Jewish-origins explanations for native Americans dominated 400 years of scholarship.

Evidence

From the very beginning of European expansion Judaism was employed in the decipherment of religions, and Jewish ancestry was used as likely explanations for the peoples Europeans encountered. With the European exploration and conquest of new continents this device was used more and more. In the first stages the derivation of North and South American native beliefs and customs from ancient Israel was formulated. Certainly the Jews were not the only candidates to be enlisted in the battle to explain the existence and origin of the peoples of the New World, but they were among the first, and the discourse suggesting Israelite origins ran the longest and had the greatest influence. In the case of the Americas, over several centuries, first in the work of the Spanish historians and later in British, French, and North American accounts, the idea of Jewish origins for the indigenous peoples of the Americas was the dominant discourse and for much of the four hundred years between 1500 and 1900 commanded the attention of some of the greatest European and American thinkers. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 311

Categorization

• QUESTION: Which specific scholars carried the Israelite-origins thesis between 1500 and 1900 — worth chasing for a fuller bibliography.
• XREF: Family resemblance to Book of Mormon origin narratives and to diffusionist anthropology; also to the ‘alien origins’ genre in speculative writing.
• ADDENDUM: Connects to the Complaints About Immodesty piece’s theme — European observers imposing their own scriptural frameworks onto foreign cultures.