When David Reubeni was led to the stake in 1538, Christopher Columbus was thirty-two years in the grave. Already, the “New World,” with its almost unfathomable riches, its vast and varied landscapes, and its native peoples, was known in Europe as “America,” a title it had received – in an homage to the explorer Amerigo Vespucci – in 1507. Already, some European intellectuals and explorers suspected that Israel was to be found there at last, among the native peoples of the continent then being revealed. And already, many Europeans wished to convert the natives to Christianity, for this and other reasons. Some saw in these efforts at conversion the fulfillment of a sacred duty to restore the people Israel to themselves. And some had already begun to wonder – or at least not long after – whether their own ancestors might include Israel, and whether European Christians themselves might be the true subject of biblical prophecies about Israel.