June 22, 2009
The 10 northern tribes of ancient Israel exiled by the Assyrians in the eighth century B.C.E., might have been lost in “another land” as Deuteronomy poetically puts it, but they never vanished from the popular imagination, as NYU Middle East and Islamic studies scholar Benite lays out in his account of the enduring legends surrounding the lost tribes. As he recounts, people in all times and regions have been thought to be descendants of the lost tribes, whether Mongol invaders who terrified Europe or Native Americans, whose descent from the tribes was used to either justify or condemn their conquest and oppression. The tribes have been put to other religious and political uses, such as a proposal in 1524 for an alliance of the Church and the 10 tribes against the Muslims. Joseph Wolff, a 19th-century rabbi's son turned Anglican missionary, believed the Benee Israel of Bombay were the tribes' descendants; and 19th-century biblical scholar William Carpenter pointed to British Anglo-Saxons. Although solidly researched and tantalizing in subject matter, this latest by Benite (The Dao of Muhammad
) is academic in tone and less engaging than Hillel Halkin's 2002 history/travelogue Across the Sabbath River
. B&w illus.
Starred review from September 1, 2009
It will surprise readers that when President McKinley dispatched American troops to quell the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, he sent along a Jewish rabbi seeking the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. But in McKinleys action, Ben-Dor Benite identifies only one episode in a tangled history of efforts to recover a people absent from the historical record for 2,600 years. The Hebrew Bible provides the essential starting point for an inquiry into the lost tribes fate. But after identifying gaps in the scriptural account of the lost tribes ancient capture and deportation by the Assyrians, the author suspends the inquiry into historical fact as he delves deep into the theological passions of Jews, Christians, and Moslems, all acutely distressed over the loss of part of the Lords covenant peopleand zealously anxious for their redemptive recovery. But the messianic desire to reclaim the lost tribes transmutes in remarkable ways over the centuries, becoming a spur to geographic exploration, an invitation to romantic adventures, and a license for colonial conquest. Readers will marvel at how belief in the lost tribes benefits the ambitions of British imperialists and at how it has guided modern Israeli leaders in shaping their countrys repatriation policies. Scholarship of exceptional breadth, certain to attract a diverse readership.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)