Abstract

Jewish immigrants, who began to move into the New England colonies in the eighteenth century, attracted considerable interest from the Puritan population, the descendants of the founders of the colonies. They identified themselves with the ancient Jews and saw themselves as a new God chosen people who came to America with a special mission. The messianic spirit of the early settlers was accompanied by extreme intolerance towards those who did not share the Puritan doctrine, including the Jews. With the sweeping changes in British American colonial administrative system at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and consequent changes in the spiritual and intellectual climate of the New England colonies, there was a significant transformation in the worldview of the New England Puritans, particularly in questions of religious tolerance, interaction with other Protestant denominations, forms and methods of “conversion to the true faith”. It led leading Puritan clergymen to search for a way to restore their parishioners’ interest in religion. Millenarianism, the belief in the imminent advent of the millennial kingdom, was chosen for this purpose. One of the main Puritan theologians of his time, Cotton Mather, tried to put the ideas of Millenarianism into practice. He presented Millenarianism as an ecumenical project capable of uniting representatives of different denominations. The vision of the Puritan colonists as God’s chosen people shaped the special attitude towards the Jews. The article pays special attention to the theological works by Cotton Mather on the Jews of New England, in which his Millenarian views are vividly presented. Although his works, as well as his missionary activity among the Jews, did not bring the expected results, they enabled contacts between the Protestant clergy of America, Great Britain and continental Europe. The Puritan clergy in New England needed other ways to push for religious renewal and conversion, which would soon be actively pursued during the First “Great Awakening” of the second third of the eighteenth century.

References

Benz E. Ecumenical Relations between Boston Puritanism and German Pietism: Cotton Mather and August Franke // The Harvard Theological Review. 1961. Vol. 54. N 3. P. 159–193.

Bertcovitch S. Typology in Puritan New England: the Williams-Cotton Controversy Reassessed // American Quarterly. 1967. Summer. Vol. 19. N. 2. Part 1. P. 166–191.

Bertcovitch S. New England Epic: Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana // English Literary History. 1966. Vol. 33. N 3. P. 337–350.

Case J. The Millennial Hope; A Phase of War-time Thinking. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1918. 272 p.

Crouse N. Causes of the Great Migration 1630–1640 // The New England Quarterly. 1932. Vol. 5. N 1. P. 3–36.

Diner H. The Jews of the United States, 1654 to 2000. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. 447 p.

Ernstine G.E. A Precursor of Christ or a Jewish Impostor? // The Journal of Ecclesiastical History. 1987. Vol. 38. N 4. P. 109–124.

Friedman L. Cotton Mather and The Jews // Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society. 1918. N 26. P. 201–210.

Gershom S. Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah: 1626–1676. Princeton (N.J.): Princeton University Press, 1973. 1010 p.

Hall M. Magnalia Christi Americana Review // The New England Quarterly. 1978. Vol. 51. N 1. P. 119–120.

Hall M. The Last American Puritan: The Life of Increase Mather. Middletown (Conn.): Wesleyan University Press, 1988. 458p.

Hertzer A. The Jews in America: Four Centuries of an Uneasy Encounter: A History. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. 417 p.

Hunher L. The Jews of New England prior to 1800 // Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society. 1903. Vol. 2. P. 75–99.

Kennedy R. The First American Evangelical: A Short Life of Cotton Mather. Grand Rapids (Mich.): William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2015. 176 p.

Lee M. American Millenarianism and Violence: Origins and Expression // Journal for the Study of Radicalism. 2007. Vol. 1. N 12. P. 107–127.

Levin D. Hazing of Cotton Mather: The Creation of Biographical Personality // The New England Quarterly. 1963. Vol. 36. N 2. P. 147–171.

McGiffert M. American Puritan Studies in 1960s // The William and Mary Quarterly: 3rd Ser. January 1970. Vol. 27. N 1. P. 36–67.

Miller P. Errand into the Wilderness. Cambridge (Mass.): Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1956. 244 p.

Miller P. The New England Mind. The Seventeenth Century. Cambridge (Mass.): Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982. 528 p.

Reiss O. The Jews in Colonial America. London: McFarland and Co, 2004. 254 p.

Sarna J.D., Smith E., Kosofsky S. The Jews of Boston. New Heaven: Yale University Press, 2005. 384 p.

Silverman K. The Life and Times of Cotton Mather. New York: Harper & Row, 1984. 497 p.

Smolinski R. Israel Revividus: The Eschatological Limits of Puritan Typology in New England // The New England Quarterly. 1990. Vol. 63. N 3. P. 357–395.

Splitter W. The Fact and Fiction of Cotton Mather’s Correspondence with German Pietist August Hermann Franke // The New England Quarterly. 2010. Vol. 83. N 1. P. 102–122.

Stanley B. Christian Missions and Enlightenment. Grand Rapids (Mich.):

William B. Eerdmans, 2001. 246 p.

Talmon Y. Millenarian Movements // European Journal of Sociology. 1995. Vol. 7. N 2. P. 159–200.

Typology and Early American Literature / Ed. by S. Bercovitch. Cambridge (Mass.): The University of Massachusets Press, 1972. 340 p.

Werking R. Cotton Mather and Salem Witchcraft // The William and Mary Quarterly. 1972. Vol. 29. N 2. P. 280–296.

Wessinger C. The Oxford Handbook of Millennialism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. 768 p.

Wilson M. Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith. Dayton: William B. Eerdmans, 1989. 395 p