Where Did They Go?

I confess to a personal interest in the subject of this book. As my roots are impeccably Welsh, I proudly claim a Hebrew heritage, a connection that is well attested in the Bible. According to Genesis, Noah’s son Japheth was the father of Gomer, who in turn begat Ashkenaz. As generations of Welsh and Breton scholars have shown over the past four centuries, these patriarchs were the ancestors of the Celtic and Germanic peoples. Gomer’s name is commemorated in the name of the Welsh people, Cymry, of the land itself, Cymru. The Welsh language, Cymraeg, is intimately related to Hebrew, and may represent a primal or archetypal form of the biblical tongue: QED.

Lest the reader be alarmed, I say immediately that I do not accept a word of these claims. Yet I know enough Welsh history to recognize that such a pseudo-history must be treated as far more than loopy rogue antiquarianism, and a similar respect attaches to the many other peoples around the world who, through the centuries, have likewise tried to write themselves into the biblical story. Such assertions particularly characterize small or marginal nations anxious to secure themselves on the global stage. Taken seriously, the claims provide a basis for pride in nation and culture, and often justify writing in a language that might otherwise be regarded as a poor relation of Latin or Greek.

Imaginative pseudo-Hebraism might actually be an essential stage in the construction of national identity and patriotism, and that applies to large nations like the English as well as their smaller neighbors. After the Reformation, as more Christians read the Bible in their own tongues, they sought to graft their own local experience and geography onto the master narrative of the Old Testament, which constituted the gold standard of historical authenticity. As William Blake proclaimed, “Adam was a Druid, and Noah; also Abraham was called to succeed the Druidical age … . All these things are written in Eden.” In the 19th century, British theorists sought their roots in the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and proudly traced the name of their nation to the Hebrew word brit (covenant) and ish (man). And once you believe that your nation is chosen and covenanted, once you accept that the threats and promises of the Old Testament are directed toward you personally, that creed profoundly shapes your social and political vision, for good and ill. Mythologies have consequences.

As Zvi Ben-Dor Benite shows, the Lost Tribes constitute a mythology that is both potent and enduring. The basic biblical story is familiar enough. Jacob’s twelve sons spawned the twelve tribes whose history is that of ancient Israel. Between the 8th and 6th centuries BC, Assyrian and Babylonian kings conquered both the northern and southern kingdoms, massacring and deporting many Israelites. By the time of the Babylonian return from exile, ten of the tribes had effectively vanished from history. Some presumably integrated into nations or kingdoms far removed from Palestine, while others merged with the more famous tribes. Such mergers and acquisitions were a common place feature of ancient warfare and empire-building.

But the missing tribes—Manasseh, Zebulun, Gad, and the rest—were not destined to fade away among history’s many other lost peoples. As descendants of the Patriarchs, they also were heirs to all God’s promises, while the number twelve continued to symbolize the fullness of the Israelite people. At the end of days, God would gather them in and restore them to the land, and such a restoration would be an indispensable prelude to the End of Time. Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah all promised an ingathering of all the children of Israel. Centuries afterward, Jesus chose twelve apostles. According to the gospel source Q, he promised them that, when he came into his glory, they would sit on twelve thrones, judging the full and proper complement of twelve tribes of Israel—not just two or three. Revelation likewise depicts the servants of God who are to be sealed before the final planetary catastrophe as being drawn equally from each of the twelve tribes, which presumably would need to be restored as a prerequisite of that event. And even if the Judgment was not actually at hand, it would be wonderful to track down such lost peoples who might be invaluable allies to God’s peoples in time of crisis. Jews indulged in fantasies of contacting the tribes to seek help against persecutors; Christians hoped for allies against Muslims.

