John Wilson (historian)

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John Wilson (8 June 1799, Kilmarnock – 22 January 1870, Brighton^[1]) was the ideological architect of British Israelism.

Wilson commenced studying at great length in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin in 1837 Within a year he was giving a series of lectures which developed an audience. He published his lectures as a book in 1840 with the title Our Israelitish Origin. Here he claimed that the peoples of Israel made their way across the continent of Europe to these Isles. He brings evidence to bear from Diodorus and from Ptolemy, supporting the earlier history of the Israelites. He studied the works of Rawlinson, Herodotus and Josephus and quotes extensively from Sharon Turner.

His lectures attracted the attention of Charles Piazzi Smyth (Astronomer Royal for Scotland and one of the first Pyramidologists) amongst others.

It was in John Wilson's house in St Pancras, London that the Anglo-Israel Association was founded in 1874.

On the death of Wilson's daughter in 1804, his MSS passed into the possession of Rev. A. B. Grimaldi.^[2]