Antonio de Montezinos
Antonio de Montezinos · Exploration & Discovery
Traveler whose 1644 testimony on the Lost Tribes in the Andes set in motion the readmission of the Jews to England
Portugal (date inconnue) — vers 1650, Brésil
Portugal, Quito, Amsterdam
Antonio de Montezinos is recognized among Jewish contributors to Exploration & Discovery — Traveler whose 1644 testimony on the Lost Tribes in the Andes set in motion the readmission of the Jews to England
Origins and early life
Antonio de Montezinos — Aharon Levi by his Hebrew name — was a Portuguese Sephardi converso, one of the New Christians who returned openly to Judaism in Amsterdam, and a traveler in the Spanish Americas.
Work and career
In 1644 he arrived in Amsterdam from the province of Quito, in today's Ecuador, with an astonishing story: in the mountains beyond the colonial frontier, he swore, an indigenous guide had led him to a hidden people who recited the Shema and declared themselves sons of Reuben — a remnant of the Lost Tribes of Israel. He gave his account under oath before the rabbi Menasseh ben Israel, and it is that testimony, not its truth, that gives him his place in history: this fiche says plainly that historians today regard the story as unreliable, a chapter in the old myth of the Lost Tribes.
But Menasseh built on it his Hope of Israel of 1650, arguing that the dispersion of the Jews to the ends of the earth foretold by Scripture was nearly complete and that England, which had expelled them in 1290, must readmit them — the book that armed his mission to Cromwell and led to the readmission of 1656. Montezinos himself died in Brazil around 1650, still affirming his story.
Verify and go deeper with these external references.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_de_Montezinos
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Traveler whose 1644 testimony on the Lost Tribes in the Andes set in motion the readmission of the Jews to England
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_de_Montezinos
