Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/217

Rh than the second-hand reports they have given; especially as many of these reports themselves carry with them a confutation of the conclusions in support of which they are adduced. Some of these people are said to possess copies of the Scriptures, which copies however are not brought forward for due examination, and of which, as we can only judge by conjecture, there may be doubts as to their value. In the reign of Josiah, which was a hundred years after the Assyrian captivity, we know that the Scriptures had become almost lost, so that when a copy had been found by some chance in the temple, it was received with a reverence and dread, showing how much they had been neglected. If this occurrence took place in Jerusalem, in the head-quarters of their religion, how can we suppose that the rebellious idolaters of the ten tribes would have been more careful of their preservation through the centuries of their revolt, and through upwards of 2000 years that have elapsed since they were scattered among the heathen? If the Israelites then did actually possess copies of their law, they would of course also possess them in their original character, which was akin to the Samaritan, and not to the Hebrew, as we now know it. But the Scriptures among these Indian and Chinese Israelites are described as Hebrew, and if this be true, and if they really preserve any Jewish ritual or Jewish institutions, or other customs, we may rather conclude them to be descendants of some Jewish colonies or families of much later migration, than descendants of the captives taken away by the Assyrians.

If however no ground could be alleged for suspecting that these scattered families of the Israelitish people must have been necessarily offsets from Judæa, of a date posterior to the restoration, and if stronger grounds could be adduced than we have yet heard, of any of them having arrived at their locations at an earlier period, still the utmost that could even then be allowed in such case is, that they were descendants from some individual families of the ten tribes who had escaped from captivity, but were not substantially representatives of the tribes themselves. We are not informed that they are anywhere to be found in any very considerable numbers; but if they were so found in tenfold proportions to any reported, yet still those numbers would not be so great as might be expected, if only a few families, in the natural increase of population during the 2500 years and upwards that have elapsed since the Assyrian captivity.

The conclusions deducible from the foregoing considerations may finally be summed up in the following recapitulation: —