The Project Gutenberg eBook of The History of the Ten "Lost" Tribes, by David Baron

AUTHOR OF "THE ANCIENT SCRIPTURES AND THE MODERN JEW" "THE SHEPHERD OF ISRAEL," ETC.

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 Scriptures 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 supported; 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, [Pg iv] 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 explanations 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 testimony on the subject of so honoured and eminent a servant of God will be welcomed and carry weight with many.

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 Multitudinous Seed	65
III.	The Perpetuity of the Davidic Throne	72
IV.	The So-called Historic Proofs of Anglo-Israelism	76
V.	"The Gate of his Enemies"	80
APPENDIX.
	Are We the Ten Tribes? By the late Horatius Bonar, D.D.	82

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 "Identifications," 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:—

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 indiscriminately 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 [Pg 9] God's true people in it than in any other professing Christian land.

I shall endeavour later on to show you the baselessness 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 philological "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.

To this let me add the verdict of a prominent Christian scholar. Commenting on Edward Hine's "Identifications 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, [3] 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 overlooking 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 [Pg 11] 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 influential 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 any 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 Nebuchadnezzar (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, [Pg 12] 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 continue to exist as the last kingdom or empire this world is to see." [4]

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, [5] 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 overturning, 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 perpetuity 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 [Pg 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." [6]

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 continues 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 remarkable from the blazing furnaces, the gas, the steam- [Pg 14] engines, as the pillar of cloud and smoke arising from the same sources in the daytime, marking the chief position and prosperity of Israel." [7]

IV. Edward Hine, author of the forty-seven "Identifications," is the promised Deliverer who should come out of Zion. [8]

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 prophecies which belong, not even to Israel, but to Israel's Saviour.

"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 (εθνος), 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:—

It is difficult to characterise statements like these given out by Anglo-Israel writers in ex cathedra style [Pg 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 immediate 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 ." [10]

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 supposes, but Judah , "with which Benjamin was indissolubly 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, [Pg 18] 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 [11] —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 [Pg 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 references "—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 meaning of the text. In fact, there is not a Scripture, however sublime and glorious its import, and however plain and obvious its meaning, which does not become distorted and perverted in Anglo-Israel hands. [12]

Here are one or two samples. Anglo-Israelism is based for the most part on the false supposition of a [Pg 20] separate calling and destiny of the Ten Tribes from that of Judah:—

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 1 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," [Pg 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. [14]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] From the article "Anglo-Israelism" in the Jewish Encyclopedia .

[2] Joseph Jacobs, B.A., in the Jewish Encyclopedia .

[3] See Note iv. in Part III.

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

[5] A beautiful specimen, this, of Anglo-Israel logic.

[6] "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.

[7] From an article in The Banner of Israel .

[8] 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.

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

[10] 1 Kings xi. 13-36.

[11] "Israel in Britain," by Colonel Garnier, page 6.

[12] See samples in Note i. of Part III.

[13] "The Ten Lost Tribes," page 12.

[14] "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 prophesied 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 historical 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 (1 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 [Pg 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).

I. The kingdom of "Judah" after the schism consisted not only of Judah and Benjamin, but also of the Levites who remained faithful to the House of David and the theocratic centre. [15] 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 Rehoboam 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 [Pg 24] 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 Babylonians 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 [Pg 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 Nebuchadnezzar—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 régime , 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. [16]

The exact location of the exiles of the southern kingdom we are not told, beyond the Scripture statements 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, [Pg 26] 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 aspirations 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:

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 [Pg 28] 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 contained 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 [Pg 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 proclamation 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 [Pg 30] 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."

Between 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 additions 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 prominent 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 [Pg 31] Haggai. This shows that there was continual intercourse 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 obscurity; 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 [Pg 32] "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. [17]

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 downfall 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 comparatively 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 Ægean; 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. 1).

As a matter of fact, long before the destruction of [Pg 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 Cyrene.

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 preserved, especially among those who were settled in the land.

