Description
Among the proliferation of Protestant sects across England in the seventeenth century, a remarkable number began adopting demonstratively Jewish ritual practices. From circumcision to Sabbath-keeping and dietary laws, their actions led these movements were labelled by their contemporaries as Judaizers, with various motives proposed. Were these Judaizing steps an excrescence of over-exuberant biblicism? Were they a by-product of Protestant apocalyptic tendencies? Were they a response to the changing status of Jews in Europe?
In Jewish Christians in Puritan England, Aidan Cottrell-Boyce shows that it was instead another aspect of Puritanism that led to this behaviour: the need to be recognised as a ‘singular’, positively distinctive, Godly minority. This quest for demonstrable uniqueness as a form of assurance united the Judaizing groups with other Protestant movements, while the depiction of Judaism in Christian rhetoric at the time made them a peculiarly ideal model upon which to base the marks of their salvation.
About the Author
Aidan Cottrell-Boyce is a research fellow at St Mary’s University in London. He is the author of Israelism in Modern Britain (2020).
Contents
Introduction
1. Singularity and Puritanism
2. Judaizing and Singularity
3. ‘A Jewish Faccion’: Anti-Legalism, Judaizing, and the Traskites
4. Thomas Totney, Judaizing, and England’s Exodus
5. The Tillamites, Judaizing, and the ‘Gospel Work of Separation’
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Endorsements and Reviews
An original and innovative contribution to our understanding of a neglected tendency within Puritanism. A compelling work that has implications that go well beyond its subject matter and opens up new ways of thinking about Christian interpretations and appropriations of Judaism.
Justin Meggitt, Senior Lecturer in the Study of Religion, University of Cambridge, and Visiting Researcher, Stockholm University
Aidan Cottrell-Boyce takes his readers on a fascinating journey, exploring the significance of ‘Judaizing’ trends among English Puritans. Operating at the intersection of theological and sociological analysis, he presents an innovative and convincing account in which the adoption of ‘Jewish’ practices enabled individuals to take on a stance of distinctiveness and separation from the surrounding culture of the dominant majority. The book’s argument has implications beyond its seventeenth-century focus, illuminating a broader historical pattern of scripturally shaped resistance-identity that can be traced through early Christianity, rabbinic Judaism, the rise of Protestantism, and the Radical Reformation.
Daniel H. Weiss, Polonsky-Coexist Senior Lecturer in Jewish Studies, University of Cambridge
Jewish Christians in Puritan England is as comprehensive a study of its subject matter as readers can ever hope for. It does not engage the increasingly transatlantic context within which seventeenth-century Puritans and Jews remade their worlds. Developments in the Sephardic and Ashkenazic communities of northwestern Europe and the Americas also escape the attention of the author. Those points being made, its clear-eyed and insightful treatment of the Puritan context makes up for those omissions. Two thousand years of history tell us that people’s fantasies about Jews are greater shapers of world history than actualities ever will be. Michael Hoberman, Fitchburg State University In Church History, Volume 92, Issue 3, September, 2023
Cottrell-Boyce’s thesis is undoubtedly interesting and persuasive, and his argument is informed by an impressive range of scholarship. This study will be of value to anyone interested in the ‘Judaising’ phenomenon, and the culture of English Puritanism more broadly. Stephen Hampton in Scottish Journal of Theology, 77/3, 2024, 298-299pp
