regard that David was of use. “I, Abraham Farissol, wrote in order to expose to
the uninformed the itineraries of the world; I chose to write this chapter that
concerns the itineraries of the Jew from the tribes, or maybe from Yehuda,
whose name is David son of Shlomo, Commander of Israel’s Armies.”^77
David’s story serves to introduce the reader to world geography. The power of
Farissol’s faith in the existence of the ten tribes clearly overrode any doubts he
might have had in David himself: “I have seen all this in truthful writings,
and my ears heard [this] from important people, men of truth, and the Lord
God.... the complete truth... does not lie... and all those who seek his shelter
shall not be ashamed, and the truth shall naturally grow forth and will make
its way.” The power of his faith in the final redemption of Israel and in its God
is more important than the question of David’s honesty.
Farissol here calls to mind Zemah Gaon, who centuries earlier was faced
with the mystery of Eldad Ha-Dani. The Gaon could not afford, and did not
wish, to deal with the identity of the person himself. Faith was more important.
The restoration of the people of Israel and their return to the Holy Land was
the “complete truth.” It seems that Farissol understood that to doubt David
was to undermine his messianic project. Farissol saw signs of the truth
“making its way” in the fact that David’s episode won the recognition of the
gentile authorities of the existence and the power of the ten lost tribes. It is not
clear how he came to this conclusion, but Farissol wrote that the Portuguese
king’s response to the pope’s inquiries corroborated David’s claims about
the ten tribes. This of course was not true, but for Farissol the mere fact that
David was received by the leaders of Christendom was enough to suggest
that they had information corroborating his story. He also maintained that
Portuguese explorers brought news that proved David’s story to be true.
For Farissol, this would have signaled a triumph that cannot be under-
estimated. Writing in 1525 ,onlytwoyearsafterDavid’sarrivalinItaly,
Farissol was quick to identify the one substantial benefit of the whole
episode: “Now it became truth to all the kings and the rulers and among
the masses and in the streets of Rome that there is still existence to the
numerous tribes of Israel and they havemany kings.... And the Jew who
came let him be whatever he is.”^78
Whereas the Talmudic authors or medieval writers hardly considered
concrete or external geographic knowledge in their discussions of the ten
tribes, a sixteenth-century Renaissance man was required to consider them
in writing acosmografia,as Farissol subtitled hisIgeret.Farissol’s joy that now it
“became truth” to the gentiles that the ten tribes exist reveals how important it
was to him to provide substantiated information in his work—that is, informa-
tion acknowledged by the gentiles’ geography. In this regard, Farissol was the
lu
(lu)
#1