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. [18] 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 [Pg 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 of the Christian era, we find in this motley and cosmopolitan 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 . [19]

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 for 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 [Pg 36] 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 subsequent 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 [Pg 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 representatives 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 kingdoms, 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 kingdoms, the prophet Zechariah calls them by the com [Pg 38] 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, O house of Judah and house of Israel , so will I save you, and ye shall be a blessing; 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." [20]

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 descendants (Mal. 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 prophets 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 [Pg 40] 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 constant 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 dispersed 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 wandering 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 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 ." 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, [Pg 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 compassion 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 Judæa," 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 iii. 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 [Pg 42] 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 testimony 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 Gentile believers in the "mystery" of God with Israel. Now I cannot, of course, stop here to give an analysis of that wonderful [Pg 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 [Pg 44] 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. 1, 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, c.), 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 [Pg 45] how early people's minds became muddled on this subject. [21]

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.

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, [Pg 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:—

Some Christian writers cling to the view that while some of the "Ten Tribes" amalgamated with the "Jews," there is nevertheless a distinct people somewhere, 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 promises. Thus the Nestorians, who inhabit the inaccessible 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 [Pg 48] surrounding nations, and having given up the distinctive national rites and ordinances, such as circumcision, 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 idolatrous 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 comprehensive prophecies in the Old Testament, and this is the inspired forecast of the history of the Ten-Tribed [Pg 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 corn 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 permitted 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 [Pg 50] 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 "outcast," 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 [Pg 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 warning 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 misapplying Scripture. One of its foundation fallacies is that it anticipates the Millennium , and interprets promises—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 process it distorts and confuses the whole prophetic Scripture.

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 undefiled 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 without 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 [Pg 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."

FOOTNOTES:

[15] According to Grätz, "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.

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

[17] "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."

[18] 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."

[19] "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."

[20] Some have supposed that the 14th verse of Zechariah xi.—" And I cut asunder mine other (or 'second') staff, even Bands (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 rejection of their true Shepherd the Messiah, which is symbolically set forth in that chapter. But this is a mistake. The אַחֲוָה ( 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 brotherhood 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 בֵּין ( 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 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."

[21] It has also been supposed that the references by Agrippa in his 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.

[22] Jewish Encyclopædia.

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.

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 commencement 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; [Pg 56] 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 not the least shadow of connection with "lost" or found 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. 11: "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 commandments. But because the words of grace and salvation He was speaking to them through the prophets 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 [Pg 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 lxxxi. 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 Testament, 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 Judah , 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 עֲזוּבָה —"forsaken," and her land שְׁמָמָה —"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 ‎ ‫חֶפְצִי-בָהּ‏‬ (Hephzibah, i.e. , My delight is in her); and thy land בְּעוּלָה " (Beulah, i.e. , married). But the new name by which the mouth of Jehovah [Pg 58] 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 transformation 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.

This historical occasion of this Psalm may perhaps have been the great gathering of the Moabites, Ammonites, and a great multitude of others against "Judah," [23] who, in the Psalms belonging to that period, is invariably called Israel. At the same time there is a prophetic 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 beautiful 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 [Pg 60] 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:—

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 [Pg 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 conception of. ( See page 41.)

( b ) The statement here repeated about the tribe of Benjamin, and that the "majority of our Lord's disciples 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 (εθνος), 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 (την διασποραν) among the Gentile (or 'Greeks'), and teach the Greeks?" is not true.

The "dispersed" among the Greeks were Hellenistic [Pg 64] " 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 application 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 interpretation 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 wandering "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.

( f ) "Lastly, the final word," we are told, "must [Pg 65] be that of our Lord," and then there follows the quotation 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 understood to mean the dispersed among the Gentiles"—by which, I suppose, we are meant to understand, the "lost" tribes.

But the sentence—και εως εσχατον της γης—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. [Pg 66] There must exist, therefore, a people somewhere great and mighty and numerous who are the seed of Abraham, in whom these promises 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 divination Anglo-Israelites are able to distinguish and identify as "Manasseh," in spite of the fact that their progenitors, who emigrated from England, were, according to them "Ephraimites," and that those original emigrants 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!

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' קְהַל עַמִּים 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 fulness,' מְלֹא הַגּוֹיִם ) 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 גּוֹיִם , 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 ( גּוֹיִם , ( 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 [Pg 68] 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 fulfilled 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 [Pg 69] plans and purposes in and through them will be fulfilled. 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 argument 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 [Pg 70] 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 thousand, 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 dispersion 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 :—

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.

