Editing British Israelism (section)

==History==

===Earliest recorded expressions===
According to Brackney (2012) and Fine (2015), the French [[Huguenots|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-Saxons|Anglo-Saxon]], [[Celts|Celtic]], [[North Germanic peoples|Scandinavian]], [[Germanic peoples|Germanic]], and associated peoples are the direct descendants of the [[Old Testament]] Israelites.<ref name="Brackney 2012"/><ref name="Fine 2015">{{cite book |last1=Fine |first1=Jonathan |year=2015 |title=Political Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: From Holy War to Modern Terror |publisher=[[Rowman & Littlefield]] |isbn=978-1-4422-4756-7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JjXHBwAAQBAJ |access-date=6 May 2021}}</ref>{{rp|176}} Anglo-Israelism has also been attributed to King [[James VI and I]] (1566–1625),<ref name="Fine 2015"/> who is reported to have believed he was the King of Israel.<ref name="Brackney 2012"/> [[Adriaan van Schrieck]] (1560–1621), who influenced [[Henry Spelman]] (1562–1641) and [[John Sadler (Town Clerk of London)|John Sadler]] (1615–74), wrote in the early 17th century about his ideas on the origins of the Celtic and Saxon peoples. In 1649, Sadler published ''Rights of the Kingdom'',<ref>{{cite book |title=Rights of the Kingdom |last=Sadler |first=John |author-link=John Sadler (Town Clerk of London) |year=1682 |orig-year=1649 |publisher=J. Kidgell |location=London |via=Ann Arbor: [[Text Creation Partnership]] |url=https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=eebo;idno=A59386.0001.001 |access-date=2023-12-05}}</ref> "which argues for an 'Israelite genealogy for the British people'".<ref name="Fine 2015"/>{{rp|176}}

Aspects of British Israelism and its influences have also been traced to [[Richard Brothers]], who published ''[https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_a-revealed-knowledge-of-_brothers-richard_1794_5 A Revealed Knowledge of the Prophecies and Times]'' in 1794,<ref name="Barkun">{{cite book |last=Barkun |first=Michael |author-link=Michael Barkun |title=Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement |publisher=[[University of North Carolina Press]] |year=2014 |isbn=978-1-4696-1111-2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qb0EAwAAQBAJ |access-date=26 January 2021}}</ref>{{rp|1}} [[John Wilson (historian)|John Wilson]]'s ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=F6SRYJwuG2EC Our Israelitish Origin]'' (1844),{{r|Barkun|p=6-9}} and [[John Pym Yeatman]]'s ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=ToEBAAAAQAAJ The Shemetic Origin of the Nations of Western Europe]'' (1879).<ref name="Kidd2006">{{cite book |last=Kidd |first=Colin |author-link=Colin Kidd |title=The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600–2000 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |location=Cambridge |date=2006 |edition=1 |isbn=978-0-521-79729-0 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aNT3q1HjY_MC |access-date=18 February 2021}}</ref>{{rp|211}}

===Foundation===
British Israelism arose in England, and then spread to the United States.<ref name=Parfitt2003>{{cite book |last1=Parfitt |first1=Tudor |title=The lost tribes of Israel: the history of a myth |date=2003 |publisher=Phoenix |location=London |isbn=978-1-842126653 |edition=1st pbk.}}</ref>{{rp|52–65}} Its adherents cite various supposedly-medieval manuscripts to claim an older origin, but British Israelism appeared as a distinct movement in the early 1880s:
{{Blockquote|Although scattered British Israel societies are known to have existed as early as 1872, there was at first no real move to develop an organization beyond the small groups of believers which had arisen spontaneously. The beginnings of the movement as an identifiable religious force can, therefore, be more accurately placed in the 1880s, when the circumstances of the time were particularly propitious for the appearance of a movement so imperialistically-orientated.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Wilson |first1=J. |title=British Israelism |journal=The Sociological Review |date=March 1968 |volume=16 |issue=1 |pages=41–57 |doi=10.1111/j.1467-954X.1968.tb01291.x |s2cid=220396960}}</ref>}}

