The Ten Lost Tribes: A World History

The 10 northern tribes of ancient Israel exiled by the Assyrians in the eighth century B.C.E., might have been lost in “another land” as Deuteronomy poetically puts it, but they never vanished from the popular imagination, as NYU Middle East and Islamic studies scholar Benite lays out in his account of the enduring legends surrounding the lost tribes. As he recounts, people in all times and regions have been thought to be descendants of the lost tribes, whether Mongol invaders who terrified Europe or Native Americans, whose descent from the tribes was used to either justify or condemn their conquest and oppression. The tribes have been put to other religious and political uses, such as a proposal in 1524 for an alliance of the Church and the 10 tribes against the Muslims. Joseph Wolff, a 19th-century rabbi's son turned Anglican missionary, believed the Benee Israel of Bombay were the tribes' descendants; and 19th-century biblical scholar William Carpenter pointed to British Anglo-Saxons. Although solidly researched and tantalizing in subject matter, this latest by Benite (The Dao of Muhammad ) is academic in tone and less engaging than Hillel Halkin's 2002 history/travelogue Across the Sabbath River . B&w illus. (Sept.)