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"The belief identifying the red race...with the lost ten tribes of Israel...attained the dignity of a theory when Thorowgood published his work: 'The Jews in America." -History of the Jews in America (2022)
John Eliot (1604 -1690), a Puritan missionary to the American Indians known as "the apostle to the Indians" noticed that the Indians he observed shared many similarities to Jews. Reverend Thomas Thorowgood (1595-1669) was a friend of John Eliot's, and an efficient promoter of missionary work among the Indians. Based on his correspondence with Eliot discussing the similarities of Indians to Israelites, Thorowgood published in 1660 "Jews in America, or, Probabilities that those Indians are Judaical."
Thorowgood appended to "Jews in America" a twentyeight page letter of John Eliot's on this subject, which affirms the belief, rather common then in New England, that the Indians were descended from the Lost Tribes.
Regarding the American Indian's relation to Israel, Thorowgood notes:
"1. That the Ten Tribes are dispersed and scattered into other Nations.
"2. That they were scattered Eastward.
"3. That it was for their sins, for which God did threaten them to be scattered to the utmost ends of the earth.
"4. That they shall be found again, and called into Christ his kingdome.
"5. Judah being scattered westward, and were scattered to the utmost ends of the Western world.
" Hence why ought we not to believe, that the ten Tribes being scattered Eastward, are scattered to the utmost ends of the Eastern world? and if so, then assuredly into America, because that is part of the easterne World, and peopled by Easterne Inhabitants, as aforesaid."
About the author:
Thomas Thorowgood received his education in the University of Cambridge, where he proceeded Master of Arts. He entered into the office of the holy ministry, and was afterward Bachelor of Divinity.
Thorowgood's "Jews in America" was one of the first published books describing Native Americans as descendants of the Israelites, and was cited in many later books on the subject, including:
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