Esdras had begun its rise to prominence in Europe almost two centuries
earlier, during the 1480 s, when humanist scholarly circles in Italy, most
notably that of Pico Della Mirandola ( 1463 – 1494 ), took new interest in Near
Eastern languages, Jewish texts and Kabbalah, ancient Greek thought, and
Islam. In this context, the Apocrypha, particularly the prophetic/apocalyptic
Esdras, a book that speaks of the climactic return of a lost people, were very
attractive. The encounters with peoples in the Americas also made this book
acutely important. In Spanish America in particular, the book of Esdras was
much on many people’s minds.^7
In 1572 , several decades before Montezinos, the Franciscan Fray Francisco
de la Cruz was interrogated and tried by the Inquisition in Lima, Peru. Among
many other crimes, de la Cruz confessed to an interesting heresy. He declared
that the Turks—since the fifteenth century a rising Muslim power—would
eventually destroy Catholicism in the Old World. The only hope for survival
was a Catholic alliance with the ten tribes—the Indians—in the New World. De
la Cruz, who wished to be the head of this New World–reinforced Catholicism,
based his argument on his belief that the Indians were the ten tribes of Esdras.
Less fortunate than Montezinos, he was burned to death after the trial.^8
Beyond Esdras, the adaptations that Montezinos adds are fascinating. His
setting is the Andean mountains, a huge range in South America, and the
gentiles from whom the ten tribes are hiding are the Indians. The story also
develops from revelation to revelation: Montezinos’s realization (in the Inqui-
sition’s prison) that some of the Indians are Hebrews, and his own self-
exposure as a Jew, lead to the exposure of the ten tribes. An evil empire—the
Spanish—provides the basic setting for the drama. In its most basic elements,
Montezinos’s story, however unique and bizarre, belongs in a much wider
realm of speculation, hopes, and fears concerning the ten tribes. Montezinos’s
version adds an interesting dimension to the prospect of finding them, one
stemming from his own identity. As a returnee to Judaism, Montezinos was
very familiar with the actual meanings of return and restoration. And as a Jew
hiding his identity, he understood the invisibility of the ten tribes as a problem
not only of reaching them, but also of identifying them. Being hidden does not
only mean living behind impassable geographical barriers, but also hiding
one’s identity. It is thus not surprising that he finds the tribes in the same place
where he himself returned to Judaism. Yet, just as he has still at times to hide
his identity even in America, so too the ten tribes: the moment of full return,
the moment of revealing their true identity, has not yet come—though the
encounter in America signals the possibility of its future arrival. Montezinos’s
encounter with the ten tribes stems from this broader context, a horizon of
possibilities which began to be seen around 1492.
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