The History of the Ten "Lost" Tribes: Anglo-Israelism Examined
David Baron
Paperback
(CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, Dec. 18, 2016)
DEAR FRIEND,—I shall endeavor to comply with your request, and to give you in this Letter a few reasons for my rejection of the Anglo-Israelite theory. I can sincerely say that I am not a man delighting in controversy, and I only consent to your wish because I believe that you, like many other simple-minded Christians, are perplexed and imposed upon by the plausibilities of the supposed "Identifications," and are not able to detect the fallacies and perversions of Scripture and history upon which they are based. As to the Jews, quite a different history and destiny is marked out for them. They, as the descendants of Judah, are still under the curse. In fact, the Anglo-Israelite, by another and more mischievous method, is doing exactly what the allegorizing, or so-called spiritualizing, school of interpreters did. The method was to apply all the promises in the Bible to the "spiritual" Israel, or the Church, and all the curses to the literal Israel, or the Jews; but by this new system, while the curses are still left to the Jew, all the blessings are applied not even to those "in Christ," but indiscriminately to a nation, which, as a nation, is like the other nations of Christendom in a greater or lesser degree in a state of apostasy from God, though I thankfully recognize the fact that there are in proportion more of God's true people in it than in any other professing Christian land. I shall endeavor later on to show you the baselessness of the distinction which Anglo-Israelism makes between the ultimate fates of Israel and Judah, but let me first say that the supposed historical and philological "proofs" by which the theory is supported, most of which have no more basis in fact than fairy tales, are utterly discredited by competent authorities. CONTENTS PART I. I. Anglo-Israel Assertions and Claims II. The Way Anglo-Israel Writers Interpret Scripture III. Fictitious Histories of the Tribes PART II. I. Are the Tribes Lost? II. The Condition of Things at the Time of Christ III. The Testimony of the New Testament that the "Jews" Are Representative of "All Israel" IV. Early Misconceptions and Confusion on the Question of the Ten Tribes V. The Testimony of Prophecy in the Light of History VI. A Solemn Warning PART III. NOTES AND EXPLANATIONS. I. Anglo-Israel "Proofs" of a Separate Fate and Destiny of "Israel" and "Judah" II. The Promises to the Fathers of a Multitudinous Seed III. The Perpetuity of the Davidic Throne IV. The So-called Historic Proofs of Anglo-Israelism V. "The Gate of his Enemies" APPENDIX. Are We the Ten Tribes? By the late Horatius Bonar, D.D.