Page:David Baron – The History of the Ten "Lost" Tribes.djvu/44

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EARLY MISCONCEPTIONS AND CONFUSION

of the facts which I have adduced is, that the whole supposition of "lost tribes," in the sense in which Anglo-Israelism uses the term, is a fancy which originated in ignorance; and that "the Jews" are the whole, and the only national Israel, representing not only the "Two Tribes," but "all the Twelve Tribes" who were "scattered abroad."


EARLY MISCONCEPTIONS AND CONFUSION ON THE QUESTION OF THE TEN TRIBES.


I have thought it necessary to enter all the more fully into this point, because even some otherwise sober-minded teachers and writers, who are not Anglo-Israelites, have fallen into some confusion in dealing with this subject; and no wonder, for already Josephus, who vaguely locates a separate multitude belonging to the Ten Tribes somewhere beyond the Euphrates ("Antiq." xi. 1, 2)—a Jewish tradition which locates a mighty kingdom of the Ten Tribes beyond the fabled miraculous river Sambation, which no one can cross because it throws up stones all the week, and only rests on the Sabbath; and the Talmud (Jer. Sanhedrin, 29, c.), which speaks of three localities whither they had been banished, viz., the district around the above wonderful Sambation, Daphne, near Antioch; and the third locality could neither be seen nor named because it was continually hidden by a cloud—all these show