Chapter 7 of Unit IV entangles the plot even more by intertwining the blend of the Alexander Legend and the Saga of Gog-Magog with a tale of the Lost Tribes. The medieval continuation of the Jewish story connects the tribes with the host of the Antichrist on the eve of the Final Battle between good and evil.
The European literati feel free to replace the location of the exile of the Israelites further and further East, while their numbers skyrocket, posing the threat to the expansion of the Christendom. Some authors even hint at a secret plot between the local Jews and their distant brethren to overthrow the civilized order.
My next chapter will tell about the Khazars which many obscure observers envisioned as the Jewish kingdom.
"Back in the Early Middle Ages, the Christian literati would make exquisite efforts to conflate the entangled Alexander legend to the no less complicated saga of the Lost Tribes.
Well-educated Europeans would visualize Gog-Magog, an inseparable pair of the Biblical mavericks, who were enclosed by an impregnable mountain range and locked by a man-made gate or a crenelated wall, residing in a secluded location, on a remote island or on a far-flung peninsula.
Paulus Orosius, an early fifth-century Roman priest and historian, discloses a new venue, reporting that the Israelite prisoners were deported to the area adjoining the Caspian Sea and experienced a baby boom. The Persians, he fancies, "drove great numbers of Jews into exile… and ordered them to settle in Hyrcania [a historical region in modern Iran] by the Caspian Sea. There they remain to the present day and have greatly increased in numbers." The Hispanic historian hints that in the distant future the outcasts will find the way out: "It is believed that at some time they will burst forth from this place." (1)
However, their presumed escape neither involves the revenge on the Christendom, nor is linked to the blowing up of any barrier set up by Alexander. Moreover, the king of Macedon receives a cold show of bad press, being epitomized as “a whirlpool of sufferings and ill-wind for the entire East.” (2)
The contemporary of Orosius, a priest and a chronicler Sulpicious Severus, confirms that the expatriates are still subjected to the pagans, among whom he enlists Indians and Ethiopians: “the ten… never returned to their native country, and are to this day held under the sway of barbarous nations.” (3)
The era of the Crusades put on apocalyptic candles, upgrading the notorious Ten Tribes to the status of the Satan’s henchmen. On the other hand, many late medieval writers realized that the enclosure context would make the imprisoned people too frail and timid to carry a potential threat. So they looked for another explanation for the seclusion: the deportees are bound by exercising their vassal duties.
Hugo Ripelin, a thirteenth-century Dominican monk, places his bet for the overlord of the revengeful tribes on the Queen of Amazonia. The Amazons, who have galloped from the classical texts, are another nation lured by Satan: "the Ten Tribes enclosed within the Caspian Mountains, however in such a way that they might leave if they were permitted… by the Queen of the Amazon, under whose rule and jurisdiction they live." (4)
