The Ten Lost Tribes. A World History - Zvi Ben-Dor Benite

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typhus at forty-two in “the sheriff’s prison in Dublin.”^68 To theAntiquities,
mostly facsimiles of art works, Kingsborough added an extensive text that was a
summary of the many Spanish accounts he spent his lifetime reading. Ben-
Israel and Montezinos were both cited as sources of inspiration.^69
This book was what Barbara Simon used as her historical evidence. She
simply republished Kingsborough’s text, with some of her own commentary
added at the front. In an appendix, she placed Ben-Israel’s interpretation of
prophecies foretelling the ten tribes’ return.^70 Sandwiched between Simon’s
introduction and Ben-Israel’s prophecies, Kingsborough’s book reads rather
differently from the original version. The originalAntiquitieshad relied heavily
on Spanish authors and on ethnographic and linguistic studies. It was thus not
theological enough—that is, not embedded in the interpretive view that placed
the ten tribes within the restorative messianic project.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the idea that Indians were
Israelites had exhausted itself in the face of the overwhelming evidence to the
contrary. Only a renewed theological thrust could keep it alive. In 1832 , the
polymath and natural scientist Constantine Samuel Rafinesque ( 1783 – 1840 )
attacked in hisAtlantic Journalthe “singular but absurd opinion that American
tribes are descended from the Hebrews or the ten lost tribes.”^71 He was
outraged by the news that “Lord Kingsborough, having adopted [this] delusive
idea...ha[d] vainly spent 80 , 000 pounds Sterling, or $ 135 , 000 !!!” on his
Antiquities of Mexico.But the thing that most angered Rafinesque was the
appearance in the United States of “a new religion or sect [that] has been
founded on this belief!” Rafinesque identified the new sect of fanatics as
“[t]he Mormonites thus called after a new Alcoran, or book of Mormons.”
The comparison to the Qur’an was intended as the ultimate insult.”^72


The Ten Lost Tribes and the Birth of Mormonism


The Book of Mormon, a collection of unknown Mesoamerican prophecies
thought by Mormons to have been compiled by the prophet/historian Mor-
mon, was first published in 1830 in Palmyra, New York. The publisher, Joseph
Smith ( 1805 – 1844 ), claimed to have found the book in 1827 in the form of gold
plates, the location of which was given to him in revelation by the last of the
prophets, Moroni, who had buried the entire collection. The basic theological
premise of the movement identified America with “Zion,” and the Church of
the Latter-day Saints as “Israel.” Rafinesque’s outrage reveals much about the
cultural moment when Mormonism first appeared. What mattered was ratio-
nal thought; indeed, Rafinesque seems as annoyed with Kingsborough’s idiocy


184 THE TEN LOST TRIBES

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