British Israelite

British Israelism (also called Anglo-Israelism) is a movement which holds the view that the people of England (or more broadly, the people of United Kingdom) are "genetically, racially, and linguistically the direct descendants" of the Ten Lost Tribes of ancient Israel. With roots in the 16th century, British Israelism was inspired by several 19th-century English writings, notably John Wilson's 1840 Our Israelitish Origin. The movement never had a head organisation or a centralized structure. Various British Israelite organisations were set up throughout the British Empire as well as in America from the 1870s; a number of these organisations are still active today. In America, its ideas gave rise to the Christian Identity movement.

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

According to Brackney (2012) and Fine (2015), the French Hugenot magistrate M. le Loyer's The Ten Lost Tribes, published in 1590, provided the first expression that "Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Scandinavian, Germanic, and associated cultures" were direct descendants of the ancient Israelites. Anglo-Israelism has also been attributed to Francis Drake and James VI and I, who believed he was the King of Israel.Adriaan van Schrieck (1560-1621), who influenced Henry Spelman (1562-1641) and John Sadler (1615-1674), wrote in the early 17th century about his ideas on the origins of the Celtic and Saxon peoples. In 1649, Sadler published The Rights of the Kingdom, "which argues for an 'Israelite genealogy for the British people'".

Aspects of British Israelism and its influences have also been traced to Richard Brothers' A Revealed Knowledge of the Prophecies and Times in 1794, John Wilson's Our Israelitish Origin (1840s), and John Pym Yeatman's The Shemetic Origin of the Nations of Western Europe (1879).

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