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"; [24] 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 [Pg 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 captivity 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: [Pg 74] —

I. That it seems to be quite a characteristic of Anglo-Israelism to ignore our Lord Jesus Christ as the centre of all promise and prophecy, just as it ignores the existence 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 commenced then. But He was rejected, and so the promise 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 [Pg 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 themselves explained, until "the latter days," when restored and converted they shall find in their Messiah the true David, both their King and Prince. [25]

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 perpetuity 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 [Pg 76] 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." [26]

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:—

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 Ægyptus and Danaus is here brought into the history of Israel, Danaus being identified as Dan, the son of Bilhah; and Ægyptus, 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.

Ægyptus, 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 Ægyptus, his [Pg 78] brother, he fled with his fifty daughters to Argos in 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 Ægyptus, 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 Ægyptus 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 Hecatæus, 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 "theologians" 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 Ægyptus with Joseph.

The value of Irish legends and ballads (upon which [Pg 79] the romances of Anglo-Israel writers are largely based), as sources of "history," may be judged from the following 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 warrant 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 Phœnicians 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)."

Note V.
"THE GATE OF HIS ENEMIES."

One brief note more must be added on a point which all Anglo-Israel writers advance as proof positive in support of their theory. It is the promise that God made to Abraham, "Thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies." The term "gate" (or "gates" as often mis-quoted) is taken to signify "strait," "port," or strategic maritime position and these writers grow quite eloquent in pointing out the many maritime points of vantage which are in occupation of the British as a fulfilment of this ancient promise to the chosen people.

Thus the writer of "Fifty Reasons" (W. H. Poole, D.D.), with which I have already dealt, asks (page 61) "What nation or people are now the gate-holders of the nations? We hold Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, Acre, Suez Canal, Aden, Perim," and many other important maritime points which he enumerates, and concludes triumphantly " For 500 years Britain has been the gate-holder in the lands of those who hate her "—a very doubtful compliment this, by the way, to British rule over her acquired possessions.

But like many other Anglo-Israel "proofs" it has no basis in philology or in fact. The word שַׁעַר —Sha'ar ("gate") is used hundreds of times in the Hebrew Bible, but never once either literally or figuratively of a maritime "strait" or "port." The "gate" as being not only the entrance to, but as giving control or possession of the oriental (walled) city, often stands for the city itself. It was, moreover, the most public place of the city, where causes were tried and justice administered (Deut. xxi. 19; xxii. 15; Prov. xxii. 22; Amos v. 10-15); and where elders and judges, kings and princes "sat" [Pg 81] officially for counsel or often to exercise authority and rule (Dan. ii. 49; Jer. xvii. 19; xxxviii. 7).

The promise that Abraham's seed should possess the gate of his enemies is idiomatic figurative language, equivalent to saying that they shall be victorious over their enemies, and take possession of their cities. This was fulfilled when at the conquest of Canaan the Israelites took possession of the land and thus assumed the position of lordship over the doomed nations who are spoken of as their "enemies."

We may notice, by way of contrast, that in Jer. i. 14-16 God threatens that as a punishment on Israel for their sin He would call all the families of the kingdoms of the north, and "they shall set every one his throne at the entrance of the gates of Jerusalem," which is equivalent to saying that the Gentiles would possess "the gate" of Israel—which as a matter of fact, they are now permitted to do by treading down Jerusalem and scattering the people until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

FOOTNOTES:

[23] See 2 Chron. xx. 1-13.

[24] "The Lost Ten Tribes," by Joseph Wild. The Eighteenth Discourse.

[25] See "The Interregnum and After"—the first chapter of my book, "The Ancient Scriptures and the Modern Jew."

[26] 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.

[27] "Palestine into Britain," by Rev. L. G. A. Roberts, Secretary of the "Imperial British Israel Association."

APPENDIX.

ARE WE THE TEN TRIBES?

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 distinct 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 [Pg 83] Great Britain, whether by sea or land, we are not told, and there is neither history nor tradition nor local monuments 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 Cæsar 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 tradition, 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 produced no impression, taught them no arts, gave them no language, and brought no civilisation to the barbarous Britons and Caledonians; whereas the Romans, who followed, [Pg 84] 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 Phœnician 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, moreover, 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.

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:—

1. "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; "England 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."

