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Millenarianism in England, Holland and America: Jewish-Christian relations in Amsterdam, London and Newport, Rhode Island

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Philosophy, History and Social Action

Part of the book series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science ((BSPS,volume 107))

Abstract

Jewish-Christian intellectual relations during the Middle Ages were often quite bitter, taking the form of disputations about whether the Messiah had come and denunciations of Judaism, and were often followed by grim consequences for the Jewish participants. In the late medieval period Christian interest arose concerning Jewish modes of interpreting Scripture. Starting with Nicolaus of Lyra, who was probably a convert, Christians started wading into the Jewish sources, the Mishna, the Talmud, Midrashim, Response, etc. As interest rose about the actual original text of Scripture, rabbis were consulted by figures such as Luther, by Papal authorities, and Henry VIII. Converted Jews became professors of Hebrew in England, France, The Lowlands, Germany, Italy and even New England.

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Notes

  1. See Christopher Hill, ‘Till the Conversion of the Jews’, William Andrews Clark Lecture (Oct. 1981), forthcoming

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  43. Cf. R. H. Popkin, ‘David Levi, Anglo-Jewish Polemicist’, Harvard Studies in 18th Century Judaism (forthcoming).

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  44. This pamphlet was published in London in 1658. Katz attributes it to Henry Jessey. The Wing Short Title Catalogue lists John Dury as the author. The content indicates it is Dury.

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  45. Dury, An Information, pp. 1–10.

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  47. Dury, An Information, pp. 11–12.

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  48. Ibid., pp. 12–13.

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  49. Ibid., p. 13.

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  51. Ibid., p. 16.

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  52. Ibid., pp. 17–18.

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  54. Cf. Popkin, ‘Rabbi Nathan Shapira’, p. 199.

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  55. All of this is recounted in Gershom Scholem’s Sabbatai Zevi, The Mystical Messiah (Princeton, 1973).

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  56. Ibid., pp. 478–479.

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  58. Scholem, op. cit., Chaps. 7 and 8; and G. Scholem, ‘Shabbatai Zevi’, Encyclopedia Judaica XIV, 1219–1254.

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  59. Serrarius’ explanation of Sabbatai Zevi’s conversion is in his letter to Oldenburg, July 5,1667, Correspondence of Oldenburg, III, p. 447. John Evelyn’s work, The History of the Three Impostors, appeared in London in 1669.

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  60. The major work on Orobio de Castro by Yosef Kaplan appeared in Hebrew in Jerusalem in 1982. It is hoped that an English translation will appear soon. It is entitled From Christianity to Judaism, The Life and Work of Isaac Orobio de Castro.

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  61. On Isaac de Pinto, see Popkin, ‘Hume and Isaac de Pinto’, Texas Studies in Literature XII (1970), 417–430

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  62. Popkin ‘Hume and Isaac de Pinto, Five New Letters’ in Hume and the Enlightenment (Edinburgh, 1974), pp. 99–127

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  64. See Popkin, ‘Divine Causality: Newton, the Newtonians and Hume’ in Greene Centennial Studies, ed. by Paul J. Korshin and Robert R. Allen (Charlottesville, Va, 1984), pp. 40–56

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  65. On the background of the Jews in Newport, see M. A. Gutsein, The Story of the Jews of Newport (New York, 1936) and the article ‘Newport’ in Encyclopedia Judaica. 49

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  66. On Stiles, see Edmund S. Morgan, The Gentle Puritan, A Life of Ezra Stiles, 1727–1795 (New Haven and London, 1962).

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  67. There is an inventory to the material in Harold E. Selesky, A Guide to the Microfilm Edition of the Ezra Stiles Papers (New Haven, 1978). The microfilms are available in many libraries.

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  68. On this see the very interesting article by Arthur A. Chiel, ‘The Rabbi and Ezra Stiles’, American Jewish Historical Quarterly LXI (1972), 294–312.

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  70. On Benjamin Gale, see John F. Fulton’s article on him in the Dictionary of American Biography and the letter of Gale to Ezra Stiles, June 23,1773, in the Yale mss. Gale had heard about Rabbi Carigal, who had just arrived in Newport — “am told he is a Man of Learning among the Israelites. Since you doubtless see a lot of him, What are his expectations about when the Messiah will come?”

