generates to this day are numerous and in most cases repetitive. The best
summary of Anglo-Israelism’s main tenets is provided by David Baron ( 1857 –
1926 ), a Jewish convert who became a fierce opponent—not for rational
reasons but because he served as the messianic leader of the Hebrew Chris-
tianity movement, a competing sect that did not focus on the ten tribes: “The
theory is that the English, or the British, are descendants of the ‘lost’ Israelites,
who were carried away captives by the Assyrians, under Sargon, who, it is
presumed, are identical with Saxae or Scythians, who appear as a conquering
host there about the same time.”^82
Richard Brothers espoused “the fantasy of belonging, literally, to God’s
elected race.” At the time, he was unique in making genealogical arguments
for that case in England.^83 Historian Eitan Bar-Yosef has argued that the
origins of Brothers’ visions were rooted in “English dreams about the Holy
Land.” This specific strand was most concerned with Palestine’s geography and
symbolic religious status under British rule. This interest in the Holy Land was
itself embedded in earlier forms of radical piety and the desire to “build
Jerusalem in England.” During the eighteenth century, “as a metaphor the
‘Holy Land’ was much more accessible, and endlessly more useful, than the
geographical place itself.” Only later, with the rise of the eastern question at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, did English attention turn compellingly
to the idea of the actual colonization of the Holy Land.
Brothers stands at the moment of transition from interest in a “British
Jerusalem” to interest in the actual Middle Eastern one.^84 British interest in
Palestine and the possibility of restoring the Hebrews to it grew throughout the
nineteenth century, famously culminating in the Balfour Declaration of 1917.^85
Although Richard Brothers did not mention the ten tribes at all in his initial
prophecies, they entered his later visions. Basing himself on clues from the book
of Daniel, chapter 12 , Brothers claimed that he was “a descendant of David, King
of Israel, who will be revealed to the Hebrew[s] as their Prince”—a basic messiah
who met all the requirements for the title. As for the origins of at least some of the
English, Brothers had more exciting news: “Though very long residents in this far
northern part of the globe,” at least some of the English “were members of the
twelve tribes of Israel.”^86 Writing from the confinement of “Fisher Mad-House,
Islington,” Brothers preempted ridicule with an invincible argument:
I am certainly liable to be contradicted, not only on account of my
own immediate confinement...but also by their having lost all
remembrance, either by tradition or genealogical manuscript, of such
distinctive origin; and again because they are different in dress—
manners—and religious ceremonies from the visible Jews.^87