2

An Enclosed Nation in

Arzareth and Sambatyon

I have heard indeed
Of those Black Jews, their Ancient Creed
And hoar tradition, Esdras saith
The Ten Tribes built in Arsareth—
Eastward, still eastward. That may be.
—Herman Melville, “Abdon,” fromClarel:
A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land( 1876 )

Loss after the Bible

Centuries after their disappearance, the ten lost tribes sent an indirect
but powerful vital sign. It was encrypted in a prophetic vision. The
ostensible recipient was Ezra the scribe, one of the last great figures of
the biblical era, whose visions are recorded in the book of Esdras. In
2 Esdras, we read about the ten tribes and “their long journey through
that region, which is called Arzareth.” The book of the “Vision of
Ezra,” or Esdras, was written in Hebrew or Aramaic by a Palestinian
Jew sometime before the end of the first centuryce,shortly after the
destruction of the temple by the Romans. The original is not extant,
but Esdras was translated and preserved in Greek, Latin, Armenian,
Coptic, Ethiopian, and Georgian.^1 It is one of a group of texts later
designated the so-called Apocrypha—pseudoepigraphal books at-
tached to but not included in the Hebrew biblical canon. Many were