Anglo-Israelite Theory, an opinion as to the historical origin of the English people held by a considerable number of persons in Britain and America. They contend that the English are descended from the Israelites who were carried into captivity by the Assyrians under Sargon in 721 B.C. The Israelites were carried into Media, where they are identified with the Sace or Scythians, who appeared as a conquering horde there about the same time. They next swarmed westwards into Northern Europe, and became the progenitors in particular of the Saxon invaders of England. Unfortunately for the conclusion, the premises must both be questioned; and we have not yet been presented with any satisfactory proof either that the Anglo-Saxons are the Sace, or that the Sace are the Israelites. And it must not be forgotten that Scythia is much more a geographical than an ethnological term. Moreover, the so-called 'identifications,' on examination, prove to be little more than verbal quibblings on the English letter, depending for their success on the reader's ignorance of Hebrew exegesis. Thus one of the strongest is, that according to prophecy, lost Israel's location must be 'the isles.' The applicability of this to England is at once obvious. But unfortunately for the argument, the word rendered 'island' or 'isle,' is applied in the Hebrew text indifferently to any district on the sea-coast separated from Palestine by water—the shores around the Mediterranean, and the coasts of Greece and Asia Minor, as well as islands proper. Much is made of 'Jacob's stone' in the coronation chair at Westminster Abbey; of the fact that the Irish, or Canaanites, still trouble us according to prophecy; that in public worship we still pray towards the east, as if the posture was peculiar to English Christians; &c. On such feeble arguments as these, we are gravely asked to believe that pro- phecies which apply to all Israel relate to ten tribes only, to the complete exclusion of the two tribes represented by the Jews throughout the world at the present day. These prophecies, which have no meaning at all if not national and spiritual, are interpreted as if mundane and political, and referring to a portion only of Israel. We are told, moreover, that the well-marked physical features of the Jews are the special effect of the curse of God upon them; and when we ask for any survivals among the English of such peculiar and persistent customs as circumcision, seventh-day observance, legal uncleanness, and the like, we are told that the identity was to be lost, and that our ignorance is the best proof of the theory's being true. Of course, all evidence goes to show the impossibility of such peculiar customs and the language of a nation being so completely forgotten; and it is hardly enough for the opponents of a theory that sets at defiance all ethnological and linguistic evidence to be assured that nevertheless it is proved by a particular interpretation of Scripture assumed to be as infallible as its own authority.
The 'lost tribes of Israel' have been sought for in almost every quarter of the globe, and as one nation answered the conditions of the theory about as well as another, 'the remnants of the ten tribes were found marauding in the Afghan passes, wandering with the reindeer in Lapland, chasing buffaloes on the American prairies, or slaughtering human victims on the teocallis of Mexico.' But the enthusiasm of Rudbeck, Garcia, and Adair had at least one good result: it caused evidence about the facts of manners and customs—afterwards to be, in the hands of scientific students, of great value for the history of civilisation—to be preserved before it was lost before advancing European influences. The ten tribes delusion has now, however, sunk to a lower level than when Lord Kingsborough spent his fortune in publishing the Mexican pictures and chronicles. In spite of all the new real knowledge as to races, it has even now more votaries than ever. 'There is indeed no doubt,' says Dr Tylor, 'that this abject nonsense has a far larger circulation than all the rational ethnology published in England.'