Paradise At What Cost? The English Origins of The Rebirth of Israel And The Bloodletting In The Holy Land

Wikipedia:

Achsah Guibbory is an American academic currently serving as Professor of English at Barnard College. Her primary areas of focus are seventeenth century literature, religious history, and the works of both John Donne and John Milton; she has served as president of both the John Donne Society and the Milton Society of America.

An excerpt from, “Reviewed Work: Christian Identity, Jews, and Israel in Seventeenth-Century England by Achsah Guibbory” By Jason P. Rosenblatt, Religion & Literature, Autumn 2011:

This large and important book is at once a cultural history of seventeenth century England, from the reign of Elizabeth and the early Stuart kings, through the English Civil War, and into the Restoration; a nuanced exploration of “the varied, contested constructions of the nation and English Christian identity” (269), beginning as far back as Luther and Calvin’s differing influences upon English Protestantism; a powerfully persuasive argument that the Hebrew Bible was foundational to English Protestant Christianity; and a comprehensive analysis of the relation of Christian England to Jewish history and Judaism.

Recent studies of early modern Christian Hebraists by intellectual historians suggest that Hebraism should be integrated into the history of scholarship, making this history biblical or Christian-antiquarian as well as “classical.” Analogously, Guibbory’s exhaustive archival research demonstrates conclusively that religion and the Hebrew Bible occupy a place at least as important as republicanism and its classical sources in the foundation of English nationalism. Although Guibbory’s tone is irenic rather than adversarial, the sheer amount of evidence she amasses constitutes a decisive rejoinder to attempts to discredit religious explanations of empire-thinking. Jerusalem takes its place beside Athens and Rome.

An excerpt from, “Lovers of Zion: A History of Christian Zionism” By Thomas D. Ice, Article Archives, 2009:

The path that led to the widespread belief in the end-time restoration of the Jews to Israel started with the study of the Bible, first in the original languages, followed by the influence of the newly acquired English translations. When both scholars and laymen alike, for the first time in the history of the church, had the text of Scripture (both Old and New Testaments) more readily available, it led to greater study, a more literal interpretation and a greater awareness of the Israel of the Old Testament. This provided the atmosphere in which a major shift occurred in England (also on the Continent to a lesser degree) from medieval Jew-hatred, which led to the expulsion of all Jews from Britain in 1290, to their invitation under Cromwell to return in 1655. “From such a context and from among this people,” notes Douglas Culver, “now growing more and more intimate with things Jewish, the early millenarian protagonists for the restoration of the Jews to their Palestinian homeland arose.” However, it would be a tough road to get to the point where belief in a Jewish restoration to their ancient homeland would become so widespread.

It wasn’t just any group of English protestants that provided a fertile soil for Jewish Restorationist doctrines, it was out of the English Puritan movement that this belief sprung. “Starting with the Puritan ascendancy,” notes Tuchman, “the movement among the English for the return of the Jews to Palestine began.” Why the Puritan? Puritans were not just dissenters, they were a Protestant sect that valued the Old Testament to an unprecedented degree in their day. Tuchman tells us:

They began to feel for the Old Testament a preference that showed itself in all their sentiments and habits. They paid a respect to the Hebrew language that they refused to the language of their Gospels and of the epistles of Paul. They baptized their children by the names not of Christian saints but of Hebrew patriarchs and warriors. They turned the weekly festival by which the church had from primitive times commemorated the resurrection of her Lord, into the Jewish Sabbath. They sought for precedents to guide their ordinary conduct in the books of Judges and Kings.

One of the first Englishman to put forth the view that the Jews should be restored to the land of Israel was a scholar who had taken two degrees from Cambridge named Francis Kett. In 1585 he had published a book entitled The Glorious and Beautiful Garland of Mans Glorification Containing the Godly Misterie of Heavenly Jerusalem (one of the shorter titles of the day). While his book primarily dealt with other matters, Kett did have a section in which he mentioned “the notion of Jewish national return to Palestine.” This notion, which some think was likely gaining many followers, was deemed heretical to the English establishment of the day and Rev. Kett was quickly burned at the stake on January 14, 1589, for expressing such views about the Jews return to their land, an idea he claimed to have received from reading the Bible. About the same time as Kett, strict Calvinist, Edmund Bunny (1540–1619) taught the Jewish restoration to Palestine in a couple of books: The Scepter of Ivday (1584) and The Coronation of David (1588).

As the 1600s arrived, a flurry of books advocating Jewish restoration to their land began to appear. Thomas Draxe released in 1608 The Worldes Resurrection: On the general calling of the Jews, A familiar Commentary upon the eleventh Chapter of Saint Paul to the Romaines, according to the sense of Scripture. Draxe argued for Israel’s restoration based upon his Calvinism and Covenant Theology.

Two great giants of their era were Thomas Brightman (1552–1607), (likely a Postmillennialist) and Premillennialist Joseph Mede (1586–1638) who both wrote boldly of a future restoration of Israel. Brightman’s work, Revelation of the Revelation appeared in 1609 and told “how the Jews will return from the areas North and East of Palestine to Jerusalem and how the Holy Land and the Jewish Christian church will become the centre of a Christian world.” Brightman wrote: “What, shall they return to Jerusalem again? There is nothing more certain; the prophets do everywhere confirm it.” Brightman went so far as to predict that the Jews would be converted to Christ in 1650.