Jewes in America, or Probabilities That the Americans Are of That Race, Thomas Thorowgood, London: W.H. for Thomas Slater, 1650

184 pages (7 ¼ x 5 ¼ in.;183x 135 mm). pagination: [44], 136, [4]= 184 pp. Lightly browned; minor staining, mostly in final quires. Corners slightly rounded. Instructions to binder at fore-edge of approbation leaf cropped as expected. Early 19th-century blind tooled calf.

"The Ancestry of the American Indians: Thomas Thorowgood's Iewes in America (1650) and Jews in America (1660)," Richard W. Cogley. English Literary Renaissance, Vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 304–330, March 2005

FIRST EDITION, WITH THE APPROBATION LEAF AND THE CONTENTS LEAF, BOTH USUALLY LACKING

Thomas Thorowgood, a British Protestant minister wrote two books bearing the title Jewes in America, but which were published in London ten years apart, in 1650 and 1660. The author, has as the subtitle of this, first edition: "Probabilities that the Americans are Jewes." This is the first work in English advocating the theory that the American Indians were descended from Ten Tribes of Israel, exiled by the Assyrians in 722 BCE and subsequently "lost." Thorowgood provides an assortment of evidence to substantiate his thesis but his final and crowning proof is a letter from Menasseh Ben Israel who forwarded the curious tale of one Aron Levi, also called Antonio Montezinos, who claimed to have met in South America with representatives of a mysterious mighty nation of Indians who claimed descent from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.