Thomas Thorowgood

Thomas Thorowgood (d. ca. 1669), B.D., was a Puritan minister and preacher in King's Lynn, Norfolk, England.[1] He was the first English author to argue in 1650 that the American Indians were descended from the Lost Ten Tribes of the biblical ancient Israelites, an early Sixteenth Century Christian theory that was revived and retaken as the English started their colonization of the New World in the Seventeenth Century.[2]

Treatise

In the English culture/language context, Thorowgood's treatise "Ievves in America, or, Probabilities that the Americans are of that race. With the removall of some contrary reasonings, and earnest desires for effectuall endeavours to make them Christian. / Proposed by Tho: Thorovvgood, B.D. one of the Assembly of Divines"[3], first published in 1650 under the encouragement of John Dury,[4] appears to be the first suggestion of this idea, 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.[5]

Contact with the Puritan missionaries

Thorowgood was in contact with the Puritan missionary John Eliot who had emigrated from England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1631.[6] In accordance with the Puritan goal of converting the American Indians to the Christian faith, one of the strategies devised by the Puritan colonizers was to view the Indians as being descended from the ancient Israelites through the Christian messianic/millenarian myth of the Lost Ten Tribes. Viewing the Indians in this religious light would make them more acceptable as human beings in general to the population of Christian colonizers, and with this purpose the book was then written and first published in London in 1650. The book was printed again in London in 1660 with a slightly modified title: "Jews in America, or Probabilities that those Indians are Judaical, made more probable by some Additionals to the former Conjectures."[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. The English version of Menasseh's work called "The Hope of Israel," probably also translated from Latin into English by John Dury, was first published in London by Moses Wall in 1652.[10]

Thorowgood's book/thesis was refuted still in 1651 by Sir Hamon L'Estrange, in his book entitled Americans no Jews, or improbabilities that the Americans are of that Race.[11]. For the staying power of Thorowgood's thesis and its influence on subsequent American historiography, a good example is the late Eighteen Century work of the Indian historian James Adair.

References

1. See, e.g., Adam Thoroughgood [Thorowgood], from a prominent family in King's Lynn, Norfolk, England. In the History of Norfolk annals he is described as "rector of Great Cressingham [Chapel]" - https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/History_of_Norfolk/Volume_6
2. Tudor Parfitt, The Lost Tribes of Israel: The History of a Myth, London, 2003.
3. Thorowgood, Thomas (1669). Ievves in America, or, Probabilities that the Americans are of that race. With the removall of some contrary reasonings, and earnest desires for effectuall endeavours to make them Christian. / Proposed by Tho: Thorovvgood, B.D. one of the Assembly of Divines (Digitized by University of Michigan). London.
4. Peter Toon (ed.),Puritans, The Millenium and the Future of Israel: Puritan Eschatology, 1600-1660, Cambridge, 1970, pp. 117-118; Henry Méchoulan, and Gérard Nahon (eds.), Menasseh ben Israel: The Hope of Israel; The English translation by Moses Wall, 1652, introduction and notes by the eds., New York, 1987.
5. Richard H. Popkin, “The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Indian Theory,” in Yosef Kaplan et al (eds.), Menasseh Ben Israel and His World, Leiden, 1989, pp. 240-243; See also Lynn Glaser, Indians or Jews? An introduction to a reprint of Manasseh ben Israel's ‘The Hope of Israel’, Gilroy, California, Roy V. Boswell, 1973.
6. More on this and on Eliot's possible own sources for the theory in Toon, op. cit., p. 118, and Glaser, op. cit., pp. 33-43.
7. Richard H.Popkin, “Rabbi Nathan Shapira’s Visit to Amsterdam in 1657,” in J. Michman, and T. Levie (eds.), Dutch Jewish History, vol. 1, Jerusalem, 1984, p. 188; Glaser, op. cit., pp. 41-42. This second edition of 1660 is the one that contains the additional introduction called The Learned Conjectures of Rev. John Eliot touching the Americans.
8. "An Epistolicall Discourse Of Mr. IOHN DƲRY, TO Mr. THOROWGOOD. Concerning his conjecture that the Americans are descended from the Israelites. With the History of a Portugall Iew, Antonie Monterinos, attested by Manasseh Ben Israel, to the same effect." https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A94301.0001.001/1:5?rgn=div1;view=fulltext
9. "The Relation of Master ANTONIE MONTERINOS, translated out of the French Copie sent by MANASEH BEN ISRAEL." https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A94301.0001.001/1:9.1?rgn=div2;view=fulltext
10. Méchoulan and Nahon (eds.), op. cit., pp. 66-68; Glaser, op. cit., pp. 33-43.
11. The Wikisource entry in the linked article clarifies: "Sir Hamon was author of a work (often erroneously attributed to his son) entitled 'Americans no Jews, or improbabilities that the Americans are of that Race,' London, 1651 (October 1651)."; see Toon, op. cit., p. 117, and Glaser, op. cit., pp. 40-43.