BRITISH-ISRAELISM

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume 26, Issue 2, 1 February 1936, Page 8

BRITISH-ISRAELISM

Pastoral to the Faithful by the Bishops of the Church of the Province

of New Zealand.

We, the Archbishop and Bishops of the Anglican Church in New Zealand, desire to warn our people against the views which are being widely propagated under the name of British-Israel-ism. Without reflecting on the sincerity of those who are pressing these views with such earnestness, we must nevertheless record our conviction the the views in question are founded on grave misinterpretations of Scripture, of history, of ethnology, and of language. While the holding of them as a speculation may not be incompatible with loyal Churchmanship, yet the adoption of them .as a cult or as a master-key to the understanding of the Bible and of God's plan for the world does in our opinion seriously upset the proportion of the Christian Faith.

A question of this kind is a question of fact, not of assumption. The Bri-tish-Israel theory appears to us to be-

gin with the assumption that the British are Israel, and then to go on to interpret Scripture and to seek for or assert facts to support the assumption. When brought to the "acid test" of facts the theory fails. Our reasons for this statement are briefly as follows: — (1) We believe that historically the theory rests on a misconception. There was no deportation of the ten tribes en masse. There was a captivity of many of the inhabitants of Galilee and Gilead in 734 B.C. (2 Kings XV., 29, 1 Chron. V., 6 and 26). There was also a captivity of certain Israelites after the capture of Samaria in 721. (2 Kings XVII., 5-23.) This captivity seems to have been limited to Samaria and the surrounding towns (2 Kings XVII., 24), and Sargon, the Assyrian King, records the number of captives as 27,280. He probably removed the leading personages. There is good reason to believe that the majority of the Israelites remained in the land, and this explains the efforts of Hezekiah and Josiah in later years to gather them into fellowship with Judah. (2 Chron. XXX., 2 XXXIV., 21, 33 and XXXV, 18. 2 Kings XXIII, 19-------20). Some of the northern exiles returned later from their captivity along with the men of Judah: the rest formed part of the "Dispersion" along with the great numbers of exiled Judahites who preferred not to return to Jerusalem. (2) We freely acknowledge that Jewish exiles and Jewish merchants wandered far and wide. The second Chapter of Acts is evidence of this. They seem to have penetrated as far as China in the East, and over the Mediterranean world to the West. There is nothing, except lack of evidence, to prevent our believing that Jews had travelled as far as the British Isles, though, as a race, Jews had no love for the sea. But we believe it to be historically impossible to accept the British-Israel belief that in less than a hundred years the comparatively small band of disillusioned and scattered Israelite exiles should have changed their religtous,, racial .ana cultural, and even facial character-

istics and have then appeared as the vast nomad horde of expert horsemen and bowmen known as Scythians, who terrorised Eastern Europe and Media in turn and. were idolatrous, murderers of: strangers, and who offered human sacrifices,. It is only because: ordinary readers have no means of consulting authorities or even, ancient atlases that they could for a moment accept such an astounding proposition. St. Paul,, at any rate, knew nothing of it, for he classes the Scythians along with barbarians and distinguishes, them from Jews. (Col. 111, 11.) And yet this is the key-stone of the British-Israelite theory. (3) If this key position of the theoryfalls, as it must fall on an impartial investigation, it is not worth while to dispute about, very dubious interpretations iof Scripture passages, sometimes wrongly translated in our authorised version, or the alleged similarities between Israelite and British language, laws of symbols. These are often accidental, or imaginary. It need only be remarked that so far from Hebrew having- ,greafly influenced the English language, etymologists give only a few more than 100 English words out of some 90,000 as directly or indirectly derived from Hebrew or Semitic Languages. When we compare the number of Latin words in common use among us. we can draw our own conclusions. We believe that, subconsciously, the passionate desire to prove the British, race part of the so-called "Lost Ten Tribes" is largely inspired by a sense of racial destiny, and a desire to. claim permanence for the prominent position in the world now held by the British people. While earnestly believing that that position is a Godgiven opportunity, we deprecate the mistaken attempt to present the British as a chosen race in comparison with other races. Such an attempt is both a hindrance to brotherly concord between races and also a stimulus to that exclusive nationalism which is threatening the whole future of civilisation. We believe firmly that in Christ, "there is neither Greek nor Jew, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free":.

and that on the ruin of the old Israel has risen the glory of the new Israel, the Israel of God, the one Holy Catholic Church. The British-Israel belief is, in our opinion, a "throw-back" to the ideas and aspirations of the old Covenant and a failure to realise that in Christ all things have become new. It does not explain, but rather confounds the Bible message of salvation.

In such a brief pastoral letter it is impossible to go into details, but what we have said should be sufficient to show that we are not lightly condemning a theory without examining it and weighing it up.

We issue this solemn warning because we are convinced that many of our people, and notably some of those most devoted to the Scriptures, are being induced to accept an interpretation of those Scriptures which is quite at variance with the "good news" proclaimed by Our Lord and His Apostles. A. W. AUCKLAND (Archbishop) CAMPBELL CHRISTCHURCH T. H. .WELLINGTON CECIL ARTHUR WAIKATO HERBERT WAIAPU WILLIAM DUNEDIN . WILLIAM, Bishop of Nelson. December 16, 1935.