Brothers spoke of “Hebrews” who “undoubtedly are concealed among the
Gentiles, and are apparently as such; some of whom arenow,multitudes will be
soon, recognized to be of Hebrew extraction.”^88 He told a story of migrations
and wanderings that spread Hebrews throughout different parts of the world
and “others who went into Assyria, Egypt and the northwestern parts of
Africa,” imitatingHope of Israel’s portrayal of global migration. More notewor-
thy was hisen passantphrase “the visible Jews,” contrasted with those “con-
cealed among the Gentiles.”
As we have seen, invisibility has been one of the markers of the ten tribes’
exile, and it was often contrasted with the visibility of the Jews. In different
contexts, this idea was expressed or implied in varying ways. Brothers took
the idea to a new height: the invisibility of the ten tribes was caused by their
“loss of Israelite memory” and by the fact that other traditions or “genealogical
manuscripts”—false pedigrees—covered their real identity. Of himself,
Brothers wrote, “it is fifteen hundred years since my family was separated
from the Jews, and lost all knowledge of its origin.” (Indeed, the last Jew “on
record” in Brothers’ family was James, which made Brothers Jesus’s distant
nephew.)^89 Finding the ten tribes now meant revealing the true identity of
the Britons/Anglo-Saxons. This notion supplemented that of a British “return”
to Jerusalem.
The roots of Anglo-Israelism lay also in geography and ethnography.
While America reigned as the center of ten tribes debates throughout most
of the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, eastern and northeastern
Asia were not entirely forgotten. Jacques Basnage had boasted already in the
1680 s that he had “reviv’d the Ten Tribes, which seem’d to be buried in the
East.”^90 As historian Richard Cogely has shown, English interest in the Tartars
and the possibility that they were the ten tribes was reinforced by Giles Fletcher
the Elder (c. 1548 – 1611 ), a poet, diplomat, and parliamentarian, who became
involved in Tartary when he visited Russia, the history and geography of which
interested him greatly.^91 Tartary and the Tartars had long been associated with
the ten tribes, since the appearance of various Central Asians on the world’s
stage. Although the notion of the Tartars as the ten tribes declined with the
Mongols, it never disappeared. The rise of the Ottoman Turks to global
prominence drew more attention to Tartary, the vast territory of Central and
northeastern Asia east of the Caspian Sea. Tartary gained currency in Postel
and Ortelius. Fletcher infused this subject with new content.
In 1610 , he wrote a short treatise: “The Tartars; or, Ten Tribes.” The treatise
was published only in 1677 , but reveals changing ideas about the ten tribes at
the time:^92 “That [the tribes] have lost their name, and the distinction of their
Tribes, is more than probable, for that no Nation of the World are calledIsrael.”
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