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 cannot 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 discoveries 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 righteousness 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 [Pg 86] 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 dispensation, 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 Judgment 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 [Pg 87] 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.

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The History of the Ten "Lost" Tribes: Anglo-Israelism Examined

The History of the Ten "Lost" Tribes:
Anglo-Israelism Examined
BY
DAVID BARON

PREFACE

CONTENTS

PART I.
ANGLO-ISRAELISM EXAMINED.

ANGLO-ISRAEL ASSERTIONS AND CLAIMS.

THE WAY ANGLO-ISRAEL WRITERS INTERPRET SCRIPTURE.

FICTITIOUS HISTORIES OF THE TRIBES.

PART II.
THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE TEN "LOST" TRIBES.

ARE THE TRIBES LOST?

THE CONDITION OF THINGS AT THE TIME OF CHRIST.

THE TESTIMONY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT THAT THE "JEWS" ARE REPRESENTATIVE OF "ALL ISRAEL."

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

THE TESTIMONY OF PROPHECY IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY.

A SOLEMN WARNING.

PART III.
NOTES AND EXPLANATIONS.

Note I.
ANGLO-ISRAEL "PROOFS" OF A SEPARATE FATE AND DESTINY OF "ISRAEL" AND "JUDAH."

Note II.
THE PROMISES OF A MULTITUDINOUS SEED, AND THAT ISRAEL SHALL BECOME A GREAT AND MIGHTY NATION.

Note III.
THE PERPETUITY OF THE DAVIDIC THRONE.

Note IV.
THE SO-CALLED HISTORIC PROOFS OF ANGLO-ISRAELISM.

Note V.
"THE GATE OF HIS ENEMIES."

APPENDIX.

ARE WE THE TEN TRIBES?

Other Works by DAVID BARON.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The History of the Ten "Lost" Tribes: Anglo-Israelism Examined

The History of the Ten "Lost" Tribes: Anglo-Israelism Examined BY DAVID BARON

PREFACE

CONTENTS

PART I. ANGLO-ISRAELISM EXAMINED.

ANGLO-ISRAEL ASSERTIONS AND CLAIMS.

THE WAY ANGLO-ISRAEL WRITERS INTERPRET SCRIPTURE.

FICTITIOUS HISTORIES OF THE TRIBES.

PART II. THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE TEN "LOST" TRIBES.

ARE THE TRIBES LOST?

THE CONDITION OF THINGS AT THE TIME OF CHRIST.

THE TESTIMONY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT THAT THE "JEWS" ARE REPRESENTATIVE OF "ALL ISRAEL."

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

THE TESTIMONY OF PROPHECY IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY.

A SOLEMN WARNING.

PART III. NOTES AND EXPLANATIONS.

Note I. ANGLO-ISRAEL "PROOFS" OF A SEPARATE FATE AND DESTINY OF "ISRAEL" AND "JUDAH."

Note II. THE PROMISES OF A MULTITUDINOUS SEED, AND THAT ISRAEL SHALL BECOME A GREAT AND MIGHTY NATION.

Note III. THE PERPETUITY OF THE DAVIDIC THRONE.

Note IV. THE SO-CALLED HISTORIC PROOFS OF ANGLO-ISRAELISM.

Note V. "THE GATE OF HIS ENEMIES."

APPENDIX.

ARE WE THE TEN TRIBES?

Other Works by DAVID BARON.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

The History of the Ten "Lost" Tribes:
Anglo-Israelism Examined
BY
DAVID BARON

PART I.
ANGLO-ISRAELISM EXAMINED.

PART II.
THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE TEN "LOST" TRIBES.

PART III.
NOTES AND EXPLANATIONS.

Note I.
ANGLO-ISRAEL "PROOFS" OF A SEPARATE FATE AND DESTINY OF "ISRAEL" AND "JUDAH."

Note II.
THE PROMISES OF A MULTITUDINOUS SEED, AND THAT ISRAEL SHALL BECOME A GREAT AND MIGHTY NATION.

Note III.
THE PERPETUITY OF THE DAVIDIC THRONE.

Note IV.
THE SO-CALLED HISTORIC PROOFS OF ANGLO-ISRAELISM.

Note V.
"THE GATE OF HIS ENEMIES."