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_ -THE SO U T HERN ISRAELITE AUGUSTA, GEORGIA i ETROPOLITAN IFE INSURANCE COMPANY tiiiitiiiiniiiiiiiii f GLANDER, Manager ,1 (iiiiiitiiniiiiiiiii AUGUSTA, GA. Winter Sports call for this Drink Ddicious and Refreshing refreshment Every bottle sterilize d — bottled in our spotless plant* Keep a few bottles in your ice chest at home. 7 million a day AUGUSTA COCA-COLA BOTTLING COMPANY It Had To Ho Good To (wot Whore It Is AUGUSTA, GA. RIDGLEY-TIDWELL COMPANY PRINTERS and ENGRAVERS AUGUSTA, GEORGIA 'em KHODES-HARKINS FURNITURE CO. Complete Home Furnishers AUGUSTA, GA. IIIMUnuUSiniMIIMaMSMIlllMnMMiaiHiNitHmiHiiMMMUIMIIIIUSntMiniiilK CLEARWATER MANUFACTURING COMPANY homer loring President HtiiuutiimitimmimiMiiimmiMMMtmttMtttiHiHM* WALTER HART BLUMENTHAL Associate Editor of / he American HebrtW ON OLD AMERICA By ALLEN H Professor of Old Testame Did any part of the ancient Israelite people ever reach America? That the ory has been discussed to rags, begin ning with early Spanish explorers and ecclesiasts in America. The theory of “Lost Tribes” of Israel among the American Indians was long ago obso lete among competent Americanists. But, seeing that there is no actual rec ord, legend, or tradition of any Israe lite migration to the west, what were the curious resemblances to practices in the Old Testament that were con strued as indicating Israelite origin? Whence came the American Indians? These questions lay outside the scope of my Lost Tribes A Myth (Duke Uni versity Press, 1930). They are the cen tral features of an inquiry which our encyclopaedic scholar-friend Blumen- thal has been pressing for twenty years. No other man has such an im mense body of material, or accumu lated such a bibliography of the rare and curious relative to the theory of Indian “Lost Tribes”. Some advance chapters of a massive work are pre sented in an 80-page booklet, In Old America (Walton Book Co. $2.00). Dr. Blumenthal employs the method of the expert anthropologist. His open ing chapter, “False Messiahs and Psychic Frenzies” is of inestimable value for those who suppose that the whole circle of ideas associated with a Jewish Messiah was peculiar to a very small divinely selected group of ancient Hebrew seers. The average Protestant Sunday-School teacher never heard anything else. My own classes come from the ranks of col lege graduates. I have never yet had one who knew anything of the swarm of facts concerning messianism among the Indians and other non-Israelite peoples. Some are always disturbed at the application of the term “messiah” to non-biblical personages. Dr. Blu menthal concludes the keen sympa thetic outlook upon all humanity thus: “The messianic longings of man have ever been a reflex of his mundane distresses, often heightened by the memory of a glorious past. Such long ing has been his reaction to the pangs of persecution, his protest against the buffets of outrageous fortune, his dream of deliverance from things as they are. And so, often, he was led or misled to embody his long deferred hopes in the flesh of one or another obsessed figure. These messianic pre tenders, the strange vessels of man s outpoured spirit, are now seen to have been pathetic rather than ignoble; their frenzy and trances pitiable GODBEY nt at Duke University rather than revolting; and the cred ulity of their followers natural rather than vile. They were not, perhaps, conscious impostors but self-deluded: hence undeserving of the appellation of “pseudo-messiah”. The afflatus which led them to believe that they were appointed to usher in the re demption of their people was not false merely because it failed.” For this one chapter I place Dr. Blumenthal’s book on my reference- shelf for students of messianism. But there are other chapters, equally sur prising to the popular reader: the fact that “cities of refuge” or the privilege of asylum was familiar ev erywhere in America. Dr. Otto Hell- wig treated this institution in Africa and America in 1903 in Das Asyl- rechtsdec Naturvolker: and a later monograph treated Das Asylrecht in Ozeanien. I discussed The Semitic City of Refuge in the Monist, 1905, deal ing with the records from Assyria and Babylonia: and an important chapter in The Lost Tribes A Myth last year adds other material. Similarly the chapter on “Circumci sion In Red America” will surprise all average popular expositors of the Old Testament, and “Lo, the Poor Squaw”, showing the dominance of the matri- archate, or woman’s headship in fam ily, clan, and tribe, among the Indians. Dr. Morgenstern has been doing a sim ilar work for the Old Testament, dem onstrating the existence of beenah marriage and the matriarchate among pre-Israelite and Israelite peoples of ancient Palestine. Seven as a sacred number among many Indian tribes will also surprise the popular reader. To the historian of religion it seems that all such work as Dr. Blumenthal’s should draw religionists closer to gether. I have read no one with a keener and more dispassionate sense of final values. When we learn that many things claimed as a unique pos session or characteristic by this or that religious group are really common to humanity at large, some exclusive pretensions will disappear. I have heard a personal friend, Rabbi Wil- liamowsky, characterize existing relig ious difference thus, “I saw two la dies looking at dresses in a shop-win dow: one marked $7.00, one $15.00. ‘Why such difference in price? They are the same material,’ said one. ‘No, they are quite different’ said the other. ‘No, it’s the same material, and the same pattern; they have a little differ- ent trimming!’ said the first. ’ Belgrade, Yugoslavia.—For the first time in the history of the country a woman has been allowed to occupy a pulpit in an orthodox synagogue. The young lady is Rosa Bradt, wl o recently graduated from the theolo gical seminary. She administers all the functions of a rabbi, including preaching and teaching, but she can not perform marriages or grant di vorces, in accordance with the tradi tional ban on women’s participation in these affairs. London.—The clamping of a rigid censorship on the W arsaw news papers, both Jewish and non-Jewish, has shut off a source of reliable in formation on what is actually hap pening in Poland. Jewish newspapers have been confiscated because they gave detailed news of the riots. Non- Jewish newspapers as well have been suspended for the particular edition because they printed articles intended to incite anti-Semitic feeling. HILL’S CAFETERIA 'mimiiiiitiiiiiiiiiimimmmmiiiiimiimtmMiimtiiiMiiniiimmiHUimnm Phone 1882 WO Broad Street AUGUSTA J.H. COOK’S White Way Market Phone 1322 1262 Broud Street AUGUSTA HOLLEY PLUMBING & HEATING CO. ROSCOE S. HOLLEY. Proprietor