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  71. Ezra Stiles, The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, ed. by Franklin Bowditch Dexter (New York, 1901), Vol. III, pp. 24–25. The published text of the Diary is not complete.

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  72. Ibid., pp. 354

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  73. Ezra Stiles, The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, ed. by Franklin Bowditch Dexter (New York, 1901) 367

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  74. Ezra Stiles, The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, ed. by Franklin Bowditch Dexter (New York, 1901) 376–377. An English manuscript text of Carigal’s sermon (which was given in Spanish) is in the Stiles Ms. Papers 611, 1–13, Reel 16.

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  75. Ibid., pp. 391–393.

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  76. Ibid., pp. 395–396.

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  77. Ibid., p. 394.

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  78. Ibid., loc. cit. Rumors about sighting the Lost Tribes in Afghanistan, India and other parts of Asia were common. When the British took over most of India, new reports came back, even from eminent scholars like Sir William Jones.

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  79. Ibid., p. 398.

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  80. See, for example, Rabbi Carigal’s letter “to the Rev. Hocham, the Master of Knowledge, and Understanding & Wisdom, Ezra Stiles”, 8th day of Sivan, 5533. Stiles Ms. Literary Diary, Reel 8, v.4. The letter is not included in the published text.

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  81. This appears in the manuscripts at the end of Stiles’ letter to Carigal, July 19, 1773, labelled by typewriter, “Hebrew Copy one”. It was obviously written in 1774, when the essay was finished. The text is on Reel 3.

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  82. This is labelled by typewriter “19 Jul 1773 ES to Raphael Haim Isaac Carigal (English Copy)”. It is on Reel 3 of the microfilmed mss.

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  83. Ibid., fol. 3.

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  84. Ibid., fols. 3–13. The citation is on fol. 12.

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  85. Ibid., fol. 16.

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  86. Ibid., fols. 16–20.

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  87. Ibid., fol. 21.

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  88. Ibid., fol. 23.

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  89. Ibid., fol. 25.

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  90. Ibid., fol. 31.

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  91. Ibid., fol. 33.

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  92. Stiles, Literary Diary, Vol. III, p. 517, entry for 25 Feb. 1794, where Stiles convinced himself that the Vedas “cant much excède the Times of Abm(Abraham) tho’ they like the Alcoran & the Pentateuch contain Excerpta from Writers of higher Antiquity.”

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  93. Stiles ms. of his letter to Carigal, fol. 34.

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  94. The correspondence for 1773–1775 is all on Reel 3 of the microfilm of the Stiles mss.

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  95. Stiles to Carigal, July 7, 1775, fol. 225–232, on Reel 3.

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  96. Rabbi Carigal to Ezra Stiles, May 27, 1774, “I am very glad to find you are advancing so well in the Hebrew.” Carigal added, “as soon as I am at leisure, I shall examine your text”. Unfortunately, the rabbi reported he had a great deal of business “for our nation”, that he was tired from his voyage, etc. Reel 3.

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  97. Stiles to Carigal, Dec. 8, 1773, Reel 3.

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  98. Cf. Chiel, ‘The Rabbis and Ezra Stiles’, esp. pp. 294–295, and ‘Ezra Stiles and Rabbi Karigal’, Yale Alumni Magazine (March 1974), pp. 16–22.

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  101. Elias Boudinot, A Star in the West, or, A Humble Attempt to Discover the Long Lost Ten Tribes of Israel, Preparatory to their Return (Trenton, 1816). I am working on a study of Boudinot and his role in the beginnings of American fundamentalism.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Washington University, USA

    Richard Popkin

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  1. Richard Popkin
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Philosophy, New York University, USA

    Sidney Hook

  2. Hoover Institution, USA

    Sidney Hook

  3. Dept. of History, Rutgers University, USA

    William L. O’Neill

  4. Dept. of Sociology, University of Toronto, Canada

    Roger O’Toole

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© 1988 Kluwer Academic Publishers

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Popkin, R. (1988). Millenarianism in England, Holland and America: Jewish-Christian relations in Amsterdam, London and Newport, Rhode Island. In: Hook, S., O’Neill, W.L., O’Toole, R. (eds) Philosophy, History and Social Action. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 107. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2873-2_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2873-2_18

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