The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah Vol 1 - Predestination

applied to Him, would ahnost inevitably lead up to
the most wide concessions in the Christian
argument.* As regards the ten tribes there is this
tmth underlying the strange hypothesis, that, as
their persistent apoetacy from the Qod of Israel
and His worship had cut them off firom His
people, so the fulfilment of the Divine promises to
them in the latter days would imply, as it were, a
second birth to make them once more Israel.
Beyond this we are travelling chiefly into the
region of conjecture. Modem investigations have
pointed to the Nestorians,' and latterly with almost
convincing evidence (so far as snch is possible) to
the Afghans, as descended from the lost tribes.^
Sach mixture with, and lapse into. Gentile
nationalities seems to have been before the mind of
those Rabbis who ordered that, if at present a non-
Jew wedded a Jewess, such a union was to be
respected, since the stranger might be a descendant
of the ten tribes.* Besides, 'YebMiLiei there is
reason to believe that part of them, at least, had
coalesced with their brethren of the later exile; ^
while we know that individuals who had settled in