So where had the tribes got to? Medieval Christian and Jewish thinkers puzzled over the question, usually concluding that they must lie somewhere beyond the known world, perhaps in North Africa or Ethiopia, Spain, or China. Repeatedly, through the millennia, the search has been encouraged by liars, tricksters, and charlatans who have declared themselves members of the lost tribes, ready and willing to make contact. Such for instance was the astonishing Eldad, who around AD 883 appeared in what is now Tunisia with a dazzling story of his exploits with the lost tribes—which still existed, he claimed, as formidable military entities beyond the known world. His story served the same function for Jews that the legend of Prester John later did for Christians: no matter how bad things might seem, there were powerful friends waiting to ride to the rescue from their fortresses somewhere over the rainbow.

But as Ben-Dor Benite demonstrates, the search for the Lost Tribes went on far longer than we might suppose, occupying a significant place in Western intellectual history right through the 19th century. The tribes were definitely in South America. They were in Central Asia, or on the Ganges. The tribes were in the Arctic, or beyond the Arctic. In fact, he shows, the quest for the tribes provided an intellectual framework for making sense of the countless new worlds that came into the Euro-American consciousness, and moreover in a context that was unimpeachably biblical. Columbus and his contemporaries sought the tribes in “the islands of the sea,” pursuing Hebrew traces across the new continents that fell under their control. To the east, meanwhile, European mapmakers regularly featured Arzareth, the supposed home of the missing Israelites, placing it variously in Tartary, Siberia, or the Arctic. And if it was on a map, then why could someone not go there?

As time went on, and light shone into even the darkest corners of the globe, the nature of the quest changed. Regrettably, we could no longer hope to find the tribes still preserving their Jewish law and polity, as they had clearly merged into other peoples. Whatever their external appearance, then, ancient blood might yet run in the veins of Africans or Asians, of Native Americans or Tibetans, and searchers had to penetrate their disguises. As Albert Hyamson declared in 1903, “no race has escaped the honor or the suspicion of being descended from the ten tribes.” Mormons believe that American Indians and Pacific Islanders are lineal descendants of the ancient Hebrew Lamanites. Orthodox Jews hope to locate missing tribes in Burma or tropical Africa, using DNA studies that secular media report as sober science, but which infallibly reflect the conclusions of whichever group sponsors them.

Not to give away a surprise ending, the author does indeed tell us the precise geographical location of the Lost Tribes: they were always one step beyond, just over the final river, beyond the final mountain, wherever that happened to be at any given time. All that was needed to reclaim them was to have one intrepid explorer prepared to cross that final limit. (Of course, Baron Münchausen claimed to have found them, together with their mighty Temple.) And yet, while the tribes never actually came to light, explorers kept making accidental discoveries that radically changed Western thought, reshaping geographical and anthropological thinking. The Irish Lord Edward Kingsborough never found the tribes he sought, “but his passion left us with a codex of Mesoamerican arts in nine massive volumes.” Other disappointed explorers brought home superbly detailed maps, as they filled in the empty spaces in which they had hoped to locate Dan and Issachar.

Writing a “world history” on this scale demands enviable linguistic and interdisciplinary skills, which Zvi Ben-Dor Benite has in abundance. By way of illustration, his previous book was The Dao of Muhammad, about a school of Islamic-Confucian thinkers that flourished in late imperial China. He is thus no stranger to arcane sources, and that background gives him an excellent basis to study events in such diverse periods and locales. All this makes The Ten Lost Tribesan exhilarating venture in intellectual history, which among other things demonstrates the sheer impossibility of comprehending early modern geographical and scientific endeavors except in the context of religious and biblical assumptions.

This is a readable and enjoyable book, all the more stimulating for the author’s meditations on the attractions of Lostness in the human imagination. He might well have quoted Jorge Luis Borges, whose imaginary “apocryphal gospel” includes the line, “Seek for the pleasure of seeking, and not for the pleasure of finding.” And as to the reality of the Lost Tribes? Well, all those things are written in Eden.

Philip Jenkins is Edwin Earle Sparks Professor of History and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University and Distinguished Senior Fellow at Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion. He is the author most recently of Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years, forthcoming from HarperOne.