facilitate the missionary project, since the Indians’ path to civilization would
consequently be “shorter.”^37 As descendants of the ten tribes, the Indians were
at once an “other kinde of being, and condition, and may yet happily, by divine
appointment, be restored and recovered.”^38 The project of restoring the Jews
should begin with the first exile—that of the ten tribes. Without finding the
tribes, the restoration of the Jews could never be complete.
The language of “recovery” and “restoration” provided a different, powerful
framework for the missionary work among the Indians. The cultural grooming
of Indians was not simply a “civilizing project” of the “natives,” but a work of
recovering lost and forgotten practices. Thorowgood’s treatise is important as
the first to articulate the project of the Christianization of the Native Americans
as a fulfillment of the restoration of the ten tribes. Once the Indians became
Christians, they would not only be restored as God-fearing people, but also
restored to the body of “Israel”—that is, the church—as the old biblical pro-
phecies promised. Furthermore, Jesus’s dictum to his disciples to go to “the
lost sheep of Israel” was hereby reinvigorated as well. The prophecies of Isaiah,
Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and others promising the return of the lost tribes in the
latter days had gained a new, Christian meaning at the same time. Thorow-
good’s articulation of the conversion of the Indians charged the project of
Christianizing the newly discovered peoples with a compelling new rationale,
one that was to last long after this particular millenarian moment had passed.
The idea that evangelizing the Indians was in fact a work of restitution
according to biblical messianic visions did not remain confined only to Puritan
circles.^39 Several decades after Thorowgood first articulated this idea, Herman
Witsius elaborated on it in hisDekaphylon.^40 Hundreds of years later, one can
still find numerous books and sermons expressing the same logic. Nearly two
centuries after Thorowgood, one author, the aforementioned Barbara Simon,
spoke of the conversion of the Indians/ten tribes as an act of “saving” them
from the state of being “ready to perish,” as the King James Bible translated
Isaiah’s “lost in Assyria.” As proof that the prophecy was right, the Native
Americans were described (with tragic accuracy) as “a nearly extinguished
race.”^41
Thorowgood’s manuscript was important enough to prompt Durie and
Holmes to turn to Ben-Israel and ask him for his opinion. By then, they were
used to writing to discuss different questions relating to Jewish theology. The
rabbi responded withHope of Israel.He was hoping that his relationships with
English scholars would help his efforts to obtain English permission to settle in
the kingdom that had expelled its Jews in 1290 , the efforts for which he won
lasting fame. He was able to go to England in 1655 to plead with Cromwell for
the readmission of the Jews. Partly thanks to his efforts, Jews were allowed to
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