that time synonymous with Spain, though the
rabbi probably had northern Africa in mind. Another passage relates that
the Babylonian scholars decided that no one could tell whether he was
descended from Reuben or from Simon, the presumption in their mind
evidently being that the ten tribes had become amalgamated with Judah
and Benjamin. If they are right, if from the time of Jeremiah to the
Syrian domination, a slow process of assimilation was incorporating the
scattered of the ten tribes into the returned remnant of Judah and
Benjamin, then the ten lost tribes have no existence, and we are dealing
with a myth. But the question is still mooted. The prophets and the
rabbis continually dwell upon the hope of reunion. The Pesikta is the
first authority to locate the exile home of the ten tribes on the
Sambation. A peculiarly interesting conversation on the future of the
ten tribes between two learned doctors of the Law, Rabbi Akiba and Rabbi
Eliezer, has been preserved. Rabbi Eliezer maintains: "The Eternal has
removed the ten tribes from their soil, and cast them forth into another
land, as irrevocably as this day goes never to return." Rabbi Akiba, the
enthusiastic nationalist, thinks very differently: "No, day sinks, and
passes into night only to rise again in renewed brilliance. So the ten
tribes, lost in darkness, will reappear in refulgent light."

It is not unlikely that Akiba's journeys, extending into Africa, and
undertaken to bring about the restoration of the independence of Judaea,
had as their subsidiary, unavowed purpose, the discovery of the ten lost
tribes. The "Dark Continent" played no unimportant role in Talmudic
writings, special interest attaching to their narratives of the African
adventures of Alexander the Great.[66] On one occasion, it is said, the
wise men of Africa appeared in a body before the king, and offered him
gifts of gold. He refused them, being desirous only of becoming
acquainted with the customs, statutes, and law, of the land. They,
therefore, gave him an account of a lawsuit which was exciting much
attention at the time: A man had bought a field from his friend and
neighbor, and while digging it up, had found a treasure which he refused
to keep, as he considered it the property of the original owner of the
field. The latter maintained that he had sold the land and all on and
within it, and, therefore, had no claim upon the treasure. The doctors
of the law put an end to the dispute by t