===Peak of adherence to British Israelism – late 19th and early 20th centuries===
[[File:William Pascoe Goard.jpg|thumb|[[William Pascoe Goard]]]]
The extent to which the British clergy became aware of the existence of the movement may be gauged by the comment which [[Cardinal (Catholicism)|Cardinal]] [[John Henry Newman]] (1801–1890) made when he was asked why he had left the [[Church of England]] in 1845 in order to join the [[Catholic Church|Roman Catholic Church]]. He said that there was a very real danger that the movement "would take over the Church of England."<ref name=Strong1986>{{cite book |last=Strong |first=Patience |title=Someone had to say it |publisher=Bachman & Turner |place=London |year=1986 |isbn=978-0-85974132-3}}</ref>{{rp|86}}

In the late 19th century, [[Edward Hine]], [[Edward Wheler Bird]], and Herbert Aldersmith developed the British Israelite movement. 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.<ref name=Kidd2006/>{{rp|209}}

By 1886, the "Anglo-Israel Association" had 27 affiliated groups throughout Britain.{{r|Barkun|p=9}} Hine later departed for the United States, where he promoted the movement.<ref name=Parfitt2003/>{{rp|56}}{{r|Fine 2015|p=176}}

The 1906 edition of the ''[[Jewish Encyclopedia]]'' stated that British Israelism's adherents "are said to number 2,000,000 in England and the United States",<ref name=TJE600>{{cite book |contribution=Anglo-Israelism |last=Jacobs |first=Joseph |title=Jewish Encyclopedia: Anglo-Israelism |editor-first1=Isidore |editor-last1=Singer |editor-link=Isidore Singer |date=1901 |publisher=[[Funk and Wagnalls]] |location=New York |page=600 |isbn=978-1-11791895-2 |url=http://d2b4hhdj1xs9hu.cloudfront.net/BJ1J6JJS.jpg}}</ref> an unreliable figure if association membership and journal subscription numbers are any guide; the number of passive Protestant sympathisers is almost impossible to determine.<ref name=Kidd2006/>{{rp|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.<ref>{{cite news |title=The Ark at the seat of kings |newspaper=The Irish Times |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/the-ark-at-the-seat-of-kings-1.356282 |access-date=13 November 2019}}</ref> At the same time, British Israelism became associated with various pseudo-archaeological [[pyramidology]] theories, such as the notion that the [[Great Pyramid of Giza|Pyramid of Khufu]] contained a prophetic [[numerology]] of the [[British peoples]].<ref>Moshenska, G. (2008). 'The Bible in Stone': Pyramids, Lost Tribes and Alternative Archaeologies". ''Public Archaeology''. 7(1): 5–16.</ref>

In 1914, the thirty-fourth year of its publication, the ''Anglo-Israel Almanack'' 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.{{citation needed|date=April 2017}}

In 1919, the [[British-Israel-World Federation]] (BIWF) was founded in London, and [[Covenant Publishing]] was founded in 1922. William Pascoe Goard was the first director of the publishing house. 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]]. One of its highest-profile members was [[William Massey]], then Prime Minister of [[New Zealand]]. Due to the expansive nature of the [[British Empire]], believers in British Israelism spread worldwide and the BIWF expanded its organization to the [[British Commonwealth]]. [[Howard Rand]] promoted the teaching, and he became the National Commissioner of the [[Anglo-Saxon Federation of America]] in 1928. He published ''The Bulletin'', later renamed ''The Messenger of the Covenant''. More recently, it was renamed ''Destiny''.<ref name=Parfitt2003/>{{rp|57}}

A prolific author on British Israelism during the later 1930s and 40s was [[Alexander James Ferris]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Cottrell-Boyce |first=Aidan |title=Israelism in Modern Britain |date=2020-08-31 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-000-17236-2 |language=en |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Wy3tDwAAQBAJ&dq=%22the+idea%22+A+J+Ferris&pg=PT35}}</ref>