Edward Hine (10 February 1825 – 15 October 1891) was an influential proponent ofBritish Israelism in the 1870s and 1880s, drawing on the earlier work ofRichard Brothers (1794) andJohn Wilson (1840). Hine went so far as to conclude, "It is an utter impossibility for England ever to be defeated. And this is another result arising entirely from the fact of our being Israel."
A bank clerk by occupation,[1]: 81 Hine claimed that he had been inspired by a lecture given by Wilson, which he heard at the age of 15, but he himself did not publish on the topic for nearly thirty years, giving his first public lecture in 1869.[2]: 9-10 For several years Hine published a weekly journal,The Nation's Leader, and a monthly magazine,Life from the Dead (from 1873 onwards). In 1880, Hine founded his own British Israel organization, "The British-Israel Identity Corporation."[3]: 193
David Baron in hisThe History of the Ten "Lost" Tribes cites claims identifying Hine himself with the "Deliverer" announced inRomans 11:25:
Are the British people identical with the lost Ten Tribes of Israel? And is the nation, by the identity, being led to glory? If these things are so, then where is the Deliverer? He must have already come out of Zion. He must be doing His great work; He must be amongst us. It is our impression that, by the glory of the work of the identity, we have come to the time of Israel's national salvation by the Deliverer out of Zion, and that Edward Hine and that Deliverer are identical.[4]
Hine in turn inspiredEdward Wheeler Bird, who eventually came to see Hine as a rival rather than an ally.[2]: 10 The main point of contention between Bird and Hine was that the former tended to identify allTeutonic peoples as descendants of the Israelites, while Hine reserved this status for the Anglo-Saxons (interpreting the name "Saxons" as "sons of Isaac"), preferring for Germanythe role of Assyria.
As the institutions created by Bird began to obscure Hine's success in Britain, Hine turned to the United States in search of a new audience.[5]
Hine's ideas thus influenced the nascent Anglo-Israelite movement in the United States, where they are still advocated by some Christianwhite supremacist fringe groups, which turned toantisemitism. For example, Clifton A. Emahiser's "Church of True Israel" identifying the Anglo-Saxons as the true Israelites and the modernJews asCanaanites who must be exterminated according toJewish law:[5]: 176
Maybe Great Britain is unaware that the Canaanites are the "Jews", as we have the same problem in the United States today. Yahweh commissioned Israel to completely exterminate every Canaanite on the face of the earth, thus we better know for sure who they are.[6]
Likewise, followers of theChristian Identity movement claim that they are descendants of the BiblicalIsraelites, whereas the Jews are the children of Satan.[7] This development is an inversion of the motivation of Hine, who was in fact a philo-Semite.[2]: xii TheWorldwide Church of God ofHerbert W. Armstrong also perpetuatedHine's identification of Germany with Assyria, adding the comparison of the NaziHolocaust with the destruction of Israel bySargon II, into the 1980s.[citation needed]
Hine also published a journal in the 1870s entitledLife From the Dead: Being a National Journal Associated with Identity of the British Being Lost Israel withJohn Cox Gawler.
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