‘The proper and naturall meaning of the Prophets’: the hermeneutic roots of Judeo-centric eschatology

Abstract

Recent scholarship on Puritan millennialism has identified an interest in Jewish conversion and restoration to Palestine, labelled as ‘Judeo‐centrism’. This essay examines the early development of this theme from 1600–21, focusing primarily on three writers within the mainstream of Puritan theology – Thomas Brightman, Thomas Draxe and Henry Finch. In Judeo‐centrism, Jewish conversion was not viewed as a union with Gentile believers. Instead, the Jews were seen to maintain their otherness and to assume a position of superiority over the Gentiles. This presumed that the Gentile Church and believing Israel were separate entities, meaning that prophecies previously applied to the Church must exclusively be applied to the Jews. This was the result of the adoption of a ‘consistently literal’ hermeneutic in reading Old Testament prophecy. This essay suggests that the development of this approach was a result of Brightman's response to Jesuit commentaries on Revelation produced in the late sixteenth century.