although hardly rich in geographical detail, corresponds with the accounts of
Scythian migrations in Herodotus, a point he even illustrated in maps
(see figure 6. 1 ). Oxonian dramatized the migration as a story of escape from
Asia to a safe dwelling in Northern Europe. This wonderful saga only occurs by
virtue of the divine blessing on Ephraim, the lead tribe in the ten tribes’ nation.
This was all “God’s merciful assurance, delivered through the mouth of Hosea,
at the very time when He was allowing His ungrateful children to be removed
into captivity. How then could their future be to continue in captivity and
eventually become absorbed in alien races?”^121 Esdras’s story about the need
to protect the ten tribes from idolatry is reworked here into a story of protecting
the purity of the British races, and the history of the Britons emerges as a story
about an exodus from Asia to Europe.
This was all about the British past, but their present and future were
equally important. Here, the equation of the destiny of Britain with the destiny
of Ephraim and his brother Manasseh was essential. In fact, it was nothing
short of the destiny of the world, and therefore the history of the lost tribeswas
the history of the world. All Anglo-Israelist thinkers since Brothers strongly
embraced this idea, for without it Anglo-Israelism was nothing but another
version of the many variants on the story of the ten lost tribes:
How can the unique position of the British Nation and Empire be
accounted for, except on the supposition that it is the Nation and
Empire of the seed of Abraham? Certain it is that this Nation fulfils at
the present day the destinedroleof Israel. This can only be due to the
fact that Israel is in Britain: no other nation can have stepped into the
promises entailed by God on Israel, for God cannot lie.^122
The unprecedented global success of the British in the nineteenth century
could only be explained as the fulfillment of God’s blessings, given through
Jacob to the leader of the tribes. The British Empire, its colonies, and its
offspring polities were “His throne on earth.”^123
The emphasis on empire derived in part from the enigmatic book of
Daniel—an eschatological vision involving rising and falling empires. So too
the idea that Ephraim was blessed with colonies as one of the most important
identifications or marks of the tribe’s glory. All Anglo-Israelists insisted on this
point. Jacob had promised in Egypt that Ephraim was to “become [a] nation and
company of nations” (Genesis 49 : 22 – 26 ). And what was an empire if not “a
company of nations,” and what was the British Empire if not the greatest of all
empires? A similar, lesser role was assigned to the United States, “whose
growing greatness, its increasing population are due to elements in it of
Manasseh.”^124 In Egypt, recall, Manasseh had received the lesser blessing;