With the removal of some contrary reasonings, and earnest desires for effectuall endeavours to make them Christian,[3] first published in 1650 under the encouragement of John Dury,[4] appears to be the first suggestion of the "Jewish Indian" theory, which would later prove to have, in different forms, an enduring influence in the religious and cultural history of both England and the United States.
Viewing the Indians in this religious light would make them more acceptable as human beings in general to the population of Puritan settlers, and with this purpose the book was then written and first published in London in 1650.
[7] The book was published both times with an introduction by John Dury,[8] and it contained also Dury's translation of Menasseh ben Israel's report of the story he had heard in Amsterdam in 1644 from the South American traveler Antonio de Montezinos, about the latter's encounters with people who seemed to follow some Israelite religious rites and customs in the northern part of the Andes mountain range (in modern-day Colombia; in the Montezinos document attached to the book the area is called "the Province of Quito").
[9] It was the publication of the account and the book by Dury and Thorowgood in London in 1650 that pushed Menasseh ben Israel to publish his famous Spes Israelis in Latin and in Spanish in Amsterdam later on that same year.
[11] For the staying power of Thorowgood's thesis and its influence on subsequent American historiography, a good example is the late 18th century work of the Indian historian James Adair.