The Ten Lost Tribes: A World History (review)

Readers of this book are in for a treat. From the title, readers might expect a tribe-by-tribe description and analysis of the ten lost tribes, but Benite's approach is very different. His goal is to show how the search for the ten lost tribes has, over two thousand years, been used as an motivation for and explanation of global exploration and as a major way to try to understand the world. From ancient explorations, to European imperialist expansions, to contemporary evangelical apocalyptic movements, Benite shows how the concept of the ten lost tribes has interacted with the search for "the edge of the world," expansion, colonialism, and the growth of geographical knowledge.

The author integrates Jewish and Christian perspectives, covers more than two thousand years, explains explorations and expansions from a number of cultures and nations, documents numerous tribes throughout the world who have claimed to be a lost tribe, and explains how all these dimensions have affected both academic perspectives and national foreign policies. The tribes throughout the world who have claimed to be one of the ten lost tribes frequently do not, of course, overlap with the ten lost tribes claimed by Jewish history, but this only adds to the conceptual complexity of the ten lost tribes. Benite has shown that legend and reality do not always overlap but that the lost tribes concept still is a powerful global story of restitution, redemption, and wholeness.

After a comprehensive historical Introduction, Chapter One discusses the first forced exile from Israel and notes how "[t]he thinly populated, poor southern kingdom, born in the tenth century, saw the destruction of its sister and rival northern Israelite kingdom by the Assyrians" (p. 45). Benite also makes other important points: that the total Israelite population was not deported, that other smaller deportations added to the [inaccurate] idea of a complete devastation, that many other people were imported into Israel, that deportations from numerous areas for various reasons were typical of the Assyrian Empire, that as Assyrian power waned, "Judah was able to rise to a status of some regional significance . . . more populated, more centralized, and somewhat stronger in military terms" (p. 45), and that the exiles were able to "return to their land and rebuild the temple, which they did in 518 BCE" (p. 47). Chapter One concludes that the fall of the Israelite kingdom led to theological explanations of divine punishment, messianic promises of return, and speculations about the locations of the tribes.

Chapter Two notes that the term "ten tribes" occurs only twice (in the same scene) in the entire Hebrew Biblical canon, and that a distinct entity of the "ten lost tribes" occurred only later in the postbiblical period. Chapter Three, " Tricksters and Travels," discusses several major world travelers who popularized the idea of the lost tribes, especially Eldad the Danite (late 800s C.E.) and the Spanish Jew Benjamin of Tudela (late 1100s C.E.). Chapter Four, "A Mighty Multitude of Israelites," continues the history of travelling writers and historians, with attention to David Reuveni and Rabbi Abraham Farissol of Ferrera, Italy. Chapter Five, "Concordia Mundi," continues the detailed recording of the travellers theme, i.e., the spreading of the concept of the lost tribes in the Jewish world. Benite begins with the story of Aharon ha-Levi, a native of Portugal, better known as Antonio Montezinos, and continues this chapter with documentation of other fascinating claims of the ten tribes being located in the Americas. He then turns to claims of the lost ten tribes being found in areas as diverse as Asia, Atlantis, Greenland, and the Canary Islands. Much of this chapter discusses historical claims of how the ten tribes made their way from Israel to the Americas.

In Chapter Six, "Hopes of Israel," Benite documents that in the late 1600s the focus changed and England emerged as the location of the hottest debate. Protestants used the legend of the ten tribes' revolt against Judah's...