world at one go. The focus on a subset, framed by a whole world, is a defining
characteristic of world history and of ten-tribes-ism alike.The Ten Lost Tribes,
too, like the seekers it describes, has the world as its ultimate frame of
reference, but this book is a history of only some of the world’s parts.
With the world as its ultimate frame of reference,The Ten Lost Tribesmoves
from the pivotal locations of the story of the ten tribes—ancient Israel and
Assyria, Judah and Babylon, Judea and Palestine under the Romans—outward,
following the ever-widening radius within which knowledge of the ten tribes
was generated. Rome and the Mediterranean, Portugal, Spain, the Nether-
lands, Great Britain, and, finally, the United States and Israel—each in turn
has become a potenttoposin the quest. The motion in this book follows the
literal movement of the seekers of the tribes, the constant recalibration of the
location the tribes were thought to occupy, and the ever-elusive, ever-receding
quality of the tribes themselves. This book tracks the emergence in different
world locations of ten tribes knowledge and, as such, is a sequence that reflects
shifts in the (largely Western) understanding of the notion of a political and
cultural center. As each site in turn became the new hub for the global
dissemination of knowledge, it became in turn the center for a new wave of
ten tribes speculation, study, and investigation. This study proceeds chrono-
logically, albeit with frequent forays into different times, from the moment a
group of people was indeed deported from the capital of the Ephraimite
kingdom during the eighth centurybceup to the relatively recent moment
when another group of people was “repatriated” to the very same place.
lu
(lu)
#1