Prophesies and Politics: Millenarians, Rabbis, and the Jewish Indian Theory

Abstract

In 1649, Edward Winslow celebrated the efforts of Puritan missionaries in the New World with his publication The Glorious Progress of the Gospel Amongst the Indians in New England. In the dedication to the English Parliament and Council of State, he noted:There are two great questions Right Honourable, which have much troubled ancient and modern writers, and men of great depth and ability to resolve: the first, what became of the ten Tribes of Israel, that were carried into captivity by the King of Syria, when their own Country and Cities were planted and filled with strangers? The second is what family, tribe, kindred, or people was it that first planted, and afterwards filled that vast and unknown Country of America?2Winslow accurately saw that the issue of Amerindian origins had perplexed western minds since the discovery of the New World. He also recognized that many had often paired this question with another historical mystery: the riddle of the lost Ten Tribes of Israel. Winslow himself married these two puzzles in order to underscore the importance of missionary efforts to convert nonbelievers, whether they be native Americans or Jews. He did not mention, however, that highly visible Europeans were beginning to address both of these questions, and arrive at an answer with potent ramifications for his native England.Scholars who study the seventeenth century such as Margaret T. Hodgen and Sabine MacCormack have explored the ways in which westerners classified the indigenous peoples of the New World. Others like Lee Eldridge Huddleston have addressed various missionary motivations and actions towards these Amerindians. Some such as David S. Katz and Richard H. Popkin have even delved into the political subtexts of literature discussing possible Jewish-Indian kinship. The most recent scholar to do so is Claire Jowitt, whose 1995 article 'Radical Identities? Native Americans, Jews, and the English Commonwealth' analyzes the 1650 book Jews in America, Or, Probablities that the Americans are Jews by Thomas Thorowgood.3 However, Jowitt, like other historians before her, fails to comment on how the apologists for what became known as the Jewish Indian theory used the increasing momentum of their message to reinforce each other's writings and seek political, as well as religious, results. She fails to see the increasing numbers of Jewish Indian theory publications as a political phenomenon at all. It was. Contrary to Jowitt's claims, Thorowgood did nothing new, curious, or unique by using the notion of Jewish-Indian kinship for political purposes. He was not the first and he was not alone. In fact, Thorowgood networked with other writers, shared sources with them, and contributed funds to those involved with proving the relationship. By 1660, attention to the questions about Amerindian and Jewish ancestry had reached a peak and created unusual interfaith alliances. A close scrutiny of the works, writers, and politics of the time proves that prominent thinkers such as millenarian theoretician John Dury and rabbi-scholar Manasseh ben Israel put aside their fundamental religious disagreements and, for distinctly different political reasons, worked together to prove publicly that the Amerindians were, in fact, descendants of the lost Tribes of Israel.Speculation concerning the origin of the native Americans touched sensitive nerves in Christian Europe. Because failure to incorporate these people into a scriptural context would challenge the faith, Europeans sensed that classifying the Amerindians was in some sense a religious matter.4 Both the Catholic Spanish and the Protestant English struggled to position these new peoples into their preexisting eschatological timeline. Who were these natives? Were they infidels who had denied Jesus as Messiah? Or were they pagans who had never heard of Christ at all, and thus were not to blame for their heathen lifestyle? In order to answer these questions, Europeans had to decide how and where Amerindians fit into the biblical narrative in relationship to key figures and events such as Adam, the flood, the Diaspora, and Jesus. …