Postmodernism and the construction of ethnocultural identity: The Jewish‐Indian theory and the lost tribes of Israel

Abstract

Ten of the original 12 tribes that comprised the ancient Hebrew people disappeared from conventional history and other secular annals in 722 B.C.E., when the Northern Kingdom of Israel was overrun by the Assyrians and its people sent into exile. However, sacred histories and biblical prophecies held that the 10 Lost Tribes would be reunited with their tribal brethren descended from the Southern Kingdom of Judea in the coming messianic age. A quest for the descendants of the lost tribes has begun many times, usually associated with the resolution of immediate, local, secular, or sacred issues that emerged in a particular era and at a particular place. Various peoples (e.g., the Falasha of Ethiopia, the Lemba of Zimbabwe, the Pachucans of Mexico, the imperial family of Japan, the British Israelites) have proclaimed themselves to be, or have been designated as, the saving remnants of the lost tribes. Among these are the aborigines of Ecuador, Florida, western Georgia, and New England, each group of which has been the subject of occasional intensive and always controversial identification as Jews. In the processes entailed in the rise, vicissitudes, and fall of the Jewish‐Indian theory is revealed a proto‐postmodern mode of ethnoreligious group construction and collective identity formation.