British Israelism
[8][9]: 33–34 According to Brackney (2012) and Fine (2015), the French Huguenot magistrate M. le Loyer's The Ten Lost Tribes, published in 1590, provided one of the earliest expressions of the belief that the Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Scandinavian, Germanic, and associated peoples are the direct descendants of the Old Testament Israelites.
[3] Adriaan van Schrieck (1560–1621), who influenced Henry Spelman (1562–1641) and John Sadler (1615–74), wrote in the early 17th century about his ideas on the origins of the Celtic and Saxon peoples.
Hine and Bird achieved a degree of "doctrinal coherence" by eliminating competing forms of the ideology: in 1878, the Anglo-Ephraim Association of London, which followed Wilson by accepting the broader community of western European Germanic peoples as fellow Israelites who were also favoured by God, was absorbed into Bird's Metropolitan Anglo-Israel Association, which espoused the Anglo-exclusive view promoted by Hine.
[13]: 209 Between 1899 and 1902, members of the British-Israel Association of London dug up parts of the Hill of Tara in the belief that the Ark of the Covenant was buried there, doing much damage to one of Ireland's most ancient royal and archaeological sites.
[19] In 1914, the thirty-fourth year of its publication, the Anglo-Israel Almanac listed the details of a large number of Kingdom Identity Groups which were operating independently throughout the British Isles as well as in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, and the United States of America.
During this time, several prominent figures patronized the BIWF organization and its publisher; Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone was its Patron-in-chief prior to World War II.
During the years of its initial growth, it could depend on the spread of Christian fundamentalism within the country, the emotional appeal of imperialism, and a belief in the unrivaled power of the British economy to expand a middle-class membership that viewed it as the divine duty of the nation, as God's chosen people, to rule and civilize the world.
By the mid-20th century, the dissipation of these factors changed the focus of the movement to one troubled by social and moral decline, including the degradation of class distinctions and of monarchical absolutism.
[17] They saw the same tribal name, left by the wanderers, in the Dardanelles, the Danube, Macedonia, Dunkirk, Dunglow in Ireland, Dundee in Scotland, Sweden, and London,[3][37][38][39] and ascribed to this lost tribe the mythical Irish Tuatha Dé Danann.
[3] Bede (died 735) had linked the Picts to the Scythians, but British Israelists suggested that he had confused the two tribes of Scotland, and that it was the Scotti (Scots) who were one with the Scoloti (Scyths) of Herodotus.
[41] The Declaration begins: "Most Holy Father and Lord, we know and from the chronicles and books of the ancients we find that among other famous nations our own, the Scots, has been graced with widespread renown.
They journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any race, however barbarous.
"[42]British-Israel Associations cite the Declaration as evidence for the link between the Scots and the Scythians, and hence the Lost Tribes,[43] as had been proposed by the early British Israelist etymologists.
In the Welsh (Cymry) the British Israelists would see a direct connection through the Cimbri to the Cimmerians, the Gimirri of Assyrian annals,[44]: 57 a name sometimes also given by the ancient Babylonians to the Scythians and Saka.
[45] Perceived similarity between this and the name by which the Assyrian annals referred to Israel, Bit Khumri, would lead the British Israelists to claim that the Welsh too were members of the Lost Tribes.
[44]: 57 According to the Anglo-Israelists, these claimed connections would make the British the literal descendants of the Lost Tribes, and thus inheritors of the promises made to the Israelites in the Old Testament.
[53] Current scholarship is not consistent with the claims of British Israelism, with scholars drawing attention to its "historical and linguistic inaccuracies" in addition to its links to antisemitism.
Tudor Parfitt, author of The Lost Tribes: The History of a Myth, states that the proof cited by adherents of British Israelism is "of a feeble composition even by the low standards of the genre.
"[14]: 61 Some proponents of British Israelism have claimed that numerous links exist between historical linguistics, Ancient Hebrew, and various European place names and languages.
[36]: 121 Adherents of British Israelism cite various scriptures in support of the argument that the "lost" Northern Israelite Tribes migrated through Europe to end up in Britain.
[citation needed] British Israelists believe that the Northern Tribes of Israel lost their identity after the captivity in Assyria and that this is reflected in the Bible.
[citation needed] Dimont is also critical of the interpretations of biblical prophecy embraced by the movement, saying, "Texts are torn from their context, and misapplied without the slightest regard to their original meaning.
[58] Dimont argues that the customs of the Scythians and the Cimmerians are in contrast to those of the Ancient Israelites,[57]: 7–10 and he further dismisses the connection between these populations and the Saxons and Celts, particularly criticizing the then-current formulations of British Israelism that would interject Semites between the closely related English and Germans.
[40] Addressing their view on the fate of the exiled tribes, Frank Boys said of their voluminous output, "All the effort to write these volumes might well have been saved on the premise that 'they were never lost,' which we believe to be the correct one.
"[38] Parfitt suggests that the creation of British Israelism was inspired by numerous ideological factors, which included: a desire of its adherents, many of whom were from ordinary backgrounds, to prove that they had a glorious ancient past; emerging pride in Western imperialism and colonialism, and a belief in the "racial superiority of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants".
This legacy was continued by Charles Fox Parham, but he believed that the Lost Tribes would join their Jewish brethren in order to reestablish the nation of Israel.
[68] Beginning in the 1960s, Herbert W. Armstrong,[14]: 57 founder and Pastor General of the Worldwide Church of God, vigorously promoted the teaching of British Israelism.
[13]: 206–210 Some American adherents of British Israelism would later adopt a racialized, strongly antisemitic theology that became known as Christian Identity,[12]: xii which has at its core the belief that non-Caucasian people have no souls and therefore cannot be saved.
Their adoption of the British Israelist belief that the Israelite-derived Anglo-Saxons had been favoured by God over the 'impure' modern Jews meant that a reluctantly antisemitic Klansman "could now maintain his anti-Semitism and at the same time revere a Bible cleansed of its Jewish taint.
[77] Christian identity members, as well as individuals such as Jacob Thorkelson and Charles Ashton, perceived British Israelism as a platform to "facilitate a Jewish monopoly on global power."
