language of paradise,” the language once used by all humans. Later, the search
was rerouted to the origins of the European peoples.^99 Among the plethora of
related hypotheses produced at the time, Rudbeck’s theories stood out when he
began arguing that Sweden was in fact Plato’s Atlantis. The legendary land
itself was now portrayed as the original homeland of most Northern European
races, where Japheth, the third son of Noah, took refuge after the flood. The
“Oracle of the North,” as Rudbeck Sr. came to be known, spent a lifetime trying
to prove his theories.^100
We have some reason to believe that Rudbeck Sr. became familiar with
Ben-Israel’s work on the ten tribes more or less around the time it was
written. He was a member for a while of the large international circle of
scholars around the eccentric Queen Christina of Sweden ( 1626 – 1689 ).
Ben-Israel was trying, unsuccessfully, to gain access to the queen’s entourage
in the early 1650 s. Isaac Vossios, whose son was a student of Ben-Israel and
the translator of hisConciliador,had a long and complicated relationship with
the queen.^101 Thus Ben-Israel and Rudbeck Sr. may have met or been familiar
with each other. In any event, Rudbeck Sr. was more concerned with his
Atlanticaproject. But Rudbeck Jr. took up the ten tribes, which he thought
were ancestors or relatives of the Scythians and, therefore, the progenitors
of the various European peoples. The idea of the Scythian origins of the
Europeans had been in circulation at least since Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
( 1646 – 1716 ), a German philosopher and linguist.^102 Rudbeck Sr. had already
noticed that there were connections among several Asian and European
languages, a fact that he took as proof of Gothic migrations to and domination
of parts of Asia.^103 Rudbeck Jr. transformed his father’s quest for Atlantis into
the more promising (and less disputed) subject of the ten lost tribes. In 1717 ,
he published a lengthy study of several European languages (including
Finnish, Laponic, and Hungarian) in which he identified a relationship
between the Laponic and other Gothic languages and Hebrew. There could
only be one explanation for this finding: the speakers of these tongues were
“those ten Israelite tribes led by Shalmaneser to captivity.”
Rudbeck traced the tribes to Arzareth using a language basically similar to
that of Postel and Ortelius, but for the most part upheld Ben-Israel’s theory of
wandering tribes that had separated en route. A number of tribes went to
Persia, India, and China, until they finally penetrated “our north” (Septentrio-
nem nostrum).^104 In locating Arzareth, he cited Esdras and Hosea, Ptolemy and
Pliny. The “many Hebrews” living among the Russians and Slavs he saw as
further proof supporting the theory about the trail from Asia to northeastern
and Northern Europe. Rudbeck suggested that the Scythian city “Arsaratha”
(north of Armenia), mentioned in the writings of Berossus, a third-century
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