The Holy Land In History And Thought

Drawing on both primary texts and archaelogy, Wilken traces the Christian conception of a Holy Land from its origins inthe Hebrew Bible to the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem in the seventh century.

This book is the first to investigate the effect of the biblical Holy Land on American religious institutions, from early Puritanism in 1620 to Judaism in 1948. It explores the attachment between religious America and the Land of Israel from a pluralistic perspective, tracing the history of religion in America as it relates to the spiritual and geographical identity of the Holy Land. Contents: Preface; Introduction: The Holy Land in American Religious Thought. PART I: THE HOLY LAND COMES TO AMERICA; Puritans and Congregationalists: The Americanization of Zion; Sephardic Jewry: Present and Future Zion; American Indians: Ten Lost Tribes and Christian Eschatology. PART II: NINETEENTH CENTURY INDIVIDUAL TIES TO THE HOLY LAND; Protestant Pilgrims: Disjunction between Expectation and Reality; Protestant Missionaries: Jewish Conversion and Christ's Return; Consuls: Jews and Holy Land History. PART III: RELIGIOUS GROUPS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY; Christianity among Blacks: The Spiritual Holy Land; Protestant Liberalists: Jewish Return and Christian Kingdom; Mormons: Dialectical Holy Lands; Judaism: American Impact and Internal Divisions. PART IV: THE TWENTIETH CENTURY; Protestant Liberalism: Universal Ideas; Catholicism: Holy Land of Christ's Crucifixion; Judaism: Centrality of the Land; Conclusion.

The dream of building Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land has long been a quintessential part of English identity and culture: but how did this vision shape the Victorian encounter with the actual Jerusalem in the Middle East? The Holy Land in English Culture 1799-1917 offers a new cultural history of the English fascination with Palestine in the long nineteenth century, from Napoleon's failed Mediterranean campaign of 1799, which marked a new era in the British involvement in the land, to Allenby's conquest of Jerusalem in 1917. Bar-Yosef argues that the Protestant tradition of internalizing Biblical vocabulary - 'Promised Land', 'Chosen People', 'Jerusalem' - and applying it to different, often contesting, visions of England and Englishness evoked a unique sense of ambivalence towards the imperial desire to possess the Holy Land. Popular religious culture, in other words, was crucial to the construction of the orientalist discourse: so crucial, in fact, that metaphorical appropriations of the 'Holy Land' played a much more dominant role in the English cultural imagination than the actual Holy Land itself. As it traces the diversity of 'Holy Lands' in the Victorian cultural landscape - literal and metaphorical, secular and sacred, radical and patriotic, visual and textual - this study joins the ongoing debate about the dissemination of imperial ideology. Drawing on a wide array of sources, from Sunday-school textbooks and popular exhibitions to penny magazines and soldiers' diaries, the book demonstrates how the Orientalist discourse functions - or, to be more precise, malfunctions - in those popular cultural spheres that are so markedly absent from Edward Said's work: it is only by exploring sources that go beyond the highbrow, the academic, or the official, that we can begin to grasp the limited currency of the orientalist discourse in the metropolitan centre, and the different meanings it could hold for different social groups. As such, The Holy Land in English Culture 1799-1917 provides a significant contribution to both postcolonial studies and English social history.

What is a homeland and when does it become a national territory? Why have so many people been willing to die for such places throughout the twentieth century? What is the essence of the Promised Land? Following the acclaimed and controversial The Invention of the Jewish People, Shlomo Sand examines the mysterious sacred land that has become the site of the longest-running national struggle of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The Invention of the Land of Israel deconstructs the age-old legends surrounding the Holy Land and the prejudices that continue to suffocate it. Sand’s account dissects the concept of “historical right” and tracks the creation of the modern concept of the “Land of Israel” by nineteenth-century Evangelical Protestants and Jewish Zionists. This invention, he argues, not only facilitated the colonization of the Middle East and the establishment of the State of Israel; it is also threatening the existence of the Jewish state today.

When Ruth Everhart was given the opportunity to travel to the Holy Land as one of several ministers taking part in a documentary about pilgrimage, she jumped at the opportunity. Little did she know just how demanding -- yet ultimately rewarding -- her transformation from Presbyterian minister, wife, and mom to pilgrim would be. Candid, down-to-earth, and delightful, Ruth recounts her experiences in Chasing the Divine in the Holy Land, inviting readers to journey alongside her on an unforgettable Holy Land pilgrimage. Watch the trailer: