not :
but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of
Israel.'

" These apostles were not to go to the Gentiles, nor to the
Samaritans — who were the descendants of usurpers of
Israel — ' but to the lost sheep of the House of Israel ' ;
and they obeyed this command as far as was then possible.
The only tribe that they could reach which had any con-
nection with Israel was Benjamin, and Benjamin as a
tribe was won to allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Benjamin had gone into captivity with Judah, and had
come back with Judah ; but in the prophecies of God,
Benjamin had been always associated with the Ten Tribes
of Israel. It is a remarkable fact that the majority of
our Lord's disciples at the time of His earthly ministry
were connected with the tribe of Benjamin. It is also of
interest that, when Jerusalem was afterwards besieged
by the Romans under Titus, the members of what had
become the Christian tribe of Benjamin escaped.

"Christ Himself declared, in Matt. xv. 24, this was His
own mission : ' He answered and said, I am not sent but
unto the lost sheep of the House of Israel.'

"Again our Lord says, in Matt. xxi. 43 : ' Therefore say
I unto you (He was speaking to the Jews), the kingdom of
God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation (the Jews
had long since ceased to be a nation) bringing forth the
fruits thereof.'

" The Jews themselves evidently so understood His state-
ment, for in John vii. 35 we read : —

" * Then said the Jews among themselves, Whither
will He go, that we shall not find Him ? Will He
go unto the dispersed among the Gentiles, and teach
the Gentiles ? '

" So the Jew quite understood our Lord to refer to Israel.

62 ANGLO-ISRAEL ** PROOFS ' of a SEPARATE FATE

"Israel was evidently in the minds of the apostles them-
selves. On the day of the ascension they asked Him : —
" ' Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore again the

KINGDOM TO ISRAEL ? ' (Acts i. 6.)

" A restoration of the kingdom of Israel with the kingdom
of Judah had been promised. The apostles did not con-
fuse the kingdom of Israel with that of Judah, for they
said, ' Wilt Thou at this time restore the kingdom to
Israel ? ' St. Paul devotes thirty-six verses in Romans xi.
to prove that God has not cast away His people, but that
" blindness in part is happened unto Israel until the
fulness of the nations be come in," so that all Israel shall
be saved.

"Lastly, the final word must be that of our Lord. In
Acts i. 7, 8 Christ said : —

" ' It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which
the Father hath put in His own power, but ye shall receive
power, after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you, and ye
shall be witnesses unto Me in Jerusalem, in all Judea, in
Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth ' — which
refers to the ' regions beyond ' — an expression that was
fully understood to mean the dispersed among the Gentiles."

With much pain one has to say that this reveals
either lamentable ignorance of the plainest and simplest
truths of New Testament Scripture on the part of an
otherwise educated man, or a clever adaptation by which
a lawyer would seek to support a preconceived theory.

I have already dealt with some of these perversions
in the first part of this pamphlet, so need only refer to
them again in the briefest possible manner.

(a) It is indeed " perfectly clear " to any reader of
the New Testament that Israel " was much in our
Lord's mind during His three years' ministry upon
earth"; but as clear and evident is it to any candid
reader that the only " Israel " of whom He thought
and spoke were the people among whom He lived and
moved, and to whom His blessed ministry on earth

AND DESTINY OF " ISRAEL " AND " JUDAH " 63

was confined, and who are alternately called in the
New Testament " Jews " and " Israel."

It was to these " lost sheep " in the land of Palestine
for whom His own compassions were moved when He
beheld them in multitudes, that the Twelve were sent
out in Matt, x., and He ascribes to them the term
" lost " in a deeper and more solemn and spiritual
sense than Anglo-Israelism has evidently any con-
ception of. {See page 41.)

(b) The statement here repeated about the tribe of
Benjamin, and that the "majority of our Lord's dis-
ciples at the time of His earthly ministry were connected
with the tribe of Benjamin," is nothing but a fiction
invented by Anglo-Israelites, as already shown in
Part I. (See page 17.)

The only thing which is historically true is that the
Apostle Paul was of the tribe of Benjamin, but he was
called after our Lord's earthly ministry was ended,
and he was appointed not to the " lost tribes," but to
preach Christ's Gospel among the Gentiles (Acts xxii.
21 ; Rom. xi. 13 ; Gal. i. 16).

(c) The nation which brings forth the fruits of the
kingdom of God during the present dispensation of
Israel's national unbelief is not the British Empire,
but the Church of Christ — the elected body out of all
nations and kindreds and peoples and tongues, who are
called "a chosen generation (or 'elect race'), a royal
priesthood, a holy nation ((6vos), a people for God's
own possession " (1 Peter ii. 9).

(d) To state that the Jews themselves understood
Christ's statement in Matt. xxi. 43 as referring to some
" lost " Israel, because in John vii. 35 they said :
" Will He go unto the dispersed (t^v dtaarropav) among the
Gentile (or ' Greeks '), and teach the Greeks ? " is
not true.

The " dispersed " among the Greeks were Hellenistic

64 ANGLO-ISRAEL " PROOFS " of a SEPARATE FATE

" Jews " of all the Twelve Tribes scattered abroad,
who stood (as already shown in Part II.) in closest
connection with the Temple and hierarchy in Jerusalem,
and were never " lost " ; and the Greeks among whom
they were dispersed were " Gentiles."

(e) And what can be said of such a perverted appli-
cation of the question in Acts i. 6, namely, that when
the disciples, immediately before Christ's ascension,
asked : " Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore the
kingdom to Israel ? " it was not their own nation, the
" Jews," that they meant, and Jerusalem the centre
of God's kingdom on earth — but some " lost " tribes
in distant regions of which they knew nothing — I
suppose on the same principle of Anglo-Israel inter-
pretation when Peter, with the eleven on the Day of
Pentecost, for instance, addressed the people as "Ye
men of Israel," and again, " Let all the house of Israel,
therefore, know assuredly that God hath made Him
both Lord and Christ — this Jesus whom ye crucified "
(Acts ii. 22-36) — he did not speak to the assembled
multitude of " Jews " before him, but over their heads
to some distant regions where there were some wander-
ing " lost " tribes who alone were entitled to the name
" Israel." But such assertions are altogether too
ridiculous to be treated seriously.

The " Israel " which " was evidently in the minds
of the apostles," and to whom Peter spoke, and of
whom Paul wrote in that great prophetic section in
his Epistle to the Romans (chaps, ix.-xi.), were the
" Jews," whether of Palestine or in the " Dispersion,"
who are the only representatives of all the Twelve
Tribes of " Israel " with whom Scripture or prophecy-
has any concern, and not any supposed " lost " tribes
to be identified after many centuries by Anglo-Israel
writers as the British and the United States.

(/) "Lastly, the final word," we are told, "must

AND DESTINY OF " ISRAEL " AND " JUDAH " 65

be that of our Lord," and then there follows the quota-
tion of the glorious promise and prophetic forecast
from Acts i. 7, 8 : "Ye shall receive power when the
Holy Ghost is come upon you : and ye shall be My
witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and
Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth" ; and
we are assured that the last sentence refers " to the
regions beyond — an expression that was fully under-
stood to mean the dispersed among the Gentiles " — by
which, I suppose, we are meant to understand, the
" lost " tribes.

But the sentence — km m? eo-xarov ttjs y>?s — means, as
it has been properly rendered, " unto the end (or
' uttermost part ') of the earth," and has always been
" fully " and properly understood by the Church of
Christ as a Divine warrant and forecast of the
preaching of the Gospel, not to the Dispersed among the
Gentiles, but to the heathen world.

Note II.

THE PROMISES OF A MULTITUDINOUS

SEED, AND THAT ISRAEL SHALL BECOME

A GREAT AND MIGHTY NATION.

A great point is made by all Anglo-Israel writers
of the promises which God made to the fathers of a
multitudinous seed. The argument is, that since the
descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were to be
a great and mighty and very numerous nation — yea,
" a company of nations" — these promises cannot apply
to the " Jews," who are comparatively few in number.

E

66 THE PROMISES TO THE FATHERS

There must exist, therefore, a people somewhere great
and mighty and numerous who are the seed of Abraham,
in whom these promi3es are realised.

Now look at the British Empire, how great and
mighty it is in the earth, and what vast numbers it
includes, ergo, the British, including the United States
of America (which by some wonderful process of divina-
tion Anglo-Israelites are able to distinguish and identify
as " Manasseh," in spite of the fact that their pro-
genitors, who emigrated from England, were, according
to them " Ephraimites," and that those original emi-
grants have since been mixed up with a flood of emigrants
from all other races under heaven), are the descendants
of Abraham, and particularly of the " lost " Ten Tribes !

Now the following are the Scriptures on the subject :

(i) " And I will make of thee (Abraham) a great
nation " (Gen. xii. 2).

(2) " And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth ;
so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then
shall thy seed also be numbered " (Gen. xiii. 16).

(3) " And He brought him (Abraham) forth abroad,
and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the number
of the stars, if thou be able to tell them : and He said
unto him, So shall thy seed be " (Gen. xv. 5).

(4) "And God talked with him (Abraham), sa3>-ing:
As for Me, My covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be
the father of a multitude of nations ; neither shall thy
name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be
Abraham ; for the father of a multitude of nations have
I made thee. And I will make thee exceedingly fruitful,
and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come
out of thee " (Gen. xvii. 4-6).

(5) " Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty
nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed
in him " (Gen. xviii. 18).

(6) " In blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying
I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as
the sand which is upon the seashore ; and thy seed shall

OF A MULTITUDINOUS SEED 6j

possess the gate of his enemies " (a Hebrew idiom for
" shall be victorious over his foes ") (Gen. xxii. 17).

(7) " And God said unto him (Jacob), I am God
Almighty, be fruitful and multiply ; a nation and a
company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come
out of thy loins " (Gen. xxxv. n).

To these passages have to be added Isaac's blessing
to Jacob : " God Almighty bless thee and make thee
fruitful, and multiply thee, that thou mayest be a
company — literally, ' a congregation ' (d'ej? Snp) of
peoples " (Gen. xxviii. 3) ; and Jacob's forecast of
Ephraim in his blessing of Joseph's sons, that his
seed shall become " a multitude (or literally, ' a ful-
ness,' oy.ari iha) of the nations."

Now in reference to all these particular promises and
forecasts, I would beg your attention to the following
observations : —

I. There are expressions in them which must not
be pressed to the extreme of literalness according to
our Western ideas. We speak of " nations," and think
of them as embracing populations of whole countries,
and of " kings " as being sovereigns of States, but in
the earlier books of the Bible we are introduced to
many " nations " and " peoples " as comprised in one
little country of Canaan, and of many " kings " who
were no more than chiefs, or rulers of " cities," which
in our modern times we would only class as " villages."
As a matter of fact, the term a% goim, generally
standing for " nations," and usually for the Gentile
nations, is actually used for the tribes or families of the
Jewish people. Here is the Scripture : " And He said
unto me, Son of Man, I send thee to the children of
Israel, to nations (a]% goim — the word is in the
plural) that are rebellious, which have rebelled against
Me " (Ezek. ii. 3).

The " Jews," or " Israel," as they are properly

68 THE PROMISES TO THE FATHERS

called are being spoken of as " nations," because they
comprised different families or tribes.

Already Moses could say of the Israel of his time :
" Jehovah your God hath multiplied you, and behold, ye
are this day as the stars of heaven for multitude " (Deut.
i. 10 ; x. 22) ; and Solomon, in his prayer for wisdom,
says : " Thy servant is in the midst of Thy people which
Thou hast chosen, a great people that cannot be counted
for multitude " (1 Kings iii. 8).

The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews knew nothing
of a supposed identification of the millions in Britain
and America with the " lost " Ten Tribes, but speaking
of the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, he could
say that because Abraham believed God, and Sarah
herself, in spite of natural impossibilities, judged Him
faithful who had promised : " Wherefore also there
sprang of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the
stars of heaven for multitude, and as the sand which is
by the seashore innumerable " (Hebrews xi. 12) ; so that
even if we view only the past it is not true to assert
that the promises of God that the seed of Abraham
should be a multitude which cannot be numbered, and
constitute " a company of nations," has not been ful-
filled in the " Jews " or " Israel," which has never been
" lost."

II. The promises of a multitudinous seed and rapid
increase of the seed of Abraham, though in the first
instance given to the fathers unconditionally, and
therefore will assuredly be fulfilled, were nevertheless
made conditional on Israel's obedience. It is with
this, as with all the other great promises, given to the
Jewish nation. They were conditional as far as any
particular generation of Jews are concerned, who may
either enjoy them if in obedience, or forfeit them through
disobedience ; but they are unconditional to the nation
because God abides faithful, and in the end all His

OF A MULTITUDINOUS SEED 69

plans and purposes in and through them will be ful-
filled. For this very reason He has preserved them as
a people in spite of all their sin and disobedience.

Now at the very commencement of Israel's history
— long before there was any likelihood of a schism
among the tribes — Moses, speaking in the name of
God of the whole nation, says : " If ye walk in My
statutes and keep My commandments to do them, . . . I
will have respect unto you and make you fruitful and
multiply you, and will establish My covenant with you "
(Lev. xxvi. 3-9).

On the other hand, he solemnly forewarns them that
if they shall " corrupt themselves " and fall away from
the living God, " I call heaven and earth to witness
against you this day that ye shall soon utterly perish
from off the land whereunto ye go over Jordan to
possess it, . . . and Jehovah shall scatter you among
the peoples, and ye shall be left few in number among
the nations whither Jehovah shall lead you " (Deut. iv.

25-27)-
This is repeated with solemn emphasis in Deut. xxviii.

62 : "And ye shall be left few in number, whereas ye
were as the stars of heaven for multitude." In the light
of the Word of God, therefore, and apart from all the
absurdities involved in the Anglo-Israel theory, the
very fact that the British and American races are so
numerous and powerful among the nations precludes
the possibility of their being Israel, for when out of
Palestine and in dispersion Israel was to become " few
in number," and oppressed and downtrodden among
the nations.

III. The underlying fallacy in the Anglo-Israel argu-
ment from the promises of a multitudinous seed which
God made to the fathers (and this, indeed, is one of the
chief errors underlying the whole theory), is that it
overlooks the fact that those promises, according to

70 THE PROMISES TO THE FATHERS

the testimony of the prophets, will be fulfilled in the
future, when (as stated above) the Jewish nation.,
restored and converted, shall become under the personal
rule of their Messiah, great and mighty for God on this
earth. Then, when Israel shall be spiritually restored
to God, and in and through the grace of their Messiah
they shall be a nation all righteous and planted by God
in their own land, " the little one shall become a thou-
sand, and the small one a strong nation " (Isa. lx.
21, 22) ; and so rapidly and marvellously shall they
increase that even the whole promised land, which is
fifty times as large as the portion of it " from Dan to
Beersheba," which alone they possessed in the past,
shall become too small for them, so that they shall say
to the surrounding nations : ' The place is too strait
for me, give place (' make room ') that I may dwell "
(Isa. xlix. 19, 20).

Now all this has been, and will be, fulfilled in the
" Jews," who, as I have shown, are the people of the
whole " Twelve Tribes scattered abroad." In the dis-
persion among the nations they became reduced to
" few in number," but when they are restored and
blessed God says : "I will multiply them, and they
shall not be few ; I will also glorify them, and they
shall not be small " (Jer. xxx. 19).

Of the capacity for rapid increase of the Jewish people
there is sufficient proof already. The following is from
a recent number of The Scattered Nation : —

" The marvellous increase of the Jewish people since
their so-called ' emancipation ' in the xixth century, is
indeed a striking sign of the times. The statement of a
recent writer in the Jewish Chronicle that at the commence-
ment of the xvith century there could scarcely have been
more than a million Jews left in the entire world after the
untold sufferings, dispersions and massacres which they
had to endure in the dark and middle ages — is probably
true. The historian Basnage, in his ' History of the Jews

OF A MULTITUDINOUS SEED 71

from Jesus Christ to the Present Time,' calculated that in
his time (end of the xviith and beginning of the xviiith
century) there were 3,000,000 Jews in the world. Since
then, however, the growth of Jewry has been phenome-
nal. At the commencement of the xixth century there
were said to be five millions. Half a century later the
numbers reached six or seven millions ; and at the end
of another half a century — in 1896 — the greatest living
authority on Jewish statistics gave their number as
eleven millions. And now, after the lapse of another
seventeen or eighteen years, we are informed that there
are no less than 13,000,000 Jews in the world. And the
surprising feature of this latest calculation is the officially
authenticated fact that, in the country where they are
most persecuted, and which during the past three decades
has driven forth millions to seek an asylum in other
countries, there are more Jews to-day than ever before ;
and this in spite of pogroms, and baptisms, and over-
crowding, and starvation, and the pursuance of a merciless
policy of repression which led Pobiedonostsef to prognosti-
cate that, in the end, a third of Russia's Jews would
emigrate, a third would die, and a third would join the
dominant faith. The old story of Israel in Egypt renews
itself to-day in Russia : ' The more they afflicted them,
the more they multiplied.' "

And if this be so now even in dispersion, we can
imagine that in the millennial period, under the fostering
care and blessing of God, the favoured nation will
increase and multiply so that they will be as the stars
of heaven, and as the sand which is upon the seashore,
innumerable.

72 THE PERPETUITY of the DAVIDIC THRONE

Note III.

THE PERPETUITY OF THE DAVIDIC
THRONE.

One great Anglo-Israel argument that the British
must be the " lost " Israel is based on the promises
which God made to David that his seed and his throne
shall be established for ever. Sometimes, indeed (as
seen in one of the quotations given in Part I., see page
12), and in keeping with Anglo-Israel logic, the
argument is used the other way : "If the Saxons be
the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, then the English throne
is a continuation of David's throne, and the seed on it
must be the seed of David, and the inference is clear,
namely, that all the blessings attaching by the holy
promise to David's throne must belong to England ";*
and since, according to the dictum of the theory, this
" must be so," evidence must somehow be found, both
" historical " and from Scripture. So on the historical
side a genealogical table has been produced in which
the descent of the royal house of England (which may
God protect !) is directly traced to David and Judah — a
table truly strange and wonderful, and which only
shows how easy it is to prove anything if wild guesses
and perverted fancies be treated as facts. On these
genealogical tables and " histories," however, with
regard to which we would only apply to the Anglo-
Israel " world " the old Latin proverb — Mundus vult
decipi et decipiatur — it would be sheer waste of time to
enter here. It is the product of a false supposition,
supported by a logic which is also false, both in its

* "The Lost Ten Tribes,'' by Joseph Wild. The Eighteenth
Discourse.

THE PERPETUITY of the DAVIDIC THRONE 73

premises and conclusions. People whose capacity for
credulity is large enough to believe the wild romances
spun out by Anglo-Israel writers about Jeremiah's
journey to Ireland with a daughter of Zedekiah, who
brought with them as part of their personal luggage
the coronation stone which is now in Westminster
Abbey, are very welcome to believe it ; and one would
not trouble much about them if they would only let the
Bible alone and not pervert Scripture.

But it is the supposed Scriptural " proofs " which
impose on some simple-minded Christians, with whom
alone we are concerned here. The following passages
almost all Anglo-Israel writers fasten upon : —

" The Lord hath sworn unto David in truth, He will not
turn from it ; of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy
throne" (Psa. cxxxii. 11).

" I have sworn unto David My servant, Thy seed
will I establish for ever, and build up thy throne to all
generations " (Psa. lxxxix. 3, 4).

" Thus saith Jehovah : If ye can break My covenant
of the day, and my covenant of the night, in their season,
then may also My covenant be broken with David My
servant that he should not have a son to reign upon his
throne. . . . Thus saith the Lord : If My covenant of
day and night stand not, if I have not appointed the
ordinances of heaven and earth ; then will I also cast
away the seed of Jacob, and of David My servant, so that
I will not take of his seed to be rulers over the seed of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob : for I will cause their cap-
tivity to return, and will have mercy on them " (Jer. xxxiii.

20, 21, 25, 26, R.V.).

The argument drawn from these Scriptures is : If
the British be not Israel, and the English throne be
not a continuation of the throne of David, where is
the fulfilment of these promises ? In answer to this
crude logic I would observe : —

74 THE PERPETUITY of the DAVIDIC THRONE

I. That it seems to be quite a characteristic of Anglo-
Israelism to ignore our Lord Jesus Christ as thf centre
of all promise and prophecy, just as it ignores trie exist-
ence of the Church and the future kingdom of God, for
all which it substitutes the British people and the
British Empire. But Christ is the true Son of David,
and the only legitimate heir to the Davidic throne.
" The sure mercies of David," which are sure (or
" faithful," as the word may be better rendered),
because God has sworn to fulfil, or " establish " them,
are all merged and centred in Him. Hence, when His
birth was announced to the Virgin Mary, the Angel
Gabriel «said : " Behold thou shalt conceive in thy
womb and bring forth a son, and shalt call His name
Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son
of the Most High, and the Lord God shall give unto Him
the throne of His father David, and He shall reign over
the House of Jacob for ever ; and of His kingdom there
shall be no end " (Luke i. 31-33).

If Israel had received Him His throne would have
been established, and His visible reign on earth com-
menced then. But He was rejected, and so the pro-
mise in reference to setting up again of the Davidic
kingdom, which had ceased to exist since the days of
Zedekiah, was still deferred until the purpose of God
with reference to the Church should be accomplished.

But the promises which God made to David have not
failed, for Jesus, the true Son of David, lives, and though
He is for the present sitting on the throne of God in
heaven, He is coming again to set up the throne of His
father David, and then " He shall reign over the House
of Jacob for ever, and of His kingdom there shall be no
end."

II. It was announced in advance that during the
" many days " of Israel's apostasy, and consequent
banishment from the land, they " shall abide without a

THE PERPETUITY of the DAVIDIC THRONE 75

king and without a prince," i.e., without the true Davidic
king of God's appointment, and without a prince of
their own choice, as Jewish commentators have them-
selves explained, until " the latter days," when restored
and converted they shall find in their Messiah the true
David, both their King and Prince.*

III. The only place on earth where a. throne of David
can have any legitimate place, either in the sight of
God or of man, is on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, and it
is an absurdity to speak of the continuity of a Davidic
throne in England. Thank God that the right of the
British Sovereign to his illustrious throne rests on a
firmer basis than the fictitious genealogies made out by
Anglo-Israelites.

IV. The same Scriptures, which speak of the per-
petuity of the Davidic seed and throne, speak also of
the unceasing continuance of the priesthood. " Thus saith
Jehovah, David shall never want a man to sit upon the
throne of the House of Israel ; neither shall the priests
the Levites want a man before Me to offer burnt-offerings
and to burn oblations, and to do sacrifice continually. . . .
Thus saith the Lord : If ye can break My covenant of
the day, and My covenant of the night, so that there should
not be day and night in their season ; then may also My
covenant be broken with David My servant, that he should
not have a son to reign upon his throne ; and with the
Levites the priests, My ministers " (Jer. xxxiii. 17, 20.
21).

Now it would be quite as logical to argue that the
ministers of the Church of England must be the lineal
descendants of the Levites, else God's promise of the
continuance of the priesthood has failed, as to argue
from these same Scriptures that there must be some-

* See " The Interregnum and Alter " — the first chapter of
my book, " The Ancient Scriptures and the Modern Jew."

j6 THE SO-CALLED HISTORIC PROOFS

where now on earth a throne of David, or else these
prophecies have proved false.

The truth is that neither have God's promises in
reference to the throne nor to the priesthood failed — for
Christ is, in His blessed Person, the Prophet, Priest, and
King. He is all this now at the right hand of God, for
not only are all the essentials of the Aaronic priesthood
fulfilled in Him, but He is "a priest for ever after the
order of Melchizedek " ; and when He is manifested
again on earth to take up His throne and reign, " He
shall be a priest upon His throne, and the counsel of
peace shall be between them both."*

Note IV.

THE SO-CALLED HISTORIC PROOFS OF
ANGLO-ISRAELISM.

I have stated on page 10 that the so-called
Historic Proofs of Anglo- Israelism, by which the theory
is supported, are derived from pagan myths and fables.
Let the following suffice as a sample : —

" To accomplish this " {i.e., that the seed of Abraham
should inherit the isles of the west) " some were sent to
take possession of the islands long before."

The wrath ot man is made to praise Him (Gen. xxxvii. 2 ;
1. 15-21), which led to the flight of Danaus, the son of Bela,

* One fundamental of the Anglo-Israel theory is that the
destinies of Israel and Judah are distinct and separate. Most
inconsistent, therefore, is their appropriation of David, the
King of Judah, with the promises applying to his royal house
for ever ; their endeavour should rather be to claim, if they can
find in Scripture promises made to descendants of Jeroboam's
line, or some other King of Israel — with David they can have
nothing to do.

OF ANGLO-ISRAELISM 77

from Egyptus his brother. Dan is the son of Bilhah and
brother of Joseph, who was over all the Egyptians. This
was the first secession from Israel. This is probably
illuded to in Ezekiel xx. 5-9. Another secession took place
(1 Chron. vii. 21-24). A third secession was after the
Exodus. When in the Wilderness Num. xiv. 1-4 states
that they said, " Let us make a captain." Nehemiah ix. 17
tells us they did so (compare Psa. cvi. 26, 27 ; Ezek. xx
21-23).

Hecatoeus of Abdera (6th century B.C.), quoted by Diodorus
Siculus (b.c. 50), i. 27, 46, 55, says : —

" The most distinguished of the expelled foreigners
(from Egypt) followed Danaus and Cadmus into Greece ;
but the greater number were led by Moses into Judaea."

In vEschylus' Supplicants (b.c. 6th century) Danaus
and his daughters are represented as a "seed divine,"
exiles from Egypt, fleeing from their brother Egyptus.
Since they feared an unholy alliance, they appear to have
passed through Syria and perhaps Sidon into Greece.*

I will say nothing here about the Scripture references
in the first paragraph, but if any intelligent Bible student
will look them up he will see that only a perverted
fancy can see in them any justification for the theory
here propounded. But, as will be noted, the heathen
fable about ^Egyptus and Danaus is here brought into
the history of Israel, Danaus being identified as Dan,
the son of Bilhah ; and ^Egyptus, I suppose, with
Joseph. Now here is the pagan fable, and let the reader
judge what connection it has with the history of the
sons of Jacob.

Egyptus, who had fifty sons, and Danaus, who had
fifty daughters, were twin brothers. Their father,
Belus, the son of Poseidon, identified by the Romans
with Neptunus, the god of the Mediterranean Sea, had
assigned Libya to Danaus ; but, fearing Egyptus, his

* " Palestine into Britain," by Rev. L. G. A. Roberts, Secre-
tary of the " Imperial British Israel Association. '

78 THE SO-CALLED HISTORIC PROOFS

brother, he fled with his fifty daughters to Argos io
Peloponnessus, where he was elected king by the
Argives in place of Gelanor, the reigning monarch.
Thither, however, he was followed by the fifty sons of
/Egyptus, who demanded his daughters for their wives.
Danaus complied with their request, but gave to each of
his daughters a dagger with which to kill their husbands
in the bridal night. All the sons of jEgyptus were thus
murdered, with but one exception. The life of Lynceus
was spared by his wife, Hypermnestra, who, according
to the legend, afterwards avenged the death of his
forty-nine brothers by killing his father-in-law Danaus.

The fifty daughters of Danaus, known as " the
Danaides," were punished in Hades for their crime by
being compelled everlastingly to pour water into
a sieve. Note also that the fable propagated by
Manetho that the Jews were expelled from Egypt as
lepers, and the legend of Hecataeus, quoted by Diodorus
Siculus that, " the most distinguished of these expelled
followed Danaus and Cadmus into Greece, but the
greater number were led by Moses into Judea," is also
accepted as history. Some of these same pagan writers
believed that the object of worship in the Holy of
Holies was the head of an ass, and other absurdities of
the same nature. I wonder if Anglo-Israel "theo-
logians" accept this also as " history."

I may here add that the identification by Anglo-
Israel writers of Tea, or Tephi, the heroine of some
Irish ballads, with a princess of the royal house of Judah,
whom Jeremiah brought, to Ireland in one of the ships
of Dan, and who married Esincaid, King of Ulster, and
so became the ancestress of the royal houses of Ireland
and Scotland, and subsequently of England — has just
as much " history " for its basis as the identification
of Danaus with Dan, or of ^Egyptus with Joseph.

The value of Irish legends and ballads (upon which

OF ANGLO-ISRAELISM 79

the romances of Anglo-Israel writers are largely based),
as sources of "history," may be judged from the follow-
ing introductory statement taken from a standard
compendium of the history of Ireland :

" The history of Ireland, like that of almost all
ancient countries, ' tracks its parent lake ' back into
the enchanted realms of legend and romance and fable.
It has been said, not untruly, of Ireland that she ' can
boast of ancient legends rivalling in beauty and dignity
the tales of Attica and Argolis ; she has an early history
whose web of blended myth and reality is as richly
coloured as the record of the rulers of Alba Longa and
the story of the Seven Kings.' We cannot now make
any effort to get at history in the beautiful myths and
stories. We should puzzle our brains in vain to find out
whether the Lady Cesair, who came to Ireland before the
Deluge with fifty women and three men, has any war-
rant from genuine tradition, or is a child of fable
altogether. We cannot get any hint of the actual
truth about Conn of the Hundred Fights, and Fin
MacCoul and Oisin. But the impression which does
seem to be conveyed clearly enough from all these
romances and fables and ballads is that the island was
occupied in dim far-off ages by successive invaders who
came from the south.

"The Phoenicians are said to have represented one
wave of invasion and the Greeks another. . . .

" What may be called the authentic history of
Ireland begins with the life and career of St. Patrick
(5th century)."

APPENDIX.
ARE WE THE TEN TRIBES?

By The Late HORATIUS BONAR, D.D.

(Reprinted by permission from The Sunday at Home,
October, 1880.)

THAT the inhabitants of Great Britain are Israelites
is a modern theory which has been widely spread.
Its defenders have invented a large number of resemblances
or " identifications," on which, in the absence of authentic
history or national tradition, they rest their proof.

The languages of our country — Saxon, English, Welsh,
and Celtic — have no affinity with the Hebrew ; but that is
made of no account. The history of the many tribes of
which our nation is composed — -whether Teutonic, or Saxon,
or Caledonian, or Latin, or Scandinavian — is totally dis-
tinct from that of any of the tribes of Israel ; but authentic
history is in this case wholly set aside.

The manners and customs of our nation, both religious
and social, have not the slightest resemblance to those of
Israel ; but this is quite ignored. The physiognomy of our
countrymen — whether they are English, or Welsh, or Scotch,
or Celtic, or Norwegian, or Norman — is the very opposite
of Eastern, the Israelitish face being a marked contrast
to the British ; but that is reckoned of no consequence.

The names of men, women, and places in our land are
not Hebrew or Semitic at all, but are traceable to another
class of languages altogether ; yet this weighs nothing.
The occupation of our land by certain tribes, who we now
call the Aboriginal Caledonians, or Britons (long before
the Ten Tribes were carried captive to Assyria, and who,
therefore, could not be Israelites), is passed by. The
grand story of an Israelitish emigration from Assyria into

ARE WE THE TEN TRIBES ? 8l

Great Britain, whether by sea or land, we are not told,
and there is neither history nor tradition nor local monu-
ments to confirm it. And yet, when was there ever an
emigration in which the emigrants did not carry their
language, their religion, their manners, their dress, and
their national traditions with them ? This the identifiers
of Israel with England have not considered. The Two
Tribes in their dispersion over wide Europe carried their
worship, their language, and their manners, into every
European city, and synagogues exist to this day which were
set up centuries before Christ, and every European Jew
can tell for certain that he is a descendant of Abraham,
and lives apart from the Gentiles around ; yet, if the
Anglo-Israelite theory be true, the Ten Tribes poured in
upon Great Britain and settled themselves there, drove
back the Aborigines, but left their religion, their books,
their priesthood, their language, their names behind them,
like cast-off clothes, in order to prevent themselves from
being identified, as if ashamed of their ancestry. It must
have been with Israelites that Julius Caesar fought ; their
queen, Boadicea, not a Hebrew name, and their general,
Caractacus, not a Hebrew name either : these Israelites
must have set up the Druid religion in the island, and to
them we must owe Stonehenge and similar relics of
antiquity.

There is no evidence in the Bible, or in history, or tradi-
tion, for any such Israelitish emigration. Such a flood
could not have passed over Europe, either north or south,
without leaving some trace or being mentioned in history.
If some two or three millions of Israelites did pour into
this remote and barbarous island of ours, it must have
been before the Romans came ; and such a flood of Easterns
must have made it a populous island, which certainly it
was not.

These cultivated Easterns — for the Israelites, even in
their apostasy, were a highly educated and cultivated
nation — flowed in upon an island of barbarians, yet pro-
duced no impression, taught them no arts, gave them no
language, and brought no civilisation to the barbarous Bri-
tons and Caledonians ; whereas the Romans, who followed,

F

82 ARE WE THE TEN TRIBES ?

carried language, arts, manners, names with them, and
left behind them (though theirs was but a brief military
occupation) traces of their Latin footsteps, which remain
to us after nineteen centuries. Traverse our island, and
you will find in every county names and traditions and
ruins that tell you that Rome was once here ; but no
name or traditions to say that Israel was here. Note : In
Cornwall there may be some traces of Phoenician commerce ;
but we know whence these Eastern strangers came and
the object of their coming, viz., to procure tin from the
mines.

Are such things credible or possible ? Prophecy, more-
over, intimates that Israel is to remain scattered and under
the curse till the Redeemer comes out of Zion, and will turn
away ungodliness from Jacob. The whole Twelve Tribes
are under the curse till the great day of national deliverance
comes for Judah and for Israel.

Let Rom. xi. be studied in connection with this.

The " identifications " gravely announced in some of
the many pamphlets of Anglo-Israelitish literature are
somewhat peculiar, and do not carry any extraordinary
amount of weight with them to counterbalance the above
arguments. Here are a few of them : —

i. " Isles and islands," spoken of by the prophets.
These must be the British Isles, and, therefore, their
inhabitants are the Ten Tribes.

2. " Israel loveth to oppress," the prophet says ; " Eng-
land loveth to oppress " — therefore, England is Israel.

3. "I believe," says one of the Anglo-Israelitish authors,
" that Sunday Schools have been raised up purposely for
this identity ! "

4. " Israel is to occupy the ends of the earth." Britain
does so ; therefore, Britain is Israel.

5. " Israel is to possess the gates of his enemies." We
possess Gibraltar, Malta, the Cape, etc. ; therefore, we are
Israel, for these are " the gates " of our enemies.

6. " The smoke and fire coming up from the cities and
furnaces of our land are like the pillar cloud of Israel."

ARE WE THE TEN TRIBES ? 83

7. The people in the South of Ireland trouble us, just as
the Canaanites troubled Israel; therefore, we are Israel, for
the South of Ireland is peopled by the descendants of the
Canaanites.

8. Jacob's stone is still in our possession. It is that on
which Jacob slept, that which was the chief corner-stone
of the Temple — saved by Jeremiah, and taken by him to
Ireland, and then placed in Westminster Abbey under the
Coronation chair ; therefore, the English are Israelites.

9. " Jacob's glory is like the firstling of a bullock "
(Deut. xxxiii. 17). The identifiers write : " The ox being
oftentimes applied to Israel may partly be said to
emblemise the world-famed power of John Bull."

No evidence (worthy of its name), either historical,
ethnological, linguistic, or traditional, is produced ; we get
nothing but conjectures and fanciful allusions as the proofs
of this singular theory.

Some of its defenders boast that since this theory was
started the incomes of our Jewish Mission Societies have
fallen off by ^15,000. Whether this is true or not we can-
not say ; but the boast, whatever be its foundation, shows
the spirit of the writers and the tendency of the new
doctrine.

Noah's prophecy stands out clear and sharp with its
threefold ethnology ; Shem, Ham and Japheth are the
roots of the nations, and God has kept them distinct : let
us beware of confounding them. History tells us that
our pedigree is to be traced to Japheth. The modern dis-
coveries in ethnology confirm this beyond a doubt ;
Eastern monuments, whether of Assyria or Egypt, tell the
same story.

The above theory rests on a misreading of prophetic
truth : such a misreading robs it of all its Divine spirituality.
Outward national prosperity and greatness, not righteous-
ness nor truth, are made the characteristics of the Israel
of prophecy. England — full of crime, infidelity, immorality,
and ungodliness — is said to be now enjoying the favour of
God, which is destined for Israel in the latter day ! The
knowledge of the glory of the Lord is to be the privilege of

84 ARE WE THE TEN TRIBES ?

these tribes, and by that knowledge they are to be exalted.
But their theory gives us another standard of the nation's
greatness — a standard which no part of Scripture recognises,
least of all the sure word of prophecy, the light in the dark
place. This theory darkens the whole prophetic Word,
perverting events and inverting times and seasons. It
denies Israel's present guilt, and lowers our ideas of Israel's
coming glory. It puts a Gentile King and Queen in the
place of the nation's own Messiah, under whose sceptre
alone it is to enjoy peace, blessedness and holy greatness.
It rejects the apostle's symbol of the olive tree, in Rom. xi. ;
Not merely confounding the Jewish and the Gentile dis-
pensation, denying that the once good olive tree has for
a season become evil, and its branches cut off to make room
for the grafts of the wild olive tree.

