Edward Hine - Career

Career

A bank clerk by profession, 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 (Barkun 1997, p. 10). For several years Hine published a weekly journal, The Nation's Leader, and a monthly magazine, Life from the Dead (from 1873 onwards). He founded "The British-Israel Identity Corporation" in 1880.

David Baron in his The History of the Ten "Lost" Tribes (ch. 2) cites claims identifying Hine himself with the "Deliverer" announced in Romans 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.

Hine in turn inspired Edward Wheeler Bird, who however came to see Hine as a rival rather than an ally. The main point of contention between Bird and Hine was that the former tended to identify all Teutonic 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 Germany the 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. (Barkun 1997, p. 10f.).