Ethan Smith

View of the Hebrews Ethan Smith

This famous book by preacher and theologian Ethan Smith puts forth the notion that the Native American tribes are descended from the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. The idea that the distant forebears of the Native American tribes had somehow arrived in North America long ago from Israel, perhaps during the Great Flood described in the Biblical Old Testament, was a popular belief in the USA during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Lacking an alternative explanation for the tribal peoples, the preachers of the era advanced this Israelite theory, which gained currency especially among pious Christians in the fledgling United States. Concepts that Ethan Smith and others advanced were later discredited by anthropologists, who determined that ancestors of the Native American peoples had in fact migrated across the frozen plains of Alaska. Despite being disproven by later research, View of the Hebrews remains interesting for insights into popular beliefs and suppositions of religious scholars at the time.