This is emphatically and pre-eminently the time of the
wild olive tree, whereas this theory not only confuses the
wild olive with the good, but denies that it is the grafted
branches of the wild olive tree that are now bearing fruit
and receiving blessing.

When the dispensation of the wild olive, or Gentile, shall
end, then, but not till then, shall the blessing and the glory
return to the good olive— that is, to "all Israel."

Let us take the Word of God simply as we find it. Let
us beware of fanciful identifications, which, even were they
true, are not worth the stress laid upon them. Suppose
I could prove, not by conjecture, but by registered
genealogies, that I belong to the tribe of Ephraim or
Issachar, what does it profit me ? Will it make me a
holier man to know that I belong to those northern tribes
against which the Lord, when here, pronounced His darkest
woes, as primarily and pre-eminently His rejectors. " Woe
unto thee, Chorazin ! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida ! It shall
be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the Day of Judg-
ment than for thee."

Capernaum, the representative of the Ten Tribes, had
been condemned for refusing the Lord of Glory before
Jerusalem was cast away.

To esteem external national prosperity as God's special
mark of favour, is to carnalise all the prophets, and to

ARE WE THE TEN TRIBES ? 85

degrade, not only the glory of the latter day, but present
privileges in Christ ; for what a poor thing these privileges
and the glory must be if this sinful nation of ours, that
seems ripe for judgment and rejection, be the exhibition
of these, the fulfilment of Jehovah's promises to the
beloved people.

MORGAN & SCOTT LD. , 12, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, LONDON, E.C.

WORKS BY DAVID BARON.

Types, Psalms, and
Prophecies.

Second Edition.

A SELECTED SERIES OF OLD TESTAMENT

STUDIES.

Crown 8vo, nearly 400 pages, 6s.

" There is always something specially interesting in the inter-
pretation of Scripture by a Jewish Christian, and those who are
acquainted with Mr. Baron's previous works will know . . . that
this volume is particularly valuable." — Record.

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The Ancient Scriptures
and The Modern Jew.

Fourth Edition.

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To be had direct from the Author, " Northfield,"

Chorley Wood, Herts.

" A notable volume, in which the Jewish Question, from the
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and general condition of the Hebrew people at the present time,
is discussed broadly and with real force by one who has made a
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The Shepherd of Israel and
His Scattered Flock.

A SOLUTION OF THE ENIGMA OF
JEWISH HISTORY.

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" Every now and then some thoughtful and penetrating
expositor opens up one of the Psalms, and reveals treasures of
truth and grace, which, in our hasty reading, we had always
overlooked. That is what Mr. Baron has done with Psalm lxxx.
. . . His judgments are carefully formed, and moderately
expressed." — Christian World.

" Mr. Baron's exposition is fresh and convincing ; and his
acquaintance with the history of his people is thoroughly
intimate. ... Of the profoundest interest." — Methodist Times.

Israel's Inalienable
Possessions.

THE GIFTS AND THE CALLING OF GOD
WHICH ARE WITHOUT REPENTANCE.

A companion volume to "A Divine Forecast of Jewish History."

Attractively bound in White Embossed Paper, 6d. net ;

Cloth, Is. net.

" Based on some of the great words of the Apostle Paul in
the Epistle to the Romans, it deals with place and privilege in
the past, covenants and promises in regard to the future. Much
precious teaching is embodied in the treatment, whereby the
reader is compelled to praise the grace and faithfulness of God,
and at the same time urged to a prayerful interest in the nation
which, notwithstanding its many failings, is still ' beloved for
the fathers' sakes.' " — The Christian.

MORGAN & SCOTT LD.,

12, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, LONDON, E.C.

WORKS BY DAVID BARON,
Christ and Israel.

LECTURES AND ADDRESSES ON THE JEWS.
By ADOLPH SAPHIR, D.D.

Collected and Edited by David Baron.
Price 3s. 6d. net.

" To those interested in the subject of Jews and Missions to
the Jews, the present volume will be indispensable, as setting
forth in eloquent language, and in fervent and unquenchable
love for his own nation, Israel, the plans and purposes of God
as revealed in the Old and New Testaments." — Evangelical
Christendom.

" This is a book that treats of the Israelitish nation by a con-
verted Jew, a man of fine literary attainments, a forceful writer,
whose language is choice, and whose description of the Jews as
a people and nation is interesting, convincing and hopeful. It is
the best book that we have been permitted to read on the
subject." — Evangelical Messenger.

The Jewish Problem.

ITS SOLUTION;
OR, ISRAEL'S PRESENT AND FUTURE.

By DAVID BARON.

Sixth Edition, Revised.
Crown 8vo, Cloth, Is. ; Paper, 6d. net.

" Anything Mr. Baron writes on the subject is of profound
interest." — Christian Treasury.

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past, present, and future of God's ancient people." — Dr. A. T.
Pierson.

MORGAN & SCOTT LD.,

12, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, LONDON, E.G.

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