[A]nd why not some of them sail fromChina,and Anian...which do
border upon New Spaine; and from thence they went to Panama,
Peru, and those thereabout. These in my judgment are those Chinese
of whomIsaiahspeaks, chap. 49 ver. 12 ...Behold these shall come from
afar, and these from the North, and from the West and from the land of
Sinim.
The little issue of the termSinimis a wonderful illustration of the change in
the relationship between scripture and geography that characterized this con-
text. I showed earlier in chapter 2 that Isaiah’s originalsinim,which meant
“south,” turned, implicitly, to “China” in a Midrash that was embedded in early
Arabic world geography. Here, we see a third twist of the prophecy; whereas the
aforementioned Midrash on Isaiah in the eighth centurycejuxtaposed Sinim
with Spain, now Ben-Israel uses the same verse in order to tie together China
and New Spain. Furthermore, whereas China in the Midrash was just a reflec-
tion of the Arabic geographical imagination, which placed it at the far eastern
edge of the earth, Ben-Israel’s China is far more real. He mentions several times
in his book the recent Jesuit reports “that there is a great number of Jews” in
China who might be descendants of the ten tribes. Ben-Israel is fully aware of
his accommodative move in this particular case. Invoking the Jesuit reports,
and even Ptolemaic geography, he thinks to refute a great medieval exegete,
Abraham Ibn-Ezra, who located Sinim to the south of the land of Israel, judging
Ibn-Ezra to be “mistaken.”^52 Ibn-Ezra was, in fact, correct in his literalist close
interpretation of scripture in locating Sinim somewhere between ancient Israel
and Egypt. However, in the context of new times, new geographies, and new
theological demands, Ben-Israel did not hesitate to dismiss him in a way that
exposes his own accommodative interpretation and the huge extent to which his
views on the tribes were shaped by the culture and geography of his time.
However, the book’s major contribution is the image it created of the tribes as
global wanderers. Ben-Israel’s method of conciliating the anterior conflicting
geographical accounts was simple: parts of the ten tribes lived in different parts
of the world because they had arrived in these locations during the different stages
of their wanderings. Their wanderings were crucial for Ben-Israel, as they are for
the final stages of this book. It was at this moment in history, albeit after a long
period of incubation, that the image of the ten tribes as nearly nomadic wanderers
emerged clearly and in a world context. Ben-Israel draws a direct line to Esdras,
the first to suggest that the biblical locations of exile were not the final ones:
The first ground of that opinion is taken from 2 Esdras 13 ,v.
40 ...[who says that the ten tribes] had passed over to...Arsareth
from whence we may gather that the 10 tribes went to New Spaine....