Between Gregorio Garcı ́a’s 1607 Origen de los Indiosand Rocha’s 1681 unique
and singularOrigen de los Indiosstood Menasseh Ben-Israel’s 1650 Orı ́gen de los
Americanos,in which the story of Antonio Montezinos/Aharon ha-Levi ap-
peared. Ben-Israel’s erudite tome shared with the other two the premise that
the ten tribes, or part of them, had arrived in the Americas, and in this respect
it sits squarely in the Spanish context of the debates about the peopling of
the Americas. But Ben-Israel’s book, better known as theHope of Israel,
truly belongs in a different context—that of the English romance with the
ten lost tribes.
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