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British Israelism


British Israelism (also called Anglo-Israelism) is a doctrine based on the hypothesis that people of Western European and Northern European descent are the direct lineal descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of the ancient Israelites, particularly in Great Britain. The doctrine often includes the tenet that the British Royal Family is directly descended from the line of King David. The movement never had a head organisation or a centralized structure. Various British Israelite organisations were set up throughout the British Empire and in America from the 1870s; a small number of such organisations are still active today.

The central tenets of British Israelism have been refuted by evidence from modern genetic, linguistic, archaeological, and philological research.

British Israelism arose in England, then spread to the United States. British-Israelists cite various medieval manuscripts to claim an older origin, but British Israelism as a distinct movement appeared in the early 1880s:

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 1880's when the circumstances of the time were particularly propitious for the appearance of a movement so imperialistically-orientated.

Earlier aspects of British Israelism and influences are traceable to Richard Brothers in 1794, John Wilson's Our Israelitish Origins (1840s), and John Pym Yeatman's The Shemetic Origin of the Nations of Western Europe (1879). In 1875, J. C. Gawler published Our Scythian Ancestors, which is considered an influential text to the British Israel movement.


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